Rad

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I am not a traditionalist. I think very few Odds are.

It’s not that we don’t want to be. Look, we probably, most of us, also want to be the popular kids in school. It’s just we’re all peculiarly broken, and even if we try our oddness keeps breaking through. We ask inconvenient questions. We poke at strange corners of the mind and go down rabbit holes of learning where frankly we — or anyone — have no business being. It’s just who we are. Most of the time “Why did you study that? Why did you look at that? How did you come up with that?” can be answered with “It was there.” And most of the time “What were you thinking?” can best be answered by “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Given who I am and what I am, it’s a miracle how traditional my life has been. It’s also shocking/upsetting, but you know, it’s important it be upsetting to all the right people, because I would be lying if I said that most of us, by the end of elementary school, aren’t just a wee bit upset people don’t take us as we are, and therefore a little bit ready to upset the popular and overbearing sorts, just a little bit. Like a bur under their saddle. (This is before the self proclaimed elites were outright evil.)

But I am not a traditionalist. In a society where my religion was the default, I tried to go off in weird (and I mean weird, trust me) directions twice before I came to the conclusion that while I’m not against other people’s finding different answers, for whatever reason — perhaps because the Author has a sense of humor — this was where He wanted me. Oh, and that He existed. (That sometimes is very difficult because I don’t like woo woo stuff, and He’s by definition Woo Woo.) In a society where every toddler girl had her ears pierced and wore only skirts and dresses, I, (because I’m deathly allergic to metal, and because mom thought if my legs were uncovered I’d catch my death (or because she wanted to re-use my brother’s old clothes. It’s one or the other. she’d deny this one, btw, anyway)) had no earrings, and wore pants until I was 12 or so, and then only dresses on special occasions. I might as well have been the boy named Sue.

Given that, it was hard to be a traditionalist. Also, in a society (at least locally) where if a girl read, she read either romances (often comics-romances) or religious and moral tracts, I read…. everything. No, really. Part of the reason I got so good at foreign languages is that my brother and my father, in a vain effort to keep me off it, bought anything vaguely racy or even clinical sex manual in English and French. Well. I don’t think they ever figured out I was reading it. Probably. Dad at least never figured it out. It would have horrified him.

My brother fell in with the science fiction crowd in college. Which meant he brought home science fiction books. This was the seventies, so a lot of it was New Wave. But since it was also Portugal, which has always printed to the net, we started scrounging for used books everywhere from the used bookstores to the houses of friends’ grandparents. (It’s amazing how many elderly people will hand you their beloved books if you are sitting in a corner trying to read them. In retrospect, the ones who did so probably could no longer read them comfortably. But for the Kindle, my reading might have slowed down by now.)

We because by 11 Science Fiction had become my fun of choice. Mystery a close second. But I never went and stood outside book stores waiting when a big mystery release was anticipated. Partly, I think, because mystery was a more “normal” taste, at least of Portuguese men, so they printed more.

But the science fiction print runs were always tight, and any new book by Heinlein, Simak (go with it. Huge in Portugal. I wonder if he ever knew it), Bradbury, Asimov, Anderson, would sell out by noon of release day. You might luck out and find one or two on a spinner, in a postcard store in some forgotten area of the country ten years later (Glory Road) but it was hard to rely on luck. So I’d drag my behind out of bed and go wait with the other addicts outside the bookstores before the opening. And you know, it became clear early on I was an oddity. Most science fiction fans were male in professions like engineering. A young girl was a curiosity. But it was okay, because it was who I was.

If I had a dime for every time I was asked if I was reading for school, while reading science fiction or popular science, I’d have been rich by the time I turned fifteen.

But I wasn’t a radical. Not really. Except in politics. And in politics, I was a very weird radical. I ran through all the leftist ideas by the time I was fourteen. At ten I wanted to ban fossil fuels. Then my brain grew a bit, okay. And I realized the “the ice age is coming because we burn fossil fuels” was a load of goop that made no sense.

By fourteen, I had gotten tired of the fact that leftism was pushed at us from every single outlet, including supposedly apolitical ones. And that we weren’t allowed to question it. So of course I questioned it, and fell head first into all the anti-communist literature. And there was meat there. It could be questioned, and it had answers.

But it was radical, or at least obeyed the radical impulse, because it started with “I don’t know why you’re pushing this on me, but I won’t be made to fit a mold not of my choosing.” That’s the radical impulse. And a lot of us square pegs seem to refuse to fit in round holes, one way or another.

In the States, it was different. Somehow all the Odds had become convinced they must strike a blow against patriarchy. They were being radical by doing exactly what society was pushing them to do. But they didn’t seem to know it.

The number of women who told me men would be threatened by my working outside the house… Well, in Portugal this might be true. In the States in the eighties, that got you pats on the back and the “so smart” label.

So, of course, for various reasons, I ended up being a stay at home mom. And had derision poured on me every time we socialized with normal society. The pinnacle of it was Dan’s co-worker who told me I was a housewife and writing was just an excuse for staying home. Since, you know, he knew nothing of writing or of me, and my not being published must mean I wasn’t trying.

I was trying — I’m very, very trying — of course, which also meant I didn’t fit in with the more traditional mommies, or the artsy set in Manitou Springs, where the art really was an excuse to stay home with the kids. They’d invite me on outings and picnics, but I was finishing a novel. If I have regrets it’s not giving the kids more attention. But given I tend to do everything in headlong mode, perhaps that’s for the best. Hovering over them night and day wouldn’t have been good for anyone. Including me.

So, what is this all about? I’m not a traditionalist. I still am not. I don’t fit the socon mold more than I fit anything else. My best classification is probably small l libertarian-constitutionalist.

I don’t hate traditionalists. A lot of my friends are more religious than I am, and not in my religion (though I’ve gotten more religious as I age, mostly because there are so many things I can’t fix that need fixed, and I want to offload them from my shoulders, which are inadequate. I now understand why grandma prayed all the time.) It doesn’t bother me. A lot of my friends are not religious at all. In fact, two of my duct-tape-adopted little brothers are atheists. My duct-tape-adopted older brother is Buddhist. They’re all more radical than I am in various life choices, too. A lot of my female friends lived far more “on the edge” lives than I have.

If you look, from the outside, save for a tendency to don grubby clothes and go outside and tuck point, or dig up half of my garden, or whatever, I am the average traditional woman my age. Practically all my recreation is going somewhere with my husband. I spend a day a week cleaning the house (asthma, you know?) I cook our dinner. As I age I wear more skirts and dresses, because they hide where I’m lumpy in that peculiar old lady lumpiness, here things just run down due to gravity. Heck, if my husband didn’t tend to run around in sweat pants and t-shirt, and could be convinced to wear a sweater-vest and smoke a pipe, we’d look like grandma and grandad in some fifties poster.

Why does all this matter? Because I’ve seen the future. And I’m going to be considered such a loose-minded person. A little leftist. Practically a hippie.

And I’ll not have changed.

When we went to Colorado Springs, we decided to go to mass at our old church, the one in which the boys were brought up, the one down the street from us where we used to live.

We did this with some trepidation. You see, that church was always a little radical, in the way we were always a little radical. Oh, look, people wore whatever and most of the women worked, but it took things more seriously than other churches seemed to at the time. Things like the teachings on human life.

