Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday, I linked one of Sargent Mom’s posts at Chicago Boyz (I still find it funny that my friend who is neither a boy nor from Chicago posts there) and on my reading it, and the comments before linking, I found that the very first comment was tediously familiar.

Note I’m not saying the commenter if a troll or ill intentioned. I’ve known him “from the blogs” for long before I started using my own name, and/or came out politically. I just think he’s not thinking things through. As aren’t all the people who make that same comment.

They are also hopelessly provincial, historically blinkered or, yes, both. It pains me to say so, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how people convince themselves of this nonsense otherwise. Though I will admit there might be a strong contention of “kids these days” and “get off my lawn” in there. In which case — at sixty — I’d like to point out that getting old is no reason to convince yourself of a bunch of nonsense. There’s much you can shake your fist at the younger generations for without swallowing old Soviet propaganda (spit it out. It’s been up Stanlin’s dead ass) or spreading pernicious lies that blackpill or worse the rest of the people still fighting.

The comment goes like this in its most commonly found form “The Republic is gone. Within its earstwhile boundaries, there are just a bunch of disparate people, who have nothing in common. It’s time to break it all apart and go our separate ways.”

My normal response to that would be “Poppycock on stilts” and throwing the nearest dictionary in the general direction of your head.

But because it keeps surfacing, it is obvious most people have swallowed this nonsense without having any clue where it came from, how it contradicts history or how utterly stupid it is. So I’ll unpack.

First, its origins: Perhaps it is unfair to call it Soviet Propaganda. I suspect it is, because of how deeply laid-in it is with a certain generation, but I know for a fact it started being widely circulated in the mid nineties, when the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Though it was mostly spread by old Soviets indulging revenge-fantasies, and by their friendly useful idiots in the US singing along with their old mentors.

All of a sudden, when my kids were little, the idea was everywhere, served up by every single leftist “The US will now fall apart like the Soviet Union fell apart. The only thing that held each together was the need to fight the other.”

It persisted till the mid two thousands, everywhere. I even remember a giggle-worthy pseudo-scholarly paper by some Russian about how the US would fall apart and in what lines, which made it blindly clear the poor dear only knew the US from Hollywood movies.

Do I need to unpack why it is utterly insane?

Yes. The Soviet Empire was mostly held together by the cold war. Let’s put it more bluntly: by the US helping them maintain it locked tight, because due to the cold war and Soviet propaganda, we were terrified Russia might get mad and bomb us all with its superior (largely imaginary) weapons.

(And Russia finally had a beginning on the empire of their dreams, which ideally for them would compass the entire Earth. Paranoiacs are like that.)

However Russia, with its very old culture, its crazy new Communist cult, and its even older tendency to want to invade and subdue everyone else so they don’t attack her is not the US, and never was. Because the Soviet Union fell apart, it didn’t nor does it follow that the Us should also. This is sort of like saying “Because you can beat egg whites into a firm froth, you should also be able to beat egg yolks into a firm froth.” Er…. what?

Neither of these things is like the other, and because the Soviets resented losing their empire and wanted the US to fall apart, it doesn’t oblige us to do so to make them happy in their revenge fantasies, okay.

Alright, Sarah, you’ll say, but just because the USSR’s bitter remnants believed it, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Do you see all our divisions and all our blah blah blah?

Yeah I see them. I also — as an outsider who became an insider — am here to tell you that all of those, save the divisions between Americans and those new imports brought over the border these last few years or those imports who are consciously staying foreign, are very small.

No, seriously.

Look: I’ve lived all over this great land. Even during my 30 years in Colorado, we made extensive trips elsewhere to visit and because we have friends/colleagues everywhere. This not counting the fact both our boys dated girls from all over. (Odds, you know?)

There are differences. Sometimes deep differences, in how you interact, where you shop, how you shop, and such. However, if you dropped me blindfolded into various cities in succession, I’d be able to tell you which ones were in America from the way we …. move, the way we look, and the way we hold ourselves.

I’ll never forget when, ten years after moving here, I visited Portugal and my mom had a melt down because having passed me on the street, she didn’t recognize me, just thought I was “some tourist.” This was capped by “You have become American.” (I’m not older son. I didn’t rub it in and say “Why, thank you, ma’am.” BUT I thought it.)

Go to the area where most of your local recent arriveds are and look at them. You’ll see the difference without much effort. I can’t fully explain it, but to me the rest of the world holds itself like a dog expecting the foot to come out and kick them at any minute. We don’t. In fact, that look in an American is a sign of profound trauma.

More importantly, when we had to suddenly function for a month in another state without help, while the national brands and chains helped, mostly we’d have found our way easily enough, just because it’s America. There are commonalities.

Having real-estate shopped across states just recently, you can suss out a neighborhood, evaluate your neighbors, and choose an area which you might or might not love, but you can live in easily enough in a week or so.

What I’m trying to say is despite all the regional differences, there is an overculture which is “American” and one that makes it easier for an American to fit in another area of America. Now, part of that overculture is of course believing them guys ain’t like us y’all. But that’s something completely different.

The only places with truly different and often hostile cultures are fractured, purposely held apart places, including ghettos/inner cities and college campuses.

Which brings us to the whole “We just found out there are enemies in our midst!’ Did you? Really? JUST found out? Well, you must have been covering your ears and shutting your eyes pretty tight.

Colleges have been embeds of anti-Americanism since I’ve come here. The joke about the student who comes home and lectures the parents on not celebrating thanksgiving has been a joke forever. (And not funny, because true.) The other innovations? One day in 2000 I was working in my yard and by a trick of acoustics heard my neighbor across the street discuss his son, who had brought a boy as his SO to Thanksgiving last year, and this year was bringing a girl, and they didn’t even care what the girl was, wasn’t it great? The vice-versa is not that rare, either. Any direction. Now of course, it would be his son thinks he’s a girl.

In fact, the only thing that has happened since I have been here is that the anti-Americanism has moved explicitly down to Kindergarten and up. (Implicitly it was already in my 12th grade history book in 1981 when I was an exchange student. It already was clear enough to make me fume.) It has done so because they are “educated” and think everyone MUST agree with them. But in doing so, it has become visible for everyone, and the counter-attack is everywhere and truly ferocious, because people might tolerate their young adult children becoming idiots, but you don’t mess with their babies.

On that, btw, note that my generation already was heavily indoctrinated anti-American. I remember that none of my classmates would admit to America’s good qualities. It was so…. gauche. And yet, unless I mistake it, my generation formed the core of the Tea Parties. And we’re still here. Because those of us — even those of us with graduate degrees. Even those of us with graduate degrees from Europe! — who grew up, married and have kids know what reality is. Those with experience abroad, know how rare it is what we have here. And we want to keep it.

One additional point, here: the culture used to be WAY more diverse. WAY more. Pre-expressways and TV, them guys over there not only talked funny, but they had other strange habits. I know because I met with remnants of that in my inlaws’ generation. (In fact, I loved my FIL’s Connecticut accent (I’m an accent-loving person, except for my own) and was shocked and startled to hear it come out of my husband’s mouth when awakened in the middle of the night by a would-be-intruder this summer. Suddenly my relatively accentless husband was gone, and a Connecticut patrician was there. And he wasn’t amused.)

In fact, it might have been impossible for a continent-sized nation to have a common culture and way of being in the world absent fast-travel and fast means of communication. And it might be impossible for us not to with that.

Going further back in history, and when the fe(de)ral government was a less powerful polity and states could get their freak on with nobody bothering them, I remember reading a biography of someone shortly after the revolution (Well, you see, there’s this mystery series with a ghost that I want to write. Might involve going to Connecticut for a six month stay, heaven help me. We’ll see if the story shuts up) where this person was in Maryland, escaping the crazy puritans of New England, and then had to get away from there, because Maryland was full of crazy Catholic laws, etc.

We were more desunited in the past. In culture. And it was by region. We were still the United States, where it counted.

“But Sarah, it’s all gone. It’s all vanished. We’re not respecting the laws of the Republic, or the Constitution!”

Ah yup. And I’d agree with you there. However, just because we’re behaving very badly it doesn’t mean the laws are gone. Just that we’re ignoring them. And you know, to an extent we’ve been violating the Constitution, more or less, since we adopted it. Like our flag, it is still there. And we often come back to it. Sideways. Upside down. Kicking and screaming, but we do.

Look, there were worse — far — violations under Woodrow Wilson, FDR and frankly a lot of others in the 20th century. It’s just you didn’t hear about them, because the press didn’t tell you. So you had this idea that everything was hunky dory.

Part of the impression that everything is falling apart and the center cannot hold is that Mass Media can no longer hold the uber-narrative, and those of us who see cracks in it and would rather believe our lying eyes can find each other and create our own spaces. That doesn’t mean things on the ground are worse. Only that it looks that way, because you hear more voices, not one over-arching, all-singing-together-narrative.

