Nice

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Nice is…. nice. I mean, you’re not going to hear much argument from me on that.

I am in fact one of those people who can be rendered speechless by unprompted rudeness. Prompted? Sure, I expect to get back as good as I give. Or even when I know people have some reason to think I did something to them, I expect rudeness.

But when people are rude to me on first meeting (or first coming to comments), it’s a complete puzzle. Because, really?

Niceness, encoded in certain manners and certain ways to approach strangers are a way to avoid unecessary conflict. Heaven knows there is enough necessary — urgent — conflict around, that going looking for more because you feel like you’re having a hairy day is utterly stupid. Not that I don’t have my own hairy days. Happens, being human. But I try very hard not to. Doesn’t mean I try not to be mean. It means I often try to be mean — or stern — politely.

I’m also — possibly — the rudest person alive when it comes to friends. If you’re my friend and I’m comfortable with you, I’ll talk over you, because something just occurred to me, and I’m afraid of forgetting. Or I’ll grab a brush and fix your hair. Or I’ll take your kid off your arms, since you can’t make her stop crying, and tell you to take a minute. Without asking or waiting turns because I’m comfortable with you.

And if you’re in a circle, talking to me, and I answer your idea/explanation with “Bullshit.” and don’t look angry? That’s because you’re a friend. You made it inside the safe circle, and I trust you to understand I’m shooting down the argument (and yes, I always explain) not YOU.

But that’s different. In fact, though I’m not my husband, who being a New Englander was trained this way, if I suddenly become exquisitely polite, it’s time to batten the hatches and look for cover, because I understand the first flash of a nuclear explosion does the most damage (at least out of immediate range.)

So I see nothing wrong with being nice to — as Jane Austen would put it — common and indifferent acquaintances.

I’m not sure how I feel about nice invading the legislature, and us no longer having punch outs and someone chasing someone else with a cane among the legislators, though, because important business shouldn’t be transacted by the rule of nice but by the rule of “this is vitally important. The fate of my beloved country hangs on it. I will lame a b*tch if they persist in trying to destroy us.”

By now, the open-borders crazies should have been chased around the senate and house floors with canes (or rapiers) and ditto for the Hamas supporting savages. Because it’s important business, and passions should be aroused.

Which brings me to … Fighting the culture war with our foot in a bucket.

A lot of the persistent trolls who never get approved try to bend me to their will to appeal to “nice” and “fair.” It doesn’t make any sense, because, well you see what they say just an (unapproved) comment before. But they are very used to this working on the right. ”I just want fairness” or “I just want politeness” tend to work with the right.

Why they work is complicated.

The left assumes it’s because we’re “upper class” and trained to behave like that. Some are, but frankly, they’re rare. Most of our rank and file is and has been, at least since Reagan, at most “scrappy self-made people.” Because the left has long ago conquered the country club and the heights of polite — and impolite, like Hollywood — society culturally. Yeah, there are country club republicans… look, most of the remaining were chased away by “Trump so rude!” And they were never the majority. It’s just that we voted for their guys — H. W., W., McCain, Romney — but they didn’t vote for ours. They punched above their weight. Trump’s win was a big, rude surprise. Eh.

Anyway….

The real reason the right enshrined “nice” as a virtue and “don’t make waves” as a sacrament at all levels is because you will get destroyed in the press if you break that.

What I mean is when they had complete control of the mass media and the narrative, to do or say anything that caused the left to deploy its entire machine to destroy you was very bad.

Take Sarah Palin and her nerve at EXISTING and being a self-made woman governor. They destroyed that woman’s life. Or Joe the Plumber asking unwanted questions of “Almost a god” while being working class and male. They had to destroy him. There was no choice. From their POV, at least, if they allow something that strongly contradicts the narrative to exist and be known about they already lost. The narrative needs to be all pervasive and unassailable.

No women or minorities can be Republican, for instance. Or non-Marxist. And if they are, they must be destroyed utterly.

And heaven help you if you hit more than one characteristic of groups they consider “theirs” and turn against their pap. You will be hammered to a pulp.

You see, they need groups to behave predictably, so they can “own” certain groups without ever having to explain how their philosophy helps the group. So, if you stick out of the choir, you’ll be destroyed with all they have. If you look around that explains a lot.

Of course, no matter how “nice” if you win an election against the left they’ll hound you with all they have. And sometimes they utterly break you. (Holds a minute of silence for what remained of W.’s spine when he left the White House. Such as it was. Really, sir, palling around with the Clintons? You make us doubt your self-identification — after leaving office! Nice! — as a “Christian Socialist” because what part of Christian is Epstein Island Clinton?)

Anyway, moving right along: This has been the problem from the beginning — oh, before WWII — and why so many false narratives got baked into the national (and world) psyche. Because everyone who deviated from Marxism in public would be destroyed.

It’s the reason the royal family of England has trended gradually farther left, to stay safe. And the same for our big corporations, our ivy league colleges, our professional associations, our “experts”, our scholars…

Because to deviate, even slightly, from whatever the left is proclaiming top-down this week — and which serves their current narrative — is to get hit with everything they can throw at you, including the kitchen sink. (Does not hold a minute of silence for J. K. Rowling, who seems to have a spine. Does wonder when she’ll wake up on the other “nice” stuff she swallowed.)

Suddenly things are discovered in your past of which you yourself are completely unaware but which everyone else knows about and look, there’s documents. (Which prove strangely slippery on examination.) Or they discover a mean tweet you sent in 1968, even though you had to time-travel for the purpose.

This would work beautifully in the past. Everything and everyone repeated the line with the coordinated precision of a ballet ensemble. The person on the street who semi-cared would assume that, of course, there was no smoke without fire. And the person who didn’t care just got the idea you were “toxic” and avoided, or laughed at comedy that demonized you while completely unaware of there being nothing behind the accusations.

They could do this in a week or so, without much flexing. I think BTW is why the US defamation and slander rules are so stupid. If you’re a “public person” you can’t pretty much sue anyone for slander. And “public person” not only extends to me (Waggles hand. Really? A small blog and some fiction books puts me at the same level as say Clinton? I think it should be at least “National household name) but to anyone, like the Covington kids. If being slandered on national TV makes you a public person and you can’t sue for slander, the whole thing is rigged. Yes, they got around it. But the fact there was even a question tells you how rigged it is. And how irrational.

The problem is that while they sort of still can do it, kind of, sideways, it’s not sticking. Worse, there’s a grassroots narrative network — and they don’t get grassroots at all — that just spreads and connects and which they can’t put down.

Take the rumor that Michelle Obama is a man. It’s a completely insane rumor, on a par with Hillary Clinton having an affair with a space alien. As you guys know, I’m a conaisseur of silly crazy. I love theories that the dinosaurs left the Earth and are circling it in a spaceship, waiting to return. I love ancient civilization, particularly the ones that were completely run according to our idea of astrology, regardless of how the skies have changed in the interim. And the first time I stumbled on Big Mike I lost three days following videos and articles with the sick fascination of watching a train wreck.

These things are my guilty pleasures. Literally. When the email was going around about “I know what you do on your computer and what you were watching” meaning porn — oh, if you get one of those, they’re not real. It’s fishing. For the love of all that’s holy, don’t give them money — and I got a couple, I giggled and told my husband “Yeah, but everyone already knows I watch and ready goofy conspiracy theories and grin and laugh like a loon.”

So, imagine my surprise when I found my very proper, serious friends make allusions to Big Mike in the middle of a serious discussion. I don’t think my friends believe it, but that they even heard of the gross scurrilous nonsense was a shock. And periodically it pops up in the middle of an unrelated discussion with non internet or politics addicted people.

Which comes back to “Oh. I see. It’s all over, like the left’s slanders used to spread.” What percentage of people believe it? Very few I’d guess, at least amid the people who actually follow politics and care. Is it believed amid the people who don’t care and just catch it in the wind? Probably more so, yes. Because the “Why would they say it if there wasn’t something in it” will be stronger there.

But the salient thing is that they can’t put it down. If they deny it, it will only feed it. “I have stopped beating my wife, who is totally not a guy.” Yeah. And if they don’t deny it, over time it will become an “everyone knows”.

The same with Bidens and the Clintons and their corruption machines, which actually happen to be true, but again, even if they weren’t, it would be known everywhere. And things like the Podesta brothers, and the pedo networks of Epstein. (In retrospect, dowgies, it was a mistake to off Epstein. You’re just not used to not being able to put down rumors, so I tell you this, out of the kindness of my heart. Giggle. You’ll learn.)

Or the important things. Took a while, but the truth about Covid 19 propagated so that not only did their protocols which they intended to make eternal break, but they haven’t been able to make new protocols stick. (Which is why I think next spring they try nuclear war. And the way their authority has degraded, I’m not sure that will work either.)

No wonder the left is now pro censorship, and like late stage Soviets trying to stop “disinformation.” And even then it doesn’t work.

The point is none of that is nice. Whenever we turn and bite the left, we’re by definition “mean” and “crazy” and “evil” and “racist” and “Anti-diversity” and anything else they can throw at us. But not NICE.

And every time this happens, a chorus of teddy bears on our side starts singing the song of “you won’t convince them if you’re not nice. You got to be nice.”

Partly because they have Stockholm syndrome. I mean, for decades if you stepped out of line you got DESTROYED. So the only way to fight the left was little by little, incrementally and sometimes just on one issue, while compromising on all the big, visible ones. (Older rightists are very prone to this.)

And part of it is … Well, you see, before the media lost most of its power, the left appeared to be “nice” and a lot of people who are naturally nice (seems to be something you’re born with. Shrug.) really would like to get back there. Except it’s an illusion.

The left was never nice. For a while I passed well enough to sit at the back of their councils and listen to them — and I just realized people like me, who then come out must seem to them like werewolves of legend. But truly, it’s not hard. Their philosophy is everywhere in public, and making the right mouth noises is easy. It just kills your soul if you have to do it for life and don’t have an outlet. A reason many of you in the lefty fields have secret handles here and other places — and trust me, they were never nice. They always wanted to cut your heart out and eat it, simply because you opposed their will to power. But the press helped smooth out any hint of that came showed.

Cancelling and destroying people on the flimsiest excuses has gone on for my full adult life in the US — which is now close on to 40 years — and I suspect before, because it was done in Portugal before, just slightly more openly. (Or maybe I saw more of it, because I was more able to pass as left there. At least in my daylight persona. And those embedded in the left also know exactly what this means.) Also because I can read fluent “secret cancel” in the bios of older authors and politicians and public figures.

But it was done secretly. So secretly that the victims were assumed to REALLY have done something heinous, or gone mad, or in some cases died. (Really, DO read Lloyd Biggle Jr.s The Still Small Voice of Trumpets. I don’t know if he did it consciously, but he captured the whole thing beautifully.)

Now it’s out in the open, which makes everything seem worse and scarier. But trust me, as someone who saw it before, it’s not actually worse. It’s better because we now know and can see the inanity of it and even fight back. (See J. K. Rowling. Or Musk.) We can see how petty and stupid the left is too.

So wanting to smooth the whole thing with “nice” and go back to “the good old days” is nothing more and nothing less than collaborating with the enemy and wanting us to lose.

I just know most of the people doing it don’t mean it that way. But I do wish they’d come to grips with the fact there are situations when you can’t be nice.

When the sword is at your chest you don’t say “Pardon me, sir, I think you misunderstood my remark.”

When they are getting ready to hang you, you don’t say “But sirs, we agreed we wouldn’t use hemp for this purpose.”

And when they set out to destroy you for the crime of existing, you don’t try to argue rationally with them.

You fight back. And you’d best prepare ahead so that you can fight back in a way that the spectators will at least be doubtful of your guilt and evil, and so that you might make them laugh at the left, and escape the worst of it. The left, btw, hates being laughed at. Probably because they know how ridiculous the entire edifice of their power and might is. And a lot of them are only “left” because they hope to be eaten last. If they can be poked fun at, are they really safe?

