Barbarism

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Since I’m writing about a re-barbarized culture (yes, in the cursed book. Deal) I have been thinking a lot about barbarism and civilization.

The culture in the book is one that went into barbarism with a hammer, being the result of genetic and cultural manipulation, which robbed them even of the legacy of languages evolved on earth and made to serve mankind With the language, they lost the final tools to keep a high-level (or any level) of technology when the ship crashed and all adults but two died. Those adults were bizarrely or perhaps desperately trying to gestate all the embryos in artificial wombs, to leave the planet with a viable population. This allowed them not to scuttle their grand design, and to have their off-shoot of humanity survive. But it left them no time to teach the children. Which might be better and worse than if they had.

Worse, because the children could live with the stuff left to them, but were in essence primitives. Better because the crazy assumptions of the grand experiment weren’t imposed on them and allowed them, after very dark times to rebuild a civilization of sorts, even if not really a civilization.

There is an underlayment of barbarism to the culture, that I don’t know (quite) how to depict without making the people unsympathetic. The environment is hell on the very young and the very old, due to the cold equations of maintaining the lives of those who can’t contribute to their own care. True barbarians don’t care, but nascent civilizations, while still barbaric, have to come up with justifications for what they do. they might not even fool their own members, but they are, nonetheless, necessary for sanity.

But there is more, because of the nature of the world — yes, the damn hermaphrodite world — it is to some extent every hand against every other hand. They’ve had to band together to an extent, hence the nascent civilization, simply to survive, but there’s not the hard lesson humans had to learn about caring for pregnant females (they’re mostly self-sufficient on that, though at the risk of tremendous infant mortality that almost destroys the sub-species) and there is marginal advantage to that sharp-edged competition of women in the seraglio. To put it it bluntly, more or your children is fewer resources for mine.

Even in nascent or at least attempted civilization, millennia in, the best of them are what we’d consider unholy prickly and capable of sudden and horrifying violence. I have to write such a scene, and still don’t know how to make it both startling and horrifying to my civilized-world visitor/dropped-in unfortunate, and yet justifiable enough that the character doesn’t lose all sympathy. Because he (yes, way back in the eighties I was told I could sell it if I referred to them as “she” but that’s the entirely wrong image for the civilization I created) IS a good person and surprising gentle for their culture and time, and its exigencies. And yet, he has to commit violence at the drop of an insult, or risk being killed.

Now to an extent it’s a very fun civilization to write: Connan the Barbarian meets Jane Austen, with something approaching magic. The response to someone outside very specific conditions (Which have edge cases) calling you by your given name, for instance, is to threaten to cut their tongue out. And to try to make good on the thread if they succeed.

Barbarism is fun, in the same sense adventure is fun: if it happens to someone else far away.

Humans in a state of barbarism are subjected to pressures and imperatives that make the rest of us blench. And the exigencies and impulses of a barbaric culture make them very bad neighbors indeed, so note that barbarism is only fun far away from us.

And barbarism is not only the default nature of humans, when our carefully indoctrinated civilized imperatives are forgotten or stripped away from us by circumstances, but it remains in some part even in the most civilized of us.

It is nature, red in tooth and claw, inside our brains, against the best imperatives of our brains. And it hides itself in myriad ways. See women in offices and corporations often recreating the behavior of the seraglio, with “death of career” substituting for “death.” And “cancelling” for “throwing to the outer darkness to die with her children” (Or his.) See men who haven’t been socialized to harness and husband (I speak advisedly) their greater strength becoming “toxic” and abusive to those weaker.

The best civilization can do is NOT banish the barbarism in each of us, but harness it, in the service of greater humanity.

And greater humanity is the point here. The tribalism of the savage does not serve civilization. It allows some very ancient and barbaric impulses to survive.

Because, despite the appearance, this is not a writer nattering about her cursed book, but serves a purpose, let me start by telling a “joke” in very poor taste.

All of those screaming that Israeli response to the Einsatzgruppen LARPing by the Palestinian barbarians MUST be proportionate are out of luck. No one can convince the IDF to run around raping women and children, beheading babies and setting fire to children.

In fact, they are at risk, rather, as all civilized people are, of having their best impulses used against them. Already, in Twitter, there are idiot Hamas Bots demanding if I’m as horrified by Israelis “killing Palestian babies” for however long. I don’t answer them. Because I don’t answer questions with made-up premises. I might as well ask them when they stopped honor-killing their wives.

Yes, Israelis have killed some children and babies of Palestinians, over the years trying to defend themselves from a relentless enemy, but never on purpose. In that they take more care than these children’s parents. For the record, it’s not a war crime to bomb a weapons depot or missile launching station placed atop a nursery school or a hospital. It is a war crime, and despicable to a horrible extent to place such installations in places where you will use the children of your own tribe as shields.

It’s also a learned behavior. The Palestinians and other modern day barbarians wouldn’t do that if it weren’t for the fact that they’ve learned their scrupulous and civilized enemy hesitates to hurt innocents. The fact that they value winning against the civilized enemy over their own children is more a demonstration of how sick their barbaric culture has gotten, and how much it sees itself as inevitably defeated. Otherwise, they would value the future. If they thought they had one.

So, should we feel sorry for them because of their lack of future? We can’t afford to. When a culture reaches that level, there’s only one thing that can save it. And “save it” only in a very general sense, that their genetics have a shot at the future: Take every child under three away and raise them in civilization, with a different language, different parents, and never tell them they were adopted.

No, we won’t do that. Civilized people have learned to be wary of that sort of impulse, which in a way is too bad.

The myths and idiocies of the “noble savage” have caused us to allow generations of children to be raised in barbarism crossed with a sort of welfare state where everything material is provided for them, but they are taught only the impulses and practices of barbarians.

It is actually no wonder they hate us. It’s just that they hate us — and in the Palestinian case, both us and the Israelis — for all the wrong reasons. They also have an internal myth that goes something like: “Commit horrible acts of barbarism — ?????? — Victory.”

But they can’t have victory. If, unlikely as it is, they were to “win” against civilization, their barbarism would just consume them. And their lack of interest in their own tribe’s future would end them.

