On Being Americans

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There are things that make America different. Most of them were seeded in the bill of rights.

Some of it has to do with being a nation of immigrants (even if you have Ameridian ancestors, sorry, you are descended mostly from immigrants.)

The people who believe that to be or become Americans you have to be as blond as Hitler wished he could be are deluded. If being independent minded and for self-government were dependent on low pigmentation, the Scandinavian countries would be hot beds of individualism, instead of cultures that consider “enough” the highest praise, and who try to become a herd of faceless sheep. At least Germans would hold the torch of freedom throughout the centuries, right? And England wouldn’t have become so cowed during and after WWII that they’re almost gone as a culture now.

Now various people will adduce that these populations have been replaced. Not really. They’ve imported a lot of thirdworlders, but honestly that was after the socialist insanity started, not before. And despite what you see in their TV shows, the non-pale populations are still distinct and often holding themselves apart minorities. There’s way more intermarriage in America, and even here well… go to any high school. Groups tend to gravitate like to like.

The theories of racial replacement before the 20th century are usually as credible as the DaVinci code conspiracies. I remember the crazy people who decided that Portugal’s decline as a world power started because of miscegenation. As proof of this they held SELECTED royal portraits. In fact, the Portuguese royal family, as most royal families, were their own race to an extent, since they all married their cousins. But go far enough back, and look at the portrait of Henry the Navigator, whose mother was btw English, and whose father was a royal bastard. This was before the period of greatness, which to an extent, he instigated. The man could be dressed in modern clothes and disappear anywhere in Portugal. Or Greece. Or Italy. Heck, in the US he’d ping Latin on sight, and not one of the lighter ones.

So, you know? Nothing to do with melanin. While, yes, there are traits associated with certain populations, which traits can influence culture, it’s not like that. It’s not that clear cut. Each of us has the virtues of our vices. My tendency to go inside and imagine when I’m unhappy is what allows me to write novels. My tendency to get incredibly anxious about politics is why I keep this blog, because otherwise I’d probably shut down, in the fetal position.

IQ is a very bad measurement, partly because it can be manipulated. (And is.) I say this as someone who tests very high in IQ. (No, higher than that. But lower than my kids, so there’s that.) And often is, by people trying to make a point. Most of the IQ of people in Africa you hear bandied about was from tests done by South Africa back when the government was for real white supremacist.

Also, even if you were to assume that IQ was a real measurement of aptitude (I invite you to go to a Mensa meeting and see how “successful” most people there are. And how LEFTIST. It will disabuse you.) for self-government, it, like height, health and a million other things are influenced by a million things, from early stimulation to nutrition. To, you know, not putting wine in the kid’s bottle because you want him to sleep. Or not doing that too often. To, the kid not living in the kind of environment where he gets concussions on the regular, for instance. Trust me, in my childhood, those were disqualifiers for most of the population. And we were not a third world country. And the area I lived in was not poor or uneducated by comparison to most of the country. You have no idea how well off even the poor in America are.

So, why are Americans different? Why is our base culture and our base assumptions about the world different than most of the world’s, and most of historic humanity’s? For good and ill?

First, the bill of rights. In preserving both the right to free speech, and the right to arm oneself, as well as the base assumption that the state doesn’t have omnipotent power over you, the culture was shaped. Most Americans recoil at the idea the government OWNS you. In the rest of the world it’s at worst met with a shrug. Unless they’re heavily influenced by us. Yes, a few on the left have lost that. But not really. They confess from the lips out that you might as well belong to the government. Until the government does things they don’t like. And then they claim rebellion is patriotism. They’re American and that’s baked in so deep they can’t eschew it.

Second, heredity. No, not racial heredity. That’s not how any of this works. Most races Americans see aren’t even races. (Latins are the Mediterranean sub-race, unless they’re Amerindians. Latin is a commonality of culture with fuzzy borders. Parts of France and Ireland might as well be Portugal. The fact Americans look at frankly South American Amerinds and people like me and see one “race” is an effect of the government making “Latin” a thing, and people starting adding people to their mental category. OTOH most American “blacks” are, what do you call them? Oh, yeah, freaking Caucasians. Seriously. Until they tell you, you assume they’re white. Because this country, under the left’s influence have gone crazy for the one drop rule.) On the other hand individual traits are inheritable-ish. And they influence culture. (What they don’t really have is any relation to skin color, in general.)

What do I mean by traits being inheritable? Well…. if you’re blue eyed, depending on the other parent’s heredity, there’s a chance at least one of your kids will have blue eyes, right? (Might not be high. Four of my grandparents and six of my seven uncle/aunts were blue eyed. Mom is dark-green eyed. My husband’s dad is blue eyed. I’m dark eyed, my husband is dark eyed, all our kids and siblings are dark eyed. Human heredity is hell o’complex even in this.)

Those of us who are naturally stubborn as all get out and have kids are aware that unfortunately it breeds true. Perhaps made worse when we’re the kind who don’t want a spouse we can just roll over. Technically it could keep increasing to infinity. (And yet sometimes such families throw a docile child. It’s odd. They tend to get rolled over.)

And those who are born of curious parents tend to be curious. And–

Well, until the 20th century and airplanes, being a country of people who themselves or their ancestors had immigrated here has consequences.

I can’t begin to explain how weird immigrating is. You leave everything and everyone you know behind. To an extent, you leave yourself behind. To acculturate — which until the late 20th century was a cultural and often a legal requirement — you had to leave yourself behind. To become something else. (Which involves at least if you’re smarter than the average bear and aware becoming aware of the differences. Which is why I’m writing this.) Those of you who haven’t done this, or haven’t done this with the intention of becoming one of the country you moved to, literally can’t picture this. You have no mental model.

The fact that it takes years even in the best circumstances, is the reason I’m against mass migration, and ghettoized one-nationality neighborhoods even if legal. It takes years. Even with you, yourself, trying to fit in, trying to change. I estimate it took me a good 15 years, and note I left my entire family and culture behind, self-consciously stayed away from even Portuguese books and language (save for the obligatory Saturday call to mom.) Am I completely integrated? Mostly. There are things I know are still “weird” but I don’t know how much of that is being “Odd” and how much being born abroad. And I have the memory of being different, and how I changed, because some of it was conscious.

Thing is, my kids are American. They are not anything else. We had some vague idea of making them bilingual, but older son ignored any language not English, so we gave up. Younger son never even got that. They are WEIRD, but not for the community they grew up in, which was science fiction. There, they are perhaps too “normal.”

People who come over in mass migrations and stay within their own culture are different. Partly because mass migration takes less effort, mentally and emotionally. And partly because acculturation, even when expected, could take three or four generations, and usually only happened when you started intermarrying.

But both my kids have, by inheritance or just growing up with us, a tendency to be “leave me alone” and “no, I don’t want to rule you, but neither will I be ruled.” Which runs in both families like an Olympian champion.

And that’s the thing, to come over, to leave everything behind, and to stick it out you have to be of a certain frame of mind. Unless you’re running from absolutely certain annihilation, which some people were through the centuries. If you’re coming over because your country is uncomfortable and doesn’t feel right? Yeah, you have certain traits. And those traits pass on.

A lot of the European migrations, in addition to coming at times of famine or whatever, came mostly from people willing to risk it all on a throw of the dice. And that’s a type of mentality. And it passed on.

The vast majority of people in America take self government and self defense as their G-d given right. Which is why every time the left tries to clamp on gun ownership, we buy more guns (to take on canoe trips. Look, that’s hereditary too, I guess.)

Yes, there are a lot of countries of immigrants. And we all have certain characteristics in common, but no other country has the bill of rights. And some countries define themselves by how nicely conforming they are, unlike that uncouth America. (Oh, Canada.)

I think it took both to shape us into who we are.

Americans are different. There is a different “texture” to society. Americans …. “every man a king” is a good way to put it. Or “I can do what I want provided I don’t mess with you” or– well, something like that. But it’s more like Americans STAND. By themselves. (This means wealth and the automobile had effects here it didn’t have anywhere else, and it’s a mixed bag, but that’s another post.)

It’s hard to define unless you’ve lived abroad as something else. You don’t know for instance how much more conforming students are in school abroad. How many things people assume other people have the right to do to them. Or the top down pressure of “your betters” which has gone from birth (sort of, a lot of Europe still is in awe of the “well born”) to wealth.

The ridiculous trust for experts imported into America by FDR and maintained only by extreme leftist control (prospiracy, not conspiracy) of education and the press is NATURAL in Europe and other places. Or at least has been beaten into the culture for centuries.

And yes, cultures are real. Cultures might perhaps be more easily understood if you view them as communal sentient beings. They’re very hard to change, and when you push them a way, they often go another. The only ways we know of changing culture involve taking the kids and raising them as something else. The degrees of violence involved vary.

If you put all this together, you’ll start to get very alarmed about the erasure of our borders. And you should be, not going to argue. At the same time, it’s not the apocalypse it might very well be for Europe.

Look, Europe has been worrying me for a long time. Before I came here. Was it part of the reason I came here? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what the hell was in my mind back then. I first came over at eighteen, and was seduced by the creativity of the common person in America and the ability to be yourself outside of a socially rigid culture. (Portugal is second maybe to Japan in that.) Then when I decided to immigrate it was that plus the fact that I could tell Portugal — and Europe in general. It would have been easier to immigrate to England or France. I had relatives — had no future. Even back then. I could tell for the most obvious of reasons: even in the eighties, no one wanted to get married or have kids.
I had been applying for grad school and work and had secured an offer. (They’d take care of paperwork.)

Then I fell in love, and things went…. odd. So I can’t tell you why I moved.

But I can tell you that Europe felt broken even when I was a kid. They had some awareness they were broken, too, and kept trying to fix themselves by borrowing stuff from America. Which didn’t work, because mostly they borrowed irrelevant stuff that has nothing to do with what shaped us. Sometimes counterproductive stuff.

I was of an age and ran in circles where I heard a lot of planning for how great the EU would be, and it will amuse you mostly they thought America was as good as it was because of…. size and standardization from the top down. Hence their obsession with bureaucracy and the curvature of bananas.

Europe felt full of self-loathing. Most countries, each despised itself.

Was it the result of WWI or the invasion and occupation of cultures by the alien philosophy of Marxism?

How about both? I don’t think the infection of Marxism would have taken hold without the measure of confusion and self-loathing from WWI. Go read books from between the wars sometime.

Europe in many ways has been casting about for ways to commit suicide.

The internationalists, most of which are European in reality or culture think they’ve hit on that by quite literally stripping the third world and throwing it into the first.

Part of it is the Marxism belief that wealth can’t be created, only stolen. Part is the bizarre gramscian idea that communism is hereditary and inheres to darker skin.

So, you see, both the crazy people on the right and left agree. People who can tan, like me, are literally communists from birth. Even if they aren’t. These people agree, btw, because they understand nothing about other cultures, and confuse familial or tribal cultures with Marxism. Oh, they can be as destructive of wealth and productivity, but communist they ain’t. Which is why I roll my eyes so hard they fall on the floor and get covered in cat hair. Give me a moment to pop them back in.

Now, does the left think it’s destroying America? Most of them? No. Remember, they also think communism is perfect freedom. (But how can you be free if you have to work for a living? is their war cry.) So they think they’re turning us into an utopia. They think, depending on how racist and stupid they are (the average is very, btw) that they’re destroying capitalism, or that they’re destroying “white culture.” (Which doesn’t exist. Anymore than “African culture” exists. Or “Latin culture” exists. Actually that later is closer to existing, because Rome never fell, in essentials. Only in government. But even then the cultures it absorbed matter. For instance, the Portuguese consider the Irish organized. So, you know? And I have it on good authority the Brazilians think Portuguese are regimented.)

What are they actually doing?

Well, even with the millions streaming over the border, they’re NOT in fact creating a majority. At most they’re creating a significant minority. Maybe.