Now, are there many among us who are frankly repulsive in their disdain for the land and the law that gave them everything? A-yup. And the pro-Hamas demonstrations are only a small show of that.

But here’s the thing, there always were. And if you say that it’s particularly bad now, I’m going to laugh in “I remember the seventies.”

And if you are going to scream in unassimilated immigrants, I’m going to say “Drives me bonkers too, and I think we need closed borders and a decade or so of mass deportations and of very limited legal immigration while we sort ourselves out.” And? Every period of mass migration did this. Mass migrations are a very bad thing. Combined with a welfare state and a victimhood ethos, they’re horrendous.

Doesn’t mean they’re lethal. Though remedy best come fast-ish within the next decade. As frankly, I suspect it will.

But you have to remember that’s not “Americans.” Americans are those who were born and raised here, or those who bothered to do the work to be more American than not. Those who haven’t are “people living here.” Not “Americans.”

And btw, my kids had a lot of friends who had one foreign-born parent. The kids were Americans. Often annoyingly so. (Note one foreign parent, not both, and none of them lived in an embedded foreign enclave.) In fact, those with one-foreign-born parent were more likely to believe in America as a credal nation.

Speaking of: America is a credal nation. Yes, it’s a land mass (and no, we’re not giving an inch of it to the idiot commies. For one, it would be like what Israel did when it pulled out of Gaza. We don’t need an enemy that close) and yes, it’s an history, a culture, and a way of living. Also a certain genetic heritage, and trust me, it’s still present in America. My kids might be second generation Americans (first born) on my side, but on the other side they’ve been here since before America was independent (and ancestors fought in the revolutionary side), are related to several presidents, and have a considerable contingent that greeted the pilgrims from the shore, okay? My ah…. new and impure blood (snort giggle. I’m just a mutt, y’all) didn’t erase that history. And both of my boys are very proud of it. It’s just good every once in a while to import a bit of DNA, less everyone have twenty toes and play banjo really well.

BUT those saying The Republic is Dead are mostly referring to it in the credal sense.

Nations don’t die because they go through a period of lawlessness. Almost every older (almost all of them) nation has gone through this. They go through periods of lawlessness, or even being outright occupied, and then come back.

But for a credal nation held together by “this we hold to be true” it can feel like it’s all gone.

Go read your Bible, kindly. No, I mean it, even if you are not a believer. Find an old testament. Steal it from a hotel room, if you must, and read the story of Israel.

Credal nations don’t go away. They just don’t. Look at all the foes of the Israelites. The Persian empire is gone, whatever the Iranians think. So are the others, including the mighty Romans. That little credal nation of Israel, though? Well, it went a long time without land, but it is still a people and a creed. And it will be.

I suspect should we be so unfortunate as to lose our land and our common links to each other, and our living together, Americans will yet persist. We might become even more genetically dilute (for us it will take effort) but 100 yeas from now or 500 there will be people claiming to be Americans (Or as some very strange sf writer made it, turning an insult on the boards into a point of pride, as we do, Usaians) even if they really can’t prove an ancestor ever set foot on the continent. And even if some of them are blue skinned and have tentacles.

And as long as the creed is there, we will come back, as an idea at some point.

Not that our falling apart is anywhere near. No, stop that. We are not Rome. The idea that we were is another Soviet idiocy. We used some of the forms, but dear Lord, not the …. history, the feel, the genetics. And if we were, that horrible Rome of the decadence continued for a thousand years or so.

If I had to guess we probably have that long. Maybe more.

Oh, granted, we’ll go through periods much, much worse than this. And periods much better. Nations are things of humans, and that means they’re not…. pure ideas, that live in the purity of being themselves. Every nation goes through very bad times. And comes back. Often seeming decadence, or occupation, or attack, teaches the nation what it SHOULD be.

This doesn’t excuse you from fighting for America to be what it should be.

“But Sarah, wouldn’t it be better to divide?”

HOW? Do you see any “cut on the dotted line” lines on the map? Because I don’t.

And the American feeling and beliefs aren’t quietly divided into states or even regions. The first civil war happened the way it did because the South had common economic and cultural interests the North was unwilling to tolerate. (I’m not going to dip my toe anymore into that. And remember, it’s a forbidden topic for good and sufficient reason. BUT:) There was a clear geographic demarcation, even if the borders were fuzzy.

Now? Oh, for the love of Bob. Yes, there are baked in blue states. But if you think they’re that way because it’s what the population wants, let’s talk. I saw my state flipped from under me by massive fraud securing a tiny margin then going vote-by-mail.

Almost every state that’s baked in blue has some procedural trick (CA) or vote-by-mail holding it that way. What is the will of the people? What do the people believe? I don’t know. And neither do you. If you’re trusting the press, you need help of the mental kind.

I have had three very different people, in/from very different circles tell me they think NYC went Trump in 2020 and that’s why the occupiers are determined to destroy and punish it. Is it true? I don’t know. I found their reasons compelling. So. Why are all big cities hard left? Well, darlings, because vote fraud is hellofeasy in a big city. All you need is well organized vote fraud groups that control the polls. And one side that refuses to fight it. (Trust me. 2012 drove me nuts. And Colorado Springs was not that large.)

Now there is another thing, which is that in the big cities a lot of people work for colleges and big corporations. Judging by the number of you flying under false names and telling me for the love of heaven not to out you, there is a substantial legion that confesses progressivism from the lips out, while hating it in their breast. And the more they’re forced to confess it the more they hate it. But they can speak progressivism very very well (I’ve seen some of you under your real names, yes) and pass. The problem being that in those areas people overestimate the number of the true lefty believers and anti-Americans around them, because they are not allowed to tell the truth or appear as they are in public. It’s poison.

I have a strong feeling I can’t substantiate but is based on the amount of fraud needed and obvious even in supposed bastions of the left, that this is not a 50/50 country. It is at the very worst a 75/25 country, with the 25 being the “progressives.” But even then, I expect about half of that are true believers, and the rest are sleep walkers, who are convinced of the media narrative and that they have to vote for the left because the right are “racissss sexisss homophobes, and WORSE uneducated hicks.”

A lot of that narrative broke badly with the events in Israel and the displays in this country. I’ve been more sleep walkers awake than at any time since 9/11.

And the rest of the left are either very young and indoctrinated, or well…. the same old Soviet-lovers who never woke up and never will. But by themselves they’re not a reason to break up this great country.

Even if we could break up. Even if there were clear regions, instead of each of us knowing friends or relatives who are enmeshed in the left’s narrative, and who live next door, it would be inadvisable. The left can’t build. Only envy. And that means if we separate, we will prosper and they will hate us.

I refer you to October 7 in Israel as what would happen with neighbors whose whole purpose is hating us and taking us down.

So let’s eschew and bury that foolishness once and for all. This is our land. The Republic isn’t dead or close to it, though it’s occupied by an implacable enemy. Which we should each fight, overtly and covertly in every inventive and relentless way possible.

Because after this, comes a revival. They can’t win. And in many ways we already have. But because the defeat took a hundred years, the revival will be slow.

I might not see it, but others will. (Yeah, probably not others of my blood. And? They will be Americans. Even if they’re polka dotted with tentacles.)

And it will be all worth it.

231 thoughts on “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

  1. Total agreement on “No Dividing Lines”.

    I’m living in Illinois which is counted as a Blue State but if you looked at a county-by-county map of Trump voters, you’d see that the vast majority of counties went for Trump.

    It was basically the Chicago area that voted for the Dimocrat and of course Chicago is where the Dead Vote Democratic.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Yes, Oregon’s the same way. The NW corner (Willamette Valley and Metro Portland) have enough votes (both real and imaginary–it’s complex) to dominate the state, but there’s a hell of a lot of the state that doesn’t want to have anything to do with them.

      I have relatives living in Metro Chicago, and noticed that one of the pro-terrorism marches was awfully close to some of them. Not a good situation, especially with the Soros-infested justice establishment there. (I prefer to remain ignorant of their politics. The very occasional family phone calls are already too interesting.)

      Liked by 1 person

    3. “It was basically the Chicago area that voted for the Dimocrat”

      There are some downstate spots that chronically vote Dim as well: the Quad Cities and Peoria (one time unionized industrial strongholds), the twin Twin Cities of Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana (university towns), Carbondale (also a university town) and the E. St Louis area. Outside of that, it’s pretty much all red or at least pink. Springfield, the state capital, tilts blue in the city but Sangamon County itself is still red/pink. Go just about 10 miles or more outside of Springfield and you would swear you were in a red state.

      Also contrary to conventional internets wisdom, not all state employees are loud and proud lefties. There are at least 2 hardcore conservatives in my 8-person office but you only discover that by listening carefully to what they say “off the record”. There is actually a long tradition of Illinois state employees keeping their political views VERY close to the vest, to the point of not voting in primaries (it creates a record of which party’s ballot you took), because up until about the early 90s (before the federal courts banned patronage hiring for most lower level positions, and before nearly every position went union, although mine isn’t) if the governor’s chair switched from Dim to GOP or vice versa, and you had a voting record of the “wrong” party, you pretty much had a target on your back for any future cutbacks or firings. State workers and retirees of my age or slightly younger remember that and still act accordingly.