And then, before we moved, and part of the impetus to move closer to Denver (though not the only impetus, mind. I hate moving and it usually takes four or five factors to convince me) a leftist priest under a very leftist Bishop took the church hard left. And we started driving the hour and a half to the Denver Cathedral for mass. (It’s hard to explain why but back then, for what turned out to be a brief few years, it wasn’t political. The sermons weren’t ripped from the CNN headlines. It was a relief.)

The last time we’d been at that church because we were in town for a conference, and couldn’t figure out where else to go, we found the church was all interestingly colored-hair and piercings, and I was afraid they’d do a nude sacramental dance. (Those of my denomination who are laughing now, know exactly what I mean.)

So, we went full of trepidation and fear, because heck for all we knew it was worse now. Blocks away, we started seeing it: young families, most of them younger than my kids, with multiple small children, walking to mass. The men wore suits, the women wore the same veils old ladies wore to mass in the village when I was little. And I blinked.

Let’s say I was the only woman in that service not wearing a skirt or dress. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Dan was in a button down, and there were a few men without coats, but– well, he didn’t stick out as badly. And the mass…. Well, it wasn’t in Latin. But other than that.

Five years. Five years. I stood there in shock, then started looking around. The people were the same they’d been when I was a parishioner. Gone were the homeless-and-aggressive-lesbians of five years ago. They were, as when I was a parishioner, mostly young families, and judging by clothing and hair and general demeanor, the same type of people who always attended that church, being, as it is, deep in a college neighborhood: professors and graduate students. Upper-middle class. Upper-middle income. (Well, no we weren’t, mostly because I didn’t make much, or regularly make much. But we always every time we moved bought the distressed house in the neighborhood and fixed it, sold at a higher price and bought in the next more expensive neighborhood. By that neighborhood we were three in of doubling our money. We stayed there longer because kids and schools and church. My value-add to the family for the longest time was not my writing, but my handymanning skills (thanks to my grandfathers and their buddies who answered my questions and let me watch them do stuff.)

But the thing is this is the class and group of people who are normally edgy and radical. Experimenting with strange ideas and lifestyles. And they were. At a guess the women stay home (though I’d be shocked if most of them don’t work from home. Money these days, you know. Also we right now couldn’t afford a house in that neighborhood, even a very distressed one.) The men work. They have kids they raise themselves (and probably homeschool, or send to the church-school.)

Suddenly I understood why the government is so afraid of traditional Catholics. They are radical. Rad Trad.

The most radical thing you can do these days is dress conservatively, get married, go to church, have kids.

And I realized with a shock how many of my younger fans and friends were like that. Yes, even the ones in non-standard families are as traditional as …. well, as would have branded them stodgy in the seventies.

I know there are a ton of denominations who have sprouted traditional branches, much to the shock and horror of their leadership. The Catholic church doesn’t like it much, either. Francis has forbidden mass in Latin, which is stupid. Because if you don’t allow them to do it within the church, they’ll do it outside. However everything must be permitted except the ultra-traditional. Because you see, they thought that they could compromise temporarily and then the old people who wanted the traditional thing would be gone. And the hippie-dippy anything goes would prevail. Since that was obviously radical and where the energy was.

I suspect it’s the same in other churches. I know it is in those where I have young fans. The elders frown and gasp and are horrified by what they’re sure are sexist (and racist, and homophobic, and transphobic — the phobic list keeps growing — probably) abominations. They warn of dangerous paths, as though ever looser rules, ever more spinning out of control societal engagement modes were the historically normal way.

We’re now into a hundred years of the left controlling almost all traditional positions of power while pretending to be edgy, subversive, and challenging norms. Even though they’re pushing their own norms from above.

We’re now into a hundred years of their speaking power to truth and imposing fake radicalism from above.

And it’s breaking. They’re losing their grip. Because like me, when I was young, people realize that the rules being imposed from above can’t be questioned, or the whole system falls apart. And people questions them.

The open challenge is coming from the Odds, of course. We never fit in. But there’s quieter challenges. In my by and large traditional church, young women are dressing more conservatively than the rest of us, oldsters, and wearing veils. Not all of them, but it seems there’s more every week.

And again, I suspect this is society wide.

Something broke in the early 20th century. Sure, okay, the automobile splintered families. People started moving to cities. There was more money, more leisure, more chance to explore. And whatever they tell you, if you look at family histories, more women were working, even before WWII. Which means more children were being raised by the public schools which were increasingly in the hands of “progressives.” This was exacerbated by mass migration and the need to integrate kids, which always leads to a tighter rein on schools and what they teach. And conformity rules. The conformity of discomformity.

But that’s breaking. Five generations out, people are looking for something to put their backs against. And the old ways are strange enough to be radical.

Right now it’s the edgy and the radical. But they’re always the vanguard, and others follow.

Am I very comfortable with it? I’m not comfortable with any mass movements. I’m the nail that sticks up, always. I wasn’t comfortable in a very traditional and homogeneous society in Portugal.

But then again I doubt the US will go that way. Oh, some enclaves, sure. But we’re too religiously splintered, too societally diverse (in the real sense, not skin color) for it to become a straight jacket.

It probably will just go far enough that I’ll feel a little uncomfortable, and my grandkids, if I have them, will look at me as being a little silly and hippy-ish. “It’s a thing of her generation, you know?” In the same way my brother’s generation considered me too traditional, too conforming, and a traitor to all the innovations of his generation.

Is it a pendulum? No. I don’t think so. That is a Marxist belief. Or an Hegelian one, at least.

People kept waiting for the pendulum but it never came, because it’s not a pendulum.

But when things are getting too broken, people find a way to rebuild. And of course, the traditional way has worked for generations, before the last, turbulent century.

Will it be rigid? I hope not. But gosh humans like fitting in, which will introduce a certain rigidity.

I’ll fight against that. I’m an Odd. If I don’t agree with, I’ll question it.

But most people aren’t Odds. And they want a predictable, calm existence. Once this external conformity and rule settle in, I suspect it will be hard totally upend it again, absent continuous war and disruption. Which of course is what the conformists who fancy themselves “radical” by fiat will try. Are trying.

A word to the wise in their machinery of enforcement: it won’t work. The big lie of false radicalism could only hold while they had full control of every mass communication means.

People are tired. They want something really radical: what works.

Me? I’ll be a fish out of water. I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again, after whatever spasm is on the horizon (and please don’t imagine revolution or violence. Spasms can happen without either. I very much doubt people took over our old church with machine guns) if I’m still alive I expect I’ll go from “dangerous right” to “dangerous left” having changed not at all.

And that’s fine. I’m aware most of the society isn’t made for me. I’m not a traditionalist. I’m not a radical. I’m just me. And therefore I’ll always stand out.

But looking at that church, the people looked happier than we were. The expectations they’re conforming to are easier than “fighting the patriarchy” or “be liberated” or whatever was continually pushed on my generation. Growing up, having a family and children is natural. What was pushed on us was sort of an eternal college-rebellion that left no room for a happy marriage or children. We had to do it around the edges, quietly defying the voices shouting down at us, and hiding our church-going habits and our secret wish for a large family from our bosses.

It will do. It will be okay. I’ll fight its excesses, of course. I always do.

But I’m starting to think cultures too have a defense mechanism, a point at which they fight back with signals the individual doesn’t get but obey.

Eh. I’ve heard of increased church attendance and traditional lifestyles of the urban young across Europe.