Or they would be, if — as they believe — everyone who can tan — them little brown brothers! — were A CULTURE.

They’re not. They ran out of Mexicans willing to immigrate YEARS ago. At this point, they’ve run out of South Americans. They’re importing the world, and I think the terms of recruitment are mostly “The guys go over there, get ALL the benefits, right wrong, and send A LOT OF MONEY HOME.” Not “Go to America to life” but “go there for a few years and make a lot of money.”

Even the go to America to live groups, like Mexicans in the past, were a mixed bag as to whether they stayed permanently. Most didn’t. It was always a high-male proportion, because those are more willing to go into the unknown. And it was always predicated on “send money home.” AND “get social security” which was enough for a comfortable retirement back home. (Luxurious even.)

This is why after decades of importing Latin Americans they remain oh, maybe 10% of the population. I know higher has been estimated, but it’s hard to tell, and unless you count one-drop — which idiots in the census do — it’s hard to tell. REALLY hard. Our census for that matter is mostly a fiction for various reasons.

Because everyone who comes in doesn’t stay. Everyone who stays doesn’t stay in the barrio. People intermarry. A lot. And even in these debased times, people acculturate, even if most of them aren’t aware of doing it and only realize it when they go back.

And because it’s verbotten to study this, and the left has MYTHS and doesn’t believe in cultures as distinct from race, there aren’t any serious studies of the proportions of the population that do this.

I know that when Obama first opened the borders — and took the economy South — the lack of jobs made people head back out fast. La Grande Salida.

Is the same thing happening? I don’t know. And neither do you. I find it weird that where I am there hasn’t been a noticeable uptick in Spanish magazines or “foreign subgroup” hanging about. Where I am that should already be visible.

There has been an increase in tent cities, yes. And homeless. Heaven help us. It has us looking around an considering maybe another two three years and another “we don’t want to” move. But those idiocies trace directly to a mentally retarded mayor who has decided that if we make it easier for more homeless to come here, it won’t result in more homeless. Most of the homeless look like home-grown addicts.

Logically, since they’re importing from further afield, imports who feel unhappy would have more trouble going back. Then again, I can tell you, particularly from my observation of exchange students is that the same culture or culture family pile together. People out of their element look for people close to their culture. And if they don’t find them (which will be difficult, given the variety imported) they find ways to go back. (Defeating that impulse is self-driven and hard. Unless you’re somewhat broken. Hi.)

And since these people are given money, they might very well find ways to go back. Depends on how many of them are being paid to come in/stay with some idea of using them for police/army actions. (Which will fail, because most of them rather fight each other or use the weapons for crime. It’s cultural.) I suspect a number are. But again, we have no numbers on any of this, besides “Came in and disappeared.”

The only thing I can tell you is it won’t go the way it’s expected. It won’t go that way, because the left has no clue what they’re doing.

They think they’re moving widgets in with widgets. And the new preferred widgets are stronk and will kill/maim/scare/ take over the old widgets.

Even in Europe I suspect it won’t go the way they think. Though in Europe the population is disarmed and in some ways pre-defeated. It’s also old as a rule, which makes a difference. And smaller, which means you can — sort of — overwhelm them. Sort of. Even there, I predict there’s life in the old dog yet, and it might wake them up and bring them to themselves. It is right and natural for the nations of Europe to care about shared heredity, even if they’re mostly just a hodge podge. For various reasons, including continuity.

I don’t know if they’ll win in the end, but they might.

Here? Dear Lord. The left has no idea who or what they are. They’re doing this because they could subvert African nations by weaponizing the native population. Being dumb they think it’s a matter of darker skin and having a majority who can tan will change us permanently.

Can someone find eyes? They’re under a sofa a think. Indy might be playing with them.

Again, illegals remain a minority. And will. Even as they scrape the rest of the world. I doubt most of them want to STAY. They want to GET while the getting is good. And our own culture isn’t weak, or ready to give up. The occupying government and the kakistocratic gerontocracy aren’t good indications. We? Here, on the ground? Are different. And starting to get pissed.

One thing the left fundamentally misunderstands about America is our attitude to government. We don’t think they have a right to “rule” us. We tolerate them, while they’re tolerable. We have lives and jobs and kids. And revolution is not worth it. Unless they make themselves intolerable. Which they’re trying really hard.

And the police isn’t there to protect us from the criminals. It’s there to prevent us going PRIMITIVE on them. Which we will if we don’t trust/there is no police.

There is a reason Americans haven’t rolled over for socialism the way Europe did. It’s there to see if they try. Even now, we’re nowhere as bad on that as Europe.

Yes, they’re going to try to create barrios and ghettos. With indifferent results is my guess.

There is bitter laughter at the organization of “migrant” (No, not really. Illegal aliens is the proper term.) camps. Because the left has one play book, and when they realize they can’t use these people as they think they can, they’re going to turn to their murdery standby. And camps… Shakes head. All in one place. easy to eliminate.

They’re going to try, probably, to create a more “effective” antifa, one that isn’t afraid of the suburbs. One that doesn’t need to be bused from city to city.

My guess is outside the big cities, the results will be astounding. Not the way they expect.

If it weren’t for their myths about “white culture” and how peaceful we are, they’d see it coming, but they won’t.

And that’s the ones that don’t kill each other.

Look, it’s going to be unpleasant as hell, and I’m looking at it in horror, but the truth is that what’s left in ten years is a SLIGHT increase in our underclass. At most. And I’m not sure about that. We’re not an easy environment to survive in, even while being law abiding.

Our homeless, our underclass, as is, are a matter of us being able to afford them.

The other things the left is doing guarantees that time is coming to an end. Even without any great convulsions, we’re headed to a tight time. Yes, it could devolve into bands of roving bandits. Maybe. But the population is heavily armed and has the home ground advantage. What’s more important, most of these criminals are used to a disarmed, cowed populace. One that will be pinched and very upset.

I hope there’s no big convulsion, because in one of those people like me and the kids will be mistaken for the enemy.

But even without it, things will get spicy. And very bad for them.

What we’re going to need, and not far off, is actual police services, not the Stasi, but people who will actually focus on organized crime. And it will be a problem.

Because what remains from this is organized crime. We’ve never got rid of the mob, there’s now the Russian mob, adding the Cartels doesn’t help.

THAT’s the main cause of my current worry and depression.

The rest will shake out. And in America I’m sure we win. In Europe, who knows? Depends on how much they really want to die. You can’t permanently save suicides.

Meanwhile, you — you out there — prepare some more. I need to take my own medicine and go to the range. It’s time and…. organization, and yes, money, to an extent.

Make sure you have a defensible position against higher crime with more third world tactics. Stay off drugs. Regardless of what you think of them, they empower the cartels. Don’t bring illegals home, even young or cute ones. Stay off the highly corruptible/corrupted charities that cater to them.

If you’re young enough and can, get married. Have kids. The future belongs to those who show up. And teach your kids, of whatever level of tan, to be stubborn, independent Americans.

Because once this thoroughly disgusting period is past, and Marxism is buried in the midden of history, America is headed for the stars. Taking humanity with us. And trailing glory all the way.

300 thoughts on “On Being Americans”

  1. Now various people will adduce that these populations have been replaced. Not really. They’ve imported a lot of thirdworlders, but honestly that was after the socialist insanity started, not before. And despite what you see in their TV shows, the non-pale populations are still distinct and often holding themselves apart minorities. There’s way more intermarriage in America, and even here well… go to any high school. Groups tend to gravitate like to like.

    Our “like” is just weird.

    It may be race– the PI mafia, for example.

    But it’s more likely to be an obvious culture thing, like a black, Spanish, and Irish looking set of Texicans ganging up.

  2. I’m enjoying the problems that cities like New York City are facing with the “undocumented” that border states are sending their way.

    They loved calling themselves Sancturary Cities and are now facing the problems that the border states were having with the “undocumented”. 😆

    Oh, I heard something about a Democratic Mayor (IIRC Austin Texas) deciding to switch parties.

    Apparently, he was as concerned about crime in his city as a Republican would likely be.

    2. In NYC the “old” migrants are disturbed that the “new” migrants work cheap.

      https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/09/23/shoulda-mowed-your-own-lawns-america/

      This is some piping hot schadenfreude my friends.

      Now, one thing to take note. In America, the illegals stand around in front of Home Depot every morning at 7AM to get day jobs.

      In Canada, they don’t. There are no migrants/homeless/unemployed dudes standing around Home Depot in Canada trying to get work.

      Also, migrants have stopped sneaking into Canada. These days they’re sneaking -out-.

      1. Weirdly, that is only in liberal places.

        Where you can get jobs without insane limits? … teens are getting jobs. And there aren’t “hire me cheep: guys.

          2. And a lot of legal Latins are starting to get pissed, too, for the same reason I am.
            To quote the black gentleman working the phones next to me for Sarah Palin and wasshisface but really against Obama said “Fool’s gonna get us all killed.”

              1. Heh. Ezra Levant wrote, “Trudeau, the woke narcissist who calls everyone else a Nazi, is the only politician in history to invite a Nazi as a VIP guest.” And the only word in that sentence which he got wrong was the word “only”. (Who is Adolf Hitler? I’ll take “Infamous politicians of history” for $400, Alex.)

                1. Name drop, I met Ezra Levant at Kathy Shaidle’s funeral. He’s a right guy, IMHO.

                  The Speaker of the House didn’t know (or more likely didn’t care) that the GERMANS were fighting the Russians in WWII, and the Russians were on -our- side. Shiny Pony came out and blamed it all on Russian propaganda today.

                  I don’t even try to keep up anymore, the new lows keep coming too fast.

                  1. Very few Americans have ever even heard of the Holodomor, so when I hear about a Ukrainian in World War II joining the forces fighting against the Soviets, I can see some of the reasons. Between the Nazis and the Soviets, I’m not sure which ones I would categorize as the greater evil. From a viewpoint over 80 years later, it is obvious that the Soviets killed a lot more people and engaged in horrendous genocides as well. Back then trying to decide who to support had to have been extremely difficult.

                    Unfortunately in today’s world the sentiment is swinging heavily towards “Communists good” while completely ignoring the history of how and why the Nazis came to power. As a famous quote goes “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme”, which makes me concerned about where things are going.

                    1. No. The sentiment in today’s world is actually NOT swinging towards communists good. It was BUILT like that over the years. It is however now, since we’ve seen their precursor socialism acting like they do, FINALLY swinging the other way.

                  2. Ok, we know that Trudeau is a lightweight with just a name and viciousness going for him, but did nobody on his team do a simple google search on this guy?

                    1. It was revealed in the House yesterday that the man WAS vetted. So they knew who he was and what he’d been doing in WWII. But apparently through some profound mental malfunction it was decided that Nazis were okay if they fought the Russians. Or something. It was in the 1940s, ancient history who cares?

                      The excuse being given is that Stalin had murdered 20 million Ukrainians in the Holodomore in 1932/33, and therefore mumble mumble so fighting for the Nazis was the lesser of two evils. (Something else that no one appears to remember. Holodomore isn’t in spellcheck, for example, and it bloody well should be.)

                      IMHO that would be a tough choice, but really, fighting the Communists doesn’t make it okay to become a real live Nazi. Evil is evil.

                      So, what was the very first thing the Shiny Pony did? Blame this on Russian propaganda. What was the second thing he did?

                      https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/09/26/the-libranos-let-us-forget/

                      Yesterday the Liberal Party of Canada House Leader Karina Gould sought unanimous consent to strike Anthony Rota’s comments about Yaroslav Hunka from the record. Because they should get a do-over, right? It was just a little mistake, their hearts were in the right place!

                      The Conservative Party of Canada told them to go pound sand, thank ghod. The Liberals celebrated the Nazi Waffen SS guy for a shitty photo-op, they get to wear it.