Or you ignore them. If you can’t — or don’t feel like — make them them ridiculous, just ignore them. This depends on your situation. I know a lot of you can’t just ignore and MUST fight back. Some of us who have indie options to continue earning a living, and can have pen names and personas no one knows about, are freer to just ignore. Ignore. Ignore and ignore some more. Don’t give them head space.

This if possible makes them even madder than making fun of them. Because after all they are the Great and Powerful Oz. How dare you pretend they don’t exist?

In fact, fighting them back seriously “on the issues” is the worst thing you can do, second only to apologizing and placating. There are no issues and no convictions in the leftist platform. They just use those as dressing, and will change them on a dime, and all unify behind the new ones. (This is facilitated by the fact that at least half their following is Memorex and the rest are scared. Even the true believers.)

If you absolutely must, sure. Fight them on the issues. And smearing their faces in their serious and horrible infractions is sometimes needed. Like their support of the rapist-murderers of Hamas. It’s better than apologizing and being cowed.

But don’t try to fight “nicely.” Come up with the worst things you can to show how corrupt and utterly vile they are. They are. If you think they aren’t, you’re still buying the “nice” facade. They were without supervision or moderation so long they’ve become horrendous, without even noticing. (Humans need boundaries to stay in the permissible. Particularly if they lack internal morality which a lot of power-hungry people do.)

And if all else fails, tell the truth. Paraphrasing Kit Marlowe, who should know “To tell the truth, just once, would be worth it, even if one had to die for it.”

They’ve managed to conquer the high ground, while being a sort of alien mixture of lizards and paramecium, and to become a positional good (all “good” people are leftist. All rich and educated ones too.) despite their horrendous, murderous philosophy, their hypocrisy, their often abysmal personalities and personal lives.

And at the same time they bound us with “be nice or you’ll get hit and killed.”

It’s like some dark fantasy spell, right there.

And it’s time to recognize their bonds can’t hold anymore, and unless you absolutely must (or are embedded in their machine, waiting your opportunity. And I think what with the events of the last three years there are a lot of those newly redpilled, suddenly. Sleep tight, lefties) you can now start fighting back without the “nice.”

If “nice” is embedded in your head — it is — and you feel like you’re breaking all commandments by speaking out — you will. I did, when I took the first timid steps out of the closet — remember it’s just a learned reaction. You’re not breaking a single commandment, much less all of them.

The Marquis de Queensbury rules were not designed for those who find themselves attacked in a blind alley. We’ve been taking a beat down for almost a century by trying to be “ladies and gentlemen.” and holding on to “the proper way of doing things.”

This made perfect sense when the stick of a uniform loudspeaker was ready to destroy us, in the press, in entertainment, in art.

Oh, you can still be destroyed. For values of destroyed. But the more of us that are speaking the truth without bothering with nice, the safer we are. And the safer, frankly, everyone is. Because untrammeled power kills. And the left aims to have it.

So, have plan b and plan c and plan d and plan e and plan aardvark ready, always.

And still stay quiet and lay low if you absolutely must, or if you’re waiting for the right full moon to rip out their throats. (And a lot are.)

But don’t stay quiet because you’re being nice. Or because you think nice is a virtue. Or because you think if you’re nice, the left will be too.

That’s how to lose the war without firing a shot. What people on the outside see is that one side if bold and loud, and so confident. And the other never disputes it, so they really must be guilty of everything.

Screw nice. Be bold. Be outspoken. Be who you are, and damn the torpedos.

In a fight for your life, or the life of the nation and your progeny, you should be willing to take out your cane and chase those destroying the nation around the legislature floor. Metaphorically speaking.

Be not afraid.

And be not nice.

Aim instead for being good, in all senses of the word. Nice and good are not the same thing. In fact, they’re not in the same neighborhood.

They’re panicking. They’re panicking badly. “Stomp, stomp, we want censorship” is not the motto of a winning movement.

It’s time to stampede them.

346 thoughts on “Nice”

  1. As Into the Woods states, “Nice is different than Good.”

    We’ve known lots of people who were “nice” as long as they thought they could get something from you. Including those who could beat you with a metal rod (literally) if you decided to cross them, and they had no further use for you.

    Liked by 4 people

    3. Bertrand Russell wrapped his essay on “Nice People” with the conclusion that “nice people are those with nasty minds.” But then again, his own personal quest in life was to do anything he wanted (especially to friends and intimate partners) without ever being criticized for it from a moral perspective, so there’s that.
      Anyway, speaking for my fellow Lupine-Americans, we appreciate Sarah crediting us for “waiting for the right full moon to rip out their throats.” As the song goes, there’s a Bad Moon on the rise!

      Liked by 2 people

    4. Not to mention that it’s easier to convince yourself that you are Nice on inadequate grounds.

      I have met a woman online who seems to think she is Nice because she is, in reality, smarmy.

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    5. And then after he hit
      Me.with the metal rod, my church friend called to the scene to help me said he was a nice man and so should treat him better. Even helped him move his stuff from my property — and all the things the nice man was stealing from us as well. After all, that is was a nice church man does, help the nice man doing the stealing.

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  2. The thing to remember about Joe the Plumber, he was white, male & working class asking unwanted questions of a Glorious Black President. :mad:

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I actually met Joe the Plumber – local Tea Party 4th of July celebration. He was one of the guest speakers at a bash we held at a local ranch venue. (Met the Governor of Texas at the same event, too. I was doing media relations for the local Tea Party – long story.) A nice, down-to-earth and very intelligent guy. What they used to call a diamond in the rough. What the National Establishment Media tried to do to him was unconscionable. So was the pile-on for the Covington Kids, ages later.
      I anticipate a day when representatives for the National Establishment Media are so hated that they can’t go out to do a stand-up without a squad of body guards. Which I understand that they need, in some big-city venues…

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The left generally believes the same working class that they profess to be the protectors of (they lie of course) are the same people they consider to be dumb and unable to think for themselves and must have decisions made for them, in other words, they hold them in complete contempt. Meanwhile, there are many Joe the Plumbers who are very smart, very skilled, and shine in areas that the leftists make the folks who ran the world of Idiocracy look like geniuses.

        The problem with the left as President Reagan noted is that there is so much that they “know” that simply isn’t so..

        Liked by 2 people

        1. When they speak of “working class” they mean government apparatchicks such as bureaucrats, teachers, etc. It sorta applies to the retail class in that they give bread and circuses but any professional whether blue or white collar is not because they are not as easy to control (especially blue collar)

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      1. But, but, but, Sununununu just endorsed Stick your Finger in the Air Hailey. Not that Sununununu, the other Sununununu, wait maybe he’s a clone of the first Sununununu? Do do do do do do. “There’s a sign post up ahead, you’ve just entered the Orange Man Bad Zone”, do do do do do do.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. There are people, who are not necessarily leftists, but who do want desperately for things to go back to normal. They think Haley or someone Iike her will return things to normal and all the
          “unpleasantness,” of the last few years will go away.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. How do they expect to go ‘back to normal’ by making everything different from what it used to be? Gun bans, censorship, ‘trans’ insanity, ‘drag queen story hour’… those were never ‘normal’ before.

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            1. “No mean tweets!”

              I know what @dorothydimock is saying. We have a neighbor just like that. Husband, daughters, and adult grandchildren, all disagree with her. But, all they, and us, can say is “Um. Okaaaaayyyyyyy” and back away cautiously. Even now “Look where that got us last time?” Will not help. It just doesn’t.

              Liked by 1 person

    3. This is not new. Not to those paying attention.

      I remember back when certain statues were being pulled down left and right. She supported it. Not the history. Not the “know what happened and why it is there, and why it should never happen again.” Not the will of the constituents that elected her in the first place.

      Even a shallow look after that point was enough for even the dimmest bulb to catch a clue.

      She’s in the box with McConnel, Romney, et. al. Lesser, perhaps, but with aspirations for the same position. For those with that sort of track record, there is not trust but verify. There is only distrust until proven (repeatedly, with evidence of sacrifices made) otherwise.

      My expectations for the average Republican are pretty low. Realistically, I expect them to be Democrats from twenty years ago or so. They are going the same place, just slower. Haley did not even rise to that admittedly low level, in my book.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. Haley, and her behavior, is very well explained by the Thomas Sowell quote you all know:
        “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”

        Liked by 1 person

      3. She’s also trying to claim to be pro-life when she publicly gutted basically anything pro-life at the Iowa Fair.

        The usual “oh, I’m pro life… just not in any possible way that might have any kind of effect.”

        Liked by 3 people

  4. The thin line between “nice,” and “ignorant bully,” has gotten much thinner, too. Larry Correia is STILL dealing with people who believe that one, we ignorant rednecks want a civil war and two, we will be instantly wiped out by “real” military or by the overwhelming numbers of the city.
    When he is clearly saying nobody in the right minds wants a civil war(or as he puts it, “Rwandan machete party), but that non-urban folks are a lot more dangerous than those overwhelming numbers of city folks would think possible.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. or by the overwhelming numbers of the city.
      ……………………..

      With what? City = less likely to own a firearm or a vehicle. Minus those as a equalizer (as in flat out do not work), their numbers mean nothing (only in areas where distance between major cities overlap). I’m guessing the idiots spouting this are betting on the targets not having enough ammunition. Haven’t they read the trope “Never can have enough guns and ammunition“?

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Guns and ammo are considerations, yes. But of equal or possibly greater concern is, who has the most food and energy stores to last through a disruption longer? And cities aren’t “protected” by walls anymore, except maybe Manhattan on their island in the middle of the river.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “Adequate stocks of preserved food” is more important to a military campaign than “ammunition beyond basic load”.

          The well-fed and sufficiently-patient force generally wins.

          It is -much- easier to scrounge ammo than food in austere times. The ammo will generally walk right up to you if you do your job right.

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          1. It’s no accident that one of the most important military maxims is, “Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics”; the “for want of a nail” maxim. Insufficient supplies cost more than one general a battle; sometimes a war.

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            1. Or as Shakespeare’s Richard the III lamented “my horse, my kingdom for a horse”. Had he only had a horse that he could escape those who were about to kill him, he could try to regroup and retain his crown.

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            2. Kratman’s correction to pros-logistics, to paraphrase:

              Since -everything- has military utility, pros study everything.

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        2. equal or possibly greater concern is, who has the most food and energy stores to last through a disruption longer?
          ………………..

          Not the cities. So it comes down to “who can protect food and energy stores?” Without ammunition and fortifications, if overwhelming numbers hit rural areas, overwhelming desperate numbers have a quality of their own. Just means destruction and more starve and freeze, not victory. The overwhelming numbers will be affected by distance. Does anyone think if the boog hits that fuel supply distribution won’t halt? Moving around on foot, once the fuel runs out, isn’t easy, and good portion will wait around for help to come. Help that won’t be coming because lack of fuel. And channeling PTB: “But, but, electric cars don’t rely on gas fuel!” Really? Since when? They have solar roofs or something?

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Overwhelming numbers of desperate people would only be overwhelming AFTER I’ve recovered and dried off my guns that fell in the lake, and then shot them empty, and I ran out of energy to hack them to pieces as they tried to come through the choke points in the house. I figure by that time, one of those enterprising know nothings would have decided to torch the house instead. And by know nothing, I mean people who would stupid enough to burn a house down and lose all the potential food in it. God knows we saw hundreds of them in Kenosha when Rittenhouse had to ventilate some of them. And he wasn’t even carrying food.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Not wrong. Don’t disagree at all.

              Just saying there are rural areas where this will be a problem, and rural areas where it won’t. Latter where any of these, and more, bad weather, distance, lack of water, etc, are natural neutralizing qualities off setting invading numbers as a quality.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. And one cannot discount terrain in the equations. I’ve done a back of the envelope guesstimate for what it would take to protect Flyover Falls, and then $TINY_TOWN against rampaging two-legged locusts, and the choke points are amazing. IMHO, it wouldn’t take a lot of people and resources to make either objective Just Not Worth It.

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                1. Oh. Definitely. The choke points in Oregon are very easy. That has been demonstrated repeatably during wildfire and slide seasons. There is a reason why Columbia River was the main access from east into western Washington and Oregon. Not even a trail north from California until the Applegate trail. Applegate trail has some horrible choke points, that until the freeway went in, were “don’t bother during wet seasons”.