Blindly, in the dark, sometimes following no more than a feeling, I think Western Culture — and remember I think cultures are almost collective sentient beings — is fighting for its own survival. Under the glare of the “elites.”

I enjoy the fear in the “elites” eyes as they realize they are only that which passes. A mistake in the long journey of culture.. I’m small enough to chortle at that.

And ready to face whatever comes.

208 thoughts on “Rad”

    1. The Reader chewed on a pipe all though college as a stress reliever. It held up better than pens and pencils. He thinks he may have smoked it once.

      1. I smoked a pipe from age about 20 to age 50 and a bit. A Latakia/Perique blend. The better it smells the worse it tastes, mine smelled horrible. Miss it every day.

        I went to an old fashioned Catholic boys school. As seniors we had two privileges, we could grow a mustache — which I still have — and smoke. I started with cheap cigars and moved on to the pipe.

        1. Black Cavendish, Latakia, Perique with a touch of deer’s tongue (The herb.), maybe a bit of Virginia Bright if the burn rate doesn’t suit. Not bad smell or taste in my opinion.

          1. I moved away from the Virginias as I got older. Turkish was the way to go with the Perique to smooth out the blend

        2. I smoked (usually pipe, but also cigarettes and the occasional cigar) from 1969 to 1983. I rather suspect that the extracted lower incisors (casualties of gum disease and overly aggressive brushing) were started on their road to distruction by my preference for pipes.

          The various docs say there’s no other evidence of unhealed damage to my body. It didn’t help that rotten teeth are a family trait.

          I’d occasionally hit the tobacconist for blends and straight tobacco varieties (pure latakia was a bit over the top), but smoked a lot of Borkum Riff. [shrugs] I liked it.

      2. Started smoking a pipe in Boot Camp when I noticed that people that didn’t smoke didn’t get smoke breaks. Never a big smoker, mostly McBarren’s back in the day. Now I enjoy a nice Black Cavendish on cool, wet days.

    3. Grandad had to stop smoking for health reasons. He continued to pack his pipe and park it in his teeth without lighting it, sometimes, I think just to get Grandma’s goat…I miss the smell of his black cherry tobacco to this very day, although, not nearly as much as I miss my grandparents.

  2. I’ve been seeing here and there more “dangers from the religious” headlines (even if I don’t read the stories).

    Going along with Sarah’s post, I wondering if the “elite” are seeing a danger in more traditional religious practices.

    Not of course, the “dangers” that the elites whine about. 😈

    On the other hand, I laughed at a story by an anti-theist who was whining about “Religious People Pushing For Theocracy”.

    Those sort of idiots, don’t know the real meaning of Theocracy. 😆

      1. In Canada going to church at all, ever, makes you a far-right-wing domestic terrorist.

        “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

        “Let me make one thing very clear: Transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country,” Trudeau wrote. “We strongly condemn this hate [Leave Our Kids Alone! is what he’s talking about] and its manifestations [aka the parents march], and we stand united in support of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians across the country – you are valid and you are valued.”

        Of particular note is that the counter-protests were astroturf crowds of public sector trade unionists and professional agitators. We know this because their pre-event planning meeting was on zoom and was released to the media. Caught red handed.

        Then there is the unsolved “mystery” of 60 churches burned down in Canada the last couple of years. Nobody din’ see nuffin’.

        Now, full disclosure I am just as much a goat as Sarah, and I haven’t attended church in any form since my mother stopped dragging me to Christmas service. Its a club for Normies and I’m not in it.

        1. The FBI has created an entire group that’s purpose is to target and destroy the regimes political opponents in the tradition of the Stasi and Gestapo.

          https://nypost.com/2023/10/05/is-the-fbi-turning-trump-supporters-into-terrorist-targets/

          They fully intend to follow this up with gulags and re-education/ concentration camps, as expressed by Shrillary in her declaration that anyone who does not support the Democratic Party agenda must be “deprogrammed”.

          Fortunately they are as incompetent as they are power hungry, but even in defeat they will cause a lot of damage

          1. No, no. You’re giving them too much credit. They don’t intend as such, because it’s impossible. (Though they might be stupid enough to think they CAN.) It’s impossible to jail the vast majority of the population, much less an armed one.
            OTOH they’re wishcasting. You have to remember they believe words create reality. Somehow.

            1. Which is why the regime keeps trying so hard to push Putin to use nukes. They think use of nukes is their golden ticket to destroy their domestic political opponents. They are delusional, but their delusions can still cause a lot of damage.

      2. Way back when, the FBI and CIA use to recruit heavily from the Latter-Day Saint population. Returned missionaries from foreign countries had fluency in a foreign language, and sometimes that fluency was in one of the more obscure dialects instead of the main language dialect. A skill like that could be difficult to come by, and valuable to those agencies.

        I wonder if that’s still the case?

        1. I rather suspect the potential LDS candidates are asked their opinion of Mitt Romney. Any non-positive response (laughter, derision, projectile vomiting) puts them in the Right Wing Extremist bin.

      4. Realistically, the article is setting the framework for what would be required for actual terroristic radicals to recruit among Trads.

        You can’t recruit someone to fight against something when they do not agree it’s a threat.

          1. Oh, goodness, yes; even with the framing, it won’t work, but it’s creating the conditions for the threat it’s supposedly exposing.

          2. Their god is the State and anybody who doesn’t worship the State is Evil.

            (They thought Muslims were different but are now learning that Muslims don’t worship “their god”.)

              1. Arguably, Islam is in fact a religion that is mostly about how to run a state, to the point that Sharia law is considered more authoritative than ahadith, or even the Quran. (But not more authoritative than a caliph… so isn’t it convenient that there aren’t any, at the moment?)

                OTOH, traditionally Sharia lawbooks were supposed to be read only by authorized Sharia law students, so that people would have to ask someone who was already an authorized Sharia scholar/magistrate, in order to find out what the law was. (Sort of like the old Dungeonmaster’s Handbook, or dungeon modules.)

                But also this was done, because some of the Sharia law rulings, and even their principles, are so terrible that they tend to drive students away from Islam. So one of the jobs of their teachers is to keep the Sharia students from jumping ship, which is a tad more difficult in the modern world.

                So… there are extremely hardcore Muslim sites that exist to make Sharia lawbook searching easier… and this is deplored by the old school Sharia scholars. Same thing with the recent translations into English of various Sharia lawbooks. The people doing them are trying to be very hardcore and devout, and yet their hardcore and devout elders don’t appreciate them spreading the word.

                It’s an interesting situation.

            2. “They thought Muslims were different…”

              If that’s true they’re not only as stupid as I thought, or more so, they’re as clueless as they are stupid. How could anyone with at least the intelligence of a flatworm not know that Islamic beliefs have absolutely nothing in common with leftist beliefs?!? Sheeesh… 😕

              1. It’s a tenet of Islam that it’s desirable to lie to all infidels about their true intentions, especially when it comes to world domination, and twice on Fridays.

                1. Yep. Leftists, of course, all know that that’s only hyperbole and they don’t really mean it; only Christians are E-E-E-EVUL! Pardon me while I spit. 😡

    2. James Lindsay went on a rant against “Christian Nationalism” this last summer. The leftist Marxists running the society that he knew so well (possibly better than anyone) utterly bamboozled him into believing that Christians fighting back against the Marxists were a real threat.