                      Turns out that EVERYBODY cares about that ancient history stuff when you explain it to them.

                    2. Yeah, there’s picking the opposite side from the one that has done the most evil to you directly, and then there’s joining the SS. One is just being pragmatic, the other is indulging in evil and atrocities.

                      Try spelling it ‘Holodomor’ — and spell check still flags it, I see. TextEdit on Mac doesn’t flag it, though.

                    3. Well, if you try to look at it from the viewpoint of someone who has very limited information in the middle of a war, it may make more sense. It’s easy to say how horrible the choice was with decades of perspective. Being there in the moment, it was likely much more difficult.

                    4. I’ve read of a deathbed confession by an Eastern European who had, after the Nazis invaded, enlisted in a force rather than go to a deathcamp. He and his comrades heard of the massacres but dismissed them as rumors — the Germans were civilized, not like the Russians — until the day all the Jews in their village were rounded up, and all the non-Jewish men, too, and the other men were forced to help with the massacre — burying if not shooting.

              2. I’ve often thought that leftists wouldn’t know a real Nazi if one was standing right in front of them, but damn.

                  2. You stand a modern Canadian Liberal socialist next to a genuine card-carrying Nazi and a Chinese Communist, you can’t slide a sheet of paper between them. They all sing out of the same hymn book.

          3. There are two Mandarin radio stations in Los Angeles, both AM band, and they simulcast the same content. There is one Cantonese radio station in LA, also AM.

            There’s one Korean station, also AM.

            I’m actually sort of surprised. I know we’ve got a lot of Asians (particularly Chinese), and there are some Spanish-language FM stations in the area. I’m surprised that’s the entirety of the Chinese radio presence, given the population numbers in the area.

        2. There’s a lot of casual labor of the yo hablo espanol type hanging about the local Home Depots, you can’t hire any of them for minimum wage. Minimum $20 to load a bag of compost into your trunk, and that grudgingly.

          1. That’s one of the reasons that to work in many of the trades, at least here in Texas, you must be fluent in Spanish.

    4. Apparently some have decided that it’s not “fair” for NY to take on all the burden. The other states need to do “Their share.”

      1. Where was New York doing “Their share” when the burden was on the Border States? [Very Big Sarcastic Grin]

        1. Why, their “fair share” was to virtue signal while accepting zero responsibility for any “unforeseen consequences”, like nearly all Leftist regimes. You didn’t know that? 😉

      2. Problem is, the other states that “need to do their share”, aren’t sanctuary states, and don’t have sanctuary cities. Those states are more likely to send the border states help (via national guard to assist repelling invaders) should border states ask.

  3. A few years back I picked up Deference to Authority, by Edgar Z. Friedenberg, a sociologist I rather like (I read his Coming of Age in America in the early sixties and remembered it fondly enough to add it to my library a few years further back). He wrote it in 1980 after moving from the United States to Canada, as a look at how Canadians thought. And he summed up by saying that what Canadians needed to learn from Americans was “that authority is, in every sense, inherently questionable, and that protection which denies respect is no protection at all.”
    I was particularly struck by his comment about Canadians resenting cop shows because they taught young people that they could expect the police to respect their rights, which was American cultural contamination.

    1. Being a Canadian, IMHO since ~roughly~ 1985 the “Authorities” in Canada have become very questionable indeed. We all know it, we all see it every day.

      Canadians are more and more faced with the cold, hard fact those in authority have changed. We Canadians are now the enemy of the state.

  4. Quote “Those of us who are naturally stubborn as all get out and have kids are aware that unfortunately it breeds true. Perhaps made worse when we’re the kind who don’t want a spouse we can just roll over. Technically it could keep increasing to infinity. (And yet sometimes such families throw a docile child. It’s odd. They tend to get rolled over.)” /unquote

    Until they hit the NO stage. My youngest is the quietest, kindest, most polite young gentleman ever, until he goes from “The Quiet Man” to Hulk smash. And nothing in between. Makes the rest of the extended stubborn Irish/Scotts family back up and go “Umm, think we need to be better about listening to him”. Stubborn is baked in, just sometimes it’s recessive to the polite.

      1. Let it glow, let it glow
        Can’t hold it back anymore
        Let it glow, let it glow
        Duck and cover on the floor
        The night it makes bright as the day
        Unleash the atomic
        The rads never bothered me anyway

    3. I can relate. I am a very nice person until I am not. It’s not a gradual change, it is flipping a switch.

      1. There was a bit from Forever Knight that I think applies. Our titular vampire detective is dangling a Very Bad Guy over the edge, having just been shot by said Bad Guy and inclined to make sure he never has the chance to shoot anyone again.

        Partner Detective Schenke: “You can’t drop him! …Think of the paperwork.”

        The sudden amazement, then look of sheer disgust on Det. Knight’s face is priceless.

        There’s an awful lot of us who would really like to be nice, really, “think of the paperwork….”

        (There comes a point at which paperwork, or even the prospect of a jury, is no longer deterrent. And then Katie-bar-the-door.)

        1. Londo: “You really would have shot me, wouldn’t you?”

          Garibaldi: “Yep, but I’m glad I didn’t have to. The paperwork’s a pain in the butt.”

        2. As the infiltrated law enforcement and justice systems become agents of chaos there will come a point at which any crime will become a capital crime without benefit of badge or gown.

        3. “I have a license to stun.”
          “Isn’t it a license to kill?”
          “That too, but you wouldn’t believe the paperwork you have to fill out.”

          1. “What’s so special about that ‘Double-0’ rating, anyway? We all kill enemy agents.”

            Bond: “When I kill somebody, I don’t have to fill out a mountain of paperwork.”

      2. Rudyard Kipling

        Et Dona Ferentes

        1896
        In extended observation of the ways and works of man,
        From the Four-mile Radius roughly to the Plains of Hindustan:
        I have drunk with mixed assemblies, seen the racial ruction rise,
        And the men of half Creation damning half Creation’s eyes.

        I have watched them in their tantrums, all that Pentecostal crew,
        French, Italian, Arab, Spaniard, Dutch and Greek, and Russ and Jew,
        Celt and savage, buff and ochre, cream and yellow, mauve and white,
        But it never really mattered till the English grew polite;

        Till the men with polished toppers, till the men in long frock-coats,
        Till the men who do not duel, till the men who war with votes,
        Till the breed that take their pleasures as Saint Lawrence took his grid,
        Began to “beg your pardon” and-the knowing croupier hid.

        Then the bandsmen with their fiddles, and the girls that bring the beer,
        Felt the psychological moment, left the lit Casino clear;
        But the uninstructed alien, from the Teuton to the Gaul,
        Was entrapped, once more, my country, by that suave, deceptive drawl.

        As it was in ancient Suez or ‘neath wilder, milder skies,
        I “observe with apprehension” how the racial ructions rise;
        And with keener apprehension, if I read the times aright,
        Hear the old Casino order: “Watch your man, but be polite.

        “Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
        Don’t hit first, but move together (there’s no hurry) to the door.
        Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells ’em how –
        `Nous sommes allong ar notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'”

        So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far…
        “Let ’em have it!” and they had it, and the same was merry war –
        Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot –
        Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot.

        Then the oil-cloth with its numbers, like a banner fluttered free;
        Then the grand piano cantered, on three castors, down the quay;
        White, and breathing through their nostrils, silent, systematic, swift –
        They removed, effaced, abolished all that man could heave or lift.

        Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs –
        The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sons –
        Measured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and un – perturbed,
        Till we wake our Island-Devil-nowise cool for being curbed!

        When the heir of all the ages “has the honour to remain,”
        When he will not hear an insult, though men make it ne’er so plain,
        When his lips are schooled to meekness, when his back is bowed to blows –
        Well the keen aas-vogels know it-well the waiting jackal knows.

        Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float –
        Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boat –
        Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite –
        But oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!

  5. Funny thing, I recently found out that North American Aviation was basically a rebadge of the US Fokker corporation. Apparently after WWI Anthony Fokker, yes that Anthony Fokker, immigrated to the US because he figured that was the best place to build airplanes. And built airplanes, a lot of them.

    It was rebadged after the Fokker Trimotor crash that killed Knute Rockney ruined the brand reputation.

    But the upshot is two of the major USAAF fighters (the P-51 from the wreckage of the Fokker Corp, and the P-47 from the aftermath of Seversky) were the direct result of crazy immigrants who did pretty much what the hostess did, mostly because they had cool ideas that there really wasn’t any way they could chase in the home country.

    1. This looked interesting, so I went looking for more info on Wiki. Unfortunately, it appears that the company wasn’t North American. Instead, his company was Atlantic Aircraft Corporation. It was acquired by GM in 1929, but was shut down the following year – mostly (but not entirely) due to the start of the Great Depression.

      1. It’s messier than that. GM owned both AAC and NAA, and the former was folded into North American. The usual suspects have snippets on the acquisitions and mergers.

      2. It’s complicated. Atlantic Aircraft Corporation was one of the business names that the US Fokker aircraft corporation used, and when GM did the badgengineering they did a really thorough job of it. Greg’s Airplanes and Autos has the whole shaggy dog tale of it:

  6. Again, illegals remain a minority. And will.

    Illegals MAY BE as much as…… .8 percent of the population, of late.

    Assuming nobody went “home.”

    1. Actually, the ones added in just the last 2 1/2 years are approaching 3%. Which is the number of internal enemies required to start destabilizing a society. Coincidence…or not?

      1. 1) no one knows that number, and I suspect it depends on the society.
        2) we have 20% internal enemies. the left.
        3) These aren’t exactly enemies. They’re…. strangers. Some will think themselves enemies. But most will be culture-shocky and lost for a while.

      2. Not. The “Overwhelm their social services” theme hasn’t worked, so they moved on to “Import a foreign army.”

      3. And how do you know it approaches 3%. We don’t know our own numbers. We don’t really know theirs. Who are you trusting.
        And don’t say “then it’s higher” because I wonder how much of this is propaganda to scare us into giving up.

        1. A lot of it. Those links I just added are what’s probably going to be used to remove TxDPS from the border.

        2. Since the Pretendent occupied the White House in January 2021 more than 5 million illegal aliens have been observed crossing our southern border. An unknown but presumably large additional number of ‘gotaways’ crossed without being observed. If the census reports putting U.S. population at around 320 million are anywhere near accurate, that’s getting close to 3%.

      4. The ones hitting LOCALLY tend to bounce right back to home as soon as they have a tax filing number, so why should I believe they’re all here now?

  7. I was going to to note I’ve no high hopes regarding the future of…, but I’m not really depressed either, and explain why that’s my take.

    However I do have to make a run in to town instead now.

    That I do find depressing! 😉

  8. Sarah,

    Something that you talked about last week got me thinking about preserving classics. Should we make a list of books/authors to be protected from cancelation? Even if all one cam do is download the text from Gutenberg and protect it from infiltration and sabotage, that is something.

    Anyway, I nominate Twain, Kipling, and Henty for the list.

    1. Add C.S. Lewis and Chesterton. And Thomas Sowell. And L’Amour and Heinlein (yes, those are classics ;-)).

    2. :coughs into fist: There may be some lists available: https://carolinefurlong.wordpress.com/2022/09/14/historical-and-research-favorites/

      And here: https://carolinefurlong.wordpress.com/2023/01/20/more-reading-suggestions/

      And here: https://open.substack.com/pub/upstreamreviews/p/upstream-reviews-presents-243?r=1jzuql&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

      And here: https://open.substack.com/pub/upstreamreviews/p/upstream-reviews-presents-cda?r=1jzuql&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

      And another one here: https://open.substack.com/pub/upstreamreviews/p/upstream-reviews-presents-2d6?r=1jzuql&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

      More will be coming. Please spread these around so more people buy more and we can get more in circulation. Project Gutenberg is good, but actual physical BOOKS is also a good idea. Those can’t be deleted as easily as digital copies can, even by accident.