                  Short of the highways. Hordes are not getting through west to east. Prepared families or individuals, will get through, not using the highways (not easy, but doable). But the latter two are those that should be welcomed. Prepared and resourceful, are wanted resources (hint. Seriously, at our ages? Hubby is your age. I’m slightly younger. We aren’t going anywhere. But …)

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                  1. Chain saws.

                    Drop a tree across the road, and no vehicles will be getting through until it’s moved. Even most people on foot aren’t going to climb around a tree or two down across a road.

                    If you really want to have fun, and aren’t worried about your commercial electricity service (assuming that’s still running), drop a pole and the lines across the road. Makes a great anti-personnel barrier.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Drop a tree across the road, and no vehicles will be getting through until it’s moved.
                      ……………….

                      Trust me. I know. 2003 shutdown Sister/Bend access from Salem, Eugene, and Corvallis, all in one fire (22/20/126 merge into 126 just below the pass on the west side). Winter early ’80s, kept us from going from Eugene to Bend. Got from Longview to Portland to Eugene. Although sketchy on last stretch. Willamette Valley and ice is not fun. Problem wasn’t the ice, except getting out of the valley (Columbia Gorge was closed because of ice too). Problem was highway crews have to clear out the trees and downed power lines on all the Cascade highway passes before the passes could open. Took a couple of days. We missed Christmas Day at the inlaws (it was “their turn”).

                      Oh, and 2020? That is what the arsonists tried to do. Or is it just natural to have all but two passes not have wildfires? Even those two had them, just caught quickly and highway not shutdown (58 and 20). The Rogue River highway was hit at 97 south. Heck we even had arson (actually named an arson fire) fires hit us west on hwy 126 (put out quickly), and Clear Lake.

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                    2. As best as I can recall, BLMifa might have missed a couple in the south. SR 140 was hit with a fire north of the highway, but SR 66 (Keno to Ashland) was missed, as well as Dead Indian Memorial* Road (Ashland to SR 140 just before the drop into Klamath Basin).

                      I’ve never driven DIM Road, but we drove SR 66 once. No official length restrictions, but there are some switchbacks of note. Not fun in the full-sized pickup. Not gonna repeat, even with the Forester. Even the biker on a touring bike ahead of us that day treated the twists and turns with extreme respect. (Might have been fun for a Cafe racer if they still exist.) Dead Indian is officially listed as length restricted, so skipping those two might have been a strategic decision by whoever was pulling the arsonists’ strings. (Might have been considered redundant, since NS traffic on US 97 was hit by a fire that also hindered access to Crater Lake NP.)

                      ((*)) Native American activists. They didn’t get the full name change, like the road that lost “Squaw”**, but people were getting annoyed at the deference.

                      ((**)) IIRC, it rhymes with something nasty in Mohawk.

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                    3. I suspect why it took 3 fires (only 2 took) to try and shutdown Hwy 126 by the BLMifa was because the 2003 fire recovery wasn’t enough to get a good roaring wildfire going at the actual pass, after 17 years. Starting to see regrowth on them thin mountain soils on the rocks and volcanic sands. But not enough to get a good roaring fire going. They chose the wrong spot for hwy 58, no “wait and see” at the location they chose. BLMifa didn’t get everything shutdown (not even I-80, again a prior years wildfire beat them to it, rest is grass fires), or even try to. Not sure if because dismissed the highways in question because minor highways (dismissed as paved USFS roads like Hwy 242?), or redundant (because of the hwy 97 fire), or didn’t know about them.

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              2. “Rural” versus “low density suburban”.

                The core city dwellers have a -long- trip to “rural”. And most lack good trekking footwear.

                There will be a tendency for the locusts to start consuming as they go, first opportunity stuff. This expends them, attrits them, on their suburban co-cityfolk. Fratricide, in essence.

                Then they have to get to real “rural”. And those folks will have lots of time to see it coming. And they will have more than sufficient warning to stand-to.

                Few will have supplies or stamina beyond 3 days. Keep them busy and away for three days. Address the few prepared hardcores. Then mop up.

                Sure. Going to suck like hard vacuum. But do-able.

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                1. Again. Not disagreeing. Even as sucky as you portray the situation. If say 10% of dense populations get out to the nearer isolated areas. The individual isolated are going to have a bad day. Have one group engage the protectors, while the rest loot what can’t be protected. Granted the further out, the better off. But there are rural areas who will be overlapped by different urban densities. The ones to survive are going to be the ones that it takes extra effort to get to, off the main beaten paths, or the ones that cause the groups to get lost getting to, even if they realize it is there to loot.

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                  1. Once it us obviously “on like Donkey Kong”, the roads get blocked quickly. A .30-06 or .308 FMJ will wreck the typical engine with one well placed shot. In very short order, one team of good riflemen blocks a superhighway. Sure folks can push them. Meanwhile, trees have dropped. The swarm… disperses. It has to go around /get around. And the guy with the .22 pops a few to discourage them.

                    Lather rinse repeat.

                    Delay, delay, delay. Every hour works against the mob. Think of the example of the retreat from Concord. And those were highly disciplined troops that got swarmed.

                    The folks going locust are already in deep shit. City folk are not noted for graceful migrations. Best examples are Florida hurricane evacuations. Those turn two hour drives into 12 hours. A few interposing yahoos would have wrecked it.

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                    1. Again. 100% agree.

                      But can the entire mob stop 19 million people? Even if only 10% get past the delays (one way or another) of extreme prejudice? Okay, 1%. 190k left to wreak and loot.

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                    2. Something that tends to get glossed over is these aren’t militaries.

                      And I don’t mean they suck, I mean their motivation is different.

                      Specifically, it looks like both of you two are assuming rural areas are the best targets for raiding.

                      When the best target for raiding is…. raiders.

                      They’re moving, not dug in; they haven’t been raided yet; and they already did the work of finding and packing up exactly the stuff you want.

                      This is why as horrible as it is, most of the folks that are killed by criminals? Are other criminals. They got money, drugs, weapons….

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. Long term. Yes. Because there are those who would rather raid rule the producers, rather than do their own work.

                      Initially, no matter how unlikely to survive longer term, the locust will consume as they move outward trying to survive. I’m not saying that the prepared rural residents aren’t going to be an impediment, I’m just saying there are areas that will eventually be overwhelmed, unless very, very, fortified, from the desperate gangs coming out of the heavily urbanized centers. Further out one is the less one is in danger from them. They are in danger from those who are prepared to be raiders, unless they are fortified, or have somewhere to run (shades of the forts as Europeans moved west off of the Atlantic).

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                    4. Not unless the only raiders are entirely established gangs staying in established areas and nobody looks weak, which would almost certainly not include rural areas. (that’s what makes very isolated houses with no traffic dangerous now, they are outside of the routes that established power structures have fought out, so new guys looking for some place nobody knows can find advantage in them, although there is the risk of finding an established international crime organization’s safe-house/smuggling location)

                      This is one of the things my husband geeks out on, so I get a LOT of earfulls. I’ll try to convey it in a way that isn’t just “no, believe me.” ^.^

                      We can look at the BLM/Antifa riots, although you have to do a LOT of reading between the lines. The guys who were pulling stuff off of trucks kept getting dead, although it was only reported when they got crushed by the vehicles.

                      But, uniformly, it’s safer to hang out on the edges and smash the guy who has a TV in his arms than to break out the window and get it yourself. And if there’s two of you, it’s even safer– or if you can get a car, but then you need guys to guard the car.

                      And, by definition, the looters are NOT forward thinking folks– the target that is RIGHT THERE is going to be preferred to heading out to where you might get something. (this is also why the advice of “don’t do your own product” has to be said over and over; because they almost universallly DO use their own product, because if they thought far enough ahead they wouldn’t be criminals)

                      Long term, they stop fighting each other… unless they think they can get away with it…..

                      So your bigger threat is going to be non-raiders who are able to think ahead well enough to be a threat.

                      Generally, they’re going to be civilized enough… until there’s an advantage to exercising their difference in values about things like property rights.

                      Defenses aimed at stopping raiders will do absolutely nothing against that– it’s kind of a form of farming the productive, except it’s not the TV drama type, and they’ll be right there working next to you. And generally really nice about it, give you the shirt off their back… if they have it, and it’s amazing how often they don’t have it. (Crab buckets don’t happen out of nowhere.)

                      The locusts, as you accurately describe them, are going to be eating other locusts as well.

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                    5. I am counting on locust fratricide, as Foxfier notes.
                      Provoking it is definitely a game plan. For the novel, I mean. (grin)

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                    6. I have a theory of, well, it’s sort of future historical discussion aversion:

                      Basically the thing that gets discussed to death becomes the least likely thing to actually happen through some process of historical process repulsion.

                      Thus endless discussions of how the inevitable breakthrough past those endless trenches would let horse cavalry run wild through the enemy rear areas during WWI meant it never happened, Western or Eastern front, even when frontal collapse actually occurred first for the Imperial Russians, then the Imperial Germans.

                      Similarly before WWII endless discussions all held that strategic bombing would progress to using gas on cities. Millions of gas masks were procured and issued. Never happened. Lots of strategic bombing, no gas attacks.

                      So the fact the the ravening horde of displaced urban zombies locusting through the countryside has been endlessly discussed and analyzed leads to me predict that if things go really sideways, they will proceed along different lines.

                      And historically the examples are not rampaging zombie hordes. No displaced hordes of Romans fleeing any of the various sacks of Rome ravaged the rest of Italy – the sack-ers did, but not the polloi. Ditto rampaging European city dwellers fleeing the Black Death, or a waves of city dwellers fleeing in armed waves from the cities that the Mongols crushed.

                      Sure there were refugees, but they were just that, not raving hordes.

                      I think any urban civil order collapse will go a different direction than the “horde of locusts” trope.

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                    8. Rereading I was probably too flip. At the heart of it I think what gets discussed to death is an obvious simplified idea based on past results, and reality is chaos and complication and complexity and enlightened self interest writ large across entire populations in the different conditions of the future.

                      That’s the one thing science fiction is good at: Taking something different and thinking it through. Reading science fiction opens up those alternate pathways in your brain.

                      ANd specific to the ravening zombie locust looter horde, on an individual level I’m not sure what’s in it for the folks at the back, or even the middle, of any such swarm, as certainly there’s be no safety net of locust swarm public assistance aid for those who lag behind the bleeding edge of looting.

                      Seems to me upon seeing any leading edge of looters swarm off thataway, self interest would advise heading off anyotherway.

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                    9. To explain, I don’t think the cities are as blue as the very frauded vote makes it appear. Oh, there might be 50% in some neighborhoods, and they talk the loudest and…. but not 80% blue or whatever.
                      I’ve lived most of my life in cities, see. I LIKE them, which I realize is very odd for an American. Heck, it’s very odd for my family. Dad can’t understand it.
                      BUT I like cities. And they’re not the thing hordes are made of.
                      Yes, there are the welfare recipients and section and there’s always an element of criminal hiding in there, but most have just been broken by the system. Heck, most of their parents were broken by the system. And that means they lack all initiative. They’re used to being taken care of. They don’t even vote, unless someone “Harvests” it. This is the left’s huge miscalculation coming from Marx. They expected a “proletariat” but these aren’t it.
                      Then there are the “lefties” in the city. These are mostly young people or well…. virtue signalers. Not only aren’t they the thing that ravening hordes are made of, most of them are fairly wealthy and frankly well… prissy. Some will turn on a dime to protecting their stuff. The students and young will be shocked no one is looking after them, and not know what to do. The loud mentally ill ones online will probably just die, honestly. I remember black bloc during the DNC in Denver being confronted by the police and having panic and asthma attacks.
                      Some number of the virtue signallers are very American, and will start improvising. You htink there’s no food in the city, but there’s — at least in Denver — canneries in the outskirts, etc. And there are squirrels, raccoons, geese in parks, etc etc etc. Even deer, in CO. Lots of them.
                      Since the great egg scare of 21 a lot of people have chickens, or quail in the balconies.
                      And 50% of those people are on our side. A lot of them are armed too, even when they’re not supposed to be.
                      They’ll survive a few days and then new systems will start bieng set up. Someone will call their cousin in the countryside, who’ll bring a big truck of food and even bottled water on Monday. and next thing you know you have farmers’ markets.
                      Now, of course there will be a criminal element fanning out and robbing, etc.
                      D*mn it. It’s today’s post isn’t it?