      Like

      1. I sort of remember seeing those places on the map, but I was positive about the Chicago area.

        Like

      2. I’m somewhat familiar with the history of Champaign-Urbana. In the early 1970s, it was quite conservative, and held onto this because it was able to prevent students from voting locally*. (When the 21 year old voting age was in place, there would have been somewhat limited, anyway.)

        The 18 year old vote was enacted before the 1972 election, and it seems that the efforts to allow college students the ability to register and vote as residents (I don’t know details; I had heard that students living in dorms were trying to register) passed eventually.

        Take a big university (U of I now has 35K undergrads, 20K grads) in a metro area of (looks it up) 200K (in the county), and you now have a bolus of leftwing-indoctrinated voters. That’s going to overwhelm the influence of the townspeople and the rest of the county residents.

        Note: as memory serves, the theory was that students who were dependents should be treated as having a legal address of their parents. Thus, absentee ballots would have been the accepted means.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “students who were dependents should be treated as having a legal address of their parents”

          What percentage were out of state and theoretically ineligible to vote in state elections?

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I really don’t know. U of I had a good reputation for engineering and computers (note HAL 9000’s interview in 2001), but as a state school, it wouldn’t have quite the draw of Stanford/MIT. Rumor has it several of the big Midwest colleges had decent engineering programs. At least back then, if you were looking for political non-entities, you’d find any college’s engineering buildings…

            I don’t know timelines for the voting change; had left the Midwest for warmer winters, and the rumor/news mill regarding schools in Illinois/Indiana/Michigan had gone cold for me.

            Any details would be left as an exercise for the student. /snark

            Like

            1. Additional datapoint: early 2000’s, the College Democrats would set up on the Quad and do voter registration drives before the election.
              They would look up your address and direct you to either a local registration or an absentee ballot, depending on whether your home address was in a battleground state.

              Like

        2. I turned 18 in ’74, in time for state elections. That is what I did was vote absentee. Not that it would have made a difference for state whether voted from parents address or dorm address. Local issues definitely. But not state issues.

          Like

        3. “The 18 year old vote was enacted before the 1972 election, and it seems that the efforts to allow college students the ability to register and vote as residents”

          sneers Colleges fight tooth and nail to prevent out-of-state students from being eligible to pay in-state tuition, but they have not problem encouraging them to register as locals for purposes of swinging elections.

          In-state students from out of town are different problem.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. 50 years ago, it would have been rather different. In 1970 someone was killed by a terrorist explosion at U of Wisconsin, along with various riots in the spring of ’70. Rinse and repeat the riots in (IIRC 1972 when the harbors in N Vietnam were mined). I didn’t notice TPTB encouraging more power to students at that time.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. I think it was a matter of timing. The fuse was lit in the late ’60s, but “progress” towards a ruined college system didn’t really get going until a bit later. ’74, not noticible. Late 80s, evident, but not in all of $SMALL_COLLEGE. Now, fully involved (as in a burning building).

                I haven’t dealt with a college since 1991, but the trends were pretty strong. Thinking about it, ’74 was pretty much the end of the Weatherman faction trying to create communist takeover revolution by way of ‘splody things and the beginning of mucking with the education system for the same goals.

                Commies on campus were present in the early 70s, but they kept a fairly low public profile at U of Redacted. They weren’t taking credit/blame for the various student riots demonstrations, (though one suspects they were doing so) but they would have been active.

                Like

    4. Illinois is a conservative rural farming state with a cancerous boil growing on its neck with tendrils down into Springfield. If all of Cook County were to vanish the rest of the state would get along just fine, thank you very much. Were the greater Chicago area to find itself detached from the rest of the state it would experience a quick and painful death from lack of those resources it steals from the “downstaters.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The Reader thinks that would be more merciful than the slow, painful death Chicago is currently experiencing. The Reader keeps praying his nephew will find sense and move, but his wife’s family is pretty invested there.

        Like

      2. States used to have Senates with fix numbers per county. The SCUS found that violated the Constitution. This is the result.

        It will be the result nationwide if they do the same to the Presidency and/or Senate.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. ^ This.
          The greatest injury the Warren Court did to our republic.
          And they considered it their finest moment.

          Like

            1. Thanks. A travesty, IMHO, since the US Senate is apportioned in exactly that way – one state, two Senators, regardless of population, and it was designed that way for a reason. The Warren Court, with its emphasis on democracy, rather than the Republic designed by the founders, has a lot to answer for.

              Like

        3. The Constitution establishes, organizes and controls the feral federal government. The states are supposed to organize their own governments within the Constitution’s limits. That ruling smacks of the Feds meddling in decisions properly left to the states. Indeed, the states should have authority over how they select their Electoral College delegates.
          ———————————
          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

  3. Well, Sarah, there’s always the alternative favored by the Founders.

    They fought the Revolution, complete with lots of atrocities. At the end, they turned to the surviving Loyalists and gave them three choices:

    STFD and STFU.
    GTFO (this was much favored by those who could get to a ship, like Ben Franklin’s nephew).
    Die.

    Since you can be certain that option 3 is what the Left plans for us (with or without camps), it has the advantage of clarity.

    What we can’t do is live in the same country with the Left. Very much the same circumstances Israel finds itself in with Hamas.

    Like

    1. While I agree with you concerning many of the Left, IMO part of Sarah’s point is that the Left (especially the insane ones) are a small part of Americans.

      IE The lunatics don’t speak for as many Americans as they imagine.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Well, then they can take options one and two. With the clear understanding that options 2 and 3 are on the table should they fail at option 1.

        Sarah keeps telling us that there aren’t that many actual Leftists. If so, the solution is feasible.

        Like

        1. My gut says 8%, based on several studies (old twitter study where they tracked political tweets being one). Put em all together and 8% might just be the high side.

          I believe options 2 & 3 are quite feasible. The logistics of it wouldn’t even be all that complicated, either.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. It’s like the number of truly gay people to the number of perceived gay people (helped along by a media that wants you to think half your neighbors are gay).
            Even more for the number of transsexuals. Lots more people cosplaying, I suspect, than actually afflicted.

            Liked by 2 people

      2. “The lunatics don’t speak for as many Americans as they imagine.”

        This.

        All the NPR nattering about “conservative echo chamber” is projection – everyone they know at the UCBerkeley faculty association thinks just like they do, so those they read about in The Atlantic or the Washington Post who oppose The Arrow of History must just be outlier loons.

        They can’t possibly be a majority, the deplorables, the bitter clingers. They just can’t.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. The conservative faction is more akin to a large family reunion or convention. We take all types. All you gotta be is American and proud of it, follow the Constitution, and work hard to be the kind of American you ought to be.

          Nothing in there says you have to be a certain sex, age, skin color, how wealthy you are, how smart you are, and so on. We don’t care. Just follow the creed and don’t be an undue burden*.

          *:Undue burden means more or less welfare queen. If you’re a retiree, veteran, or the like that’s not a burden. If you’re a quadriplegic, unless you did it to yourself deliberately, same.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. In Dick Armey’s book of axioms, he says that getting the conservatives (R) to do anything together was worse than herding cats. The (D)s all had a shared philosophy. The (R)s were more a collection of “not D,” each with a different take on things and approach to issues.

            Liked by 3 people

    2. ^ This.

      Strategically, we can’t project force into the blue bastions. The best we can do is besiege then. Drawing a formal line of demarcation around the city-states has advantages as a prelude to this, and could force them into a Fort Sumpter incident easily enough.

      That said, we don’t have the command and control, or the unity of message to pull it off in any sort of useful way.
      It’s likely things may reach this impasse.
      But they’re much more likely to get there without our trying to force it. This is really much more of a “something must be done” kneejerk emotional response than thought through. Especially by people who really don’t want to think about the problem.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Quite so. We can’t unify sufficiently to besiege them, and our soldiers won’t go along with it even if we tried.

        But… I don’t think we need to make the effort. They are busy destroying their supply lines without any assistance – the Blues depend on the massive surplus produced by the Reds and the ability to transport that surplus into their regions. The current Watermelons are working hard at destroying that surplus (fertilizer and pesticide bans) AND at making it impossible to transport it in the quantities required (electric everything).

        It won’t take actual famine to create a tipping point, either. But which way it does tip – that is the scary part.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. City of Montreal has announced they want to ban gas barbecues. Not the propane ones fed from a bottle, mind you. The natural gas ones. To reduce CO2 emissions, y’know. Also gas stoves, gas fireplaces, gas furnaces. Oh, and burning wood too. They’re going to ban that.

            So then you pay the electric company or you freeze. Or, if there’s another major ice storm as there was a few years ago, you just f-ing freeze, paid or not.