      He lost a lot of my respect and on X I tried to reason with him that he’d fallen into the left’s divide and conquer trap. He blocked me. And I took my monthly financial support away from him.

      Such a disappointment.

      Tradition religion is IMHO a way out of this woke BS. Lindsay got suckered into fighting his own side. Utterly disappointing.

    3. They don’t like the competition, and figure if they stomp it all out, surely people will flock the their congregations instead.

      But the high church of marx and his mimics are a dying religion that has failed in all ways possible.

        1. It’s always surprising to reread the Inferno and notice how many Popes Dante put in Hell.

          1. Just convince an Archbishop (or better, a Cardinal) to install one; being in the Vatican isn’t required, nor is air pollution (white smoke), nor is the College of Cardinals. It wouldn’t be the first time multiple contending Popes declared each other anathema and excommunicate, and that time may have come around again.

            1. Maybe have the Catholics in Africa threaten to schism if they don’t get one. The Catholic hierarchy has done it’s best to ignore the growth of their religion in Africa.

              1. That’d be backwards; there’s several bishops in Africa who have correctly pointed out when the Pope (and the faddish idiots in Germany) have been doing what the oughtn’t.

                We can’t fire the Pope, but we have at least one Doctor of the Church who is best known for criticizing a pope until he Did The Right Thing.

            2. Wrong religion.

              Bad things don’t happen because we ‘deserve’ them, and we don’t get to control other folks’ free will even if we work really, really hard to try to earn that ‘right’.

            4. Make the pope live in the Vatican again. From everything I’ve read, the Vatican poisoners do G-d’s work.
              STOP STARING AT ME. I’m just saying what my family said around the dinner table.
              We might not have been very good people.

              1. I”ve heard stories about what the Catholic ladies in Roman neighborhoods traditionally say. They are… very free-spoken… about their local bishops, past and present.

                There’s a happy medium between respect for the office and free speech, and I think it’s crazy to expect that there wouldn’t be a certain amount of laying out facts and opinions.

    4. The part they’re not saying (and the part I suspect is a much bigger issue for them than they’re letting on) is that people who pay homage to the Lord (i.e., attend traditional churches) are not available to pay homage to the Lord of the World.

      1. This.

        Those who love Truth with a capital T, and try to practice living truthfully, will refuse to bow to lies. And that is why we are dangerous to the left, because making people submit to their lies is how the left knows they have power. It’s both pleasurable and practical for them: pleasurable because they like seeing others under their boot, and practical because it helps them know how secure they are in their position. And if lots and lots of people are standing up to them and refusing to bow to their sixty-cubit golden idol of lies? They know they’re just one inciting incident from a Romanian Christmas, and they don’t know when that incident might happen. So anyone who stands up for Truth must be squashed as fast as possible, lest he infect others with his dangerous (to them) attitudes.

        1. I explain to people that one of my 3 goals is to make people think. I warn them that this makes me very dangerous.

  3. The future belongs to those who show up. The big families are the ones who show up.

    I’m also reminded of a personality test I did ages ago. One of the this was you go into your imaginary house and see what’s there. That’s generally the thing you care most about or are most invested in. The little aside comment was if it wasn’t people, food, or plants, you were generally unhappy.

    A lot of progressive dogma has no room for any of those.

  4. “The big lie of false radicalism could only hold while they had full control of every mass communication means.”

    I saw some eco-weenies getting tossed off a highway in Portugal on YouTube today. The difference in the men moving them and the response from the agitatiors was remarkable.

    In England, Germany, and France, men drag them off the road but they get back up and run into the road again because they know the cops will be along to protect them from the public almost immediately.

    This time the agitators didn’t do that. When they got dumped on the sidewalk most of them stayed there, and the one or two fools who didn’t got dumped much more vigorously. The men didn’t fool around, they just cleared the road and then left. This leads me to believe that in Portugal, the police very quietly don’t have the demonstrators backs.

    In Canada, I get to see this sort of thing up close and personal. Any road blockage/riot/literal church burning done by the Indians is “legitimate demonstration”, while Muslim (and other) parents rallying peacefully and in an orderly fashion against pedophile grooming in schools is “hate speech and a national disgrace/emergency”.

    In Toronto the police have blocked all the roads around the provincial Parliament buildings four or five times in the last few weeks on the faint chance that “hate filled, disinformation spreading rioters” -might- come in large numbers, and bring vehicles with them.

    God help you if you drag some traffic blocking a-hole off the road and punch them back when they take a swing at you. In Canada? You’re going to jail.

    Therefore it is Portugal, not Canada, on the cutting edge of freedom and human dignity in the Western World right now.

    1. You have no idea how frigging terrifying that idea is. But it’s not true, really. I could explain what’s going on — I enjoyed that video more than should be legal — but it’s most people exasperated at the traffic already. And men trying to get to work.
      BUT there might also be a blow back. Remember Portugal was commie before Canada. There’s blowback.

      2. I was thinking that:

        A) The people of Portugal have seen a lot more commie BS than the English/French so they know it when they see it, and

        B) the Just Stop Oil weenies might not have paid up their membership in the Police Widows and Orphans fund this week. Corruption cuts both ways, right?

        But either way, random men on a random street felt confident enough to kick their little activist asses, and they knew it. Which is 2000% better than what you’re going to see around here.

        1. Which is why my favorite saying to deal with Pantyfa and the radical left is a simple one.

          “Oderint dum metuant.”

          “Let them hate, as long as they fear.”

              1. Google Translate is certainly getting a workout today… 😉

                That noted, I tend to agree with both. Especially the second in this particular case; Amalric didn’t mince words.

                  1. I’ve heard (read) that; I have yet to see any actual evidence either way. Do you have a cite to any? Thanks.

                    1. The websites I did have are defunct, now, but it was based on someone who knew it “must” be true applying the same standards as any other history– and discovering it failed the ‘first showed up much later, and according to someone who wasn’t there at the time’.
                      (Showed up in Dialogus miraculorum, which was not intended to be a history book.)

                      There are multiple first-hand accounts, including the letter from the guy who supposedly said this– his letter claimed that while they were in negotiations for release of the Catholic citizens when essentially the mob went in and massacred everyone– and nobody has anything like that happening.

                      (The really funny thing? I only found out about this because I was looking up Cardassian ranks and fell down a search-hole, back when search engines didn’t “help” you find what you really don’t want. Legate.)

                    2. OK; thanks. Given that it occurred over 800 years ago, and that records are sometimes spotty (and many were written to “whitewash” actions which might kick back on someone) I’ll simply keep the purported quote in mind as one of the numerous pithy quotes or events which, while not proven, are intended to show a general principle or attitude. Washington’s cherry tree falls into the same category.

                    3. …. we literally have letters from the guy, at the time, about what happened… and from other folks who were there, at the time….

                      Yeah, records are sometimes spotty, that doesn’t mean that the rare prime records we’ve got are to be ignored in favor of later writings from folks we know weren’t there. That’s utterly backwards.

        2. They’ve been doing it here for 40 years. I remember one than once not being able to get off base because some anti-nuke group was blocking the gates.

          The temptation to slip from brake to gas was not small.

        3. Because it was hard even for me to understand the words, I’ll inform you at least one of those men was bellowing “Go back to the whore that birthed you.” Which made me giggle.

        4. You know… it turns out that this whole international fake airplane parts scam was blown sky high by…

          A Portuguese machine shop. Because they were mad that somebody was forging papers that said that they’d done work on parts that they hadn’t done, and hadn’t been paid for.