                      Liked by 1 person

                    10. Yep. Prob’ly so.

                      Agree on the cities aren’t as solid blue as they appear. Not nearly so. More a parity, but with control of the courts, the machinery that runs the voting, and the bureaucracy, they’ve effectively got a lock.

                      A very likely (almost 100% sure, in any fair court) illegal, definitely immoral, and by the numbers fraudulent lock.

                      The biggest chunk there is, I think, the ones that are just trying to get by. Either by flying under the radar, knowing how bad it is, trying not to know and staying small, utterly ignorant and increasingly irritated but too busy/distracted to know exactly why, and the ones that honestly don’t want to deal with politics, they just wish prices would stop going up on everybloodything for just a minute so they can catch up.

                      That center will pivot on a dime if things get tight- well, tighter than they are now- and they’ll go for whatever and whoever looks most likely to save them. With a firm prejudice against the current status quo, whatever that may be. That’s “imminent disaster” flip, not “gas prices went back up to $6/gal” flip.

                      Maybe I’m way off on that.

                      But I don’t see Balkan civil war and post apocalyptic banditry becoming ubiquitous any time soon. Slip into older modes of things? Like, great depression stuff. Food pantries, raising chickens, cutting back on extras, that sort of thing. And yes, criminality. But not “holding up a truck convoy and looting it dry.” More smash and grabs, petty thefts.

                      Eh. Hopefully not even that much. We proved this country can bounce back quick one president ago, so long as the idiots in DC take their foot off the economic brakes. All we need is the freedom to take risks again. Screw “safety.” Heck with safe spaces, personal privileges, and tolerating the intolerable.

                      Liberty is not safety. Liberty is risk.

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          2. That’s the real thing. First they have to find the rural areas, and then they have to get there.

            There are a lot of areas where if you drive 30m from downtown you are in howling wilderness, not rural America. And something that is an hour away by freeway is a day or more away by foot.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. lot of areas where if you drive 30m from downtown you are in howling wilderness, not rural America.
              ………………..

              I am very near, and we visit, these areas. There are areas where people get lost just getting off the road.

              But there are a lot of areas where, not true. Some of the hordes will get through. It will be spotty.

              We know this. But do the big cities, outside of NY? After all “one can walk across NY state in a day or two” (Crocodile Dundee 2). Trust me, cannot in Oregon, let alone Montana, Texas, or even California (Donner Pass, anyone?) and it is relatively skinny east to west, compared to most states west of the Mississippi.

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              1. Donner Pass is Exit 180 on Interstate 80. That would be 180 miles of freeway—much of it fairly steep once you get to Auburn or thereabouts—from San Francisco. A trained hiker, as in someone who prepares walking with a pack daily for months if not years, might make 50 miles if they happened to be a motivated young male in the 15-25 age range. (Trust me, I know some of that type.)

                Otherwise, a trained hiker might be doing 15-20 miles daily, with a necessary daily water refill plus food recap. Untrained will drop you down to ten miles a day, which I think was about the average of the Oregon Trail folk (given the speed of your average team of oxen.)

                So crossing the state, assuming you are in the physical shape to do so, is going to take more than a week for someone trained, and the better part of a month for someone who is training along the way. And that is assuming walking along the “best trail” of the freeway.

                Not that anyone would, because the only gain you’d get from crossing the state is ending up in the rain shadow of Nevada, not exactly the best call if you’re looking for food. But anyway.

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                1. Kind of my point. :-)

                  I am well aware. Worse. Few are setup to pack. The book packs are not going to work any distance. Taking standard household items from the kitchen isn’t going to cut it either. There is a reason why REI and other backpacking outlets exist. (We might have given them a dollar or two.)

                  The Donner Pass quip was because of why it is named Donner Pass.

                  There is a reason why the Oregon Trail is considered to be “paved with emigrant graves and their belongings.” That doesn’t count the lives lost once they loaded on rafts to come down the Columbia.

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              2. At my age and condition, if the US went pear-shaped when I was in F-Falls, it would be a nasty hike back home. And that’s with a rail-to-trail route. The days of 10-20 mile walkabouts after work are long over, as are the occasional 60-100 mile bike rides on weekends.

                I don’t think it would go toes up that quickly, though if I were stuck Westside, that’s a horse of a different feather.

                [Makes note to self to prepare the bug-in pack.]

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                2. We are west side with no place to go.

                  The days of 10-20 mile walkabouts after work are long over, as are the occasional 60-100 mile bike rides on weekends.
                  ………………

                  As are the climbing up/down mountain sides (USFS college seasonal). Or up/down ladders all over log trucks (only 3 years for me). I was never one to exercise after sitting at a desk. Paid for it on weekend camping, backpacking and hiking. But I did do it. Without complaining. Still do. Just hubbies knees are slowing us down. I exercise now to keep up with hubby, and I’m younger by 5 years. I do take two steps for his one (have I mentioned I’m vertically challenged?)

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              3. The only place you can walk across New York State in a day or two is the neck down to New York City, and even then you have to cross the Hudson. It took me and my brother a week on bicycles, doing about 110 miles a day average, to go from Albany to Buffalo along Route 20. And let me tell you, those hills going up out of each of the Finger Lakes valleys are real gut busters, even in first gear.

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      4. Ask what the Brits thought about the Zulus. You should take deep care in comments so- they’re not nearly as close to truth and reasoned out as you believe them.

        In the end, yeah, the right strategy will win against sheer numbers- but if you’re a sole player defending, or a few, you’d best have a microgun, minigun, or similar autocannon to throw a LOT of lead their way. Numbers DO win under the right conditions.

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    2. Want? Hardly. Preparing for one? Weeeeeelll… It’s due to that which is coming and they’re the proximal cause for the same. They flatly aren’t nice OR good and they see what they believe to be the good for all…and isn’t any damn different than Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Mao, Stalin, etc. In the end, I refuse and there will a price exacted if they try where they’re going.

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  5. It would be darkly humorous if they held a nuclear war and none of the bombs actually worked.

    And between a combination of ‘select for incompetence,’ corruption and ‘oops I fat-fingered they key code,’ I’m not sure it’s impossible either.

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    2. One of the dirty little secrets of the Cold War is that most of the Soviet Union’s missiles would not have worked. Perhaps that’s why they always backed down when properly confronted.

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      1. There was a point where many of our ICBMs were likely to be duds. Some of our “safeing” systems worked a little too well.

        The scenario where we pound each other over and over again with super high-tech multi-million drachma dirty-bomb duds is amusing. Kinda hard on the city-folk’s nerves, and leads to “funny looking kids”, but imagining “World War Squib” give me giggles.

        “Did any of them work?”

        “Well general, we got yield on a couple of their silos, and they got yield a few of our bases.

        “Yeild?”

        “The primaries were not total fizzles. Couple kilotons of excitement. But Marvin is sadly looking for the earth-shattering kabooms…..sir”

        “

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        1. I’m recalling the scenario in Clancy’s The Sum of all Fears. I don’t know much about nukes beyond a 300 level Physics quantum class, but his scenario of a fizzle rings true.

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          1. Keep in mind that the ‘fizzle’ in Clancy’s ‘The Sum of all Fears’ was about 11 KT.

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        2. The warhead for the early Polaris (W47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W47) had an issue with the 1 point safing. A test in 1958 caused the weapon to fail ( a “fizzle” ~ .1 Kton yield) when there was supposed to be NO yield. The safing method was changed, but this itself provided an issue that over time could leave the weapon as a total dud basically becoming a small dirty bomb (no nuclear ignition at all). Estimates were that perhaps as many as 3/4 of these warheads were affected. Oddly the ONLY ICBM (well SLBM) to be live fired was a Polaris with a W47 in 1962 as the Frigate Bird shot of Project Dominic in 1962. The W47 were ultimately fixed and left service in 1974.
          The basics are pretty sturdy The primary or pit of a fusion weapon is primarily plutonium 239 (half life 70Ky) or enriched uranium (80%+ U-235 Half life 700 My). The secondary is primarily Lithium Deuteride. The lithium is common mostly Lithium 6 (no decay) and Deuterium is also stable. In a Teller-Ulam design there is also a U235 “spark plug”. Far more delicate are the initiator (initial source of neutrons for starting the primary). What precisely these are are tightly held secrets, Early designs used strong neutron emitters, speciulation is modern designs use very small particle accelerators. The biggest threat that has been seen is that the knowledge of the materials and manufacturing techniques may be lost. There was a critical material used in the secondary (I can’t find the article that had details) that was part of the creation of the Xray burst used in the ignition. It needed replacement, but the stockpiles were running low and the details of its manufacture were not fully recorded, ultimately the method of manufacturing it was recovered. Most of our warheads were manufactured no later than the 90’s. The electronics (Capacitors) have shelf lives in the 30-40 year range and other long storage electronics have seen issues with a variety of materials (Tin in solder causing tin whiskers that can short things out).

          Figuring out how bad this is is really hard. The DOE and the DOD have stated that there have been issues but they tend to gloss over it. the Federation of Atomic Scientists and similar want the nuclear stockpile to fail being part of the Brahmandarins and basically opposed to a capable US superpower. Every attempt to upgrade the warheads keeps getting canceled from Bush I to present, partly due to cost overruns, partly due to US hating Democrats controlling the purse strings and not fearing the Russians and or Chinese capabilities.

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          1. Hah found it! The material was/is called FOGBANK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank). It is likely an aerogel that is part of the secondary. Speculation is it provides a path for the radiation from the primary to get to the secondary and is critical to the manufacture of compact fusion weapons. Details for the curious at the wikipedia page.

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      2. The thing about nuclear missiles is that they have literally NEVER been tested under use conditions. We have tested the rockets; we have tested the bombs (although not for a very long time); we have never tested the weapon system as a whole, and it is a complicated system. God willing we never find out what can go wrong.

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        1. Expect a 40 to 50% failure per launch to detonate over the target.
          Scary, isn’t it?
          Treat each missile as a small satellite launch mission.

          Click to access 20190002705.pdf

          “between the years of 2000 to 2016, 41.3% of all small satellites
          launched failed or partially failed. Of these small satellite missions, 24.2% were total mission failures, another 11% were partial mission failures, and 6.1% were launch vehicle failures.”

          Liked by 2 people

            1. And all of those were under the best conditions of preparation and calm, using tested systems for the most part. When it’s “Get those never-tested-as-a-system missiles off in 15 minutes or lose them!”, and maintenance is probably a bit spotty these “wokie/DEI” days…?

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              1. True, but if you launch 1000 and only 100 work that is still a lot of damage, debris and radiation that gets spread around.

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                1. Yup. Plus, while a 1 in 10 chance of death means that I’ll probably live, it’s still a level of risk that I would greatly prefer to avoid.

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                  1. Lot of those rockets burned/blew up on the pad, or seconds into the launch. Being a the launch site isn’t the safest place either. And the safety devices for missile nukes aren’t the same as gravity bombs. I suspect the risk of accidental nuke detonation on a missile payload is a magnitude higher than on anything a bomber can drop. (And AF folks have dropped their fair share of nukes loading them on and off aircraft over the decades – not fun, but at least none of them detonated, and I’ve read no reports of radioactive release on the flight lines.) Even the accidental drops of bombs from altitude appear to have survived intact without detonation.

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                    1. That is part of the only 10% actually working-all the reasons for failure make up the 90%. Launch a couple of thousand nukes between all the various nuclear powers, and it will hurt. A lot.,

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                  2. The thing to really worry about is biological warfare, especially since the WEF crowd has expressly called for a drastic reduction of Earth’s population (the latest alarmist “study” blames human BREATHING as a “problem”-see https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2023/12/15/study-the-science-pins-climate-change-on-human-breathing-n4924793 )

                    Smallpox samples still exist. The vaccine, while not generally administered, is still available and can be made, certainly in sufficient quantities for the Bill Gates and other members of “the population must be reduced a lot crowd, to get current inoculations. Then, they just release smallpox and let it go to work, while frustrating efforts of people to get vaccinated before catching it.