            That’s the plan. Normies are going for it so far. Kind of like Normies in Acapulco have been going along to get along for so many freaking years that one storm took out their whole freaking city infrastructure. Broke it. And now they’re screwed.

            Liked by 2 people

              2. Bottle gas is what I have. And a wood burning stove too, better believe it. And a cistern.

                Because what is the very first thing to go in an emergency? Centralized systems. You got a little set aside, you can go a few weeks until they get their act together again.

                The Liberals are all-in on climate change as their hill to die on. They will keep squeezing until they’re either put out of power, or they realize that climate change is a looser for getting votes.

                From current signs, they -might- decide to cut ties with Israel and sign up with Hamas. Cops have been told not to arrest people at Hamas rallies, which I should point out are -illegal- in Canada. They should be arresting every demon who shows up flying the Hamas flag, and they’re NOT. So it isn’t impossible that they’ll just wink at anti-Semitism outrages to keep getting votes in Brampton.

                No word on their plan for keeping the Sikh vote in Rexdale if they go all-in with Palestine. That could get “entertaining” as they say, with fireworks every evening.

                And that’s why I have a woodstove. And why I live three day’s walk from Brampton. I’d sooner it was four days, but we do what we can.

                Like

                  2. We laugh, but the empty-headed Torontonians who keep voting for this really do think that way.

                    They don’t understand, despite being told over and over and OVER again, that the Sikh religion only exists because of Muslims killing Hindus in the Punjab region of India.

                    And while there are -still- Muslims killing Hindus in the Punjab, they’re not really messing much with the Sikhs, over-all.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    3. And let’s not forget the Apache, which IIRC is Navajo for “enemy”. And there are so many other “us vs. them”, with us and them frequently indistinguishable by sight.

                      Liked by 1 person

        3. Some in Portland and Seattle seem to be catching onto various clues. If they can get enough of their fellow travelers to wise up, the cities might be saved. If not, then the salvage operations can start after their downfall.

          Liked by 2 people

  5. Because after this, comes a revival

    Yes, but these post-crisis revivals have historically featured stronger central government.
    Post-Revolution: Articles of Confederation to the Constitution
    Post-Civil War: “these” United States to “the” United States
    Post-WWII: whatever-it-was to Technocratic Bureaucracy

    We need to be thinking how to avoid that outcome this time around.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. The classical way to state the post-Civil War change is to say that we went from saying “The United States are” to saying “The United States is”.

      Liked by 2 people

    3. When I saw that, I just had to put on Al Stewart’s ‘Post World War Two Blues’.

      Of course, he wrote that in 1973, long before we knew the Soviet ‘Union’ was a soap bubble ready to pop.
      ———————————
      Governments can only print money; they can’t make it worth anything. They can make it worth nothing.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. The overall trend has been pointing the other way for decades at this point. These days the schemes of the centralizers can’t make it 50 feet before crashing and burning, and that is when they are luck enough to make it off the runway at all.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. All we can do is hope that continues, and help it along when possible.

        BTW, I just actually looked at your profile symbol. As a retired engineer, I can only note that it might be a bit too optimistic. :-)

        Like

  6. Agree. No dividing lines. Oregon is a good example. Greater Idaho/Jefferson-State movements put a lie to easily dividable. Over 50% of the Oregon Counties want to separate from the Portland/Salem/Eugene Metro. And there are pockets inside there that want out too. Oregon went Biden in 2020. Majority of the Oregon counties did not. What I want to see is forcing States to be republics not pure democracies. The State house and senate, already is. The 2020 election *could have been very different if electoral votes had been determined by how the counties voted instead of pure democracies.

    ((*)) Without running the actual numbers I don’t know for sure if the Portland metro counties (plus Dechutes, Lane, Benton, Marion, Josephine(?), i.e. outside Portland metro liberal enclaves), congressional 2 senate + representative counts would have not overcome the 2 senators + 1 representative total count of all the majority of counties who voted Trump. One vote/county, definitely would have changed Oregon national electoral college votes. But that isn’t how republic electoral votes should work, not even at the state level. As it is, all the state level does (at least for Oregon) is show how repressive pure democracy is in practice.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “Oregon is a good example. Greater Idaho/Jefferson-State movements put a lie to easily dividable. ”

      And that would be one of the easy ones, since there’s a mountain range by which once can divide the dry side (mostly conservative) from the wet side (mostly moonbats).

      BTW, Idaho doesn’t want Dry-side Washington, because Dry-side Washington includes Spokane.

      Like

      1. I get Josephine and Jackson switched. Or rather lump Meford/Ashland in with Grants Pass.

        As far as dividing by Cascades. Coast might take exception to that. Douglas county will take exception to that. As in “don’t leave us behind!”. Even western/eastern Lane county (i.e. not Eugene) would feel left out if left behind. That isn’t counting the counties, sub areas in the Portland metro that voted for Trump in 2020.

        Like

      2. Ashland is Moonbat central, but my periodic visits to Medford tell me that Jackson County isn’t as blue as people might think. I think the fraud has been really bad there.

        SW Oregon seems to be somewhat interested in Greater Idaho, so perhaps the Umpqua Divide and south (we could wall off Ashland, and Bend) could be added to us Eastside deplorables. We’d welcome them.

        Like

    3. If all states followed the Maine and Nebraska way of allocating electoral votes, the Democrats would be locked out of the Presidency for a while.

      One other thing about that- the limit of 435 congresscritters is in itself unconstitutional, because with the population disparity between states, the states are no longer, and haven’t been for decades, proportionally represented in Congress.

      NY (20,201,249) / WY (576,851)=35. NY has 26 congresscritters. It needs 11 more to be as proportionally represented as WY.

      Increasing the number in NY to 35 would make it much harder to gerrymander.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I don’t know how electoral college are allocated. Every state (not sure about territories) starts with 3, which takes off 150 off the top leaving 285 to be allocated by population. Yes, gerrymandering is a huge problem, at the state level. Oregon has that problem. Why there are so few republicans in the state senate and house, when most counties, by shear population vote republican in presidential elections. We wouldn’t have a democrat governor if the process was electoral representative voting either. Good luck getting an electoral process through on an initiative: 1) by state constitution the house sets the rules, so this initiative wouldn’t be allowed, and 2) Portland metro, and the usual suspect areas, will shoot it down, no matter what it looks like. Look at OR 114 that passed despite all the talk against it coming out even in Portland metro, and how anti constitutional, both state and federal, it is (still in court system, it will go to SC, eventually). Of coarse that could be possibly filed under look who is counting mail fraud tally.

        Like

    4. “What I want to see is forcing States to be republics not pure democracies”

      The problem is that a couple of SCOTUS decisions back in the 60s (Baker vs. Carr and Reynolds vs. Sims) required all state legislative elections to be done on a “one man, one vote” basis so that urban areas weren’t “underrepresented”. Prior to that it was possible, for example, for a state to have one house/chamber with population based representation and a second/senate chamber of geographically based representation (e.g., one senator per county). It’s my understanding that’s no longer possible unless SCOTUS were to reverse those decisions.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I vaguely remember hearing about there being a SCOTUS decision. Thought it had to do with allocation of national state electoral votes. But if it only has to do with allocation of state house and senate seats. Hmmmm. Then possible to change to more republic VS pure democracy at that level (one per county works for me). Also explains why 2020 election (let alone 2016) shows so much red by county and yet so few republicans in the state senate and house. Gerrymandering indeed. Won’t happen. Ever.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Bit of a sideways diversion, but I’m one of those weirdos who thinks the Seventeenth Amendment wasn’t all that great an idea. We already had one house of Congress that was directly elected by the people, and thus represented all the people of the nation…the Senate was supposed to be the representative of the interest of the states. But now we have two houses elected pretty much the same way and the state governments have no direct representation in Washington. That’s not what the Founders intended. And it’s greatly contributed to the growing invisibility of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and the uncontrolled growth in power of the Federal government.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. When I was in high school I thought it was great that the people got to choose the senators as well. But that was because of how the school taught the subject. Now, definitely think the states should choose the senators.

            Like

            1. Neither of you is alone in this. In fact, you can add Amendment 16; that’s the one that enabled all the “goodness” we see today. Also 22. If term limits are fine for the president they should be fine for Congress; both houses, same 2-term limit for each. Or remove the limit for the presidency.

              Liked by 1 person

  7. A couple observations along the same lines:

    Over the past year I have had the undesirable opportunity to be exposed to both the US hospital system and the long term nursing care system. One of the observations I’ve made, is that even at the same level of education and with the same ancestry, for the young women nurses at least, I could determine whether they were raised in the PI or raised here just by the way they walk and stand. There’s an “American slouch” walk combined with a particular style of moving in a hurry that the raised-in-PI do not exhibit, but even the fully-Pinay-but-raised-here do.

    But none of them, no matter where they were raised, has ever indicated they want anything but to stay and raise their kids here.