Not to pick on Palestinians, only. You see the same behavior among the lost and broken “ante-fa” and the other barbarians of our left. It’s all “Commit horrible acts of barbarism — ?????? — Victory.”

It’s all based on the idea that civilized people will behave as the barbarians will. That they will fight at the same level, but impaired by being “civilized” which for the barbarians translates as “weak.”

They miss the mechanism of civilization. The thing that kicks in, when all of us feel threatened with extinction.

Civilization allows individuals to be fat and sassy, and consider themselves secure enough we are horrified by violence, and don’t respond with the same level of violence, or not close enough for barbarians to understand.

The Einsatzgruppen LARPing was typical barbarian aggression. When tribe of human meets tribe of human in the wild, one of them will commit the worst atrocity they can think of, to cause the other to run away. This saves lives on both sides because it spares the tribes endless war.

However it works very, very badly when tribal humans meet civilization, where all humans are considered part of one’s “tribe”.

Oh, a lot of attacks are ignored, because civilization removes the knife from the civilized throats. We have lives to live. We are momentarily horrified, then move on.

Until an invisible mark is hit, one that is hard to quantify, so it’s always a surprise for the barbarians, but that mark does get hit in every confrontation between civilization and barbarism. Some atrocity so horrible, some outrage so immense is perpetrated by the barbarians, that the civilized cannot forgive, forget or even conceptualize. At that point, the switch in civilized society’s brain gets flipped, and they go utterly destructive. They turn against barbarism with a fury that can only be described as “exterminate them root and branch.”

The nuclear conflagrations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the response of a very, very civilized culture. I’ll just remind everyone of that. As was the bombing of Dresden. (The Nazis, themselves, were bizarrely an advanced civilization which, under various pressures, had decided to embrace the worst features of barbarism. Let that rest under “humans are weird.” They were weaponized barbarism, though, once again showing there’s nothing as dangerous as civilization choosing barbarism.)

How close is that switch? It might already have tripped, though I suspect the barbarians are going to try for a coda, because, heaven help them (we won’t) they think they’re winning and that it’s business as usual.

Those barbarians in the Middle East, and our own rebarbarized left, for that matter, so in thrawl of the noble savage that they achieve savagery with no nobility whatsoever.

In the end, civilization always wins. But civilization can be shocked and left harder and harsher and closer to barbarism than it should be.

Which leads to very dangerous times indeed.

We’re sailing very perilous waters. For us, for our would be enemies, for humanity itself.

Be not afraid. Hold on to what civilization you can. And stand by to defend it and rebuild it.

176 thoughts on “Barbarism”

  1. “All of those screaming that Israeli response to the Einsatzgruppen LARPing by the Palestinian barbarians* are out of luck.”

    There should be a “must be proportionate” or the like at the asterisk.

    Israel may have had the switch flipped, but those leaning on them to delay, delay, delay have not. Sure, tie down the relief valve on the boiler. No downside to that.

    The longer it goes on, the worse the corrective measures will have to be. If the measures are taken at all.

    Republica restituendae
    et
    Hamas delenda est

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    1. None of them are going to pay a cost if it explodes, and they may get rewarded for their leaning, so yeah, for a lot of the Int’nat elites, there is no downside, and a certain amount of upside.

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      2. If people get frustrated enough, then leaders get turned into scapegoats. That’s not to say that the current crop of leaders wouldn’t have a lot to do with why things are bad (unlike an actual scapegoat). But people stop caring about the degree of actual responsibility.

        Though the current TPTB are either oblivious to this, or arrogant and deluded enough to think that they can successfully harness the wave of anger and redirect it at their enemies.

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        1. I forget who I saw it from on Twitter, but someone postulated the whole “midwit” thing may be because our IQ and certification processes don’t actually test how smart you are, but to a large degree, how industriously you can follow directions.

          Which implies there is a lot of the management class who got where they are not by being smart, but by industriously following the directions. I.e. the proverbial stupid but energetic soldier.

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          1. The big problem is that the key leadership positions go to the well-connected, not the most competent.

            Which is a potential solution…there are a lot of highly competent people who were shoved aside for some well-connected imbecile. Just the sort whose discontent can be tapped.

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          2. Boy howdy! I can attest to that. I never ever edit your blog posts simpy because it’s stream of consciousness, not paid copy. On that subject, it’s been so long that I’ve had to reach out and offer an edit on some other author just to keep in practice. Not to put any pressure on my favorite niece or anything like that, but my pot of electronic red ink was starting to dry out.

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    4. A lot of those leaning on Israel to delay are on the side of those who want to see Israel wiped off the map and every Jew living there murdered, if not every Jew in the world. Last Friday the people the Democrats and EU tout as being “a moderate partner for peace”, i.e. the Palestinian Authority, called for Imams to issue calls to join in the Jihad to achieve the annihilation of Israel and the death of every Jew there.

      F-ck those who want Israel to delay or “moderate” their response.

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  3. On the horrifying event with a sympathetic character, the ones I’ve read that worked generally had either the character or an observer working through the cold logic chain of why this was the only possible response.

    I don’t think it was even offered as a justification, rather it seems to work best when it is “if I do X then Y. If I do A then B. B is unacceptable for C, D, therefore I do X.”

    And probably show the after effects on the character. That sort of thing has to leave a mark, especially if they’re at a spot where they know just how horrifying it should be.

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  4. I’ll note the Gazans and others learned the “exploit their civilizational safeguards as a weakness” behaviors at the feet of…(wait for it)…the Soviets, as documented revolutionary doctrine, from basically as soon as when the commies rolled out the Third International in 1919.
    This, as well as being a repurposed antisemitic joke, was one of the main messages of the “they’ll sell us the rope we hang them with” statement: “We can get them to do what we want by playing to their ‘civilized’ preconceptions, and then we’ll kill them.”
    Obviously the schools of the NKVD/KGB didn’t invent subverting civilized norms to kill people nd take their stuff – see The Siege of Troy and a big wooden horse – but they were the primary propagator of this strategy in the blood soaked 20th Century.