        1. Or (and?) save decrypted digital copies where Amazon/Nook PTB can’t get to the digital copies. Just need to find a decent Android epub reader that is not Nook. Calibre works for on the PC should it come down to that.

          1. Are you talking about a physical e-ink reader or an app for your phone? O use Librera. It can read epub, pdf, and other formats as well.

            I also have an e-ink reader that is not tied to Amazon or any other bookseller. Both have a purpose and are much used.

            2. I seriously considered building my own e-book reader from scratch but ended up buying a Kobo and installing KOReader system (https://koreader.rocks/) therein.

              I find the combination extremely satisfactory, well over a hundred hours of reading on a charge, fonts and formats almost infinitely modifiable, handles EPUB, PDF, DjVu, XPS, CBT, CBZ, FB2, PDB, TXT, HTML, RTF, CHM, DOC, MOBI and ZIP files.

              & oh, I decided not to build my own when I found I could by a Kobo Nia for less than I would have had to pay just for the e-paper display screen.

              1. I had a Nook eReader until the battery ran out (hey it was over 20 years old). I replaced it, well before then, with a Samsung, that I put the Nook and Kindle Android apps on (it’s battery eventually died too). The Nook device I shared with mom when I replaced it (she couldn’t buy books, but could download anything I had purchased). When the laptop I had died, I got a MS Surface tablet for less than a replacement laptop plus 8″ Samsung replacement cost. The MSS tablet is really too big for just reading on it as a tablet.

                Note, both devices would hold enough charge that I could reroot them, but quickly died. Plus could kick them off as “approved devices” on Nook and Kindle accounts.

                1. I’ve tried reading on active screens, including my phone, my computers, and a couple of tablets. It’s just too hard on my eyes. I’m considering trying a Kindle Scribe, the e-ink screen may work better for me. I just don’t know and haven’t felt like gambling the money. The newer Kindles certainly have some features that make them far more appealing.

                    1. Don’t know about the Scribes but the latest generation of kindle PaperWhite backlight can be set to less blue more red/yellow lighting.

                    2. According to the product description, the Amazon Scribe can also be set to reduce the blue component of the light. I may get one to try. The larger screen makes it easier to increase to font size and the e-ink display makes it easier to add light. My eyesight is failing, so I need quite a bit of light to read (shrinks my pupils).

                    3. One of the features that I have found useful is you can also select from several fonts and font sizes. Modern publishers find san serif fonts aesthetically pleasing (particularly at smallish font sizes), I find these unreadable and tend to run with the Bookerly font (a Serif times roman like font of Amazons) at 10-11 point. The EPaper tend to run at about 300 DPI, there were some tablets (most modern Ipads, Fire HDX 7″ that is discontinued, likely most modern Android tablets) that are 300 DPI Plus, but the difference between the emmissive nature of a LCD/OLED display versus the reflective nature of the EPaper seems to matter. I used a fire HDX 7″ from 2014 to 2018 as my main reading device. I liked it a lot, but when I switched back to a first gen paperwhite in 2019 I found far less eye strain. Also the Paperwhite is FAR lighter than its Fire cousins making it more pleasant to use than a tablet for old wrists that verge on carpal tunnel from 40+ years of typing. Last of all the battery life is far superior. I read 2+ hours a day and the paperwhite stays charge for 2 weeks plus. The fire was charge it every other day. Phones I find just to darned small for reading other than for short bursts even though most modern ones are 300 DPI+

    3. I would say try to preserve not just the classics, but everything. Everything and anything you find interesting and/or informative.

      …And I nominate Andre Norton and Cherryh’s Foreigner series, for one!

    4. I have put my mind to fighting what I can fight now while trying to lay a piece of foundation on which to rebuild, no matter the outcome.

    5. “Even if all one can do is download the text from Gutenberg and protect it from infiltration and sabotage, that is something”

      A few years ago my husband and I discovered Create Space (now KDP) and began creating paperback editions of old works that were in the public domain. (Anything published in the US before 1928 is now public domain in the US. I believe the UK, EU, and Australia’s rule is that works become public domain 70 years after the author died. Which means all of Orwell’s stuff is public domain across the pond since he died in 1950, but not in the US just yet.)

      Downloading the text from Gutenberg and then putting into a nice paperback format was exactly what we did. We had fun doing that for a while and even selling our books at various events such as comic cons and steampunk events, until KDP kinda cracked down on that, then the pandemic totally took the wind out of our sails.

      I SHOULD be reviving that now more than ever; the problem is getting back into jumping through all the hoops of transcribing, uploading files, etc. and then having to sit in front of a computer for hours every evening after having already sat in front of a computer for hours at my job, which is killing my hip and lower back muscles…. you probably know the drill.

        1. Just for the fish, just for the halibut, I ran your 294 page London’s Iron Heel through lulu’s cost calculator, a hundred copies, printed and delivered to any undisclosed address in the U.S. would cost around $8.89 each.

  9. One picky point (I’m good at those): Spanish-language magazines? Is anybody starting up new magazines these days? That’s something like getting into the buggy-whip business circa 1912. I wouldn’t mind having magazines make a comeback, but I haven’t heard anything suggesting it. I’d be glad to receive correction: it’d give me hope of short-fiction writing markets expanding.

    If you want a data point about a Latin uptick, look at the great Bud Light auto-defenestration. What brand took over its number one spot? A Mexican/Latin brand, Modelo Especial. That’s suggestive, though maybe cancelled out by Foxfier’s point regarding local Spanish-language stations. (Or maybe non-satellite radio is having as bad a time as magazines these days. I don’t listen to it much these days, which itself hints it might be true.)

    1. No. Seriously. The rest of the world still reads magazines. and around 2008 Walmart magazine racks were filled with Spanish language magazines. It’s a thing in grocery stores. We’re not importing the CONNECTED of the world.
      As for Modelo, dear sir, it’s not an ethnic taste. it’s been gaining among working class men forever. 20 years at least.

        1. a lot of my male friends drink Dos Equis. Actually we could say the Mexican immigration to Portugal is 0. The immigrants to Portugal are MOSTLY Eastern European of all things. And yet both Dos Equis and Modelo are big in Portugal.

      2. Which gets to one of the deeper complications of this whole topic: what would become the mexican and american cultures have been connected since before the nation existed. And their food has been completely mainstream for decades.

        1. “what would become the Mexican and American cultures have been connected since before the nation existed”

          I remember years ago a descendant of one of the ORIGINAL inhabitants of Texas saying her family didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them, because they were living there when Texas was still part of Mexico.

          1. Which is a prime example of what the Left has been pushing against assimilation.

            Did she follow it up by saying you should give the land back?

            1. No, she didn’t. She was making the opposite point, that she didn’t appreciate people assuming she was an illegal.

              1. Like my friend, Charlie Martin, whose SPANISH family was in Colorado at the time of the Louisiana purchase. (Obviously a lot of other things fell into the genetic pot since then. But at least one of his brothers looks Spanish. :D)

              2. That’s interesting, because that phrase is part of a stock argument by Leftists for why we should have open borders, a “path to citizen”, creating the Latino state of Aztlan, etc.

                “My ancestors and I didn’t choose to be included in Amerikka; the border moved. Give it back via open borders / a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants / creating the Latino state of Aztlan / reparations, etc.”

                Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

    2. Modelo is an interesting case, because it’s a German style beer, so it’s actually in the same category that Budweiser was, but hadn’t been economized down to the extent that Bud Light has been.

      As I recall there was a similar Japanese beer brand that also sold out during things, but they could not handle the demand. I think it was really as much a case of Modelo Especial being the closest good match that could also support the production ramp up needed.

    3. For what it’s worth, the ARRL has dropped the dead-tree magazines (at least QST–I read the others online) from their normal memberships. They say that the paper companies are producing so much cardboard for shipment (coughAmazoncough) that magazine quality paper has gone sky-high when it can be found. I took Make magazine for a year’s worth last year, and the paper they used sucked rocks.

      I’m glad my printing needs are now quite modest. Just broke open a ream-and-a-half package that should last me a few years.

  10. Not. The “Overwhelm their social services” theme hasn’t worked, so they moved on to “Import a foreign army.”

    3. They’re going to try it now with homeless support. IIRC, the plan here in LA County (at least as of a couple of years ago) is to build residences for the homeless that will be absurdly expensive.

      1. Longer than 14 years. I remember when the word went out back in the 00s to “STOP WAVING THE MEXICAN FLAG AT DEMONSTRATIONS!” One week it was clearly visible in all of the pictures and video footage, the next it had vanished.

  12. On a different tangent, if you’re needing to get to the range, I highly recommend something like a Lazerlyte laser practice system.

    Basically they’ve got a snap caps with lasers in them in a variety of calibers, and electronic target boards that register and can show the shots.

    You can basically train using aimed dry fire. And since something like 80% of accuracy is in pulling the trigger without jerking the gun, it’s a really good way to practice for cheap, without having to hit the range. You can pretty much do the equivalent of go through a couple of boxes every night for basically an occasional new set of batteries.

    They’re really cool, and I’ve found them a really efficient way to train. Plus it’s kind of a zen way to wrap up the day.

    1. I live in a country where I can’t own guns, so my only experience with those is when we’re in America and I visit my brother-in-law. He has one of those (I forget the brand name) and I’ve gotten to shoot it. It really is effective: it can’t simulate recoil, but it sure does help you learn to keep your aiming point on target. And then when you go to the range to fire off actual ammo, you can focus solely on controlling recoil because you’ve already trained yourself to aim correctly. And for any skill, a training session where you focus on just one aspect of the skill (because you’re already competent in the other aspects) is going to produce far better results than a training session where you need to train three or four different aspects simultaneously (e.g., stance, grip, trigger smoothness, and recoil control).

          1. Ah, yes, Canada – a beautiful nation full of wonderful people but tragically governed by sympathizers.

            1. I will tell you something. I always used to think what you’ve said there was true.

              But then there was Covid. And as bad as the behavior of the government was and still is, the great revelation of the WuFlu is that this nation is -infested- with block captains, sympathizers, snitches and full-on camp guards.

              Really, I’ve never been so disgusted with my fellow Canadians as I was in 2020 and 2021. Free country? No, not a fricking chance, and it has almost nothing to do with socialism. Canada is full of people screaming “There oughta be a LAW!!!”

              Well, they’re getting what they wanted. Now there is a law. For everything.

                1. This was my direct experience on the ground. It was very tough to take them seriously after about April/May 2020, and the Vaxx jab made my freaking hair stand on end.

                  The number of people I thought I knew, telling me I better go get that jab and acting all high and mighty, it was large. It’s a good thing I live in the sticks on a dead-end road or there might have been trouble. Even out here we had mask enforcers and vaxx fanatics. “Put your mask on! Put your mask on PROPERLY! Hand sanitizer!”

                  Meanwhile all they have is a plastic face shield, which does less than nothing. I tired of it rapidly.

                  That’s why I took to wearing the N-95 respirator everywhere. People want to be ridiculous, I can top them. Aggressive over-compliance makes Karen uncomfortable, right? She can’t complain, and you’re making her look bad.

                  If they bring out the masks again I’m going full biohazard Raccoon City with faceplate and bunny suit. I may even get an Umbrella Corporation shoulder patch, just to be that way.

                  There’s a lot of a-holes here. A lot more than I thought when I was younger.

                  3. I have thought about seeing what I can find from the milsurp store in the way of Nuclear Biological Chemical suits. It is far past time to ridicule these morons.

                1. Sarah, they rolled tanks on the moms and dads march for kids. The Mooslimb organized march, by the way, and very well attended by everybody across the country. And then lied about it, and then tried to change the subject to -anything- else.

                  It’s Pravda now.