    On the “old Soviets indulging revenge-fantasies” those old Soviets were here too – those who bought into the official containment strategy, albeit a “leaky containment” where the west never tried to win back anyplace that was lost and would lose gracefully when pressed, especially if doing otherwise would require supporting anyone in the opposing Communism side who was not angelically pure to fight the inevitable Commie takeover. They also spent a bit too long staring into Stalin’s abyss, so it stared back into them, and they internalized a lot of the Soviet themes.
    Those folks, mostly in the diplomatic corps and the “IC”, were stunned and shocked when the USSR fell apart. They never once saw it coming, and they scoffed if any such suggestion ever came up. They are the ones who strove mightily via backchannels to make sure the CCP didn’t meet the same fate when those kids were camped out in Tiananmen Square.
    In coming to grips with how they could possibly have been so wrong they basically concluded that imperial breakup must just be the inevitable fate of all powers, and those “IC” and diplomatic “experts” who never once wrote any appraisal indicating what actually happened, now were the ones writing the “So will we go as well” pieces with all their accumulated gravitas and influence, mostly to salve their wounded egos.

    But we’re not an empire, not even close. The most I would ever expect is a temporary split followed eventually by military reunification, see LCol Schlichter’s prophecies for an example.
    Because as Sarah notes, the idea driving the U.S. is not “random assembly of disparate places with nothing in common under central rule”, it’s “come here and be Americans”. Even the folks the rest of America despaired about doing that in the last massive wave of immigration were Americanized in a single generation.
    Yes, obstacles have been put in place, and the education system is working flat out to oppose assimilation, and there very well may be blood and fire, but I have come to think that in the end the kids are alright.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Not an empire? Seward disagreed with you and told the British Ambassador that the US was an empire. Seward was correct.

      Like

        1. Not my assertion. I was pointing to the fact that Seward disagreed with you. You don’t have to agree with Seward. He was not completely wrong, however. Far from it.

          Like

              1. That’s three times you’ve refused to even attempt to form a rational argument for the assertion that you put forward; since even you have no faith in your claims, I can see no reason to entertain it myself.

                Like

                1. Carry on, my young friend. I’m not making any pretense of making what you call a “rational argument.” I simply pointed out that Seward disagreed with you. If you want to read his argument that he gave the British Ambassador, that’s up to you. You know about his assertion, and what Lincoln’s goal was (see what Hamilton wanted), so you can satisfy yourself as to the truth or weakness of his argument. I won’t present it here.

                  Like

                  1. ALL nations became more centralized at one point. Some earlier, but all definitely by the mid 19th century. This didn’t make them “Empires.” Good Lord. It’s not just a word.

                    Like

                    2. If it’s not just a word, it has a meaning. An empire by definition takes sustenance from its colonies. It’s also a particular nation imposing on others. If someone called the US an Empire, whether it was Seward — and who is Seward I should bow to him? — or Herod, I would like it to respect what the word means.
                      What you’re saying is “He said the US after Lincoln is poopy face, and he’s not wrong.” Okay, great. Now, why is it poopy face? Because an empire it ain’t BY ANY DEFINITION. Just like the Roman Republic wasn’t an empire, even though it had consolidated most of Italy onto itself.
                      Damn it, I’m a linguist. Words have meanings, and the meanings aren’t “Stomp, stomp, stomp, because I said so.”
                      Calling the US an Empire is USSR bullshit. It’s “they’re Imperialists, and we’re not” Which is the ultimate projection since the USSR was what we called the Russian Empire.
                      BE CLEAR or buy into enemy propaganda. That’s it. I’m not indulging nonsense.

                      Like

                    3. The south had been a colony of the north for a long time prior to the war between the states. Seward knew this.

                      Like

                    6. I am sympathetic to arguments for federalism. I am much less sympathetic when those arguments are used to defend slavery, both for the moral wrong it protected in law, and for the spectacle of crying federalism after the Fugitive slave act and Dred Scott rulings.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    7. I do not defend slavery and hate seeing it anywhere in the world. Alas, it is still a reality in Africa and the Muslim world. Paul’s letter to Philemon is a good example of how a Christian should deal with slavery.

                      Many historians have stated that the south was an economic colony of the northeast. Beyond protection, forcing the south to buy overpriced goods made in the northeast was part of the picture of tariffs that the south found odious. Tariffs devalued the produce of the south and made life harder for them.

                      Sarah, I apologize for setting off a firestorm. I won’t come back.

                      Like

                    8. Note the ACW is a forbidden topic for a reason.
                      Flouncing on a disagreement is nonsense. Yes, many historians, I’m sure, stated that. Many historians also state socialism is perfect.
                      The grownup thing to do is to defend your position logically, not to throw around words and authority, then flounce when challenged.

                      Like

                    10. Repeating something stupid, and then trying to support it with more stupid, does not make any of it true. A ‘colony of the North’? By what possible definition could the Southern states be considered ‘colonies’ any more than the Northern states? Have you been smoking something you shouldn’t?
                      ———————————
                      I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

                      Liked by 1 person

                  2. Sigh. Hitchin’s Razor applies.

                    You claim that Seward was at least partially correct. You present no evidence for that correctness. You make no argument in its favor. Simple declare it.

                    A proposition presented with no evidence may be dismissed the same way.

                    You also don’t state which parts he supposedly got right, thus allowing for infinite weaseling. Anything anyone refutes, can simply be declared “not that part, some other part.” That leads to Brandolini’s principle, meaning that every single word has to be conclusively refuted (thus requiring several of orders of magnitude more effort than your assertion) to prevent you simply declaring victory.

                    So make your case…or not. And the onlookers can judge either way.

                    Like

                    1. There is no need for me to do so. If you want to argue, look up Seward and see what he had to say. I’m not going to muddy the carpets here.

                      Like

                    4. Pretty much every time I’ve seen that style of “argument” used, the person can’t actually make their case. If you bother to go look at what they’re aiming at and rebut their claim about it, they’ll simply say you’re reading it wrong or some other thing (which they’ll bring out of left field) shows that you’re still wrong and, of course, they won’t make that argument either, insisting on another round of “let’s you and him fight.” Repeat as needed until you get exhausted and stop at which point they declare victory without ever actually having supported their claim.

                      It’s the Brandolini Principle exponentiated.

                      Liked by 1 person

                  3. We are most assuredly not friends, and again the desire to make pronouncements and then promptly abandon beyond a very wordy “yeah-huh” has been noted.

                    Like

        1. Lincoln reduced the US to almost a unitary state. Seward was far more right than wrong. empires are more than just economics.

          Like

              1. No.

                You’re wrong, not ‘agree to disagree’.

                Agree to disagree is what happens when the arguments have been made and then mutually found to be irreconcilable, not “someone makes an assertion and then wants it treated as if they’d made an argument, so they get to declare the other person has to do so.”

                Like

                1. Agree to disagree is also usable when it comes to matters of taste. I think grilled ribeye is better than smoked brisket. Someone else prefers the brisket. We agree to disagree (and each gets to enjoy our own cut of steak.

                  Liked by 1 person

  8. “Do I need to unpack why it is utterly insane?”

    Unpack? As in remove, inspect and set aside from a container? [Red button pushed.]

    I just saw online that the Israeli authorities found a piece of Shani Louk, confirming that she died on October 7th at the now infamous music festival. We all know which one. We all know what she died of.

    So I’m really not in much of a mood for unpacking, if I’m honest.

    Eviscerating, perhaps?
    Shredding. There’s a good word.
    Casting into the pits of Tartarus, there to burn for all eternity as it deserves.

    “The Republic is gone. Within its earstwhile boundaries, there are just a bunch of disparate people, who have nothing in common. It’s time to break it all apart and go our separate ways.”

    No, it is time to stand the f- up. They have told us who they are and what they want. They have told us they are here, among us.

    Where we can get at them.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Not sure, but do know there were several career soldiers on both sides that were of an advanced age. Patrick K. O’Donnell mentioned a couple in one of his books, but just cursory age, rank, unit stuff.

        Like

  9. “Look, there were worse — far — violations under Woodrow Wilson, FDR”

    The book “The War Comes to Plum St.” is a memoir of a mid-size town in the heartland during WW2 — the author describes in some detail how the ration coupons worked. Yah know, my mother and aunt had many times shown me the leftover ration coupons they had from their childhoods during that time, but I never really thought it through until reading that book. The feds actually controlled how much food you were allowed to have. If you were a city person or unable to garden, they strictly controlled how much protein and sugar (and other things) you were allowed to buy. If you were fortunate enough to be able to garden or you were a farmer, you had to do the direct sweat work to get that “extra” food. They controlled how often you were allowed to buy a pair of shoes or a winter coat. And many many other necessities of life. My mind was blown by that book and I realized that we had never had actual liberty in our lifetimes. So long as it’s done in the name of national security or “the troops” or suchlike.

    My family members also described the overwhelming support for the government during that time — I suppose because the majority view on the war was righteous and necessary. Dissent was punished.