          So they got mad and started contacting people, to tell them it wasn’t their work.

          2. That’s interesting — I hadn’t heard that part of the story.

            AOG Technics is/was a parts broker, not a manufacturer. Not sure the supplier vetting techniques such as DEMATEL would have caught on to what they were up to, although basic literacy might have been useful (“sales executive Johnny Rico?” I ask you. Maybe his territory included Klendathu.)

            I suspect that despite the lip service given to multivariate supplier evaluation, cost is king.

      3. Plus, Evil But Beautiful Space Princess, as you know, folks in Portugal are generally a bit more…excitable?…than Canadians. Takes a lot to get Canadians riled up (although you could ask the Germans around Antwerp in late 1944 what happens when you do, and it’s not pretty). Not so much folks of the Latin-blooded persuasion.

          1. Which is why I would never read your posts and quip “pull pin”.

            Well, maybe occasionally.

    2. IIRC, I’ve seen recent indications that the cops are starting to side with the motorists in the UK. Might be a regional thing, though, with some areas protecting the protestors, while in other areas they side with the motorists.

      I think there have also been some recent instances in which protestors glued themselves to the asphalt, and the cops were not gentle when they removed those protestors.

      1. Did that one idiot who was afraid he’d lose his hand after the epoxy stunt ever get freed from his chunk of road/runway?

        1. The one in Germany lost part of the hand, I know that much. He’d done something that required removing muscle and other tissue to get him loose from the asphalt. The German news mentioned it once, then hurried on to other topics.

          1. If they’d liked him, somebody could have used a pickaxe, jackhammer, or other tool to chunk a chunk of roadway out, and take it to the hospital with his hand still attached but more portable. But apparently nobody loved him enough.

            1. And I should have refreshed. Great minds think alike, but I’d let him deal with concrete hand in jail.

        2. I’d love it if the police just decided to leave the glue-on protestor on the road. Screw trying to get him off, and discourage his buddies from helping.

          Either that, or bring out the Jaws of Life. (Don’t have to use them, but it’d be interesting once the perp goes code brown.)

          OTOH, if you really need to get the road cleared, get a jackhammer and free up a 20 pound chunk attached to his hand. Then put him in jail.

          (My patience is worn a bit thin today. Did you guess? 🙂 )

          1. Or invite the local mosque to apply the traditional punishment for thievery (of drivers time, oxygen, whatever), Whatever’s left will be worn away shortly.

      2. This is one of those deals where cops follow orders except not always, and not forever. I saw the other day where a London cop shot some goblin on duty, and was hauled up for murder. Mr. Goblin was “unarmed” except for the small detail that he was driving a car and presumably tried using it on the cop.

        https://www.dw.com/en/uk-army-put-on-standby-as-london-police-hand-in-weapons/a-66911726

        TL/DR one hundred or so elite London coppers from the gun squad handed in their guns, leaving London to the few that didn’t. Presumably some political thing going on there, I’d have expected them -all- to hand them in.

        Also, -cops- roughing up protesters means things are getting bad in the organization.

        I’m not encouraged if cops are punching out the protesters. If -civilians- are doing it, in this time of overzealous officials pushing false narratives, -that- is encouraging.

        1. The civilians just want to get to work/school/store/home/etc… But they can’t do that because the self-entitled would-be martyrs block the road. And then move right back onto it if some motorists haul them out of it.

          So what are the motorists going to do? Well…

          1. Carry a supply of extra large zip ties? Zip tie the miscreants to the nearest immovable object and let the police sort it out when they get there.

            1. Police are there almost immediately, since someone is all but guaranteed to call them when the idiots first put themselves into the road. For that matter, the protestors might call the cops beforehand to make sure that they’re on-site.

              Point being, there really isn’t a “when they get there” sort of situation where the cops are concerned. They’re going to be there pretty much from the start.

              1. I still think zip ties are a good option. I am non-violently protesting their protest. As is my right.

                1. Um. Question. Does zip ties tightly around the neck count as “non-violently protesting their protest”? Doesn’t have to cut off all their breathing, just enough to make them have to think about it, and make it really, really, difficult to remove.

                  Asking for a friend who was curious for another friend, who was asking for a friend, who was asking for a friend. At least 6 degrees removed.

        1. the shock and disbelieving looks of the leftoid Alphabet Mafia when the Muslim City Council said basically, “Sod Off you buncha freaks!” was glorious

      2. Turned on a -dime-. Turned on them like a rattlesnake.

        It does seem surprising, given the Lefties are all flowers and rainbows all the time, and multicultural this and diversity that. But when you understand what Lefties actually -are- then it is plain that they would do this in a heartbeat.

        We’ve got video now of Lefty teacher’s union “Diversity!!!” champions screaming “GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!” to a crowd of Muslim parents demonstrating against groomers in schools.

        Lefties lie. They lie about everything. If they’re for something this week, they will be against it next week, then for it again the week after. It is quite hard to understand people being that fundamentally evil, but there they are, doing it.

        1. Hard leftists love everybody…as long as they’re useful. As soon as they quit serving the Five-Year Plan, they are disposable. You would think the hard left could look to their heroes Lenin, Stalin, and Mao and see that.

  5. Radical as in the root of the thing. I realized I was a radical about the same age, 14 or so. I had the great misfortune to see clearly. Number to son has the same misfortune. Later, I was very much the young fogey. It was all very ironic and making fun of the “modernes.” I’m still a fogey but not so young.

  6. The elites are relentlessly trying to treat us like cattle. It’s time for us to turn round on them and stampede.

    1. They expect that. They’re prepared for that. Time to switch up from herd animal?

      Humans don’t generally run in herds, they’re more a baboon troupe sort of thing. Little groups of unmanageable bastards getting into things they’re not supposed to.

    2. The Reader suggests that the elites need to be introduced to the pack. Ain’t no herds here.

  7. I’ve been odd all my life. I was the weird girl who read every single thing I could get my hands on. The entire set of encyclopedias, Louis L’Amour, Popular Mechanics, cookbooks, Issac Asimov, Poe, Shakespeare, the back of shampoo bottles. Everything.

    I also married at nineteen and stayed home with a bunch of kids of our own making and cooked “clean” foods before that had a name and homeschooled. I wore dresses when literally no girl EVER did because they are very comfy and I like them.

    Very hippy like. But also very religious, so I didn’t fit in with the hippies either.

    When I was “recycling” and “up cycling” it was weirdo penny pinching. Now it’s saving the planet.

    The thing is, that kind of lifestyle is quite rewarding and relaxing. Sure I was very busy and worked hard but it was entirely for people I love. That makes all the difference.

    Now they’re calling it Trad Wife if you want to be slightly insulting or Cottage Core or whatever, to make it seem trendy and acceptable. But for millenia it was just LIFE.

    The feminists have tried to convince everyone that the only way women have any value at all is if they do exactly what men do. And that men can’t even be expected to get supporting their families right.

    I was just weird enough to not believe that.

    Or much of anything else they spout off about since they are the very people who’ve bullied me all my life. And they are the desperately unhappy ones.

    1. The Hippies always struck me as a bunch of losers. I like to make things and fix things, so that’s what I’ve done in life. Even physical therapy is basically fixing stuff that’s broken, you’re just doing it on people.