                    2. This is the -only- video I’ve seen, and while I don’t doubt it I can’t verify its veracity. Those two armored cars were rounding the corner of Queens Quay onto Rees St, someplace they have no reason to be. Its right on the waterfront in the middle of condos.

                      I do find it “interesting” that those guys were out driving around down there in the dark, the day before the Million March for Kids. Rees St. doesn’t go anywhere but up to the front of the Skydome aka Rogers Center. Not exactly the national interest.

                      Try searching “soldiers in our streets” that’s a meme up here.

                      The last time LAVs were seen in Toronto was cleaning up Downsview after a huge snowstorm.

                    4. Sarah, you want to make something famous?

                      https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/rodger-kotanko-mystery-customer-witness-police-raid-1.6977476

                      According to the lawsuit, Mr. Kotanko was raided by -Toronto- police, not Haldimand County OPP, because his paperwork wasn’t in order. That’s what the police said. So, obvious political operation. Somebody wanted a high profile bust. Otherwise the OPP would have made the arrest, because it is their jurisdiction.

                      According to the lawsuit, he was killed because he didn’t put his hands up fast enough. That’s what the eyewitness said.

                      Which sounds to me like “FREEZE!BANGBANGBANGBANG!” They shot the guy four times, sitting at a table, with nothing in his hands. Eyewitness. Lawsuit. Okay then.

                      I -do not- know any background on Kotanko, his politics, his history, nada. I am told by private sources and the local grapevine that he was well regarded by local shooters for his gunsmithing, and did a lot of work for the local OPP. So, cops in and out of his place all the time.

                      Even saying for the sake of argument he was the worst guy ever, you do not shoot an unarmed man because he didn’t put his hands up fast enough. Particularly some fat old guy with six rifles pointed at his head.

                      That happened in Port Dover, sleepy little lake town down the road from Chez Phantom.

                      This is new information, out today. Deserves wider dissemination.

      2. Airgun?
        Blackpowder muzzleloader?

        Certainly teach the basics. Some can be surprisingly effective, too.

        Bow?

    2. Going on my list for purchase when I can. I assume I’ll be able to find 9mm.

      Keeping up my accuracy is hard right now – I can go to the range, but can’t put all that many rounds down range without the old wrists giving me fits. This looks ideal to solve that problem. Then I can reserve my range time to just keeping my recoil control well oiled.

      1. If you are using 9mm, find the light bullet loads, 115 grains usually work well.

        A .22 is great for practicing the basics. I usually start with a .22 then finish with the larger pistol for that session.

        Tried an air-pistol?

        1. Eh, no. For recoil control, I always use the loads that I would be using if I had to fire the weapon when NOT on the range. (So far, so good…)

          They’re two different, if related, things. Recoil control is about how quickly you can get back on target, how fast you are able to send lead down range. Accuracy is whether you are hitting where you intend to when you are back on target.

          These would solely be for maintaining accuracy. I would still go to the range, with normal loads, to practice recoil control.

          Oh, and definitely not an air-pistol. Any firearm (or, indeed, any weapon) that is not your own, or at least the same model, will have a different weight and balance from the one that you might HAVE to use at some point. For a beginner, it might be appropriate – but consider that a person skilled with, say, a rapier is NOT thereby also an expert with saber or katana.

  13. Re: the IQ results from Africa, it’s known that IQ changes over time. There were those results from Norway many years ago that found that two additional years of school led to an increase of 7 IQ points in the average scores of young men enlisting in the army. (Norway had mandatory military service for young men, and administered IQ tests on entry to the service so they had a huge data set. And when they raised the age at which you could leave school from 16 to 18, they found that the young men who left school at age 18 were scoring 7 points higher on average than the cohort that had left school at age 16).

    So two extra years of good schooling can increase your IQ test results. Does it follow, then, that years of bad schooling can decrease them? Well, one would assume that it can, and one study would suggest that this is happening. The article never mentions school quality as a possible reason for the drop in IQ points, but come on. Does anyone believe that British schools (the study was done in Britain) are doing better these days than fifty years ago?

    And if poor schooling can produce lower IQ test results, well, the poor IQ test results all across Africa are easily explained by that alone. I spent a year in western Africa, in one of the poorest countries of the world. I heard several times about teachers not getting paid because the kleptocrats in charge of the country had pocketed the money that was supposed to go to the teachers. Anyone think the kids are going to learn well in a country run by leaders like that?

    I’ve seen maps of IQ results by country posted online, usually by people trying to make a racist point about how Africa’s IQ results are so poor. (E.g., the country I used to live in showed average IQ results of 61 in those maps). Thing is, that idea doesn’t pass the laugh test. First, if IQ was innate as these racists claim it is (which is why they claim Africans are genetically inferior, a claim I absolutely refute), then they have an impossible task trying to explain the Norway result. Second, if the average IQ really were 61 and this was innate, that would mean that 95% of the population ranged in IQ from 46 to 76 points (since IQ is calibrated to have 95% of the bell curve be within plus or minus 15 points of the average). Thing is, IQ results at that level would indicate (if IQ were innate) people who are so intellectually disabled that they are incapable of supporting themselves and need special help to make it through life. Such people do exist, and there are many charities doing good work with them. But on a population-wide scale, at those numbers? No. Especially not in poor countries where there are such limited resources (because the thieves at the top steal most of them). If there really were such huge numbers of intellectually-disabled people at that scale in those poor countries, the death rate would be catastrophic (because almost nobody could afford to take care of them) and it would be all over the news.

    No, the IQ results from Africa are easily explained by their countries having terrible schools, and no other explanation is needed: the atrocious quality of the local schools is, alone, enough to explain the results.

    1. That makes sense if IQ is measuring education, not intelligence, and specific kinds of education at that. What use is a math test for people who were never taught math? A reading test for those never taught to read?

      With our schools now teaching weird sex fetishes instead of math and reading, we should expect huge drops in IQ scores here.
      ———————————
      Mislabeling some social or political issue as ‘An Epidemic!’ does not make it one.

      1. Agreed. As I understand it, IQ is pretty much defined as, and assumed to be, ability to learn; i.e. to retain and correctly process information. Also as I understand it, IQ tests do not measure any such thing; they measure (poorly, based on a general model taken from a single culture) what has been learned and use the assumed level of education to calculate IQ based on the results of that calculation. So many ways that breaks down in different cultures with wildly varying levels of “formal” education. IQ tests are a joke when misapplied, and not much better when “correctly” applied.

  14. It is nice hearing somebody else comment on how bad Mensa has become. When I joined over 45 years ago, it was a really cool bunch of people. Now, I’ve seriously considered canceling my Life Membership. It used to be a significant part of my social life. So did fandom. Now I have very little social life because of the hatred these groups have for people lie me.

      2. Being able to come here and “talk” is a big blessing in my life. One I’m very grateful for.

        2. I have to echo snelson134 – #metoo

          Even when I’m with people, I don’t get to talk much, if at all (not unless I am asked a direct question). By the time I open my mouth to talk the conversation has moved on past what I wanted to contribute to. Why bother?

  15. Europe’s problem, I think, is the shock of the World Wars. Both of them. They were the Second Thirty Years’ War, and like the original, were fought with a ferocity that shocked the combatants.

    The response to the first conflict was the Treaty of Westphalia. Laws of war, outlawing private mercenary armies, the concept of the state as the fundamental unit of international relations. But underpinning it all was the Christian concept of repentance – that no matter how badly you had behaved, it was worthwhile to Go And Sin No More.

    The response to the second conflict was a catastrophic loss of self-confidence. Arguably helped by Communist agitators – it’s noteworthy that Eastern Europe is still strong and vital. Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest are the new capitals of Europe. And they are finally learning to throw their weight around.

    1. And I have been roundly criticised for wanting to move to Ukraine. Yes, once the war is finished, if that happens in my lifetime which is unlikely.

      Yes, there is corruption, but as far as I can tell, there is far less corruption than in the West, which isn’t saying much. As far as violence, even with the war, I would be much safer in the city center of Kyiv than New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago, or even Austin.

      Overall, I do not want to move to the EU.

      1. Uh…

        It wasn’t all that long ago that a big deal was being made about Ukrainian cops getting higher salaries because they’d agreed that they weren’t going to take bribes anymore (which made up a big chunk of their salary before the raises). You might be safer in Kyiv than in some places in the US. But the corruption is still on an entirely different level.

        1. Given how corrupt the US government is, maybe we could try paying members of Congress more to eliminate their corruption. Yes, I know it is corrupt, but from what I can tell the US is far more corrupt. Even Texas is more corrupt.

          1. How much more? We already pay them almost $200,000 a year, plus benefits worth at least another $100,000 a year. The voters they supposedly represent only make a fraction of that.

            They’re not corrupt because they’re poor. They’re corrupt because they’re greedy and entitled. They don’t represent the voters, they represent the big-money donors. Giving them more of our money won’t change that.

            We’ve already paid AOC more than $700,000 and she still wants us to ‘forgive’ a $40,000 college loan. Sadly, they mismanage the public’s money even worse.
            ———————————
            Why do so many idiots believe that our problems will be solved by the same shitheads that caused them?

          2. Given how much Reid and Pelosi both increased their net worth while serving in Congress, I don’t think you can name a salary that would be high enough.

            However, corruption at the top is pretty much normal (unfortunately) throughout the world. The problem is when corruption gets down to the very lowest levels of government. You’re at City Hall because you need a form? You’re going to have to drop some cash into the open drawer of the clerk that keeps the forms (that’s why the drawer is always kept partly open). Then you’re going to have to drop some cash into the open drawer of the clerk that collects and files the forms. And so on. No words are said. No one ever says, “Drop the money into the drawer or your form will get ‘lost’.” But the locals all know how the system works, so words don’t need to be said. I don’t know that Ukraine necessarily has that particular tradition. But I know that there are parts of the world that operate that way.

            Yes, corruption is becoming an increasing problem here in the US. But there are plenty of places throughout the world where it’s a lot worse. The thing about the US is how rich our country is. And that means that when you’re talking about corruption at the top (where the most power and money is), you’re talking about some very big chunks of cash.

            1. Every now and then I will see articles purporting to rate which cities or states are the “most corrupt” based on how many or what percentage of their public officials go to jail or get charged with bribery or malfeasance. (Of course Illinois, New Jersey and sometimes Louisiana always rank at or near the top of these lists.)

              I’m not so sure that’s a good measure of corruption, because if State A has a whole bunch of officials going to jail while State B has very few, it could mean that State B is actually MORE corrupt because they are letting their officials get away with it and not prosecuting them.

              No, I would think the best measure of corruption is this: how readily can an average citizen lacking wealth or political/social connections obtain needed services or “redress of grievances” WITHOUT resorting to extralegal means such as cash under the table, calling in a favor from someone “connected”, etc.

      3. No, you will not. You will be the POOR American (that is, not as rich as they think you should be to be worrh having around). The outsider. You think you are isolated now. You will be even more isolated because you are not Ukrainian. You will not be a guest among them. You will be an interloper.

        You have been criticized for not having a clue about what you are speaking of. You see only the numbers. The numbers aren’t the problem. You are not Ukrainian. You will NEVER be Ukrainian, and you will not be bringing with you that will make you valuable to them. You will just be the old stranger with nothing to offer. Why should they care about you? Especially if you are halting in the language or get the local dialect wrong.

        1. Considering how much I am HATED where I live now, it sounds like an improvement. In many countries there are active expat communities which would provide a much more accepting life than the life I live now. I’m sick and tired of the “America, Rah, Rah” crap. This country has a lot of problems and the majority of people seem to want it that way.

          I just got back from a vacation in Thailand. I could build a life there. It’s not my first choice, but it could work and I could afford it, unlike living here.