    I thought about this a lot during the recent insanity.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I have the WWII coupon books that grandma kept for her, grandpa, and their two girls. They were in Colorado (Denver, I think) while grandpa worked at the mines maintaining equipment.

      OTOH dad doesn’t remember rationing. But dad was in rural Oregon. Between the big gardens, turkeys which his mom raised, sheep which an uncle raised, fish and deer (regardless of hunting season or not), they were never without food. They even had flour (not much wheat, but some) and if not sugar, they had honey.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Similar story with my Dad. 6 kids at that time (Dad the youngest) with one arriving towards the end and Grandma had plenty to feed them and certain others who frequented the place. Grandma’s bread was famous. About the only thing was trips to Garden being For Pa to load 2 spare tires and patches, pump onto the 32 Ford 4dr Sedan. Drive until first flat, repair after swapping tire, drive and at next flat, swap good spare on, repair tube and/or tire, check previous repair to ensure it held air, then load up and go again, if luck was with them, no more flats until the return trip, but often enough the spares got flats as well and were likewise repaired. This is a 45 minute trip today of 44 or so miles. iirc the worst was 5 flats there and 6 coming back.

        Like

        1. While mom’s family felt the war via ration books, because they were in an apartment in Denver CO, they didn’t know about the depression. Why? Because grandpa was still working in the mines in Montana then. They were so poor they had no clue there was a depression. They moved to Colorado when grandpa was drafted for the war (I also have his service wallet with the picture of grandma, mom, and aunt). Then he got pulled because they needed mechanics at the mine for the war effort.

          Dad’s family were aware of the depression but didn’t feel it because grandpa (civil engineer) worked consistently. Plus grandma was raising Turkeys to sell. That was when Hwy 101 along the coast, and roads across the coast range, like Hwy 138, were being built. Grandma repeated the story how grandpa (he died when I was 2) was the first person to go through the new tunnel between Drain and Elton once it was broken through. Grandpa was never drafted because he was considered crippled (limped) because of childhood polio (not even late in the war when prior 4F’s were pulled into units to be shipped to the European theater).

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Grampa K was a tweener, born in 1904, and while too young for WW1 he did work driving a logging truck (started when he was 12), so a bit on the older end plus the passel of kids, for WW2, and having a railroad job that dealt with the iron mines and timber likely helped.

            Like

            1. Paternal grandfather, born 1890s, was old enough for WW1, but childhood polio kept him out of the war then too. His twin would have been old enough too, but I don’t know if he served or not (he died before grandpa and grandma married). Paternal uncles, grandma’s brothers, born 1902, and 1906, would have been too young. The oldest was in the European theater WW2. Youngest was in service WW2 but in the states, because of a childhood farming accident that took part of one heel, but was being mobilized to the European theater when the war ended. Maternal grandfather would have been 4. His older siblings, while quite a bit older, are all female.

              Like

    2. One of the differences between then and now is that while there has always been a lot of corruption, back then most of the corrupt politicians, such as New York’s Tammany Hall, understood that in exchange for the graft they were getting that they had a responsibility to provide basic services such as taking care of streets and street lamps, and keeping order, so that people could go about their lives and do their jobs. They also for the most part were patriotic.

      The current crop of politicians would gladly let the whole country burn down as long as they get theirs.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. This. Note the difference between Chicago as run under Richard J. Daley versus his successors. City hall was crooked as hell, and the infrastructure, et cetera projects always included X percent for grift, but things actually got done.

        Like

        3. IIRC, that was what ultimately did in the Chicago Machine. During the big ’67 Chicago Blizzard, Daley ordered utility workers to work round the clock to clear the streets and, recognizing that they would still be overwhelmed, asked the citizens for help by reminding them that they were all in this together.

          Then, in the big blizzard of ’79, Daley’s successor, Michael Bilandic, totally bungled the city’s response to the storm (and pissed off his voters in the process, like ordering the L and city busses to bypass stops in order to alleviate congestion but making all of the said bypassed stops were almost exclusively in low-income minority neighborhoods) to the point where the city was completely paralyzed for days, and the infrastructure didn’t operate normally for months afterwards. As a result, he lost the primary to Jane Byrne, who IIRC was the first candidate not backed by the Machine to win the Democratic primary and (pretty much by default) the election for Mayor in over 50 years.

          Like

          1. I had relatives from the Chicago suburbs visiting in California during that blizzard. One of my brothers had to deal with 4′ of snow in the driveway before the visit was over. Mercifully, it was a short driveway.

            Word from relatives indicated that after Richard J died, the city started a major downhill slide. Unfortunately, they managed to infect the rest of the county, then further out. Never heard how that was done–it was a moot point, since I already lived in a crooked blue area in California.

            Liked by 1 person

  10. It’s good to keep in mind right now that Americans are being subjected to an unprecedented deluge of propaganda from their government and their enemies (but I repeat myself). So many of the foolish political ideas right now are the result of this social engineering attack.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. I have a problem not with the pro-Hamas demonstrations, because the idiots will always be among us.

    I have a problem with the colleges not responding saying that threatening the Jewish students is not appropriate. I have a problem with them telling the Jewish students who were threatened that they can go hide in the attic. (Shades of Anne Frank! though I think it’s more akin to the apocryphal statement attributed to Marie Antoinette, not unsympathetic, but totally not understanding the problem.)

    I have an issue with my church praying for every other conflict, mass shooting, etc., that comes up, and not even mentioning the massacre in Israel. I have a problem with me bringing up the raid on Israel, and being told “Oh, you’ve got to understand how frustrated they are, so many of them trapped in such a small area.”

    No, I don’t have got to understand. And the full extent of the atrocities was not known at the time, or I would have objected louder. I pray I never know the full extent of the atrocities. But I expect that she would have been saying something different if the people murdered, the women raped, the babies beheaded, had been people she knew, or known to people she cared about.

    But no amount of frustration justifies it. In no other context would that even be considered as a defense.

    And I don’t think I can have communion with a congregation who can excuse rape and brutal murder. Which hurts me.

    And I also have an issue with Drak and my mutual friend, who comments on everything. She even in the past couple of weeks again urged everyone to get vaccinated, for Pete’s sake. But on the issue of Israel/Hamas, nothing. Radio silence.

    I mourn for my lost illusions.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. “so many of them trapped in such a small area.”
      All the “Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison” memes drives me nuts. Yes, it’s a prison, because violent dangerous people get put into prisons. You’re confusing cause and effect.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Ben Sasse at the University of Florida came out with a clear, strong statement of support of israel and UF’s Jewish community. Makes me feel a little better about my Alma mater.
      Understand about the churches. I realized one more way we’ve been manipulated is the idea that we must pray for peace, and for all sides, automatically, or we’re not giving a good witness. What happened to praying for the right to prevail?

      Liked by 3 people

    3. It is possible to understand fully, including the historical and cultural context, and still say Ceterum (autem) censeo Gaza esse delendam

      It is in fact more likely.

      Liked by 2 people

          1. I agree, and I’m sure that’s going to happen, sooner or later; feral societies don’t tend to last.

            BTW, have you tried Brave? I’ve been pleased with it since I dumped DDG.

            Like

                1. Will go back to Chrome or use Edge before I even install Firefox.

                  My daily driver is back to Vivaldi after Brave over-integrated their search. I may give the new Opera a shot. Vivaldi is an Opera fork that happened at a big change of direction for Opera that I took, having been using Opera on and off since before 2000.

                  Like

                  1. Just curious…What’s your issue with Firefox, other than the tendency (like every other piece of commercial software) to add unnecessary complexity (mostly “bells and whistles”) over time?

                    Like

                    1. The fact they knuckled under to a cancel mob and fired one of the original creators (who went on to found the group behind Brave).

                      Like

                    2. OK; I didn’t know that. There have been so many instances of that sort of crap I haven’t managed to keep up.

                      Like

                    3. I only know of it from Bork’s book written after he was rejected by the Senate. It was part of his defense of Originalism against the Warren Court worshippers.

                      Like

            2. I’ve been using Pale Moon since Mozilla went to the “improved” user interface. PM has had compatibility issues, but the last few updates have fixed most of them. I’m still running into permission issues; some things work fine if I run from root, but There Be Dragons. OTOH, seeing Johnny the troll flaunting his TDS on Insty comments is a disincentive to fixing it.

              Like

  12. ‘Do you see any “cut on the dotted line” lines on the map?’

    Reminiscent of all those ridiculous armchair discussions about Texas metastasizing into as many as five different states, all with their own legislatures and US senators. But “credal” Texans think more like the authors of the Texas Pledge of Allegiance, “Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.”

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Maybe the San Andreas Fault? Alas, it is the wrong type of fault to simply drop LA and SF onto the sea.

      Like

      1. I keep murmuring the SmallDeadAnimals “prayer:” “Sweet St. San Andreas save us!”

        Hey, just opening up a big enough rip for the Pacific to wash in would be a good starting place. “It’s an island! Bye-bye!”