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      1. “What happened?”
        “Well, the terrorists finally managed to push the Israelis into going Full Arab on them.”
        “Huh?”
        “A line of fuel-air explosives at one border, and another line just a bit further in, in a sort of March of Utter Destruction to far border.”
        “That’s horrible!”
        “Full Arab ain’t nice.”

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        1. Tunnel-penetrating HE projectiles optimized for shock wave blast.

          WP missile wherever a water main is being dug up. (Yeah, they’ll force hostages and uninformed “martyrs” to do it.)

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      2. Sure, but it would be a mistake not to expect exactly the same tactics from any of the groups that went through the original Revolutionary Studies programs at Moscow Center University, no matter what their ethnicity.

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  5. “The best civilization can do is NOT banish the barbarism in each of us, but harness it, in the service of greater humanity.”

    I am reminded of the Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within”, which makes that point rather sharply.

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    3. See also “Mirror, Mirror”, once they got back.

      Kirk: “How could you tell they weren’t us?” (remember, they swapped uniforms too.)
      Spock: “When a civilized man is thrown among barbarians, he can draw on his innate barbarian and — revert. A barbarian thrown among civilized men cannot revert to civilization. The difference is rather striking.”

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    4. See also the episode “A Taste of Armageddon”, particularly Kirk’s speech at the end.

      It’s time to teach Hamas why war is a thing to be avoided.

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  6. I disagree. Those Ham-Ass-holes are not civilized enough to be called barbarians. No self-respecting barbarian would do most of the shit they’ve done. They are savages. They never reach any point of deciding “This is wrong, and should not be done.” They deliberately seek to commit the most extreme atrocities they can.

    And their fellow savages within our own civilizations cheer them on. As I said yesterday, it’s like cheering for the Nazis, only worse. Because there were a few things even the Nazis would not do. Ham-Ass would horrify Eichmann.
    ———————————
    If you use violence and brutality to bring about social change, your cause will be taken over by violent brutes.

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      1. Savages ain’t noble. They’re feral. They have no boundaries, no limitations other than fear of something bigger and meaner than themselves. They are one short step above vicious animals.

        Children have to be carefully taught and socialized just to achieve the conversion from savagery to barbarism.
        ———————————
        You can have a civilized society, or you can have mob rule. You can’t have both.

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        2. Anyone that believes the “noble savage” tripe needs to read some of the biographies of the Plains Indians that detailed their treatment of enemies and captives.

          But even they didn’t do as much damage as the Mongolian hordes, the 20th century regimes nor what the current TPTB elite and their brainwashed minions are planning.

          What happens when your “rulers” are barbarians? Or encourage barbarians to invade?

          At some point in time you may have to become as ruthless as Israel needs to be just to survive.

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          1. What happens when your “rulers” are barbarians? Or encourage barbarians to invade?

            –
            [Captain Otto Harkaman of the Corisande II] “Our grandchildren, if any, will probably be raiding Marduk.”

            [Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith] “You think it’ll be like that?”

            [Harkaman] “Don’t you? You were there; you saw what’s happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting.”

            “Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think that civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it — luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?”

            “And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.”

            Harkaman poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handcraft-industry level.

            [Trask] “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler, on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler came to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”

            [Harkaman] “It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter behind democratic safeguards.”

            [Trask] “We don’t have any of this democracy in the Sword-Worlds, if that’s the word for it. And our ruling class aren’t ashamed of their power, and our people aren’t hitchhikers, and as long as they get decent treatment they don’t try to run things. And we’re not doing so well.”

            [Harkaman] “You know why? Our rulers are the barbarians among us. There isn’t a one of them — Napolyon of Flamberge, Rodolf of Excalibur, or Angus of about half of Gram — who is devoted to civilization or anything else outside himself, and that’s the mark of the barbarian.”

            [Trask] “What are you devoted to, Otto?”

            [Harkaman] “You. You are my chieftain. That’s another mark of the barbarian.”

            — from Space Viking, by H. Beam Piper

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    2. The Nazis had nerve agent… but, because Hitler had experienced gas warfare directly, they never used it. Which seems odd as they gassed so many, but not in places where anyone could reply in kind.

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      1. That also had something to do with the fact that the Allies were putting hundreds of B-17s over Berlin on a regular basis and had massive stockpiles of mustard gas in theater.

        AFAIK, there’s still a WWII shipwreck somewhere near Italy that was chock full of mustard agent when it was sunk. One of those “we really don’t want to disturb it, but we also really don’t want to just let it rust away” situations.

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    3. Consider them to be a deliberate product of their education system. They are indoctrinated from an early age that Jews aren’t human, and that since Mohammed (insert appropriate comment) called for all of them to be brutalized or killed, they can do what they want. Actually teaching them to think is completely off the table. You know, a lot like our current American public education system.

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  7. Those are some pretty barbarians in that pic… ahem

    Barbarism, yes! It’s a bad thing.

    I think my “favorite” part of watching barbarism in real time (from very far away) is the immediate confused and lost reaction when the people they’ve committed atrocity against kill them in return.

    Like infants who haven’t yet grasped cause and effect, only without the infant’s excuse of being newly born.

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      1. Any world that can generate such beautiful barbarians gets an up-vote from me.

        Although I suppose their beauty is only skin deep.

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    2. “You cheated!”
      “You cheated first!”
      “Cheating is wrong! Cheater! Cheater!”
      “You…”
      “How could you! You’re horrible! Cheater!”
      “But you…”
      “Liar! No one would ever believe you! You cheat all the time! Mooooooommm!!!”

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      1. Given that international politics for the last few decades has generally agreed with the bully when the bully in question is an Arab group trying to pick on the Israelis…

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      2. Or as Voltaire says,

        Cet animal est très méchant.
        Quand on l’attaque, il se défend!

        [That animal is vicious: When you attack it, it defends itself!]

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    4. Aha! A Lunarian who watches barbarism from afar. All you must contend with is mere lunacy.

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  8. If there is any hope to be had, it is that most of this madness is confined to the “urban cores” of most nations.