                    Given their lust for power and fanaticism in doing so, it is certainly foreseeable to see this crowd do this.

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                    1. Or even worse, engineer a variant of smallpox (or something else; many have been proposed). IMHO, the level of bad-to-worse in WMDs runs nukes-chem-bio. Or maybe the first two could be reversed; it’s not really clear. What is clear, at least to me, is that bio has the potential to be quite a bit worse than the others.

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                    2. The idiots are NOT at the level they can engineer viruses. They just proved that. Now they might think they can. But, trust me, getting it RIGHT by accident at the level they’re fumbling at is harder than getting nukes right.

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                    3. Bio’s bad because you can’t control it. But that goes both ways due to mutations. You can release something really nasty that kills 99% of the world’s population, including people who have been inoculated. Or you can release something that kills a few people in the immediate area, and almost immediately turns harmless. These are both extremes, and the reality would probably fall somewhere in the middle. But it shows just what a dangerous gamble people make when they play with bio weapons.

                      Chem lingers, and can go unexpected places. You release your gas shells, and then the wind changes and the gas is blowing back into your own troops. It also causes problems when you try to advance into the positions just vacated by the enemy, as the chemicals are still present.

                      Nuclear leaves radiation behind. But the bulk of the damage is immediate, and over almost immediately. A cloud of radiation being pushed around by the wind can be dangerous. But it’s generallyl not as immediately fatal as a gas cloud can be.

                      As for human breathing as a problem… It wasn’t all that long ago that the EPA tried to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Fortunately, that got shot down.

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                    4. Smallpox is very dangerous already without any engineering to it, That is why I referenced it; it is something that only older people are vaccinated against, and after so many decades, who knows how effective the immunity from those continues to be.

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                    6. Regarding smallpox vaccinations. Don’t count on us oldsters who were vaccinated against smallpox being immune. Not a “one time shot + booster, and done” vaccine. I was surprised to learn it wasn’t. I doubt I’ve had a booster shot even as I headed to college (mid-’70s) given when the population at large quit getting boosters. The older veterans who were still getting the vaccine when the rest of the, at least US population wasn’t, would have “more” immunity, but even theirs would be waning.

                      Are there any vaccines that are “one and done”. Couple that are every ten years. But even then for some of us the immunity isn’t anywhere near that long. I do not want whooping cough, again, thank you very much. It was not fun. And I had whooping cough as an infant before the vaccine was available, was vaccinated when I got it again, as an adult. Not Fun.

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                    7. GWoT vets will mostly have had the shot, and be 50-40 ish in age, and there are some “first responders” that got it when it was noted that Saddam was dumb enough to at least try to use bio weapons.

                      But yeah, it’s only considered good for like five years.

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                    8. Small pox may be a bigger problem than many folks understand. It’s been several generations since most humans have had exposure to small pox, and it’s possible that we’ve lost some of our acquired immunity to it.

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                    9. I’d say our stage of ability to engineer viruses is about the same stage as a 5-year old trying to make a truck with Legos. But without the cuteness factor.

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                    10. “Common” smallpox is about 30% lethal. There is a naturally occurring variant that hits 90% in previously unexposed populations.

                      The hard part is delivery, not the bug. Need a widespread major rash of cases to overwhelm USA level health and health care. Clancy covered it in a novel. As have others.

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                    11. Minor nitpick/further consideration– the fatality rate in late 1940s USA for cases that were bad enough folks noticed someone as infected was about three in ten, although folks have sliced and diced our rather limited data to get a huge range of numbers. (Pack salt unless they tell you what the sample size was for any characteristic.)

                      The cases with modern medicine, on less stressed populations that had grown up with modern medicine, is too small to sample; the last death that lady in England basically died because they couldn’t figure out what she had but her mother who caught it caring for her recovered fine, and the last naturally acquired infection it took almost three weeks for them to figure out he didn’t have chickenpox and actually treat him for smallpox. (That was the ’70s, and the gentleman died in 2013 of malaria.)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    13. It’s supposed to kill about half under a year of age, and there was NOTHING listed about comorbidities, and they didn’t even have a way to know if someone actually had it until they got the pustules, and–
                      Well, I get a little tired of folks taking the numbers and thinking they’re the same as the stats we get from current infections. (Heck, even kung flu, we had better information than that, and that was actively frustrated!)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    15. I’d be more worried about bubonic plague. Just as lethal if it gets going in it’s pneumonia arisolized form. It is already endemic in the rodent wildlife in the west and southwest. There are cases that occur annually (not the easily person to person spreadable form). No need to steal the bubonic bacterium from a highly secure lab. Just go out into nature and find it (not that easy, but easier). There have been fictionalized novels of this type of pandemic too (both naturally occurring, and concocted in a lab purposely).

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                    16. Note a guy with smallpox caught it in Mexico (this was in 1947). He and his wife traveled through the US to New York, where he headed for Bellevue because he felt ill. He was transferred to another hospital where, several days later, he died. They had traveled by bus through the country, then by cab. Result: 12 cases of smallpox, 2 deaths and a massive vaccination program. Most of the cases were apparently caught in the hospital where he died.
                      So even with something as horribly virulent as smallpox, we can dodge the bullet – and we have no idea, other than the grace of God, how it gets dodged.
                      (See Berton Roueche’s, “A Man from Mexico,” for the details).

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              2. using tested systems for the most part

                Uh, bullshit.

                In order to define “tested” in a way which excludes the ICBM fleet not a single small-sat launcher has ever been tested either.

                In fact by that standard the only launch systems which have ever been tested were STS and Falcon 9.

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                1. “…not a single small-sat launcher has ever been tested either”. Only if you define “tested” so as to exclude multiple launches using identical (or nearly so) boosters. If not, there have been far more such “tests” than for ICBMs, with or without warheads.

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                    1. Bugbear recommends an audiobook entitled “KittyCat Kill Sat” as a tool of amusement.

                      Totally not on topic at all.

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                2. And there is a funny video of all the ways Falcon 9s blew up trying to land before SpaceX got the hang of it, set, I believe, to, “The Blue Danube.”

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              3. Get those never-tested-as-a-system missiles

                And bullshit again. The missiles have been tested as a system through their entire flight profile (YES THAT INCLUDES REENTRY YOU IDIOTS) many times.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. I’ll give you that. IIRC the military has pulled active missiles off the field, shipped them to Vandenberg, and periodically launched them over the Pacific to do exactly that, test the entire system from launch to reentry and impact. (Although without blowing a nuke along with it. Fallout kind of taught them that that wasn’t a good optic.) What is apropos is that even though that launcher was pulled from active inventory for testing, it still got a completely fresh going over before launch. That’s not going to happen on zero hour. You’re going to have to hope that all the techs did their jobs right, and everything works as well a heating up your coffee in your microwave.

                  I used NASA’s figures. From my days in the AF, over 50% of the vehicles and aircraft have some minor mechanical issues. Less than 10% of those vehicles and aircraft have an issue that would prevent successful mission deployment, although it might not be enough for a truck or plane to make it back successfully. (Don’t ask me how many times we had to wrecker one or several vehicles when we deployed over the road to various other bases just here in the U.S., or how often we had a plane turn up unusable for air shipment of cargo during a mobility – it’s NOT a joke that I’ve seen airmen bang on a component to get a short to connect to pass an inspection.)

                  Liked by 2 people

                    1. US military inspectors for the START treaties report standing at “active” silos in the FUSSR to verify they were getting decommissioned, watching as the cover winched open to see the entire silo filled to a couple feet short of the top with freezing cold filthy water, the Russian officers standing there smirking at them.

                      I doubt the SLBM missiles are that much better.

                      Add “not even really there” to “serviced by drunk underpaid draftees” and “Hey Yuri, how much would this part get us on the black market?” and a lot of the missiles will not even light, let alone launch and fly.

                      And now that the Russians are raiding all the other services for meat to send to Ukraine, any conceivable institutional expertise is getting blown up while charging a tree line through the snow outside Avdivka.

                      All of that completely leaves out the warheads, so yeah, low probability overall.

                      Liked by 2 people

                  2. What is apropos is that even though that launcher was pulled from active inventory for testing, it still got a completely fresh going over before launch.

                    You are casting this as a Bad Thing.

                    You don’t seem to recognize that another term for this is an “inspection”. Usually a very good thing because it gives you information about decay over time.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. “You are casting this as a Bad Thing.”

                      No, what he’s saying is that the refurbishment will NOT happen just before actual launch. Congratulations. You’ve just invalidated your whole test premise.

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                    2. Yes, obviously that is the point he is trying to make.

                      And you too are ignoring that now you know what parts are an issue over time that you didn’t think would be.

                      Also if we want to talk about “invalidating test premises”, what about taking the missile out of the tube where it is supposed to sit undisturbed for 30 years, and subjecting it to the rigors of shipment?

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                  3. Live silos at Canaveral and Vandenburg. They worked as intended, as did the missiles. Sure many failed. Test flights. Note how many are used, quite reliably, as satellite launchers. (Atlas, Titan, Minuteman I)

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                  1. Since we are talking about Here, yes.

                    This whole subdiscussion was spawned by someone repeating a Brilliant Observation! by a fool on twitter a week or two ago.

                    Nuclear devices are as bad as space travel for people flapping their gums with “Look at this incredible flaw I thought of! I’m smart!”, and the “flaw” is something anyone who isn’t a 24/7 fountain of drool could see, and yet somehow the designers couldn’t have ever thought of this.

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                  2. Sarah, all I’ve got to say is that many years of testing various DoD software projects tell me that faking results (or just skipping testing some things at all) is not confined to Them, Over There.

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                  3. Yes.

                    An ICBM is a gun. American guns work. Soviet guns work. There are quality issues existant for both sides. Both sides manage to wage large scale wars with them.

                    An -early- missile war may have been “wet firecracker”. Post 1990s, they are debuged.

                    Keep in mind that the Russians -design- around their difficulties. “Kalashnakov”. (Whom I have met, briefly)

                    The Russians have enough working nukes to preserve the motherland, and to wreck the main enemies, with China as the main threat (versus say, us).

                    How many multi- megaton weapons does it take to blanket a large country with enough fallout to poison it?

                    About 20-40.

                    I bet the Russians or Chicoms can deliver 20-40 working multi-megaton U238 jacketed weapons to poison our major cities and our farmland.

                    Can we survive and rebuild? Yes. Are they far more dead? Oh, rather more glassed over, quite yes. But we will be too busy rebuilding to much annoy their survivors. For a while, anyway.

                    The key is the number of needed, versus the negotiated limits. If the Russians accept quantity X, it is sufficient to deal with us, PRC, and still have enough to say “nyet”.

                    20-40 working thermonuke MT weapons, delivered.

                    That’s why Russia built 30,000 of the damn things. “Quantity has a quality all its own”.

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                3. Since I think it’s my comment that sparked this whole thing, perhaps I should clarify what I was talking about. There have been precisely two war shots of nuclear weapons. The systems I was referencing are not just armed nuclear missiles; they are the entire system from communicating the order to launch, the targeting of the weapon, the travel of the weapon, how close to the target it travels, and finally the detonation and yield/effects, and failure is not a binary does/does not go boom. You decreeing that we are all idiots for being skeptical that in a panic situation (and yes, it would absolutely be a panic situation if it happens, no matter how well we may have prepared) things would work as intended is naivete not brilliance. Far less technically complicated systems routinely underperform in wartime conditions. Do I think our bombs will mostly detonate? Yes. Do I think the missiles will hit their targets in general terms? Yes. Do I buy into the idea that they will hit with the necessary precision to destroy hard targets, and do so quickly enough and often enough to destroy the other guy’s ability to strike back? No. I am decidedly not saying that nuclear warfare is not possible, just that it, like every other kind of warfare, is going to involve all sorts of unexpected and awful surprises.