        Liked by 1 person

        1. unfortunately, it’s a north/south slider fault. LA and/or SF would slide farther towards Sacramento, but it wouldn’t open up any new water-front property.

          Like

      2. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again until I’m blue in the face and the cows come home:

        Modern-day California is proof that Lex Luthor and Max Zorin were actually the good guys in their respective movies.

        Like

    2. Maybe the San Andreas Fault? Alas, it is the wrong type of fault to simply drop LA and SF onto the sea.

      Like

    3. Most of the issues in Texas stem from the corrupt large cities and the rest are the fault of the RINOs in the State House. Been tilting against those windmills most of my life.

      Like

  13. (Not only have never been a boy, and not from Chicago … but I’ve never even been to Chicago. When I pointed this out to Johnathon, he said never mind, just put up a picture of F. Heyak and call it good.)

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I’ve been to Chicago a few times. Saw the Museum Of Science And Industry, checked out their U-Boat.

      Of course that was back in the 70’s, when some of their Democrat voters were still alive. :-P
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

      Liked by 2 people

  14. “Do you see all our divisions and all our blah blah blah?

    Yeah I see them. I also — as an outsider who became an insider — am here to tell you that all of those, save the divisions between Americans and those new imports brought over the border these last few years or those imports who are consciously staying foreign, are very small.

    No, seriously.”

    Yep. The rest of the world is weird to Americans. We’re insane, in their view. Much prefer us (US) to anything I’ve seen from outside of here.

    And on accents. I can speak without one. Took years of training to be able to do so, but I can when necessary.

    Most times, it comes out thick as treacle though. Can’t be helped. Southern is not an accent to be rushed.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. Um. Your ‘no accent’ is an accent to a lot of other people. Everybody thinks they have no accent, but all ‘those others’ do. Even Texans and New Yawkers.
      ———————————
      “Ehh, on second thought let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

      Liked by 2 people

      1. When I was going to U of Redacted, it was amazing to note the myriad accents of fellow drunks students, all from the same state. Hell, people from different parts of the same large city had unique characteristic accents.

        Like

      2. It’s shorthand. Simpler to say than “generic Midwest plus proper enunciation spoken with swifter cadence and proper inflection.” I know accents differ. I know accents in different languages, too. The French spoken Colline d’ l’ane is very much not Parisan French, etc.

        Generally speaking, accents have moderated a great deal over the last fifty years. Or muddled, if you prefer. Strong accents are getting rarer, state-side. When I was growing up accents were quite a bit more distinct. Locally, I could tell you where so and so grew up just based on the way she said the word “children.”

        There are no agreed upon neutral “accents,” true. But proper enunciation and pronunciation was, once upon a time, a thing deemed Very Important to the teachers of Appalachia. Most of those teachers were not born in Appalachia. That led to a strange melange of things deemed “proper pronunciation.”

        It turned out okay for most kids. The drawl and the twang were reduced in intensity, and speech cadence picked up a smidge. Me, it didn’t take all the way. I can speak intelligible English to most Americans, so long as I’m not p*ssed off or tired. Then all bets are off.

        Like

        1. Many years ago, I read a SWAG that the “American Accent” was based on Walter Cronkite’s middle Missouri accent. Not sure how much Science was in that WAG, though.

          Like

  16. We have a lot of immigrants who come to the store, who either came from the waybacks of Mexico or the waybacks of Guatemala. I mean, we’re talking people who look like Mayan statues, or people who look more Asian than Native American but speak Indian languages.

    And most of our customers like that have kids that are dressed nicely for school, who work hard, and who seem to be trying to learn both English, and American ways (the good ones).

    I think they’re doing pretty good at assimilating.

    And frankly, the same is true of all the other people, from all the other places around the world, who end up here. I can count on less than one hand the people who didn’t seem to want to be American (other than international visitors/tourists, and even a lot of them).

    I think that if we were more unapologetically American, we’d have even more people wanting to assimilate. Because being American is fun and awesome, for most of us.

    Of course, there are other fun and awesome nationalities out there, and I hope everyone enjoys their own country. But if you want to come here to the US and live, you presumably want our brand of fun and awesome, to which your current brand can be added and mixed to taste.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. “…your current brand can be added and mixed to taste.”

      Well, that’s pretty much what’s been happening for the past couple of centuries, and it’s been working quite well. But, to paraphrase George Carlin, “they’ve gotta WANNA”. :-)

      Like

  17. There are actually more American local accents now, than there used to be. But people are also used to code-switching to something more universally understood, so you have to wait a bit to see their local accent show up.

    This happens a fair amount at work when people are tired, and it’s always instructive. :)

    It’s freaking hilarious to look at the dialect map of Cincinnati local accents, now, when there used to be about two or three.

    It’s also freaking hilarious to stalk Youtubers and Rumblers until their local words start to surface. Every so often, Az goes Serious Yorkshire, and starts using words I’ve only seen in linguistic textbooks. Super sweet.

    Anyway… I think the point is that most people do think other people’s accents are cool, and don’t think of them as “inferior” or something that socially penalizes someone. Except, of course, for the self-anointed elite, who want to point and laugh at everything.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I don’t know about internal migration, but in Baltimore there are two (possibly more) distinct regional accents/pronunciations/dialects. In one area Baltimore is pronounced “Ball-tee-more”, and in the other it’s “Balmer”.

        Like

  18. Data Points.
    Russia has always been an empire with peoples that did not consider themselves Russian. Fins, Poles, the Baltic states, the mess of the Caucasus peoples, all the central Asia peoples they had to conquer to keep them from taking Russian slaves. America not so much until now. People wanted to come to become American.

    Some of my varied mongrel ancestors were Germans invited to move to Russia, to defend against the Turks. They moved to Russia, and stayed German for generations. I know that because they thought themselves German when they came to America 150 years ago. They became American.

    My Grandmother, second generation, born in America, was American, no question. They had German books, some still unreadable in my collection of 12,000. Yet they, after just a few years, become American.

    In Russia, subject tribes do not become Russian. This very important in understanding the conflict. It is dangerous for an empire to allow its subjects to become independent.

    I am an American. I just have a bunch of ancestors from a whole lot of interesting places. One branch we can trace back to 1400 in England. Another to Spain. Another, just known by genetics, to folk who lived in the western hemisphere prior to Columbus. I am none of my ancestors, I am an American.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. There’s many immigrants from various cultures that moved nearly entire towns to America and all settled in the same place, carrying on most of the old cultural habits (language, reading material, music, cooking, clothing, etc.) but which added American habits as well and considered themselves American.

      Liked by 1 person

  19. But Sarah we have no border, we, realistically, have no representatives, we have no rule of law, we have little or no recourse from the slings and arrows of our elites…

    Divide aside, or eagle astride, frankly I find little comfort in we shall overcome.

    Someday. Later. Maybe much much later.

    Where I do find comfort; try to assure my word is always good and expect the same of those with whom I deal, expect, not just hope for, expect the best, and do everything possible to make such happen, but prepare for the worst.

    In other words I find much comfort in taking care of myself and mine, getting through another day and enjoying it, helping where I can, trying at least not to hurt, where I can’t.

    Hence having said that, if someday, later, works for you I’m not faulting, though I suspect it’d be better if we’d see some tea in the harbor today.

    Like

  20. L. Neil Smith and I once had a discussion about what is is to be an “American” and, while we disagreed on particulars, we did agree that American is not a race, a religion, or even a location but a way of thinking. Some Americans — like Smith and me — were lucky enough to have been born here but some were not. Sarah certainly seems to be an American who happened to be born in Portugal just as Michael Z. Williamson is an American who happened to be born in England.

    OTOH, I am not sure how to get from where we are now to where I want us to be. I am afraid that, at some point, it will get ugly. However, I still hope that ugliness will not go beyond deportations and helping those nominal citizens who don’t want to live in an American America to leave for some more hospitable country.

    OTGH, I accept that, historically, the Gulag and mass extermination are the endgame for the Left. Given that I doubt I will be too disturbed if the vermin have to be exterminated. I hope Sarah is right as to the real numbers so the stain of that sin will be small enough it can be borne by old farts like me who can die off leaving the survivors without any “original sin” to come back to haunt them.

    I guess that is why interesting times is a curse. In the meantime I will cling to my guns, my godlessness, and my classical sense of virtue.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I used to be a Canadian, but Canada got up and walked away from me.

      I and all my kind are vaguely anathema in this country now, according to the government. They’re importing replacements for us as fast as they can. Those are the people demonstrating for Hamas in Toronto by the way, just so we’re all clear what’s going on there.

      I did try being American for a while, but I’m too white and the US government wouldn’t let me stay. Some may think I’m kidding, but I am here to tell you that an illiterate Somali goat herder will get a Green Card faster than a white Canadian with a Masters degree and an immigration lawyer. For sure.