      Imagine my surprise to find myself on the cutting edge of furniture-making radicalism with my plain-vanilla Shaker cabinets and my little Japanese benches etc. Like the really out-there avant-garde leaders of fashion looked behind them and discovered nobody was paying attention, so they all rushed over to where I am, doing what I always do.

      I have noticed a thing. If you park a chewed-up crappy rat-rod next to a Lambo, the crowd forms around the rat rod. Because guys respect the builder, and like what he did. They don’t feel much for the Lambo other than it is obscenely expensive and they’ll never have one, even though its nice.

      1. There were SOME hippies (or hippie-adjacent) that were alright. They BATHED, etc. but also “did their own thing” of some actually creative sort. These were a decided minority, alas, but they DID exist.

    2. I’ll own to watching some of the Cottage Core content and have two take-aways:

      I need to follow one of their instructions on aprons for cooking.
      If I have 2/3rds my age and single there are a lot of very appealing Cottage Core young ladies.

      1. Lucky you. I’d have to drop to one-third my age. And besides, my wife of 58 years (this month) would probably kill me if I did more than ogle, and she’s usually a better shot with her Python. 😉

    3. “Reading everything from an early age” seems to be a common factor for many of us Odds who refused to be defined by the ticky-tacky boxes of contemporary culture.

  8. The thing about tradition is that unless you actively teach the young ones why tradition is, they get this funny idea that it doesn’t matter and can be dispensed with without harm.

    Sometimes they’re right. Sometime they’re dead wrong. And if you haven’t taught them the why, they don’t know which is which until it’s too late.

      1. “That’s a really weird tattoo you have on your forehead. You should have that removed.”

        “Funny you should say that. There’s a reason why that tattoo is there….”

      2. Chesterton’s Gate swings both ways. Those who want to take a gate down need to be able to defend why the gate was put up, and those who want to keep the gate need to be able to defend why the gate shouldn’t have been put up in the first place. Especially when it’s a historically recent gate, rather than one that has been there since time immemorial.

        (And these days the ‘reformers’ more often want to put up fences, rather than clear them away as in Chesterton’s metaphor. See the Left’s passion for ever-more regulation.)

        2. “It works” is a good reason to keep a fence without having to be able to explain why it works.

          Changing things, on the other hand, means you have to have some kind of a working understanding of how and why a thing works.

          1. And “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” is a good reason to not have put up the fence in the first place without having to be able to explain why it isn’t broken.

            Putting up the fence in the first place was an example of changing things too.

            1. You do not seem to understand the story of Chesterton’s fence, and have instead attached some kind of moral quality to the question of things having ever been changed, rather than somehow eternally in the current state.

              If you are interested, here’s the chapter the quote is from:
              http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/The_Thing.html#04

              It starts at:
              IN the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

              And then goes on for at least three Chestertonian paragraphs.

              1. Yes, I’ve read that.

                My point is that the same logic applies to the earlier putting up of a gate in place in the first place. “I don’t see the use of an ungated pathway, let us put a gate here.” And that tearing down a gate or fence doesn’t magically dispose of the objection “you should have first explained that you do see the use of it.”

                Or are you claiming that the passage of time does tend to validate a past tearing down (or putting up) of a fence or gate under the “Chesterton’s Fence” principle, even if that tearing down or putting up was done without respect for that principle?

                1. Yes, I’ve read that.

                  Try reading the entire section, because what you say after that shows you are not understanding the point, and he beat the dang thing to death.

                2. You are trying to drop a moral equivalence gate across an open metaphorical path.

                  Didn’t work.

    2. That was the problem I kept encountering. “Do this!” “Please explain WHY I should..” “NO! JUST DO THIS!”

      Well, if you can’t explain it… why should I BOTHER?

  10. I grew up an odd in an odd family, so I sorta thought that everyone was like me for a while. It was confusing when people treated me like I was weird because my whole family did these sorts of things, or even crazier.

    My dad was a house husband when that was an appalling thing for a man to do. My mother was upper-middle management in a national company and worked her 9-5 while dad taught me to do laundry and plan/cook meals and do basic house and car maintenance. All my brothers had to be able to cook a meal, replace a button, fix a popped seam before they left on their mission. My sister and I needed to be able to change a tire, gap spark plugs, and change the oil before we were allowed to get our driver’s license.

    Sunday afternoon was dead quiet in my house. The only sound to be heard was the gentle turning of pages as everyone was reading (and not just scripture).

    I also grew up mountain. I know there are those in this group who know exactly what I mean by that. Until I hit junior high, I was as strong, if not stronger, than the majority of the boys I went to school with. Not because of any stupid grrrrrl power non-sense, but because I spent my summers actually lifting and hauling heavy things, which built up my muscles, while a lot of the boys spent it playing at the beach. (if the only way to heat your house in the winter is wood fires, you spend your summers making darn sure that there is enough wood stacked up and cured to last you through.) I didn’t care about the weird looks I got. I had a couple of good girl friends to hang out and play with and I didn’t need more than that. Honestly, more than that sounded exhausting….

    The result of all this, was that in the majority of Northern Cali, where I grew up, I was considered so conservative as to be reactionary. This confused the hell out of me, since my mother most certainly didn’t stay in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, to cater to my father’s needs.

    When I left home to go to college in Utah, suddenly I was so radically liberal people were surprised I wasn’t covered in tattoos and doing hard drugs between classes.

    I hadn’t changed at all, just moved a thousand miles east.

    I suppose all of this is a rambling way of saying that I’m not surprised that society has gone so far around the bend that they are approaching traditional from the back and those that embrace it are being treated as radicals. Traditional doesn’t automatically mean good, but there’s usually a reason why it became a tradition in the first place. Maybe checking under the hood before deciding to toss it out was worthwhile after all?

      1. I’ve a had a coworker ask me, rather bewildered, how I could be So AMAZINGLY Right AND so AMAZINGLY LEFT. Except, I explained, what I really was, was LEAVE ME ALONE. I want the “Republicans” (The fundie types that haven’t been a real faction for decades now…) to stay OUT of my bedroom. I want the “Democrats” (who ain’t no such thing) to stay OUT of my wallet/bank account/etc. Simply, LEAVE ME ALONE. Though perhaps ‘GET OFF MY LAWN’ might apply. [Oddly(?) I don’t CARE about folks on my lawn. As long they realize THEY assume ALL risk, I don’t care.]

  11. OH yes! I am reminded very strongly of Fiddler and the opening…
    “…You want to know why? I’ll tell you – I don’t know. But, it’s tradition!”

  12. Along with my Fiddler comment – I grew up in a “Leave it to Beaver” household and didn’t figure out it was odd until I was well out of high school. When I was a wee lad I never really fit in with any group in school and was sort of always on my own. In High School there were the motor heads, dopers/stoners, up-tight academic and the jocks. I wasn’t any of them but was able to drift between any of them and was welcome on the edges of each group. Did not think at the time it was odd but looking back…

    When a stoner friend needed a ride home, I picked him up on the way to get the jock friend who drank too much and poured both of them into their respective beds before the parent types were any the wiser. As of today, I still have two good friends from those days who grew up into responsible adults, had families and normal lives – well, normal for us odds!

  13. Once again, I find myself odd among the Odd. Temperamentally I am very traditional — at least partly. Or maybe “conventional” is the more accurate word — and again, at least partly. Kinda brainy: what’s wrong with that? Voracious reading: didn’t seem odd to me either. Science fiction: okay, pretty odd, but negotiable in a post-Star Trek/Star Wars culture.