    Europe is mostly “urban cores” and methodically disarmed. Pretty much assume unless the army decides to intervene hard, it’s going to be messy.
    American…the “urban cores” are the exception and there are probably a lot of guns “under the bed” in even the worse “blue” states. It’s going to be a mess, a terrible mess.

    And I think the Israelis are going to have to decide exactly what they want their ending to be. We also know that if they Israelis do decide to just…”deal with” the Palestinians…it’ll be anger and chaos and sanctions and the Middle East will be “angry” for six months to a year…

    …and then nobody will care, not really, outside of the fundraising class.

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  9. That’s not how I interpret calls for “proportionate” response. The Lefties seem to cry for that whenever Israel defends itself. But they don’t want Israel to behead Gazan babies, they want Israel to make a token response. Some sort of “tit-for-tat” that will drag on forever. That is what they mean by proportionate.

    It is the way of suicide. Israel should wage total war.

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    2. “Proportional” in their case means equal or less than one to one ratio of casualties.

      Since moslems outnumber Israelis something like 100 to 1, that “proportion” eventually leads to national extinction.

      Just the local case still is more than an order of magnitude.

      And one side targets women while the other does not.

      Yes, extinction is the intent. “From the river to the sea.”

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Because a forever war means forever profits for those supplying the fighters. Welcome to the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, and feared.

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  10. As for ‘proportionate response’ — the only response that makes any sense at all is to remove every single Palestinian from Gaza. Permanently. Never let any of them back in. They have spent the last 50 years proving that they can’t live in a civilized country, so kick ’em out.

    “But the Palestinians are Pooor! and Staaarving!”

    That’s what happens when they spend all their money on RPGs instead of food. When they dig up the water mains to make half-assed rockets out of them. Rockets so shoddy that one out of four crashes and blows up their own people. Rockets they launch from schools, hospitals, orphanages and refugee centers, where some of them blow up on the ground and kill everybody.

    What to do with them? Ship them to Iran. True, Iran is not solely to blame for Ham-Ass, but they have made the problem 100 times worse than it would have been without their ‘help’. They are enough at fault to be saddled with the savages they cultivated. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the ‘best’ solution, but everything else is even worse.
    ———————————
    The government can mandate stupidity, but they can’t make it not be stupid.

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    2. Maybe we can hire some diplomats from Venezuela to work out the logistics of transferring them across hostile states (Jordan doesn’t want them, and if we’re lucky, Iraq won’t, either).

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      1. Happily, technology in the form of airplanes has made it possible to move people from country to non-adjoining country without touching the countries in between.

        Though, yes, I realize the difficulty of getting them o the planes and to their destination without a crash and/or hijack.

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    3. Iran won’t take them because Iran wants them where they are as a weapon against the Israelis.

      The rest of the Middle East won’t take them partly for the same reason and mostly because the Palestinians have historically started or worsened civil wars and committed terrorism in other Arab countries. (Lebanon used to be the Paris of the Middle East. Jordan had them try to take over. Egypt had them helping the Muslim Brotherhood try to take over. And so on.)

      WAY back in the day I used to think the Palestinians coming here was a solution, but then they danced in the streets after 9/11 and I don’t want one more Palestinian in this country and I think it’s a disgrace we didn’t send everyone who wasn’t already a citizen back.

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      2. Asking nicely wasn’t part of the plan. Haul them to Iran and drop them off. If the Iranians get froggy about it, blast ’em.
        ———————————
        Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

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        2. Haul them to Iran and drop them off.

          Final outcome depends greatly upon the speed and height from which they are dropped off.

          As G-d is my witness, I thought Palestinians could fly!

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    4. Remember when the arabs cry about “their land”, that they were forced out in 1948, that an equal number of Jews were forced out of their ancient homes in various muslim nations like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc. Did those Jews languish for years in “refugee camps” (AKA towns)? No, they were absorbed by their brethren in Israel, and also here in the US. So anytime I hear about arabs wanting their land back, I ask about compensating the same # of Jews.

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    5. Or you could just exterminate them, and then allow a new batch of diasphorized Palestinians to return to repopulate the Gaza rubble. Rinse and repeat as necessary until you get a bunch who are civilized, or they all go extinct.

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      1. Or put them on a reservation, undermine their culture, and subsidize a lifestyle of indolence and substance abuse. Like what we did to the Indian tribes; not nice, not humane, but horribly effective.

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          1. Also very interesting that other than one or two protests that went violent, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of indigenous American tribal terrorism in the past 100 years.

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            1. My beloved has a theory: every tribe that honors some form of individual incentives (private or leased property, individual goals over Tribal, etc) is more successful than those who stick to completely tribal/collective culture. Cherokee over Crow, and so on.
              His favorite example was our guide at Acoma Pueblo, a U of New Mexico graduate, who proudly showed off his Adobe oven (appropriated from the Spanish) while stating it made great pizza.

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              1. Private property means that you own what you buy with the money you earn from your labor. ‘Collective culture’ means you don’t. The products of your labor are taken from you without compensation ‘For The Greater Good’ and you have no say in how they are used.

                Once upon a time, we called that slavery. Now they call it socialism.
                ———————————
                Only idiots believe they know how other people should live their lives. The stupider they are, the more blindly they believe it.

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  12. (insert sound effect of a derisive snort) Barbarians are often depicted as cold…history shows them to be the opposite. Primitive cultures tend to be hot-tempered. Easily offended, with recourse to the sword seen as the first option. It’s the civilized man who has been taught, from early childhood, to master his impulses…and to serve his enemies a cold, cold revenge at a time and place of his own choosing.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It depends on the ideals of the particular culture. A lot of cultures are stoic, while others are big on emoting. Or you are supposed to emote around your friends and family, but not around outsiders.

      The utility of the poker face is definitely an area where cultures differ.

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  14. Oh, sorry I misread: I thought it was you were “reading” a book, not writing. Please delete earlier comment, thanks.

    Also this one I guess.

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  15. What’s especially galling is that the modern barbarians choose to be barbaric. They have options, they can see other things, but have decided that barbarism is to be preferred. The children of civilization who leap into barbarism because it is “more honest” or “more genuine” are truly fools (or crazy, or evil, or “yes”). At least the kooky Brits who went Arab came from the Romantic Era ideas about noble horsemen and all that. They might have been pre-loaded to see Arabs (and some Indians) as knights from a different culture.