      Liked by 3 people

    2. I think quite a few on the left had their eyes opened the last couple of weeks with all the anti-Israel/Jew protests. How far they’ll move their political activities is still in question, but at least they’re aware now that there are a whole lot of people on “their side” who hate them with a passion that is hard to conceive.

      Liked by 1 person

  21. No, we’re not breaking up, because the boundaries are the cities. Look at NY: the left has Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, Albany, Westchester, the City, and about half of Long Island. Everywhere else in NY, people have guns and would vote for Trump. Numerically, a minority, but geographically, we have the entire landmass of the state.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. And we produce all the food. And wine…

      And all the city power lines and gas lines run through us.

      Something I mentioned once to someone who thought if there were a breakup and Texas seceded, that POTUS could simply order the divisions at Fort Hood to conquer Texas. What I mentioned was- after 30 days at Fort Hood, 99% of the soldiers are Texans.

      Liked by 4 people

          1. I’ve seen some quip about keeping Madison the mess it is. Of course the implication was it was not said mess. Forget the message wording but recall “Of course, it’s on a Prius.”

            Like

      2. I have one serious problem with the “red areas produce all the food so the blue cities can go to hell for all we care” argument. Not everyone who lives in a “red” or rural area is a farmer, or a rancher and we don’t all have victory gardens in the backyard. Cities are where the JOBS are — not to mention the medical care — and where our paychecks come from, and if that goes away, a lot of us are screwed. The dependency runs both ways to some extent.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. the 80’s I said that to a coworker who thought the USSR was better – “If it’s so great and we’re so bad, go. You are free to leave here, unlike people there.” they didn’t take me up on that. More recently in ’16 a coworker quipped about going to Canada. I pointed north and said “Just a few hours drive. Nothing stopping you.” He stopped mentioning anything political around me after that.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Know of at least 2 people, a neighbor and a friend of mom’s, who are dual citizens of the US and Canada (Canada does not require giving up Canadian passports apparently). They tend to stop people who declare “I’m moving to Canada!” with “I’m Canadian.” (Implying green card, but actually are full citizens. Married US citizens.) “Guess where I’m living. I visit home. I’m not moving back!”

        Liked by 1 person

        1. living near the Canadian border, and (used to) visit Canada quite a bit, all these people who talk about moving to Canada permanently have clearly never spoken much to Canadians about the living conditions. Most of the Canadians I know prefer coming to America for health care for anything beyond the common cold.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Had a college classmate go on a rant about how awful the United States was, how much she hated the US, how much she hated living here, and how she was going to move to the Dominican Republic after she graduated and stay there forever. I told her that I’d fund her move in its entirely on the condition she renounce her citizenship and surrender her passport. She refused to entertain my offer. Last I heard, she and her (equally crazy) husband are still living the States.

        Liked by 1 person

  23. Re: being able to tell an American by the way we move, I concur. I spent one year working (and living) in western Africa. During that time, one of my friends — I’ll call him Steve — was an American who was there for the summer, who shared a lot of the same tastes as me (we watched Babylon 5 together). He happened to be black, so he looked (superficially) just like all the locals I interacted with every day. A little taller than the average local, but not so much as to be noticeable.

    And yet, one day, I was driving and I saw a black-skinned guy walking along the side of the road, his back towards me. And something about his stance or the way he was walking made me say, “That guy’s an American”. I passed him and glanced in the rear-view mirror, and it was Steve. I didn’t recognize him from behind, but I did notice the way he carried himself. There was, if I remember correctly, a certain kind of confidence in the way he walked, that made him different from the locals that I saw all the time.

    So yes, I can easily believe that one could recognize Americans by our body language. Not 100% of the time, of course, but often enough to be pretty reliable.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Incidentally, the biggest driving challenge in that country was nighttime. There were some stretches of road near where I lived where there were no streetlights because it was just on the outskirts of town. Many of the locals rode bicycles, and many of those bicycles had no lights. Spotting a dark-skinned man wearing dark clothing, at night, riding a bike with no lights on a stretch of road with no streetlights, was challenging. I got good at spotting motion in the dark, and I also drove quite a bit slower at night than I would have felt safe driving in the daytime on that same stretch of road.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Even in the USA, with streetlights (and generally reliable electricity), I am surprised at the number of people who walk at night (and twilight) in dark clothing. And they all seem to presume that I WILL see them as they don’t seem to be watching out for themselves. One couple I only noticed as they at least had the sense to put a light on the dog they were walking with. But if someone merely avoided the dog…

        The times I walk at night (to or from work, from time to time) I am wearing a SEE-ME-YELLOW jacket, being a bit paranoid about vehicles, and sometimes also employing an LED blinker as well.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “I am surprised at the number of people who walk at night (and twilight) in dark clothing. ”

          Or drive in dark cars without at least parking lights at twilight or in bad weather.

          Liked by 2 people

  24. I suppose the difficulty of the ideal of ideologues cannabalizing themselves (metaphorically) is that even if that happens, they will simply do what they continue to do now: ensure that those who produce work harder and pay more. Currently the power lives in the Urban centers and not the hinterlands. The urban centers tend to be overwhelmingly of one particular political bent and they cannot support themselves as they are now. More pressure will simply mean more transfer of resources and wealth to where the center (the important people) live.

    Were borders to be redrawn and new states created based on smaller geographic units, their power would shrink accordingly (and likely the Congress would represent more accurately the actual population. And have a little more accountability). I would love to see an Upstate New York or State of Jefferson, or even a greater Idaho. But that is the political scientist in me wanting to see the art of politics practiced, not the crude bludgeon that we currently use.

    A breakup? Probably not. But large swaths of the population starting to “drop out” or putting in the minimum amount of labor, producing a minimum amount of goods, and spending a minimum amount of money in a consumer economy? Perhaps more possible.

    I will say that one of the strategies I am considering my declining years is what is the minimum amount income I need to live and is taxable.

    Like

  26. Thanks for the story of your mom failing to recognize you on the street. Makes me feel just a tad less embarrassed over my faux pas a year back at Libertycon.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I am apparently protean.
      On the serious side, uncle Lar, I gained 50 lbs during lockdowns and move (mostly move. restaurant food.) You’re not the only one. Dave Weber didn’t recognize me.

      Like

  27. Experience abroad usually does not mean touring countries on vacation. It means having lived or worked in another country for at least half a year, living on, and in, their economy (even if you’re receiving U.S. wages.)

    Of course, we’re not Rome. But we did appropriate those parts of Roman-ish culture we thought had value.
    We’re not Israel. But we did appropriate those parts of Jewish culture that we thought were good ideas.
    We’re not Africans. But while most of us probably don’t like chitlins, we’ve still appropriated a lot of “black” culture that we thought was cool and useful.
    We’re not Indigenous North American tribes, but we appropriated foods, language, and concepts that we thought were the best the native Americans could offer.
    We’re not the only people in the world who come up with new ideas; but we are one of the only nations in the world where people can take those ideas, and run with them, without being stomped back into the mud and stolen from by their elitist masters running their governments. (Although our own self-appointed elitist masters are trying their best to do so.)
    America was built on good ideas, and the freedom to try them.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. But a few small portions might need to be cleansed of socialist anti-Semites before liberty once again prevails.

      Like

  30. Sarah,
    Thank you for reminding me from time to time that we are a great country with a great tradition that will not be beaten down. I pray the serenity prayer daily and endeavor to identify the things I can change and not fall issues where I have no power. It is hard sometimes to maintain confidence and direction in making small and right decisions with a faith that somehow there enough others doing the same thing that it will come out all right.

    Like

  32. I think that it was Hollywood and TV that nearly leveled the American accents. When I was a kid in Traverse City, Michigan 60 years ago, one could hear a lot of accents. There was the basic Michigan midwestern accent. There were hillbillies and there were southerners – they aren’t at all the same accent. There were older folks from out in Leelanau County that sounded like Poles that learned English from Germans and French-Canadians, and probably were. There was my own Missouri-Iowa-Arizona accent, which tended to shift closer to whoever I was talking with.

    And there was just one remaining culturally French-Canadian family, living on land that presumably their family had settled before 1700, although now it was an auto junkyard rather than a farm. Louey the father became a local hero for how he handled county officials inquiring about a license for that junkyard. (He had perhaps 20 acres of junk well hidden behind high fences and was not making any sort of nuisance, so this was only an issue of paperwork.) He explained that he couldn’t fill out the forms because he couldn’t read or write. When they offered to help, his accent became undecipherable and his comprehension of English disappeared. Voters would have considered arresting or heavily fining Louey to be unreasonable, so eventually they just gave up and waited for Louey or his children to realize that this property was in a prime location and they could sell it to a developer and become moderately rich.

    But Louey’s three or four kids spoke just like Walter Cronkite until they wanted to sound otherwise, and so did everyone else born since the 1940’s. Besides that, every boy could imitate John Wayne. Maybe every girl could imitate Scarlett O’Hara, but I didn’t want to hear that.

    Like

Comments are closed.