    In different circumstances, I could have gone along and gotten along. I could have been a comfortable cog in society.

    At least a society that worked. So, no, not this one, that for quite some time has been trying to reject me like a heart transplant from a baboon.

    My private joke was that wearing dress clothes and ties to cons was my method of non-conformity, in that I was not conforming with the non-conformists. (There are several ways in which you may snicker at this.) My rationale was that doing panels and such was work, and I should comport myself accordingly. And the fandom was, admittedly, quite tolerant of this. I wonder whether they would be at a main-line SF con today. (They might have other reasons for unpersoning me, but I’ll go with that one.)

    My point with that digression, I guess, is that there are odd ways to be Odd, and some of them may not look odd to those considered non-Odd.

    Okay, I’ve really wandered, so I’ll stop now.

    Republica restituendae.

      3. I neither confirm nor deny what I might be carrying beneath an article of clothing I only seldom have worn to SF conventions. (Not much room in my luggage for a suit coat, but ties travel very easily.) Best to keep some people guessing, if only on principle.

    2. “This is a sci-fi con.”
      Me: Yes it is.
      Them “So why are you wearing that?” Waves at Victorian-style clothes.
      Me: Because this is my everyday work wear.
      Them: [boggles in nerd]

      I rebel by being the proper Victorian middle-class lady. You know, the kind that went to Africa on her own with a few steamer trunks and came back with bundles of sketches and botanical samples after having catalogued insects, plants, fishes, and shooting her own supper. While assisted by 100 or so hired native porters who shrugged and went along with the Crazy White Lady because the pay was good.

      1. looks around at her soil, rock, plant and insect displays and maps lots of maps

        I resemble that remark.

  14. Simak (go with it. Huge in Portugal. I wonder if he ever knew it)

    Given what I know of agents handing foreign rights I suspect not only did he not know he had fans, he didn’t know the rights had been sold and he never saw a dime.

    Which is pretty sad.

     I was afraid they’d do a nude sacramental dance. (Those of my denomination who are laughing now, know exactly what I mean.)

    Man, Catholics have all the fun.

    Gone were the homeless-and-aggressive-lesbians of five years ago.

    They infiltrate things to destroy them but once the skin suit stops convincing they move on.

    What seems different here is the church recovered. A lot of the Episcopal churches they did this to didn’t.

    1. At an early Mythopoeic Conference, perhaps the first one I went to, I saw a group of people on Sunday morning sitting on hard benches while someone at a lectern delivered a sermon. Then I saw another group of people standing outside, under a tall tree, in a circle, while one of them played the guitar and they all sang. The first group were the pagans. The second group were the Christians.

    2. Speaking of nude sacramental dances back in the nineties I saw a documentary on what was purported to be the “future of liturgical celebration.”

      It featured nuns saying mass to an all female congregation and a benediction ceremony where nude ladies would crawl between each other’s knees chanting, “I am womb water, you are womb water.”

      It was both horrifying and absolutely hilarious.

      2. Are you sure you didn’t just see “Oh, Calcutta”? 🙂

        Fun fact, it is one of the longest running musicals of all time. It’s twelfth.

  15. The fundamental problem with Pope Francis is that he is a Marxist before he is a Catholic.

    1. Liberation Theology has never ended well, no matter how disguised. Environmental veneer, human rights veneer, it’s still Marx and a heresy (even by my standards).

      2. I have Catholic fans praying for his conversion.

        Waves rosary

        May the Synod on Synodality defend the true faith and provide sound teaching to the faithful.

        And if not, may all the documents that are being prepared in utmost secrecy by who knows whom, perish in a mysterious cleansing fire.

  16. Several thoughts occur.

    There is an account on Minds (for a radio host, I think) that frequently posts a meme promoting his show with the legend “Conservative Is The New Punk!”

    On the most superficial level, conservative and punk are antithetical. Punk rockers (some of them) spit on their fans. “Conservatives” are “nice”, or at least civil.

    At a somewhat deeper level, it’s a lot less stupid. The punk ethos was a combination of “do it yourself, the rules be damned” and standing against The Establishment. Since the rules are being made (and constantly re-made) by the totalitarian left, and since the left is in all ways now The Establishment, well, sure, being conservative is punk.

    But at a third level, we’re back to “things that don’t go together” again. He’s trying to make conservatism (and I think this includes social conservatism) “cool”. Which is about as impressive as a Mormon Bike Gang.

    I don’t really see how traditionalism can ever be seen as “cool”.

    On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for the Tao of Flakfizer.

    “Jacques, you’re working for me now.”

    “For what reason?”

    “Does it make you angry?”

    “YES!!!”

    “That’s good enough reason for me!”

  17. I’m…not a fan of religion in general. Probably due to the fact that I have the same attitude to the practice of faith that my father has (i.e. he found it hard to go to Church on Sunday and have to go to the church on Monday to arrest the priest for crimes, usually playing a little too much with the choir boys).

    I understand the appeal of faith, especially in these days, especially in the days when everything else seems to be so…wrong to any form of common sense or logic. And a church is very much that “third space” that isn’t home or work.

    I hope it works for them.

    1. I have have issues with Big, Organized Religion. The personal is another matter.
      I do not so much not believe, as that I am wary of so many self-proclaimed followers.
      “Love thy Neighbor”… with pitchforks and torches? Er, about that…

  18. I glance at articles by Danielle Blumenthal from time to time, just for the halibut. A few of them are interesting, but mostly they’re tin-foil nuttery. Like this:

    Democrats are disciplined. They follow talking points. When Hillary Clinton and others talk about MAGA extremists, cultism and “reeducation” — that is a coordinated effort.

    –
    Aaahhh…no. What she mistakes for ‘discipline’ is just a matter of them all having the same rats in their heads. Of course they all sound alike.

    1. There have been several examples of leftists posting/speaking things with much the same talking points and the cool word of the day. It gets funny to see 10-20 tweets that easily could be copy-pasta (and these are accounts linked to real (for values of) people).

      I wouldn’t rule out the rats, but some of the rats are getting the message from Rodentia Central.

      2. In fact, one of the actual distribution points for those talking points was revealed quite a while back (has it really been that long?). Journolist was basically a place where journalists would get their (leftwing) talking points in order. The original was disbanded after a couple of the members who were troubled by it revealed its existence. But it’s been stated more than once that there was soon an identical replacement.

  20. I can’t fit in even when I want to. And it’s destructive to my mental health to try.

    1. I don’t much try. Though if I’d known I’d have worn a skirt, because “giving scandal.”
      BTW I didn’t mean that everyone is or should be turning religious: rather that there seems to be a great hunger for something “before”. Before all the crazy. I think it’s part of “If that’s what you are, I’ll be what you says is bad.” Of course, this has a lot of bad implications, too.

  21. Hamas has attacked Israek with 5000+ rockets and many I curious by terrorist teams.

    Looks like this is going to be an interesting weekend.

    Stay alert. Hamas doesn’t like us, and Iran is their pupprtmaster.

    1. And who provided Iran with 6 billion last month? JoeBama. I guess if you have a guaranteed income stream coming in, you can spend ahead.