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                  1. just that it, like every other kind of warfare, is going to involve all sorts of unexpected and awful surprises.

                    And?

                    Welcome to reality. That’s how everything works.

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        2. I have a friend who used to go observe the bomb tests. First, they where always specially built…not random bombs or warheads. Second, failure rate was 50%. More often than not they published the results anyway. Complete fiction.
          Third, nuclear weapons in the US were built by lowest bid government contractors. Other places they are built or were by people who were 1 generation from illiterate serfs. Yes that does matter for being able to do things.
          Side note…..how much of chinese launch systems being touted actually work?

          Liked by 1 person

        3. Actually, we have.

          “Shot Frigate Bird of Operation Dominic on 6 May 1962, was the only U.S. test of an operational ballistic missile with a live nuclear warhead (yield of 600 kilotons), at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific.”

          If you only count ones aimed at or near the surface, The USA used one SLBM+nuke as intended. If you count the EMP-related high-altitude tests, we have fired armed missiles several times. The Societs and ChiComs have also live tested.

          Russia/Soviets: September 1961 Test 95

          PRChina: October 1966 CHIC-4

          All of those were with missiles that today would be “intermediate” range.

          Looks like the Soviets and Chicoms either played it way-safe with toned-down weapons, or had fizzles. Ours went 600KT of earth-shattering kaboom.

          (just linking the one article non-wiki. Easy enough to look up Wikipedia’s “testing” stuff. ) https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/nuclear-tests-involving-ballistic-missiles-with-live-warheads/

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          1. Based on a biography of Mao that I listened to, that particular launch was the *only” time that particular PLA missile had a successful test firing…

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          2. Frigate Bird was a Polaris. None of those left.

            I didn’t recall any, and looking through the list I don’t see that there was ever a live shot with live warhead of what’s currently shootable, i.e. a Minuteman or Trident. Certainly never one with the latest generation of electronics on the birds.

            I know they still shoot a Minuteman from time to time from Vandenberg out to the South Pacific, sans warhead of course.

            I haven’t read of one lately but they must still shoot a Trident from an actual sub occasionally. Don’t know if they use a MIRVed one with all inert RVs – those are expensive.

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                    1. That’s why the warheads are periodically refurbished, and those components can be tested without the physics package.

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                    3. Castle Bravo wasn’t a malfunction. The Lithium7 that was assumed inert has a very low probability reaction path that yields tritium. We only know about it because someone observed how short we were on pure Lithium-6 and decided “why bother removing inert stuff”.

                      Surprise. X2.5 yield. Surprise. New understanding of low probability versus super-high flux environment.

                      We learn rather more from “that’s funny…” and “Uh oh…”

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              2. Yep – Seen vids when the Navy isn’t being shy about PR with scary newkewler systems, but I had not seen any recently. Maybe no missile boats came out of refit in the last few years?

                The point above re gone-over missile applies to these as well though, as the boat’s captain does not want a dud launch on his record, especially with the evaluators on board.

                I have heard about a no-maintenance-allowed Minuteman test launch from Vandenberg, taking a missile from the silo and not fiddling with it all the way to the test silo at VBG, at least being proposed, though I don’t know if it ever happened. One could argue the transport jiggling around made it fail if it had any problems.

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            2. One can test a warhead by omitting the fissile material, substituting a test material. One then studies the resultant implosion forged thing.

              It’d how they worked out explosive lensing for Fat Man.

              We have fired so many Minutemen that we have solid reliability. They used up the remaining MM1s as space launchers.

              Someone mentioned tin-lead solder issues of “whiskering”. Specially Rad-hardened circuit boards for space use are 100% gold. No whiskers. Likewise, space rated IC chips have special construction that avoids the flaws acceptable in cheap radios.

              Space Program needs resulted in a whole bunch of super-reliable super-durable rad-hard systems. Example: Voyager 1 and 2.

              Remarkable engineering, with myriad other uses.

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            3. Ever wonder what exactly was on the payload of “failed” milsat launches? And what was recovered? Say a non-fissile warhead? “Look! Perfectly forged x-phase somethium. Had that been plutonium, would have yielded 300kt”.

              We used to drop commo taps on Soviet phone cables in Soviet harbors. See also the great sub grab off the deep ocean floor. Wanna bet we can’t recover “failed satellite launches”?

              The Russians had a crapload of “failed” launches that flew ICBM trajectories. Ditto.

              I used to work in the circuit board and chip industries. We have prettily much aced how to make electronics work in spaceflight, including the nasty rad-flux of deep space. (Voyager) Suborbital is vastly easier.

              Vastly.

              And the Russians manage reliable satellites quite nicely. If you can park a working geosynchronous satellite that lasts for a few years, you have everything needed to hit anywhere on earth with a nuke-sized reentry vehicle.

              And U238 + some other stuff makes a dandy reentry vehicle.

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              1. On our side at least, rad-hard and space rated integrated circuit devices are something we really, really know how to do. Two jobs ago I worked a couple cubes over from that group, where rad-hard and space-rated reprogrammable-FPGA flash devices were even a thing, albeit very new then.

                But you don’t need bleeding-edge geometry rad-hard devices for the electronics to drive an ICBM, so I am fairly sure, as long as nobody sold the electronics boxes for scrap value to buy vodka, the other side’s electronics will work well enough to do guide the launch vehicle through a ballistic trajectory.

                The aging effects on the “physics package”, on the other hand, are reportedly tricky, and I doubt much of anything was done at all in the way of maintaining or refurbing any of the ex-Soviet warheads from 1991 to recently.

                I also seem to recall seeing something about technical concerns that the Russian only-goes-bang-when-authorized hardware is perhaps not as robust after n years of sitting there as when they were built back in the glorious Soviet day, but that was back when nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes” were the major concern, which would imply someone thinks they “fail: yes” rather than “fail: no”.

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                1. Considering how many of the Russian warheads are protected by the equivalent of combination locks and “pull to arm” or “plug to arm” pins, their “safeties” are probably more reliable than ours.

                  Different mindset.

                  Liked by 1 person

        5. Which is an absolutely meaningless point. Because as you still acknowledge: all the parts were tested.

          And yes, that includes testing what happens to the parts when they are under launch conditions.

          The rocket doesn’t GAF what the payload is, given a certain mass and moment. And data about what happens on the rocket in flight is also easy to get. Which means it is easy (well, “simple matter of engineering”) to build a machine which will shake a warhead around the right way to simulate a launch, and then detonate it.

          You are not the first person with >50 IQ to walk the earth believe it or not.

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          1. I’m a computer programmer. Part of my job is writing automated tests for the software I write. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of tests that programmers write: unit tests and integration tests. Unit tests will test one component of the system, in isolation. Integration tests, also known as end-to-end tests, will test the entire system, because the components, when put together, may interact in ways nobody thought about.

            It’s kind of like the difference between theory and practice. You’re familiar with the old joke? “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

            In theory, you’re correct. It should be possible to build a system that simulates the physical stresses the warhead would go through. (And thermal stresses, can’t forget about those).

            In practice, I suspect that no such system would be a perfect simulation, because there’s always something you forget to allow for. For example, perhaps your tests of the rocket were done on a sunny day, but the actual launch-for-real ends up on a rainy day with 30-mile-an-hour winds, which drive a little water into some part of the rocket and cause it to perform differently than in your simulation, changing the stresses the warhead goes through during launch. Will that be enough to make it malfunction? Probably not. But just how probable is “probably”? Nobody knows, because that situation wasn’t simulated.

            And that’s the point. There’s only so much that component testing in isolation can tell you. The interaction between the components is also an important part of the system. That’s why computer programmers write end-to-end tests, and that’s also why engineers do full-reality tests as well as simulations. (E.g., crashing real cars into walls with crash test dummies in the seat, rather than just running the numbers on a computer simulation to see what should happen to the car in a crash).

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            1. I’m a computer programmer. Part of my job is writing automated tests for the software I write.

              As am I.

              And the rockets have been tested to hell and back. The rocket doesn’t care that there is no fissile material aboard. If it does, then the entire design team needs to be fired, and the people who hired them need to be fired too.

              Engineering works a little differently when you have a particular thing you can’t do. Since most programmers never touch anything that sensitive they are mostly unaware of this.

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        6. Not quite true. The US has tested a full up SLBM on May 6, 1962 as part of shot Frigate Bird in Operation Dominic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dominic), yield was as expected, CEP basically sucked (2200 yds off target). Also many of the free fall weapons were tested in the 50s in the Pacific test range and as part of Operation Dominic. As part of Operation Fishbowl Thor missiles (Period IRBM, E.g. Starfish Prime) were used to loft weapons to space for EMP tests. Smaller weapons (Genie Air to air rocket, Davy Crockett recoilless rifle and the M65 atomic cannon) were tested at the Nevada range in fullup testing. No US ICBM has ever been tested full up other than the Polaris A2/W47 tested in Frigate bird. As of 24 September 1963 the Partial Test Ban Treaty was Ratified by the US Senate and the US has been in compliance with that (other than some accidental emission from underground tests in the 70’s) since. Full up testing would be a violation of that treaty. The current US ICBM/SLBM weapons were all developed (Minuteman III. Trident D5) well after that treaty. I believe both Minuteman III and Trident D5 have been fired with inert warheads to the Pacific test range from both from stands and from actual Trident/ silos. To the best of my knowledge no circumpolar shot has EVER been attempted with those weapons (or any ICBM US or Soviet/Russian). However both sides have experience with launches of that sort from Weather/spy satellites and well understand the gravitational variations in those paths.

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      1. I wonder – the trigger part has the fissile materials, which are really the part of concern, and traveling at ballistic entry speeds, if it’s an airburst and the thing only breaks up that fissile material a couple thousand feet up, it might stay pretty localized and make a cluster of nasty deepish holes.
        If it pops the fission trigger and doesn’t fuse, it would likely be not all that dirty, and there would be a lot less uptake from the ground into the mushroom cloud given it would pop pretty high up for that unexpectedly small of a yield.
        Someone who has the actual math obviously would have modeled this at some point. It would be interesting to know what the real answer is on a ICBM delivered fizzle.

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        1. Interesting to think about. This is something approachable. US has ONLY 3 active ICBM warheads. The Minuteman III have either a W78 (original 350KT) or a W87 (for the MX/Peacekeeper warheads repurposed when missile retired 300KT) and the Poseidon D5 carries 10 W68 (40Kt). The W78/W87 are fusion weapons given the yields, W68 is likely just a modern (well vintage 1975 or so) implosion fission weapon with no secondary though perhaps some boost. Failure modes
          1) Total failure of the primary effectively NO fission yield considerably less than 1 ton TNT
          2) Incorrect/incomplete primary ignition. Yield from .1Kt to near full primary yield (20-40KT?).
          3) Failure of Secondary. Yield from full primary ONLY to near full yield. My limited physics tells me that if the secondary ignition fails you’ll probably get nothing from the fusion fuel but the U235/PU “Spark plug” may extend the fission explosion. But how much? Beats me. Every bit of the information you’d need to make a wild ass guess is Top Secret CNWDI (Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information) and not likely to be exposed in any of our lifetimes

          Whats it look like? Easiest way to see is use https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ . Choose a city you’re familiar with and fill out the yield and hit the detonate button. Even on Boston (my target of choice as I can visualize the layout) even the .1 Kt fizzle is not good. About 500M circle of 500 rem pulse exposure (usually fatal within 1 month). About a 350m circle of 5PSI overpressure that basically makes most buildings collapse. Estimate is ~14000 fatalities, 35000+ injuries. If you have a tendency to really obsess over this kind of stuff don’t mess around with Nukemap too much, it isn’t healthy.