    Now? Nope.

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    1. They are also fired by religious fervor, which is not unlike being hopped up on meth. (Hitler’s armies ran on meth, BTW. =D-Day Through German Eyes=, two short volumes by Holger Eckhertz.)

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    2. “They might have been pre-loaded to see Arabs (and some Indians) as knights from a different culture.”

      Did I miss the memo banning teaching Rosseau? They’re STILL being pre-loaded.

      Rosseau and several other writers of yore should have their works treated like “The Protocols of Zion”.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. KNOWING what goes on in my head, and where some of it came from (I stood SAC Alerts in the late ’70s), and knowing my poor impulse control, I choose to not own firearms. Not to mention no “advanced infantry training”, poor physical conditioning, effects of age and multiple surgeries, and plenty of the Brothers and Sisters of Perpetual Outrage living in my “quiet suburban neighborhood”. I’ll not be a weapons depot for anyone.

    And I thank the LORD that I’ll never be in charge of our military.

    Because those… people… “need killing” as much as anyone I ever even read about. Or “gangrene of the tender vittles”, like Herod the Great is said to have contracted.

    But I don’t feel qualified to get the job done right.

    There is a Bible verse that states “Vengeance is mine, says the LORD.” I don’t want to be stealing what’s His.

    Like

    1. Since the American military is designed by the Constitution to be controlled at the top by civilians, and in our current times, too many civilians in our government have zero military experience (and pure civil service working for the military doesn’t count), most of those in charge of our military are complete blithering idiots. Worse, they control the ones who become officers and have been deliberately selecting for political rather than war-fighting purposes. Doesn’t bode well for our next major armed conflict. And frankly, no matter how good our SEAL teams and other special forces are, the bureaucrats and politicians would screw up any operation like an embassy hostage rescue, or even a bin Laden assassination, if done today.

      My impulse control is probably average. If I’m home, and a bunch of cars come down the drive and a pile of uniforms spill out to break my door down, if one of them isn’t a Barrington cruiser with one of the dozen cops I recognize, they’ll all be classed as armed criminal home invaders and my phone will be 911-ing while I’m firing from concealment. (Why do I have so many books in my house? Heh. Because they more than double the small arms stopping capability of plywood and sheetrock walls.)

      Yep, the Bible does state, “Vengeance is mine, says the LORD.” So I’m not avenging anything. I’m merely doing pest control for health and welfare purposes. And I’ll pray the He gives them additional learning opportunities somewhere they won’t cause more trouble.

      Like

    2. God works through flawed human instruments.

      If He wants to show up and handle the job Himself, I’ll happily let Him do so.

      For whatever reason, He refrains from visible intervention. So I do the best I can.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. I’ve repeated that verse to myself many times to calm myself down, and talk myself out of thinking up ways to punish those who richly deserve it.

      However, note that it’s vengeance that God reserves for Himself. Not protection of the innocent. So if you were in a better situation, there would be nothing wrong with arming yourself and practicing regularly at the range, in order to be ready to stop a violent criminal if/when you should encounter one attacking other people. (The odds of that are low, but sadly, not low enough to ignore). Given your situation, your choice makes sense, but I wanted to clarify that vengeance is not the principal reason to arm oneself in the current day and age.

      Liked by 1 person

  17. Once again, dear friends, Rudyard Kipling:

    “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.”

    Like

  18. You can not avoid your come to Jesus moment. You will have to decide do I stand for civilization, or do I stand for chaos.
    The choice is always yours, choose well.

    Like

    2. It’s far, far worse than foolishness.

      If you find yourself saying, as if it ameliorates anything, “They only cut off some of the heads of all the babies they murdered” you are worse than a fool, you are evil.

      Liked by 1 person

  20. Israel’s answer to those who support Hamas and refuse to believe the terrorists committed atrocities during their barbarian attack. (Massacre-deniers, as it were.)
    https://redstate.com/joesquire/2023/10/23/indescribable-footage-journalists-react-to-raw-video-of-hamas-attack-in-israel-n2165442

    @njc – we seem to be living in a Universe that took Kipling’s oeuvre as an instruction manual.
    When the English Began to Hate (actual 1917 title The Beginnings)
    Gods of the Copy-book Headings

    One I just discovered, but perhaps apropos to today’s post.

    A Legend of Truth

    Once on a time, the ancient legends tell,
    Truth, rising from the bottom of her well,
    Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied,
    Returned to her seclusion horrified.
    There she abode, so conscious of her worth,
    Not even Pilate’s Question called her forth,
    Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny
    The Laws that hold our Planet ‘neath the sky.
    Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call
    Fiction, did all her work and more than all,
    With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care,
    That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.

    Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined,
    Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,
    And through the dust and glare and wreck of things,
    Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings,
    Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb,
    But semaphoring direr deeds to come.

    Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade
    Clung to her knees and babbled, “Sister, aid!
    I am–I was–thy Deputy, and men
    Besought me for my useful tongue or pen
    To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied,
    And they, and thy demands, were satisfied.
    But this–” she pointed o’er the blistered plain,
    Where men as Gods and devils wrought amain–
    “This is beyond me! Take thy work again.”

    Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar,
    And Truth assumed the record of the War…
    She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell
    Facts beyond precedent and parallel–
    Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write,
    But happening every minute, day and night.
    She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew.
    She marked them, first, “Return. This can’t be true.”
    Then, underneath the cold official word:
    “This is not really half of what occurred.”

    She faced herself at last, the story runs,
    And telegraphed her sister: “Come at once.
    Facts out of hand. Unable overtake
    Without your aid. Come back for Truth’s own sake!
    Co-equal rank and powers if you agree.
    They need us both, but you far more than me!”

    Like

    1. Yup. The ‘Progressives’ Believe, with all zealous fervor, that if they simply destroy Eeevul Civilization their Perfect Utopia will magically arise from the ruins with no effort on their part.