      Now I’m looking at all the NeverTrumpers moaning about this and all I can say is “stolen elections have consequences, fools. You excused the fraud because OrangeManBad. You own this too.”:

      https://twitchy.com/artistangie/2023/10/07/dana-loesch-says-what-everyone-is-thinking-following-the-attack-on-israel-from-hamas-n2388223

      1. While I’m fully confident that most of the recent 6 billion will be going to terrorists (just as happened with the batch of money that Obama sent), it’s probably not accurate to say that it helped finance the current attack. This current attack is complex enough that it took quite a lot of planning, over a considerable length of time, to put it all together. This operation was being worked on long before the most recent cash drop to the Iranians. The bulk of the financing for it was probably in place by the end of Spring of this year.

        1. Maybe indirectly though. Now that Iran got $6b from Sleepy Joe, Hamas can launch off all their missiles because replacements are in the pipeline from Iran, courtesy of Bidentia.

          1. Again, this was not a spur of the moment thing. This was something that had been planned for quite a while.

            1. You mean like ever since we abandoned a crap-ton of weapons in Afghanistan? That long?

              1. Maybe, but probably not, imo. From what I understand the rockets that Hamas uses are generally built within the Strip. Paragliders have been mentioned, as well – something that I wouldn’t expect to be connected to Afghanistan. That would leave whatever was used to breach the fence at multiple points, and possibly whatever knocked out that one Israeli tank that I saw a photo of, with what looked like gunmen surrounding it (assuming it’s not an old picture recycled for the current event).

                My suspicion would be that this was largely independent of the Afghanistan fiasco. But I wouldn’t rule it out.

      3. Spokes person sheep is spinning the 6 billion as:

        “Was already Iran’s money earned from legally selling oil to 4 countries Iran is allowed to sell oil to. The money was transferred to a bank” (not in Iran but even if I could remember to type it, couldn’t spell it correctly anyway) “that US has not only the tracking ability to know where the money is going, but the spending has to be approved. Approval only for basic supplies: Food, clothing, medical, etc.”
        ………….

        Um. Like that money doesn’t free up money that no one can track. Not that Iran will spend the above money for food and medicine for anyone other than the elites. Or that the Iran kleptocracy won’t sell the supplies on to other parties to get their toys.

        IMHO that money (and more) belong to the US treasury for the Carter years Iranian abuse. Not to mention the Iranian transactions since then. But no one listens to me.

        1. IIRC, we received the same assurances about the pallets of cash (that we were told didn’t exist) that Obama sent to Iran. Subsequently, Iranian citizens started rioting once they found out that all of the money had been sent to Iran’s foreign proxies such as Hezbollah.

          ^^;;

    2. As Golda Meir allegedly said during the Yom Kippur War (which started exactly 50 years ago yesterday…. coinkydink?), “We’re having trouble with the neighbors again.”

    4. 1. How much do those damn rockets cost?

      2. How many ‘Pore Palestinian Refugees’ could that money have fed?

      3. How many of those rockets were launched from schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc.? So the Israelis could be accused of atrocities if they responded with counterbattery fire?

      They’s Eeevul!

      1. ”
        3. How many of those rockets were launched from schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc.? So the Israelis could be accused of atrocities if they responded with counterbattery fire?”

        Never mind that the original firing is the actual war crime of Perfidy, and full retaliation is authorized.

        1. I didn’t say the accusations would be fair or justified, only that the Leftroids would scream them hysterically. Palestinians blowing up Israeli widows and orphans is fine, of course.

          How many of the assholes launching those rockets are actually Palestinian, though? I’m betting most of them are Iranian military, out of uniform.

            1. But are they competent to launch Iranian rockets? Would the Iranians trust them to be competent? I suspect a rather large number of covert Iranian ‘military advisors’ are ‘helping’ them.

              2. Not really. The Quassam rockets used by Hamas were designed by members of the organization, and are built within the Strip itself using a variety of otherwise junk items to put them together, and serve as a warhead. The fuel is a sugar and fertilizer mixture. They’re horribly inaccurate (accuracy basically comes down to “somewhere in this city”; personally, I keep waiting for one of them to hit the Dome of the Rock…). I suspect that Iranian assistance for the rockets basically comes down to getting dual-use goods into the Strip that can serve as parts, and better explosives for use in the warheads. I wouldn’t be surprised if aiming consists largely of figuring out how far the rocket will probably fly before the fuel runs out, calculating a parabola that uses that number as its “top of the curve” point, and tilting the rocket (using a pipe as a launch tube) at the angle that was calculated before launching it.

                1. “personally, I keep waiting for one of them to hit the Dome of the Rock”

                  I seem to remember that actually happening about 5 years ago; came down in the courtyard.

                  Israel’s fault, of course.

                2. From the videos I saw it loooks like the rockets have a burn time of <1.5 second, and at burnout they’re at least 200-300 yds “on the way” at a 20-30 degree elevation and going like a raped ape. Of course, those are really rough estimates (except the burn time), but not off by much.

  22. I have attended an Orthodox church for a few times recently. What was attractive to me was the beauty of the service. It was not too loud. It was emotional – but not in a weepy, tortured way but in reverence and humility. I found it…comforting.

    One of the great mistakes many churches – independent and denominational – have made is to become just like the society around them. If something is just like something you spend the other six days a week in, why make the effort for one more day of the same?

    1. Just so.
      And I used to attend Russian Orthodox service with an Ukranian friend when I was an exchange student. (It’s complicated. She was British, but her parents were Ukranian refugees post WWII.) Anyway, I found the services very beautiful.
      This is why for a while we attended mass at the Denver Cathedral. well, first the presence was still there, which I have trouble explaining. Second, it had beautiful music — the Catholic Opera Singers are all in the choir, since they work at the Denver Opera — and was solemn and dignified.

  23. Speaking of religion and pipe smoking…. there’s a You Tube channel called Pints With Aquinas, hosted by an Aussie Catholic dude who does long but very engrossing interviews with various people on both religious and secular issues.

    Recently he interviewed Alan Harrelson, a history professor who has his own You Tube channel called The Pipe Cottage. They spent more than 2 1/2 hours discussing pipe smoking, bourbon, why Harrelson recently decided to convert to the Catholic Faith (spoiler alert: Southern Catholic authors like Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy were involved), and why he’s NOT ashamed of his Southern heritage. Harrelson, by the way, has a quite pronounced Low Country accent reflective of his South Carolina roots (he now lives in Kentucky) and more than one commenter has suggested he should do Shelby Foote audio books. (Except he believes books were meant to be read and not listened to.)

    Another great You Tube channel for rad trad Catholics is the Divine Mercy Shrine channel, which features talks by Fr. Chris Alar on various aspects of Catholic faith. I binge watched/listened to them recently while having to work at home for a week (due to the office being under extensive renovation). His videos persuaded me to start praying the Rosary daily and doing the First Friday and First Saturday devotions (look them up).

    1. Yes.

      Back in the mid 80’s I wound up leading a Catholic young adult group, which was dying when I arrived. They had 25 attendees on a Sunday night when the next largest such group in the diocese had 10. By the time I left 18 months later (job change) we had 60-70 every Sunday night. The secret was a foundation of sound Catholic teaching with a wide variety of everything else; something for everybody. Some of the best work I ever did.

      Francis will not destroy the Church, though he may well destroy the Papacy. Over the years I’ve been able to volunteer in various parishes. The formula for success doesn’t seem to have changed. I’d like to see a stronger alliance between the Traddies and the Charismatics.

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