            1. That’s what you think. I did some serious research both before going and while I was there.

              I can’t live in the United States much longer. If for no other reason than I need to quit driving soon. I MUST move somewhere that I can live without owning a car, which is completely impractical in the US (and Canada). I MUST move somewhere with a lower cost of living. These are nonnegotiable. So while you call me an idiot, I’m saying you have absolutely no fucking clue where I am coming from.

              If anybody has practical ideas for someplace else, I’m interested.

              2. You’ve informed us of it repeatedly.

                And you’re still being an idiot, because I freaking live in a town where you don’t have to have a car.

                I went through boot camp with folks who’d never driven because they didn’t NEED a car.

                If your “serious research” couldn’t even find the places in the US where you can live without a car, it’s nonsense.

                1. So share some of these places. New York, Chicago, San Francisco and DC are all impractical for me to live in due to the cost of living. I have been looking.

              1. It’s a matter of finances. I can’t afford to live here. I can’t afford to live anywhere in the US where I am not required to drive. I researched what apartments/condos cost in Thailand. I have first hand knowledge of what food costs. I even know what it cost to get my teeth cleaned. I know what a taxi costs. And these were farang prices.

                So, go ahead and tell me how I can live an adequate life here.

                  1. Fine. Where is a cheaper place to live where I do not need to own a car? Seriously. I can get a cheaper place to live out in some rural area, but owning a car is mandatory for me if I do that.

                    1. Rural areas, as has already been pointed out to you, have these things called “towns” which frequently are in walking distance to the store and clinic.

                      Or there are retirement communities that start at an apartment and go all the way up to nursing home.

                      Or dozens of other things that you should have run into in your supposed research.

                    2. Sure, I’ve looked a retirement communities. The rents are high enough that I would have a negative cash flow, as well as being subject to unacceptable medical requirements as of 2020. Not all of them had that requirement, but it was something that any of them could decide to implement, which in a few years moving will be a lot more of a challenge. I gave them serious thought. Small towns where there is a grocery store and a coffee shop leave me too dependent on them staying in business. Being in the center of a small city, such as Kherson, is very different from being in a small town. Where I just was in Thailand there were over ten restaurants within two blocks, a 7-11 half a block away, at least ten bars within a block where they were happy to serve me water or a coke (about $1.50 in the bar)

                      The numbers I have for Thailand. I can rent an apartment in the middle of lots of action for under $500/month. Food while eating out was under $300/month and this was not street vendors, it was middle of the road restaurants. Taxi (Bolt) was under $3 for most of the city and that was on 4 wheels, not 2. Beer in a bar was anywhere from $1.50 to $2.50, except for Guiness and some other imports. Most of the drugs I am taking are available from pharmacies without having to visit a doctor. Clinics and doctors are much cheaper for most routine care, dentists are a quarter the price. Yes, I will likely need to travel to the US when my battery runs down in about six years, although the replacement surgery is far less invasive. My heart valve will likely wear out in twelve to eighteen years, which will almost certainly require a trip to the US. My annual CT scan will likely be much cheaper there than here, but an annual trip back is doable.

                      I’ve already got a lawyer lined up to help me with immigration and getting a retirement visa. I’ve already spoken to a real estate guy about apartments and condos.

                      Is it my first choice? No, but it is a viable choice. I don’t like the weather and the nasal sound of Thai is a bit annoying, not Fran Dresher annoying, but still annoying. And, the Thai alphabet breaks my brain. I was also amused that I was reading some of the signs in Russian before I was reading the English. I am on the lookout for other alternatives. I’m hoping to make a trip to Bulgaria in November.

                      As far as community, there are lots of British, Australian and German expats there. They own a lot of the businesses. I found myself striking up conversations with quite a few of them. Some of the bars are retirement projects for them, so they enjoy talking to people.

                    3. One-bedroom units range in price from $364 to $708 a month. Two-bedroom apartments will cost anywhere from $437 to $848 monthly.

                      We offer easy living to our residents. You won’t have to worry about maintenance or lawn care, meaning you’ll have more time to focus on the things that truly matter to you. Utilities are also completely covered in your rent with the exception of telephone and cable TV costs.
                      https://www.good-sam.com/locations/affordable-housing-rapid-city

                    4. https://www.good-sam.com/locations/hastings-village

                      ndependent Living Apartments
                      Comfortable, convenient living is yours with a Village Lane home. The single-story apartment buildings contain two to four units with ample lawn space for each resident. The sparkling clean apartments are available with one, two or three bedrooms. Residents add their own furnishings and décor to create a cozy, welcoming home.

                      Units include one-, two- and three-bedroom floorplans.

                      Starting at:
                      $625/mo
                      Available in:
                      540–715 sq. ft.

                      Note this is without doign the obvious thing of reaching out to actual retirement specialists.

                      And found by doing a quick search for “Affordable retirement communities.”

          2. You truly have no idea. HOW ABOUT YOU TRY NOT TO BE HATED.
            Seriously. Considering how you come across on line “I don’t care what you say. i know best. Oh, owe is me, no one loves me.” The problem is between the ears.

            1. Gee, that’s exactly how you come across. I will not kowtow the the leftists. I hate living under a government that classifies me as a “domestic violent extremist”. You don’t even know me and you are busy telling me what a horrible person I am.

          3. How much of that is in your own head? If you are as isolated as you say, you have no idea how people actually think of you outside of the media and the loud mouths.

            If you can’t afford to come back for medical treatment, if you do not speak the language, and you do not have enough money to impress the locals, you will be more isolated there, people will hate you more because you are an American, and your first major medical issue will kill you. We’re talking trying to talk you down from this because it’s a slow form of suicide rather than a retirement plan.

            1. I will be able to afford to come back for medical treatment. I just can’t afford to stay here with a roof over my head and food to eat. I’ve done the numbers. As far as being hated, I made friends with the guesthouse owner, two bar owners and a bar manager as well as some of the waitstaff I dealt with. Nobody over there was interested in attacking me because I was straight, white, male, American, or Republican. Even the ladyboys along the street started smiling back at me because I was always polite to them.

          1. And that visiting is far different from living there. And living there as an old man is far different from a young one ‘who will go home when his work is done.’

            1. Okay, you tell me where I can afford to live in the US. Someplace where I don’t have to own a car. Pitch a tent in Pioneer Square in Seattle?

              1. If you can run the math on Ukraine, surely you can run the math on the US. Try smaller towns. (We’ve got one here in Podunk Oklahoma. there are houses right across the street from grocery store, Dollar general, and local clinic.) You’ll have the same trouble getting to hospitals in good time in Europe.

  16. Sarah, you’re a far better American than most of the natural-born folks with whom I graduated from high school. In the 1970s.

  18. One grandparent got here because the Austro-Hungarian Empire was spinning up another round of drafts for another empire-v-empire skirmish and he had no interest at all in participating in such imperial shenanigans. That’s the one who came through Ellis Island using a different name, then moved far away from New York and took a sufficiently differently spelled name than he was born with for the family he started here.

    The other branches appear to have been coming here ever since the Dutch ones started arriving in Nieuw Amsterdam to basically get further away from royal busybodies and be able to build something of their own.

    So yeah, ‘murcun.

  20. The Bill of Rights was a brilliant piece of work. Unfortunately, it has been heavily neutered.
    All of the “hate speech” laws are in violation of the 1st Amendment.
    The BAFTE is in violation of the 2nd Amendment.
    The 3rd Amendment hasn’t seen that much application.
    The 4th Amendment has been hurt by both technology and the technique of “parallel construction”.
    The 5th Amendment is generally weakened.
    The 6th Amendment is being very publicly ignored to punish political dissidents.
    I don’t know what to say about the 7th Amendment.
    The 8th Amendment is often ignored.
    The 9th Amendment generally gets ignored.
    And, the 10th Amendment has mostly been overridden by the 16th Amendment.

      1. The “Freedom From Religion,” folks are trying to shame Auburn University for the football coach helping out at a mass baptism. Gov. Ivey, (known more or less affectionately as “Mee-Maw,” for her grandmotherly appearance) wrote them that they are “misguided,” and “misunderstood,” the meaning of the First Amendment. Ted Cruz chipped in by asking if they didn’t have something more important to do, like suing people for having Christmas trees. Here’s hoping Auburn stays cool about it all.

        1. “known more or less affectionately as ‘Mee-Maw’, for her grandmotherly appearance”

          You have no idea (or maybe you do) how fortunate you are to have a governor known “more or less affectionately” for anything. As those who live under Gavin Gruesome, JB the Hutt Pritzker (aka Baron Harkonnen), Gretchen Witchmer, et al. can testify.

          1. Ivey has had some rocky moments. I don’t live in Alabama now, so less familiar than I used to be. I think she was all in on WuFlu restrictions, then realized they were a mistake and changed course. And she signed a pro-gun bill last year (can’t remember whether if was open carry or concealed carry) that got her some definite good will.

            1. It must have been an open carry bill. Every state except, you guessed it, Illinois had concealed carry in some form by 2013, and Illinois only got it because the federal courts demanded it.

      2. Looked at from the assumption that we have a legal system, that’s true.

        Looking at the “facts on the ground”, we’re seeing the firearms industry being targeted (successfully) by lawfare, and both federal and state agencies ignoring Bruen and enforcing “process as punishment”… when they’re not just using any hint of firearms as justification to shoot first..

        Yes, we see what they are doing. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be able to stop it, without Fort Sumter. Which was entirely to be expected.

        1. “we’re seeing the firearms industry being targeted (successfully) by lawfare and both federal and state agencies ignoring Bruen and enforcing ‘process as punishment'”

          Illinois passed an “assault weapons ban” earlier this year and one of its provisions is that anyone who owned one of these alleged assault weapons before the law took effect can keep it, but they are supposed to register it with the State Police before the first of next year. The State Police just released the rules for how gun owners are supposed to do this, and the rules include a very LOOOONG list of the firearms that are expected to be registered — basically, just about any semiautomatic rifle or pistol that is capable of firing more than 10 or 15 rounds at a time or has a detachable magazine, or has various other features, way too numerous to list here. I predict there are going to be an awful lot of tragic canoe accidents in the next 3 months.

            1. Yep. Until they have to actually, you know, bring it out and use it. Then they get charged. Selective enforcement: it’s what Democrats rely on.

                1. The state Supreme Court upheld it, which is why the State Police are issuing the rules for registration now. It will probably get overturned at the federal level but in the meantime it’s moving forward. The real fun will come after Jan. 1 when ISP discovers that hardly anyone has registered, and then they have to decide whether to go out and start knocking on the doors of everyone who has a Firearm Owners ID Card (which IL requires to purchase any firearm, and has for more than 50 years; though not everyone who has a FOID actually has a firearm). Many county sheriffs have said they will NOT carry out any orders to go looking for unregistered firearms and I have a hard time believing that most State Police officers who live downstate or in rural areas are eager to do so either.

                  1. The state Supreme Court upheld it, which is why the State Police are issuing the rules for registration now. It will probably get overturned at the federal level but in the meantime it’s moving forward.

                    “probably”

                    The only way it doesn’t get overturned by SCOTUS is that some other case gets there first and wipes the board.

                    Many county sheriffs have said they will NOT carry out any orders to go looking for unregistered firearms and I have a hard time believing that most State Police officers who live downstate or in rural areas are eager to do so either.

                    “Many” is understating it. You can count the sheriffs who didn’t refuse on the fingers of one hand. Including mine in Sangamon county. And plenty of DAs also said Hell No.

                    1. Including mine in Sangamon county.

                      er, that phrasing is ambiguous: I mean that my sheriff also refused. This is relevant not just because I am covered, but also because this is the capitol where all the state workers are, and thus presumptively blue.

                      (In reality it went red in 2020)

                    2. You are correct. The city of Springfield is tilting more blue but outlying towns are still firmly in the red column and you can still see Trump banners and “Pritzker Sucks” signs out there. There are also many longtime and retired state employees who are Republicans because IL had Republican governors in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

          2. Kalifornia’s ‘Assault Weapons Ban Registration!’ had an estimated (how?) 15% compliance rate. Especially after several people had their registrations denied and were forced to ‘give up’ their Eeevul (and expensive!) Scary Guns.