      So, everything they do is directed at destroying our mostly functional civilization because it’s not Perfect. And then they point to the destruction they caused, and the problems stemming from it, as Proof! that Our Civilization Iz Eeevul!!

      Just like they point to the hopeless mess the government has made of our health care system as Proof! that the whole shebang should be turned over to the same folks that mismanage schools, prisons and the DMV. Despite all the dismal examples of National Health Care around the world. Canadian Nationalized Health Care only sucks because it’s corrupted by proximity to our incompletely-nationalized American health care!
      ———————————
      How can imperfect people create a Perfect World? How could imperfect people live in a Perfect World?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Rebuilding a destroyed civilization/infrastructure is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle after you pureed half of the pieces in a blender. You don’t know what’s missing until you find the hole, you’re not sure what it looks like, and you have to build that piece from scratch all over again.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I saw an interesting piece somewhere that referenced Thomas Sowell’s “A conflict of Visions” (Note: I REALLY need to get off my lazy posterior and read or listen to some of his stuff). In that he divides political views into two subsets, those that believe Mans nature is malleable and perfectible and essentially good (called unconstrained) and those that believe Man is more static and flawed (called constrained). The Constrained view to a large degree matches with that of orthodox christian thought that acknowledges a innate failing in Man (aka Original Sin). Our Brahmandarins are of the Unconstrained view but on top of that their own prejudice and ignorance leads to them to dismiss these horrific acts as unsurprising behavior from uncultured ill trained (perhaps less evolved to their ideas?) people. And they don’t treat Israelis/Jews as humans at all, some of their statements SHOW that. Like many others here it is good I am not in charge of things, I too often swing to a statement attributed to Arnaud Almaric head of the Cistercian order in dealing with the Albigensian’s in a siege “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” That is usually translated “Kill Them, The Lord will know his own.” My own view is that the Unconstrained view is at best excessively optimistic, and in all likelihood it’s being rooted in something that is a direct opposite of something that is fundamentally part of my belief system (and I believe to be an absolute truth) suggests to me that it is doomed to failure.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Also called Pelagianism, after an Irish monk named Pelagius. He taught that Christ was sent to be a Good Example of how men should behave, rather than as a Savior, as men were inherently good and merely needed good examples. He was passionately opposed by Augustine, who basically said, “I know I’m not basically good, and I’m a man, so you’re wrong.”

          Liked by 2 people

          2. I am familiar with the Pelagian Heresy. Indeed as you noted Augustine of Hippo (AKA St Augustine) was his main opponent. That heresy is a large part of modern liberal Christianity’s issues and the Marxist/Socialist cultic variant system takes it as a given.

            Liked by 1 person

      3. Human perfectibility again rears its blood soaked head.

        The ones who think humans are flawed and society should be set up to deal with said flaws, vs the ones who think humans are perfectible if the right pressures and training and punishments are applied. The latter, when faced with inevitable imperfection in spite of their oh so doctrinally correct efforts, inevitable race down the cheap margarine-lubricated slope directly towards mass graves.

        Preaching to the choir here, I know, but I just read something in the mainstream recapping this as if it were not common knowledge ( https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-delusions-died-konstantin-kisin ), so it bears repeating. There’s a reason the same readings keep coming up in services on your sabbath of choice, after all.

        Like

        1. Wait until they finish nationalizing our health care — then you too can have equal access to medical ‘suicide’.

          Funny how in Canuckistan you have to wait 6 months for an MRI, but you can get ‘assisted suicide’ tomorrow.
          ———————————
          Would you mail $1,000 in cash? With ‘THIS ENVELOPE CONTAINS $1,000 CASH’ printed on the outside? That’s how secure mail-in ballots are.

          Liked by 1 person

  22. a civilizations “better nature” is not bottomless … its like a bag of coins … each time the barbarians make us use one of them (the Palis with their human shields or the cashless bail for criminals or “peaceful” protestors burning down buildings) one more coin is taken from the bag … at some point the bag is empty … I used to be too passive to aggression in the workplace … each time someone would push, instead of resetting back to the middle I would back up … eventually my back would be against a wall and when I pushed back ALL THE WAY to the middle people would say I was “overreacting” … to the last slight, yes I was but not to the accumulated slights …
    There is a thought exercise about Hitler that people use, “What if you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a child ? Would you do it … Alot of people say Yes …
    Well, today EVERY Pali male child is being raised to be a Hitler if he has the ability i.e. kill all the Jews … and every male Pali who has access to weapons AND Jews kills as many as he can …
    Why should we wait for some Pali boy to come of age and fulfill the teachings he has been infused with ?

    Liked by 1 person

      1. If you can’t change history then you can’t kill baby Hitler. If you can change history, then you don’t need to kill baby Hitler. You can divert him into other directions, maybe work with him so he succeeds in getting into art school.

        People put it always in binary either-or ignoring all other options.

        Like

        2. There was a story in Analog many years ago in which a time traveler just couldn’t bring himself kill the kid and devastate Mrs. Hitler, so he paid little Adolph’s tuition to art school. The story ended there.

          Like

  23. Interesting discussion in comments.

    Fact One: “Arabs” – in whatever form – hate Israel, because…..well, Israel “isn’t them.” What constitutes the “them” is never specified in indentifiable metrics. The braying about “stolen territory” is handy bovine excremental smokescreen, something one would expect from Karine Jean-Pierre types.

    Fact Two: Israel is successful. Primarily because of the social, economic and political organizational structures it has adopted and maintained. There is no patent or copyright on those, anyone can have as much as they like without any obligation of royalties. But the adoption, exercise and maintenance of those options is a conscious choice and requires not just desire but a long term committment to the very hard work of making, and keeping, it fully functional. Limited vision, short attention spans and addiction to instant gratification – in whatever form – are not conducive to success.

    Gaza, or Beruit, or Detroit, could, if it so wished, adopt, and implement, the very same organizational principles and practices that have made Israel, and 19th to mid-20th century America, so successful. That they do not is, first and foremost, a deliberate choice, and potentially indicative that no one in those societies is capable of the vision, attention span and resistance to instant gratification necessary to do so.