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          1. You are missing a number of items from your list. (grin) Open source items. (bigger grin)

            We utilize the learned issues to produce “dial a yield” multistage weapons that can go from citybuster to low-yield tactical.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. For freefall and tactical weapons that is true, but the warheads on the Minuteman III ICBMs are one of two models and the Trident D5 only have the W68. And our Tactical is mostly in the strategic reserve NOT the ongoing stockpile. To my (limited) understanding the dial a yield weapons are basically fision weapons that use Deuterium-Tritium injection to get some fusion which in turn generates more neutrons to get better yield from the fissionable material. All of this happens fast in the first few shakes (10s of nanoseconds) of the blast and how it would go wrong is unclear. Would it totally damp the fission in some fashion or do we just fall back to the pits natural yield?

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      1. The only hard parts on a gun-type uranium device are A) getting enough fizzy uranium, see lots and lots of centrifuges and really nasty chemicals to dissolve the stuff in to be centrifuged, and B) the initiator.

        B was the part the college kid who designed a viable device said was the high bar on figuring his design out, as of course the fizzy bits were assumed, his advisor not requiring a working prototype.

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      2. And the “gun” doesn’t even have to be very good. Science News once let it be known that a drop of N stories (and they didn’t use ‘N’) would do.

        As for the other… Co-60, as one example, is narsty and silent. Fortunately it’s likely so nasty anyone dealing with weaponizing will cease to be before they can deploy it. At least so anyone sane hopes.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Much harder to make the highly enriched U235 that makes the gun design practical.

        “Gun” types wont work right with plutonium, unless you can do some things that really are very, very hard to actually do. And if you insufficiently study Plutonium, the problem isn’t obvious. (Or fail to look it up. Open source.)

        There are so very many ways to squib and fizzle….

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  6. Those of us taking the Yul Brynner way dare you to brush our hair. ;-)

    I always considered “nice” to be a warning to FAFO. You’re “nice” to them, so they know if they get out of hand things are gonna get really nasty. Most of our politicians are just bought and paid for actors giving us the illusion of different sides. Like continuing the FISA court with even more egregious violations of our rights.

    My dog developed the K-9 respiratory illness this week. It had been over a week since he had last been around any sort of other animal, and apparently this brand new infection is such a unique and small bacterium (possibly) that I can’t help but think this might be another modified bug that got out of lab somewhere.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My dog developed the K-9 respiratory illness this week.
      …………………………..

      Prayers being issued for his recovery.

      Talked to my veterinarian clinic. They told me that Pepper has 2 of the 3 annual shots (we’ll start the 3rd in March), that they are recommending to stave off or at least make it less critical. Plus the only places she is going is to the groomers and the veterinarian clinic. Both have instituted strict protocols and warnings on symptoms. Otherwise she isn’t leaving our backyard. Does not isolate her from the mini-poodles (owner just lost her husband last year, it’ll break her heart to lose the pups now), or labs, of the 3 houses behind us. But she is not doing any public access now (which means I’m isolated to short trips without hubby or son with me, oh well).

      apparently this brand new infection is such a unique and small bacterium (possibly) that I can’t help but think this might be another modified bug that got out of lab somewhere.
      …………………

      Agree. First noticed in Oregon. I’m thinking via Portland Ports.

      Liked by 1 person

        2. Does this communicate to cats? Please? I need to know.
          ……………….

          Not that I’ve heard. We have 5 cats … so … Something to as our veterinarian.

          We get all the recommended vaccinations for the cats even though they are not outside roaming. Including and especially rabies. We did not expose the 4 cats (limited as much as possible) until a full panel was run on the semi-feral golf Diamond Woods, 3 year old, we brought home August ’23. (Clean panel. Healthier than the veterinarian figured he would be. But then he had initial shots, and neutered, at 6 months, by the veterinarian who golfs there too. Still no guaranty. Just higher odds.)

          Liked by 2 people

      2. Kat doesn’t go to dog parks, and the neighbor dog she sees is across the road. The rancher’s dogs were sick of something last week, and they haven’t been around lately. Kat and Daisy will go nose-to-nose at the fence, but it’s been a while. With winter weather on hand (no snow yet, and it was jacket weather this afternoon, but quite brisk in the morning), I think she should be all right.

        What-in-hell was Fauci doing this time?

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      3. Right at the moment, I am glad that my dog died of old age/possibly cancer back in the spring. (15 years old.) (Not really glad. I’d have given anything to have him age back 10 years to his prime.)

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        1. Condolences on the lost of your dog. I know how hard it is.

          We lost our last dog 7 years ago. She was 10. She was a brachycephalic type breed. English Toy Spaniel. This illness would have been devastating to her. I understand your feeling.

          Picture not her. But might as well be her twin.

          (FYI. She was a rescue through our veterinarian clinic. Their 4th from the same breeder. They fired the breeder as a client.)

          Staff named her Taylor, because Taylor Swift song was playing in the clinic OR as they were performing the surgery to save her life after they brought her into the rescue program instead of putting her down. She was 2. We kept the name.

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      1. Yeah, although I enjoy READING about conspiracies, I tend to doubt their existence.
        Except this dog thing. I wonder – do they want to get rid of dogs, who, after all, provide EXCELLENT early warning of encroaching demons?

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        2. Nature is always trying to kill everything. There are naturally occuring new pathogens.

          Dont let one frankenbug event oversell the concept. Else everythign looks human-deliberate. (Nature, as stated -is- trying to kill us all.)

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      2. Yeah, although I enjoy READING about conspiracies, I tend to doubt their existence.
        Except this dog thing. I wonder – do they want to get rid of dogs, who, after all, provide EXCELLENT early warning of encroaching demons?

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        1. Slight disagreement. ‘Twould be insane to not retaliate when innocent lives are callously snuffed for such paltry things and momentary political and minor advantage.

          Ashes and glass. And a slowly normalizing spike in background radiation.

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            2. Contrary to the view held by most of the Foggy Bottom Boys and the rest of the academic foreign policy elite, I think the world was a calmer place when DJT made the reaction from the US more unpredictable.

              A world in which the general view is “Don’t poke the Eagle” would be a saner one.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Yup. It’s one reason why Reagan had as much success as he did. The Soviets viewed him as an unpredictable wildcard, and thought he might launch the bombs at the drop of a hat. So they were careful to avoid provoking him.

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                1. What’s the story?
                  “Of course you are aging more slowly/gracefully, Mr. Reagan. You don’t have to face Ronald Reagan!”
                  Or something to that effect.

                  DJT’s response to Kim Jong Un’s bluster about a nuclear button was to bluster right back (speaking the language) “I have a button too. Mine works.” and with the history…. yeah. Even though that might take more preparation than might be desired. Then, maybe needing to prepare anything of that magnitude ain’t such a bad thing?

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              2. Strategic ambiguity is an old concept, which is why it doesn’t surprise me that the Left doesn’t know anything about it.

                It’s also why I blame Hillary for kicking off the Syrian civil war by publicly saying that the US wouldn’t get involved if Assad started killing his own people.

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                1. No different than that ambassador of Papa Bush “green-lighting” Saddam to invade Kuwait.

                  People hear what they want to hear.

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              2. That was my first thought.

                “I know they released the John Wick movies worldwide, and they did very reasonable foreign box office. Did they just not pay attention?”

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        2. Yep.

          After 9/11 there was a clear undercurrent question in conversations I had, even here in Silicon Valley, along the lines of “Why isn’t Afghanistan paved in green glass yet?”

          It’s not that far down.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Someone, a few years later, related he recalled what I had said at the time. Which was there would be calls for a “measured response” and I figured the megaton was valid unit of measure…

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            1. We already had a mini-Beslan…the Nashville trans school shooter. And you see how the left has closed ranks to hide its anti-Christian, anti-White manifesto.

              Like

        4. Definitely dogs.

          I would’ve said children a decade or so ago, but apparently parents have a higher tolerance for Ba’al worshiping nowadays or there’s some more horrible line that has yet to be crossed.

          Like

      2. Yeah, it would either be an NBC retaliation, of which we only officially have N. Or there would be a heck of a lot of people willing to take trip overseas to see what color they are inside. Neither action would be good for anyone.

        Like

      3. CCP already has tried poisoning our pets …

        Or “Why won’t you buy any food sourced from CCP?” Or anywhere other than the US or Canada, truth be told. Do you know it is illegal to transport pet food into Canada or the US, privately, unless sourced and certified by joint Canada and US agency (forget name). Yep. Scramble time when checking regulations taking service dog across Canadian border both into and back. Prescription food, so should be, but, double checked JIC.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. More a case of appauling indifference and simple fraud to pocket ill-gotten loot. Wasnt meant to kill dogs. Wasnt meant not to. They simply didnt care.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Wasn’t meant to kill dogs. Wasn’t meant not to.
            ……………………

            In this case? Perception is everything. It was meant to.

            Like

        2. As I recall that was just bulk run of the mill fraud, that got loose.

          Basically melamine plastic reads as protein in certain tests. So if you’ve got something that is required to have a certain protein content, you can spike it with melamine and get the numbers up.

          As I recall, the same thing led to a bunch of infant deaths in China too, because they were doing the same thing with milk and formula. The kids were starving to death because they were being fed, essentially, colored water, instead of actual milk or anything digestable.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The company that sold the stuff was getting from a bunch of different suppliers, but wasn’t doing good enough quality control on the stuff they were being supplied. And they found out about it just as the Olympics were starting in China, when the CCP had just made it very clear that NO BAD NEWS was to mar the international spectacle.

            So the company kept quiet about it, while probably trying to fix the supply before anyone else noticed. But New Zealanders were also using the same formula, and that’s where the story eventually broke.

            Liked by 1 person

    4. Darn it all….

      Okay, for anyone who might not know this, many Lowe’s have a “pet friendly” policy.

      Always assume a dog has been through the store.

      Yes, every area in the store. Yes, every item. Yes, puppies too young to have their full vaccination schedule, and many too old to have good immune systems.

      Please, please, think twice and keep your furred friend away from potential exposures!

      Liked by 2 people

        1. I see dogs with (and without) service markings in Fred Meyer. Home Depot, at least one of the two farm & ranch stores are dog friendly. Not too many service dogs at the independent grocery, though plenty of dogs in the encampments in the parking lot.

          No encampments at the Fred’s, and a lot near Walmart has loud music to encourage moving right along. Rotten songs, too.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. ADA does not require service dogs to be marked. Although it makes it a whole lot easier to be ignored. Best compliments I’ve ever gotten were when we were on the way out “Wow. Did not know she was with you!” Then too, Pepper is also vertically challenged. Easy to make her unnoticeable. Unless there are children around. They see her. :-)

            Liked by 1 person

      3. Home Depot too. Used to be universal. Now by local top manager. Not the only non-food stores either.

        The young puppy in these stores is a thing because prospect service dog depends on starting socialization at an early age (yes possible later, just more “difficult”. Mine started socialization “late”.) Not meet and great, either people or other animals, but sounds, if not surfaces. Critical times before full vaccinated. The way to do so is to carry the puppy (and not in carts either). But with this new “have no idea how picked up” virus/bacteria, even that isn’t safe.

        Liked by 3 people

  7. rumor that Michelle Obama is a man. It’s a completely insane rumor, on a par with Hillary Clinton having an affair with a space alien.
    …………………………………..

    Wait! What? They’re not?

    ;-) ;-) ;-) ROFLOL

    On a different note. Dec. 16, is a Sapphire event, our 45th wedding anniversary.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. My suspension of disbelief is not up to imagining an alien with such poor judgement.
      ———————————
      “Why waste your time being polite to robots?”

      “Why do you waste time being rude to them?”

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    6. May your anniversary be one of fulfilling joy for the both of you. Not many couples celebrate such a milestone. Such an occasion is as rare as it is precious. Treasure it, and each other, appropriately.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Even her husband don’t probe that considering that their child looks more like a close family friend than the husband…

        Like

  8. “Sleep tight, lefties”

    Yes, by all means, dears, roll over and go back to sleep.

    The murmuring crowd you hear breathing in the dark is merely a figment of your imagination and your scary dreams of Bad Orange Man.

    Presidentish, Joe and Dr. Jill have your back.

    It’s fine.

    Liked by 2 people

            1. It mocks the powerful in a way that can clearly be averred on challenge as a joke, so one is only the owner of a low sense of humor rather than guilty of any high crimes in eyes of the overculture.