            I predict that less than 15% of Illinoisies will register. Probably a lot less. Because when people register, they know who’s got what, and then they can change modes from ‘register’ to ‘confiscate’ overnight.

            Because they’re terrified. Not of ‘Gun Violence!!’ but of people having the means to defend themselves without needing any ‘help’ from the government. Which is why you shooting a burglar in your house is much more undesirable than the burglar shooting you.
            ———————————
            If you call 9-1-1 and tell them that somebody with a gun is breaking into your house, they will send two cops in 10 or 15 minutes. If you tell them that somebody is breaking into your house and YOU have a gun, they will send 10 or 15 cops in two minutes.

            1. Which is why you may be able to have that expensive paperweight, but depending on where you live and the attitude of your local / state LEOs or DAs, using it may be a touch…. problematic.

              Even in a Constitutional Carry state. Just ask this guy.

              https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/04/09/greg-abbott-vows-to-pardon-army-sergeant-convicted-of-killing-armed-blm-protester-n1685740

              Note: there has been no pardon so far. Facts on the ground. It isn’t the punks who have to feel lucky. It’s you.

              Will the DA feel like he needs a win? Can you afford the self-defense lawyer? How about that “jury of your peers”? Roll dem bones.

              1. PS: the sergeant is still waiting…..

                https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/09/15/sergeant-sentenced-25-years-prison-fatal-shooting-still-army-4-months-later.html

                “Abbott’s office did not return Military.com’s requests for comment asking whether Perry’s pardon has been initiated or if the governor still intends to approve one. Online records state that Perry is up for parole in October 2035. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles said it had not yet determined whether to recommend a pardon for Perry.

              3. I live here so I am quite familiar with this case. The DA wants to make self defense by white people illegal. The pardon is a bit complicated because the Governor, often known as Governor Windsock, has to get a recommendation from the Bureau of Pardons, which I have not heard anything about that actually happening.

                And people keep trying to tell me that this country is not horribly corrupt.

        2. Dear Lord, Steve. Yes, if you concentrate on the bad news it’s terrible.
          Do consider someone wants you to be doomed and give up. those people are either also being propagandized, or not your friends.

          1. Sarah, I’m not sure how you can ignore how events are actually playing out. Nor the simple fact that our legal system is systematically broken. I just hope people are actually paying attention, so that the reality bus isn’t a total surprise when it hits.

        3. So you aren’t actually looking at the facts on the ground at all are you? Or rather you are defining the facts to be only the bad ones and dismissing everything that isn’t bad as irrelevant. Because in reality “things are hopeless” is your premise, not your conclusion and you will twist whatever you have to to fit with that.

          Which is how every doomer POS operates.

      1. THIS. And is going to make him commit suicide by not understanding other countries.
        I don’t care how much research one does. I didn’t understand THE US until I’d lived here, married to an American 10 years.
        Because the US is a relatively benign society the only hits were us buying a house we lost money selling (our first) and going to a hospital where they almost killed me (why was it empty while the others were pouring out? never occurred to me to ask.)
        But abroad, the sharp end can be much faster and harder.

        1. Americans seldom understand how important family/tribe is elsewhere. Going solo is … unwise.

            1. HERE you don’t need it. Abroad you do.
              I think what you need most is mental health counseling. I think your isolation is largely self-inflected. Sure, you can’t find people right there who love you on sight. AND? Most of us can’t. Find something you like to do where you can connect to people. Or something you find important. Church, fandoms, clubs, heck, coffee shop to become a regular at.
              If you can do it abroad, you can do it easier here. And here no one will kill you for being an outsider, except in very bad neighborhoods. There? Yeah.

            3. LISTENING to what people are saying might help with isolation. You say we’re “yelling at you” But you’re on the bridge, and what we’re yelling is “Don’t jump.”
              If this is how you interpret things, there’s a hole in your cognition a mile wide. And you’re going to die from it, sure as heck. So, fix it.

            4. No family (yet)? -Make- one.

              Get roommates and share a house. Cut expenses to 1/3. That is how I got through broke student years, then later broke again because stupid years.

              Find a church and get in it. I recommend a Gospel preaching Baptist one. But get to church and get in it.

              All basic steps to improve that life of yours.

              “Everybody hates me” is demonstrably false.

          2. And Ukraine is in living memory of eating the neighbor’s kids and trading yours away to be eaten, so the rest of the family could survive. If you think hard times won’t make them ruthless…..

            1. As we’ve just seen, the Ukrainians were willing to join the Waffen-SS to get rid of the Soviets. One reason we could have won had we adopted Patton’s plan and gone after Stalin is that once we had shown we were in it to win it, the internal revolts would have been epic.

  21. OT, but David McCallum has passed on at 90. Many years ago, post Man From UNCLE, he played in a production of “The Mousetrap,” at a theater in South Florida. Our, ahem, odd ties to local SF/media fandom meant we had a friend at the theater who sneaked my best friend and I into his dressing room. He was a complete gentleman. In retrospect I feel a little embarrassed, but it was important to me at the time.

    1. He also appeared in a Season 1 Episode of Babylon 5 as one of Dr Franklin’s mentors, gone bad.

  24. The ridiculous trust for experts imported into America by FDR and …

    Umm, wasn’t that actually Woodrow Wilson? e.g. the technocrats.

    Ed’n

  25. Not to nitpic but something strikes me as Odd. But not the usual Odd. I was not taught as a child that we were a nation of immigrants. I was taught we were a nation of pioneers. (Even if your ancestors were Indians they also were pioneers. I was also taught they were Indians. Now I’m seeing everyone, even conservatives, endlessly repeat that we are a nation of immigrants. Was the ‘nation of pioneers’ idea just a Southern thing? Or generational? Anyone else here get the ‘pioneer’ slogan as a kid?

    It seems like anyone could just show up with a lazy attitude and their hand out, and proudly claim to be an immigrant. Pioneers have to show up and build something.

    1. It’s hard to be a pioneer now. Look around.
      And no, immigrants shouldn’t show up with a lazy attitude and their hand up, if we’d kept the rational laws that used to exist: Someone had to be responsible for you, or you had an account, etc. OTHER nations still do this.
      Immigrants — legal — are SUPPOSED to jump through hoops — and still do everywhere else — to show they’re serious about adapting and wanting to become one of you.
      There’s nothing wrong with the word “immigrant.”
      Pioneer… well, hon, as soon as we can settle space, there will be pioneers again. now? not so much.

      1. LBJ and “The Great Society”. I do object to being forced at gunpoint to support people who come here unlawfully, or even lawfully. When my ancestors came here they were welcome to freeze or starve to death without government intervention. Mind you, there were lots of charitable organizations who were helping and doing a better job of it than the current government is. The government is never a good choice to do anything, it’s just that sometimes all the other choices are worse.

        1. Yeah, it’s funny how utterly ghosted “Mutual Aid Societies” have become. I’m almost 65, and had never even heard of them until this 2000 article:

          https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/mutual-aid-welfare-state-how-fraternal-societies-fought-poverty-and-taught
          Money Quote:
          A conservative estimate is that one-third of adult American males belonged to lodges in 1910.

          Despite that, they were, until the Great Depression overwhelmed them, THE primary source of public charity for decades to a century or more.

          And VERY American just by their very nature.

      2. “It’s hard to be a pioneer now…”
        I think it was probably pretty hard to be a pioneer in the past too. Insert your own Alfred Packer joke.

        ” as soon as we can settle space, there will be pioneers again. now? not so much.”
        An Oddly humble sentiment for one of the pioneers of Human Wave Science Fiction.

        1. Are you being intentionally obtuse? Or just reaching for the joke?
          Not hard in the same sense. In the sense that there’s no place in the US to “pioneer” outside the reach of “civilization”.

          2. Folks call it “going off the grid” now. If you have some cash for the land, there is still quite a bit of no-road remote bqack-of-beyond one can buy, in various out of-the-way places.

            Alaskans call some of those folks “end of the road” types. Some stop there, some keep going.

            Back in 1986, I knew a Sergeant Major with plans to retire to pioneering Alaska. Know several now, here, who are about one more annoyance away from unplugging from civilization and living in their “hunting cabins” year round.

            Surprisingly many folks still find nooks to “pioneer” these days.

            1. Yeah, but it’s still not a thing of “US needs pioneers.” Not right now. Right now, we need skilled immigrants, willing to work. Bringing in 3rd world illiterates and hoping the environment will weed them out as they “pioneer” went out when westward expansion ended.

              1. No. I’m not being intentionally obtuse. If it was someone else I’d actually suspect they were being deliberately obtuse to pretend the word ‘pioneer’ only meant someone who developed new land and not new anything else… but I know that you are not the sort of hostess who plays those games so I take you at your word. Since I personally dislike it when people do try to act deliberately obtuse online and I know you have to deal with a lot of trolls I will take care to assure you I am not, with the unfortunate result that this may be too wordy. I apologize, but I don’t want you to think I’m only playing dumb. Feel free to just end there with a tldr if you take my word for my earnest obtuseness.

                Whether we actually are a “nation of” whatever and whatever we aught to be a nation of is irrelevant to the facts that:
                A. When I was young, I was NOT taught we were a nation of immigrants. I was taught we were a nation of pioneers. You can say “they were lying” or “that was evil” or whatever… it doesn’t change the fact that that was what I was taught. And I doubt it was just a couple of teachers in one town because I recall there used to be a lot more references to “pioneers” in general culture.

                B. Everyone else online seems to rattle off “were a nation of immigrants” as though it is a basic fact we all should know from grade school like 2+2 =4. If it was only the Left I’d assume it is the usual Journolist-style coordination + the desperate habit of normal leftists to always use the word of the day to show their in the good people group. But it’s not. It’s everyone even conservatives which suggests to me that it IS something taught widely in school (not that you went to American schools, but most everyone else using it did).

                So I naturally wondered if that was a regional thing (I grew up in the rural South) or perhaps a temporal thing (it was half a century ago) to say “we are a nation of pioneers.” I expected that at least some Huns might chime in that they too remember being taught that in X place at Y time. And that was my original question.

                On to what is or aught to be, which seems to be the thread’s trajectory. I recall little about it other than thinking that being from a “nation of pioneers” seemed pretty cool and it also seemed to include a little bit of “and YOU are expected to be a pioneer type too”. I’m sure I was not confused about the idea that we were all settling the town and carving it out of the wilderness. The town was had obviously been there at least a century. Clearly even to a child it mean that the community had been created by pioneers and we should continue in that spirit.

                And despite your confusion at being called a pioneer when there is clearly no more frontier left to civilize. Even as a child I knew that the term “pioneer” meant far more than just people who went out to uncivilized areas and built towns. We studied “Pioneers in Science” and “Pioneers of Industry” and such. I just checked and sure enough my professional society maintains a very, very elite list of people in the field it has given the title “Aerospace Pioneers” to along with a way to nominate new people to the list. Clearly the idea that you could be a pioneer and not be some person physically settling a new piece of land used to be commonplace, and the use of the term as someone who pushes back ANY type of frontier or develops some new area of thought or action or business at least did not used to be considered obtuse. Admittedly a quick Google search for “Pioneers of Science Fiction” does not bring up any similar official or semiofficial list, save a Park Service description of Poe as one.