    In the area of “deliberate choice” is the possibility – pehaps evern the probability – that despite being capable of the factors necessary for success, their mental structure and state precludes any consideration of adopting what their enemies have employed so successfully; seen as emulation of those they have condemned for so long, it is impossible.

    Gaza, in the forseeable future, will cease to exist; it may still appear as a map label, but as a community it will be thoroughly and completely transformed; Israel’s survival depends on it.

    “Arabs” and “Gaza-ians” missed, and will continue to miss, the secret: were they to “out Israel” Israel, become a better economic, social and political community, work at it hard enough to put Israel in second place regionally, their dreams of domination would be realized. That they did not, can not, and will not, is because if who, and what, they are. Israel is at what historians wll call “a defining moment,” the very point at, and from, which Israel’s future will be decided. So will that of much of the Middle East.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. But Arabs hate Persians. A lot. And directing Arabs attention to which wants to kill them and which wants to be left alone was the underlayment that led to The Abraham Accords, which were set to expand until the third Sotoero term commenced thanks to that pesky virus of unmentionable origin.

      The younger House of Saud rulers might still make it happen without the U.S. just to lock in a non-enemy at their back when facing those Persians.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. For twenty-two years and six weeks I’ve been hearing that “someday they’ll go too far and then they’ll see!” I used to believe it, but no longer. What atrocity is worse than murdering babies? What atrocity is worse than crashing airplanes full of passengers into skyscrapers? They strain their imaginations to come up with ever more horrible deeds, and we just shrug and post Tweets.

    How many dead will be enough for us to react? Three thousand weren’t enough twenty-two years ago. How about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? The entire population of Israel? The entire population of New York City? The entire population of Spain? I fear that each time the response will be a flurry of Tweets.

    Maybe India can save us. We certainly don’t seem capable of saving ourselves.

    Like

    2. Don’t forget for a long, long time, we didn’t get accurate, or much reporting. it was all what the mainstream narrative dictated.
      Why do you think theyre so desperate to stop free talk?

      Like

    4. How many dead will be enough for us to react?

      First of all, it depends on who’s, or whose, dead. Call me tribalistic, but even with graphic pictures and television, the dead Israelis and dead Gazans are not my immediate family; and even the Americans tortured, butchered, or kidnapped by Hamas are total strangers to me. Harm my family, ah, now that equation changes.

      Second, it did not occur on American soil. It’s not within my reach to do anything about it. I can’t just load up a packing case with my ammo and AR and fly over there. Worse, I barely can read the Arabic alphabet, don’t speak or read the language. I certainly don’t understand Hebrew, so I’m not going to be able to ask questions, much less interrogate anyone. As such, I’d be as great a danger to our Israeli allies as I would to the Hamassassins.

      Third, I’m almost 65 and no longer in great shape. I can’t run them down, I’m not jumping from roof top to roof top, I’m not crawling through tunnels. And I’m not hauling heavy loads in a single trip. (Hell, I go get my tractor when I need to bring a deer out of the woods.)

      Fourth, I’m unlikely to be contributing financial or material support to get these aforementioned Hamassassins. My current employment and financial situation prohibits it.

      I can write, I can complain, and I can vote, however much good any of those can do. I can do something if they foolishly come within my reach, but my reach is limited, say a 500-mile radius if you need to put a physical number on it.

      Like

      1. Ditto. 60 years ago when I enlisted, or even 40 years ago, it would have been different; I could do damn near anything I needed to. Now, not so much. :-(

        Like

    5. How many dead will be enough for us to react? Three thousand weren’t enough twenty-two years ago.

      :blinks:

      Er… how on earth do you miss the reactions on that one?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I did see the reaction: we sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq with suicidally restrictive rules of engagement, treated the local gangsters with kid gloves, and our attempts to change the culture consisted of celebrating Pride Week until we left. Within weeks everything was just as it had been, and you see the result this month.

        Like

        1. Well, if you’d just said that by “a reaction” you meant “absolutely only including those where I agree with every single detail, after the fact,” this would’ve been a much shorter discussion.,

          You don’t get to control everybody else.

          You can’t even reality check to the point of going “Wow, even with what I characterize as suicidality restrictive rules of engagement, US troops rolled into Iraq on March 20th, and the country fell on April 9th. Of the same year.”

          You are, quite obviously, not engaging with this in a rational intellectual manner.

          Like

  25. One bit of pedantry that I think matters:

    Whatever the provenance of the term or the validity of the grouping, “Palestinians” as a group didn’t do this. Gazans did this – people from Gaza who are in charge there and determine Gazan policy and actions, at the behest of the majority of Gazans as of the last election and every poll since, did this. Other people over in the West Bank or elsewhere may agree and applaud, but the ones who did this are Gazans.

    The third Sotoero administration’s proclamations that “Hamas does not represent all Palestinians” is correct, as there are plenty of other Paly groups that want to kill all the Jews, yet which hate Hamas, but the Gazans, yeah, Hamas pretty much does represent them, by definition, at least if you have to Believe All Elections.

    If you play “follow the money” they are the ones who get all the money sent to Gaza. This includes civilian aid as well as all the money passed through by Iran from American pallets of cash.

    And there’s not really any other power structure allowed in Gaza to point to as an alternative.

    So either unconditional surrender a la 1945 or “Gaza Delenda Est” would be completely valid state responses to all the cumulative cross border attacks by Gaza on Israel.

    I am just not sure they are going to be able to get past all the strong messages urging restraint coming from DC.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Yeah, let the Foggy Bottom Boys leave a message, then return their call when it’s done.
        “I’m sorry, the State of Israel is away from the office right now taking care of some business in the neighborhood. If you leave a message after the tone we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re done. Shalom!”

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I think DC should be told to take a long hike off a short pier.
        …………..

        Over the Grand Canyon edge; parachutes, etc., not allowed divers. *And into the Pacific Mariana Trench; no life jackets or submersibles allowed.

        ((*)) There are a lot of people in DC that need to be told this and need to comply, so one option is not enough. Probably need more locations. My only problems with either location is first the environmental hazard it would leave in the Grand Canyon and any other non-oceanic local. And second do not want sharks or other big oceanic predators to learn “Oh. Look the bipedal from the dry place are tasty.”

        Like

  27. @ dorsai123 > “eventually my back would be against a wall and when I pushed back ALL THE WAY to the middle people would say I was “overreacting” … to the last slight, yes I was but not to the accumulated slights …”

    Some years ago, Lawdog wrote a post about the history of gun control legislation which strongly resembles your experience writ large. It was called “The Cake Analogy,” and is illustrated here.
    https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-compromise-illustrated-guide-to-gun-control/

    The Analogy works with every facet of the creeping-ratchet of Leftist ideology and power usurpations (even if nominally voted for — because they lie, all the time, about everything; that’s the only way they can win an “election”).

    PS Click the link in the post to get an update on books being published by Lawdog and friends.

    Like

  28. Sarah, about your work-in-progress, you wrote: “To put it it bluntly, more or your children is fewer resources for mine.”

    Please be careful with this. Very, very careful. I don’t know how well you know the theory of evolution, but your description of your hypothetical culture reminds me strongly of the foul misunderstanding of Darwin known as “social darwinism,” under which the strong live and the weak don’t. “Survival of the fittest” taken to a degenerate extreme. But Darwin himself understood evolution and selection better than that. He knew that our sociability and ability to cooperate is an essential aspect of what makes Man so successful. (So far, at least.) The genetic basis for cooperation and forming social groups is so strong in humankind, and so powerfully selective, that it will quickly outcompete the “every man for himself” strain. Even in such a harsh world as you describe, I doubt the “every man for himself” strain would last more than a couple of generations.

    Like

    1. That is where Social Darwinism came from, basically; folks with the mindset similar to that of sister-wives fighting over fixed resources.

      Like

    2. You’re talking about trust-based societies, like ours used to be. Where everybody is more secure, and more productive, than in societies in which everybody is out to screw over everybody else and you have to waste most of your time and effort trying to avoid getting ripped off.

      Trust-based societies are always stronger than dog-eat-dog societies.

      But that trust has to be earned, by consistent, fair and equal application of the law. By exposing and punishing lies and corruption. Fail at that, the trust is broken and it’s everybody against everybody else.
      ———————————
      Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

      Minutes later: “What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

      Liked by 1 person

    3. sure. I mean this with a culture that is PROFOUNDLY broken. By reason of colonizing but also other incidents. Though people are people and trying to rebuild.
      HOWEVER for us this was true tribally, hence inter-tribe cannibalism. (Or Chimps eating other chimps’ babies.)
      HOWEVER they’re not even tribal, except with an effort. well, they’re making the effort.
      I didn’t say the red in tooth and claw worked. In fact,t hey were about to go extinct, following it.

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  29. The history of barbarism – at least in Europe – is a history of destruction. The barbarian destroys; they can work and perhaps make repurpose parts of the civilization for themselves, but it often turns out to be less than what was before them. The Goths and Visigoths and Vandals and Franks conquered much of Western Europe, but they never built structures or created a corpus of literature like those of the Romans that they overcame (good heavens, even we cannot replicate some of the miracles of concrete the Romans achieved).

    Like

      3. Interesting. We go to great lengths to keep modern concrete cool while it cures. There is still a huge network of pipes embedded in Hoover Dam, that they pumped ice water through to keep the concrete from overheating and crumbling while it cured.

        Now they’ve rediscovered a different, hot-cure concrete chemistry that appears to have a number of advantages. Great!

        Liked by 1 person

  30. }}} And “save it” only in a very general sense, that their genetics have a shot at the future: Take every child under three away and raise them in civilization, with a different language, different parents, and never tell them they were adopted.

    I don’t think you need to go that far.

    By the 1950s, Islam was on the way towards civilization. Yes, it was mainly the urban groups who were socializing well, but that was true a long time ago in the USA — the cities tend to be were certain aspects of socializing spread from.

    A casual review of the pictures you can find by searching
    “Afghanistan in the 50s and 60s”
    is pretty revealing. It was mainly Kabul — I’m sure the rural bunch were still pretty rough and ready, but it had promise. And I have little doubt that other Islamic groups were at least somewhat in the same shape.

    What happened?
    Multiculti. We stopped telling them that their culture was fucking barbaric and telling them that they were just as good as we were. We stopped civilizing and started enabling.

    We need to stop enabling. As a subtext of what you say, not all cultures are as good as other cultures. Mine certainly may not be the best, but it’s a damned sight better than that of Hamas, at its worst.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Obama once again trying to f))K Israel over because he hates Jews so much. Harden the Palestinian’s attitudes. WTF? They are already calling for Israel’s annihilation and genocide of Jews. How much more f’n hard-line can these Jihadist mofo’s get.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/10/24/obama-warns-israeli-actions-may-harden-palestinian-attitudes-for-generations-n1737530

    Meanwhile the White House is having therapy sessions for Muslims and Arabs.

    That loud screeching sound is the sound of Team ObamaBiden throwing Israel under the bus.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Well yes, that was the point. The left screams loudly that anyone who is to the right of Marx and Lenin is a Nazi, yet the people who actually hate Jews and seek genocide of Jews, are leftists, both the original Nazis and the modern day ones.

          Liked by 1 person

  33. More than one pundit is making the connection between Hamas (and sometimes Islam) and Barbarism.
    https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-delusions-died
    A mass emergence from the woke slumber. By Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman
    (after quoting from Kisin’s post, the title in the URL)
    “The other aspect of it, we think, is the sense of how thin the line is between civilization and barbarism. And how the West, which so many take for granted, is more vulnerable than we ever imagined.”

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1716792833795899668.html
    John Hayward @Doc_0
    “Leftism paints a veneer of intellectual sophistication and morality over the most brutish human impulses: the urges to coerce and destroy.”

    https://www.jns.org/ceasefire-advocates-are-hamass-useful-idiots/
    Jonathan S. Tobin
    “It’s been more than two weeks since the atrocities of Oct. 7 shocked the world with the deliberate cruelty and barbarism exhibited by Hamas terrorists as they conducted what has been aptly described as pogroms inside Israel.”

    Liked by 2 people

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