                It wasn’t my initial question, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that I would prefer we continue saying we’re a ‘nation of pioneers’. It is certainly no less accurate for us to do so just because only a very few of us alive are still actually physically pioneering undeveloped territory than for a nation whose current population is 87% native born to say we are a ‘nation of immigrants.’ I think even schoolkids like I was would figure out that we meant the nation was built by those sort of people and we should continue in their spirit. I think it would surely give people more pride in their country to use an active positive building descriptive like “pioneer” than just to say “yeah, your ancestors moved here from somewhere else” Maybe you should be an immigrant to somewhere else too, kid. I’d much rather they shoot for being pioneers of something.

                https://archive.org/details/pioneeringspacef00unit

                And I don’t think other nations would be confused and think it obtuse that we were still claiming to be pioneers when we’d mostly stopped building new cities (can you pioneer a subdivision?). And if they are… F*** ’em. They’re full of people who didn’t even have the gumption to immigrate here, much less pioneer something. Whether that pioneering was something physical like carving a city a mile up in the Rocky Mountains or something intellectual like a new field of literature.

                1. Sorry, I didn’t know it was a thing to say we are a nation of “immigrants.” I meant it in the sense that people came from elsewhere and had to adapt, particularly before the late 20th century. I had to adapt against cultural imperative in the late 20th, but a lot of people don’t.
                  That’s all I meant.
                  As for pioneers in the sense you mean, not everyone who came over was, though probably the vast majority, and it’s almost impossible to select for.
                  I’d say we’re a nation of “goats” either first person or hereditary. I mean, people who stick out from the herd and go in search of somewhere they can make themselves a place. But saying that sounds weird.
                  Again, while I understand prizing “Pioneers in science” etc (which often go with the ability to leave it all behind and strike out) it’s hard to select for, particularly when people are young and stupid, as I was. Also I dislike “pioneer” because the soviet union’s young communist cadre was the Young Pioneers. (Ew)
                  but to your point more directly, no one coming here should be illegible for any social services for at least ten or twenty years. And if you say “or forever” I’m not going to bitch. To be fair I’d prefer to get rid of all the social stuff.

                2. You were not supposed to notice the rhetorical slight-of-hand replacing “pioneer” with “immigrant”. Because

                  We -are- a nation of pioneers. We do pioneer things.

                  Thus our first true deep space probes are “pioneer” and “voyager” not “immigrant” or “migrant”.

                  We explore, with intent to derive permanent gain.

                  The western frontier is largely closed. The Alaskan frontier is essentially vacant, with some settled fringe. Space is just sitting there. Antarctica is more settler freindly than Mars. And if the climate kooks are right, McMurdo is going to be the next st Louis.

                3. So I naturally wondered if that was a regional thing (I grew up in the rural South) or perhaps a temporal thing (it was half a century ago) to say “we are a nation of pioneers.” I expected that at least some Huns might chime in that they too remember being taught that in X place at Y time. And that was my original question.

                  The only time I’ve seen a push on that, it was related to trying to exclude folks who didn’t have family back to the civil war, and who had the wrong family if they did.
                  Because they’re not “pioneers,” they’re just immigrants. Usually icky Catholics, too.

                    1. Less the Pioneer thing being specifically anti-Catholic, than a lot of nasty emotions were built on that– and now I’m wondering how much of it was tied to that mess in 1920s Mexico.

                  2. Gah. No. Modern Marxist/Racist pollution. Purge it.

                    Pioneers here were of every stripe, and multiple waves. Lots and lots of examples.

                    One third of the cattle wranglers of the Old West were quite black. Pioneering yet again as they abandoned the wreckage of the east.

                    Pioneers move then build. From my distant kinfolk who crossed the Bearing land bridge to the folks now re-settling Alaska’s Pleistosene Park.

                    1. Modern?

                      Hardly, it’s over a century old.

                      What, you didn’t think that they actually came up with something original, did you?

                      There were folks being pissheads, other folks resisted it because the US isn’t blood and soil, we’re a creed. Their intellectual offspring and later descendants grab anything they think will let them do harm.
                      It works, then it works; if it doesn’t work, it defangs something that beat them last time.

                    2. We’re a creed with a soil, to be fair. I don’t disagree with you, but the distinction is worth it. All of those talking about how we should “divorce” states get my dander up. We will not give up an inch of our sacred soil to the occupiers and abandon our brothers and sisters living there. No.

                    3. The land definitely matters– I was born a third generation Californian. But because a bunch of jerks from back east got vacation homes in SoCal and fraud started up, nope, burn that all down.

                    4. I’m not suited to Alaska’s climate. I’d go nuts. TBF at this point pioneering is a stupid idea. I need quick access to an ER at least once every three years.
                      But here’s the thing, 11-B, “pioneer” is policing what type of people new Americans are allowed to be. I mean, I agree that is the remote origin of the country, but if only pioneers are allowed, then I fit in very ill — and I don’t incidentally — because I’m an URBAN person. My ideal location is a place I can walk to a safe park or zoo or a garden that charges admission (You really can’t be safe and day dreaming as a woman walking alone if everyone is allowed in. Sorry. No, not even in the country. Out of sight of others is where something can happen. Yes, guns. I ain’t great with them. See daydreaming) with a little bookstore around the corner, and a coffee shop down the block. Yes, lots of towns provide that, but a homestead in the middle of nowhere doesn’t.

                    5. You seem to have built quite a stack of books. Whole worlds others visit. Are you not counting that? You should.

                      Carnegie pioneered steel so cheap we used it for low-end toys, and thus we built a world of it.

                      Salk pioneered rendering a virus nearly extinct. (almost….)

                      You didn’t come here to just be what you were back home. You have expounded on this multiple times.

                      “Pioneer” doesn’t just mean a coonskin cap and rasslin bears.

                      And as for skill with firearms, well, “good enough” is good enough.

                  3. I doubt it was anti-Catholic sentiment in my area. There weren’t enough Catholics for them to be anything but a novelty. They had not (and still haven’t) reached the percentage where a minority becomes annoying.

                    I thought it might be a Southern thing because there is a notable minority who could fairly claim that their ancestors were not immigrants, they were kidnapping victims.

                    1. :amused:
                      That population of kidnapping victims is why Catholics were targeted by that one social group with horrible fashion sense.

                      More importantly, never needed any local Catholics for that stuff before; there as a big revival push that …. well, I found out about it because of those naughty books that are supposedly tell-alls, which sold better when someone didn’t know any Catholics. I think the hayday of the book craze was …. 1870s? 1880s? I’ve slept since then. 😀 But the books formed a lot of stuff that folks who didn’t know they had Catholics around “knew”.

                4. Fun fact: pioneers were originally soldiers who broke the way for the rest of the army. Chesterton thought the American usage was metaphorical and pointed out that generals, not pioneers, choose the army route

  26. OK, Many decades ago, I read a wonderful piece from American Heritage, still available online, at:
    What We Lost In The Great War
    John Steele Gordon July/August 1992
    https://www.americanheritage.com/what-we-lost-great-war

    It’s a long but interesting piece, and it put me on track for thinking about the development of “PostModern Liberalism”, as opposed to “Classical Liberalism”

    Classical Liberals, in the run-up to WWI, were very proud of themselves, arrogant, even, in their belief that humanity could be perfected, that it had taken major steps in that direction.

    THEN they saw what human stupidity could do with their efforts, and a certain percentage of them turned on it — on Western Civilization itself — as a woman scorned. The result was PostModernism, and the political arm, PostModern Liberalism.

    A casual examination of PostModernism is clear — it is aimed at nothing less than the total destruction of the foundational underpinnings of Western Civilization — it takes particular aim at the twin foundations of the Judeo-Christian Ethos, as well as the Inheritance of Greek Thought and Ideal. Seriously — take a close look at the tools of PostModernism — moral relevativism, deconstruction, pure egalitarianism, Marxism…. all of them attack central tenets of Western Civ, with the goal of invalidating them and repudiating them.

    Sara Hoyt says, “Europe felt full of self-loathing. Most countries, each despised itself.”

    This is as-designed. PostModernism is all about hating Western Civ, and thus all of Europe, the main source for Western Civ, is under attack. It’s a huge hate-fest filled with self-loathing and blaming Euros for doing nothing more than things humans have been doing to each other for millenia, and just being BETTER at it than anyone else… except they also, during the process of developing Western Civ, particularly as a result of that Judeo-Christian Ethos, also developed the notion of the worth of the individual, and the notion of simple human decency due All Men (and Women). The earlier people of Western Civ failed at many places and times to BE PERFECT? How DARE they!! Everyone since bears absolute guilt for their every sin!! It all needs to be destroyed — after all, how can anything that wasn’t begun from perfection possibly strive to be better and better over time?!!??

    And this is where the hatred for America derives from, because America, for all its many faults and failures, has striven — more than any OTHER nation — to try and exemplify those best qualities of Western Civ. We did not start the notion of race-based slavery, but, having had it made a central tenet of our early economy, we had a hard time throwing the yoke off — but we did do it, we fought one of the most bloody Civil Wars in human history to get rid of the primary vestiges of it. Then we spend another 75-odd years trying to clean up the mess THAT left behind… And, by the 1980s, came pretty close to having fully done so, and achieved much of MLK’s dream, of a land where people would be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. But the quacks and the charlatans saw their opportunities for personal power and wealth threatened, and invented “institutional” racism and falsely conflated inequality of results with racism. And the cultural marxists, having lost the whole War Against Capitalism, appropriated racism into a new form of Marxism that sells itself as “fairness” and “equity”… because “equality” is work. Equality is engendered by the SELF. And it’s a lot easier to blame others for one’s failures than to work on self-improvement.

    “[Harry S] Truman was particularly irked by the ‘professional liberal’, whom he distinguished from ‘real liberals’ like himself. Professional liberals lived by slogans and saw American politics as an ideological war, which Truman considered alien to the genius of the Democratic party. In his lifetime the party was a sort of political melting pot in which conservative Southerners and moderate border-state men like Truman found common ground with Eastern liberals. ‘Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise,’ Truman said. ‘In my experience they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They’d double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it’.”

    PostModern Liberalism — about 95% or more of all modern self-defined “liberals”, nowadays — are exactly those ‘professional liberals’ Truman railed against — nothing but people out for a power-grab with zero legitimacy and zero ethicality.

  27. My favorite parts of this post (quote):

    “A lot of the European migrations, in addition to coming at times of famine or whatever, came mostly from people willing to risk it all on a throw of the dice. And that’s a type of mentality. And it passed on.”

    “Americans are different. There is a different “texture” to society. Americans …. “every man a king” is a good way to put it. Or “I can do what I want provided I don’t mess with you” or– well, something like that. But it’s more like Americans STAND. By themselves. ”

    That this country was founded and developed by immigrants who were brave enough to roll the dice, and that those traits pass on (hopefully) – plus the true statement that Americans STAND – brings great hope that we will weather this storm. Even if it looks bad.

    The command to STAND in the book of Ephesians supports your point, and informs as to who our real enemies are in the cultural and political wars.

    Thank you for the reminder.

  28. Ah yes, canoes. I just went on a canoeing campout. A whole passel of scouts earned the Canoeing merit badge.

    Most of the capsizing was intentional. But not all of it. And a leader lost his prescription glasses despite them being tied to his head. (He did an absolutely fabulous double-capsize maneuver on two canoes of unsuspecting scouts.)

    You can’t take anything on a canoe that you don’t mind losing.

    1. We stopped attending the Cathedral in Denver when, after they’d been under siege by BLM for days, the Deacon delivered a sermon on “no justice no peace.” He seemed to think our gods were anti-racism and gaia.
      We were told, my friend, that there would be false prophets. And lo and behold, there they are.
      One of the things that soured our recent visit to Colorado was, in the middle of my beloved Colorado Springs downtown, a big mural of George Floyd of fentanil. Sigh.

      1. Yeah, it’s been quite apparent the PMLs have taken over Colorado, and turned it into Mid-USA Wisconsin. Not quite The Left Coast level of PML insanity, but straining in that direction, for sure.

  30. Jerry Pournelle wrote that IQ tests were measuring something, but his study never determined exactly what it was. It was only showed that the higher the score, the better the testee was at taking tests.

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