              That’s why I am not surprised to see it as behind-the-lines graffiti in lefty LA. The humor makes the challenge of designated authority figures – note the repeating suggestion of Michelle as one savior candidate when POTATUS goes down – repeatable, and thus viral.

              Mockery is perhaps our most potent weapon at this point. Mockery and surprise. Our TWO best weapons. Mockery, surprise, and an agility of thought. THREE!! Our THREE best weapons.

              I’ll come in again.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. Its visually funny too. Like watching C-3PO and R2-D2 stand side by side. Skinny, wispy, little closet case next to hulking mannish beard-wife. Mockery is a powerful weapon. But shooty things is a MORE powerful weapon 😀 🔫

                Liked by 1 person

    2. Big Mike is a reference to the claims that Michelle Obama is a man. It’s referenced frequently in the comments over at Ace’s blog, which is how I know about it. And weirdest of all, I actually saw some “Michelle Obama is a man!”graffiti in a liberal location in LA County.

      The one that’s now out of date due to his retirement and death is the “Searchlight Strangler”, which was a nickname given to Harry Reid. Reid famously admitted after the 2012 election that he’d made up the claims about having seen evidence of Romney cheating on his taxes. So commenters on the right made up the Searchlight Strangler, who had the bodies of dead boys in his basement, aka Reid. And then in an “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” moment, a right-leaning journalist asked him about it.

      Reid blew it off without answering.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The difference is that Harry Reid was careful to make his knowingly false statements about Romney on the Senate floor, where he was immune from being sued for libel and defamation. The commentators and reporters doing payback against Reid did not have the same benefit of being immune from being sued on such grounds.

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        1. There was no chance for a lawsuit with the made-up Reid accusation. The only time it came up in public was a question from a reporter. And a question by default is safe from libel and slander lawsuits because it’s not asserting that the thing being asked about is true. No one ever actually attempted to publicly claim that it was true.

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    3. A passage from Mathew 10 comes to mind, and seems appropriate here –

      34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
      35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
      36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

      Don’t pick fights. But don’t passively roll over, either.

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        1. Not necessarily even that. If the other party walks away, then it might be fine to let them go. The important thing is to not give in.

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          1. Ummm… Not quite what I wrote. More like “Don’t start none. If one starts anyway, be the one standing at the end”.

            Like

  10. I recently finished reading a history of Intel, and the first thing I thought on seeing the title of this post was Andy Grove’s frustration with Bob Noyce’s aversion to conflict, which manifested as niceness — and made it difficult to keep the company on track in the early days. Meetings that went on for hours but decided nothing, etc. The author of the book made a very good argument that Andy Grove taking the helm with his no-nonsense determination and willingness to impose consequences was what made Intel great, as well as innovative.

    Liked by 1 person

    5. May the doctors, nurses, and specialists be blessed with skill and ability beyond their expectation. May your operation be a successful one, and the recovery be swift and as free of lingering pain as is possible.

      Like

  12. You are a breath of fresh air Ma’am! I won’t annoy you by calling you optimistic again, but reading your posts helps me keep things in perspective where many other blogs on our side of things seem hell bent on reducing all of us to panic and rage.

    Liked by 2 people

      2. As the saying goes, it takes [x] muscles to smile, but [3x, 4x, 20x] muscles to frown.

        But it only takes one to pull a trigger, so… :twisted:

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    2. Oh, the rage is there. I’ve been angry a long time, but the crazy people in our country since 10/7 have pushed it way up. And panic…. the border worries me.
      BUT I believe in America. Our elites are a mess, but we aren’t. We’ll get ‘er done.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have plenty of rage all on my own. I don’t need it increased by cherry picked stories and manipulative language. You keep your posts level headed. Take the compliment damn it :)

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Let wrath be not a poison, but a whetstone to your will. Use it to cut away pity, remorse, and hesitation. Let righteous anger be the fulminating force that brings the clarity, control, and precision that comes with disregarding all nonsense and bleating, chanting, or crying. Let your inevitable fulfillment be slow, properly planned, and inevitable.

        The heart may hold pity for those getting a taste of the horrors that the Gods of the Copybook Headings bring with them like a sickening honor guard, but it is oft that the burned hand teaches best. May wisdom follow swiftly, for those with the wit to see.

        And may those who have laughed as civilization burned find their own dreams of power and control shattered beyond all repair. A free man rules himself. He must. For there is no fortune in willing chains, no justice in corruption, and no proper morals in depravity.

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          1. Eh, might’ve been stolen? Definitely butchered and pasted together if it was. I read a lot. Old books, new ones, and so on.

            The “let wrath be not a poison” is probably stolen from somewhere. Bit of it from Buddhism, bit of it from practical stuff an older sergeant said to me if I’m remembering correctly.

            “If someone tries to make you angry, let them. But don’t waste it. Use it to cut away all pity, hesitation, and remorse.”

            That sounds more like what he said. I’ve seen it other places, I swear, but can’t find them off the top of my head.

            The rest is just the residue of life, built layer upon layer, and seeing the seed of evil we all carry inside. We’ve all got that in us, that impulse to twist the knife.

            Good men leash that urge and channel it into goodly works. They don’t deny the hot fires of wrath. All that does is bury the embers, and that’s not a good idea. Wrath and passion yoked to purpose is a powerful thing. Men have done great deeds in such a manner, historically.

            It’s better to acknowledge the dark heart that lies nestled beside the lighter one, I think. Keeps a man honest. Humble.

            And keeping those fires stoked and that memory fresh is a good thing to remember come the campaign craziness season. Remember promises kept- and promises broken. Remember insults given and faith lost.

            It ain’t just for elections. Buy ammo. Store food. Care for and tend to the ones you care for. Strive to be as upright as you can be, an example to your children for how to live.

            That’s a tall order for anyone to meet.

            Like

      3. Speaking of the border…

        CBP has apparently warned that Mexican authorities recently discovered ten IEDs at the border. Apparently they’re believed to be the work of one of the cartels.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. My BIL when my sister lost a political “discussion” with a 12 year old (one of my nieces): “Forget the facts! Stick to the talking points!”

    Same BIL who laughed about having voted in the Republican Primaries in order to elect the least suitable candidate, and screamed bloody murder when Hitlery was “cheated” of “her” Presidency. But when Trump lost, there was nothing wrong and no one ever lost the presidency because of cheating, so obviously anyone who thought there was cheating was insane.

    I have watched these tactics all my life, and I can’t for the life of me see why people can’t see through the hypocrisy. When those on the right use their tactics against them, it’s a demand for jail time and “reform” to make sure it can’t happen again.

    All I can think is that (like my BIL) They know they’re cheating, they know they’re wrong, and they glory in it.

    But he’s such a nice person, he does so many good things for people, that it apparently makes up for his actions.

    My gavorite “cringe” line was “I don’t want to hear it. I OWE HIM.”

    Which actually translates to “He owns me,” but that’s a different issue.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Your BIL is an idiot; share survival equipment and supplies with your sister, but leave him out.

      Yeah, I know; impossible to implement, but IMHO the best course.

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      1. I am glad I am out of state. He’s the kind who would come to my house in an emergency and demand to be put in charge because he is the Master of all Masters.

        And when he failed catastrophically, my sister would step in.

        I have offered supplies before and they both refused. Apparently their money is going to insulate them.

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  14. Sex with an alien is NOT the Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory. If you don’t know the actual conspiracy theory, I’d prefer not to share it as it is very, very grim.

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      1. Trust me, if you are not familiar with what I am referring to stay that way. It makes Epstein sound like Mr. Rogers

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      1. He is also alleged to have yelled, “Free Palestine!” at a Jewish Congressman.
        He works for a Senator Cardin.

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        1. Last I heard you could make that past tense. Of course having someone that would do that on your staff begs the question of why. Of course the ex senator from Delaware and Turnip in chief had a dude that paraded around in stolen womens clothing and like all sorts of kinks as part of the DOE’s nuclear waste section. Not the best choices in subordinates by the senators with D after their name.

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            1. Yep. He posted a, “Poor, poor, pitiful me, I am being made a victim because of who I love,” message and got reamed….by a number of guys who basically replied, “it was where you did it, not who you did it with! You’re making the rest of us look bad!”

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  15. Nice? I guess nice is sort-of OK, provided it’s this sort of “nice” (and assuming the Conan approach to “what is best” is Right Out):

    “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” – General James Mattis

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Agreed – I’ve always liked the idea and intent of the Mattis quote. Roadhouse comes to mind too: “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”

      In my current life It costs me little or nothing to be “nice” so I tend to be so in most situations. That does not mean that I am actually nice, I’m just looking like it. However, there is also (thank goodness not often) when the command voice comes out and there is no fooling around. Note too that in extreme situations in a FAFO event the response will be very responsive.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. Be nice until the capacity for humility is gone and you can no longer ignore the consequences of others actions. Then expect no quarter and give none, until once again you learn humility.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. “Or they discover a mean tweet you sent in 1968, even though you had to time-travel for the purpose.”

    This is why shifters work behind the scenes to try to keep Linear A from being translated. ♉

    Liked by 2 people

  22. I warn people that I am dangerous. I will make them think. So some are interested. I make them think.

    I am fond of paradox, so I will offer one of the 317 I have found. This stretches their brain, so there is more room for me to infect them. So we have a dangerous gift to offer. To wake those who are woke by making them think.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. “It’s time to stampede them.”

    Over the cliff. Lots of good eatin’ on a cliff-stampeded mammoth, and pre-tenderized too.

    Like

  26. Back in the day, any conservative/right winger who had the temerity to hold an opposing opinion to left wing nuttery was expected to approach, hat in hand, head bowed, tugging at his forelock, apologizing profusely and expressing his opinion in the most wishy-washy terms possible to minimize the offense. That was why the Left hated Rush Limbaugh so much. He wasn’t afraid to shove it in their faces, basically telling them to “eat s*** and die,” although using much more polite terms to do so. To compound the offense, he hadn’t even attended one of their elite or even not-so-elite universities, and yet could argue rings around them “with half his brain tied behind his back.” That, and his “talent on loan from G*d” shtick were calculated to make their heads explode, which is why his fans loved him so much. The Left’s reaction to this was what is always is: a foaming-at-the-mouth derangement syndrome, just as it was for Trump and Sarah Palin. These days, the person a smart Lefty (I know, oxymoron) won’t cross, especially on gun control, is Ted Nugent.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Pulled from Heilung “Krigsgaldr”

    What am I supposed to do
    If I want to talk about peace and understanding
    But you only understand the language of the sword
    What if I want to make you understand that the path you chose leads to downfall
    But you only understand the language of the sword
    What if I want to tell you to leave me and my beloved ones in peace
    But you only understand the language of the sword

    I let the blade do the talking…
    So my tongue shall become iron
    And my words the mighty roar of war
    Revealing my divine anger’s arrow shall strike

    All action for the good of all
    I see my reflection in your eyes
    But my new age has just begun

    The sword is soft
    In the fire of the furnace
    It hungers to be hit
    And wants to have a hundred sisters
    In the coldest state of their existence
    They may dance the maddest
    In the morass of the red rain

    Beloved brother enemy
    I sing my sword song for you
    The lullaby of obliteration
    So I can wake up with a smile
    And bliss in my heart
    And bliss in my heart
    And bliss in my heart

    Coexistence, conflict, combat
    Devastation, regeneration, transformation
    That is the best I can do for you

    I see a grey gloom on the horizon
    That promises a powerful sun to rise
    To melt away all moons
    It will make the old fires of purification
    Look like dying embers
    Look like dying embers
    Look like dying embers

    Like

  30. “But when people are rude to me on first meeting (or first coming to comments), it’s a complete puzzle. Because, really?”

    Interesting, years ago some gay activist (I’ve long forgotten his name) who was popular with you because he liked to tweak leftists, said something inappropriate (nothing horrible) that gave his leftist enemies ammo to suppress him.

    You wrote a story supporting him lamenting his situation. I wrote a comment stating that while it was unfortunate that he was catching shit but given his position he should have been more careful.

    And then hell broke loose. You along with some of your minions read me the riot act, castigating me for saying that the guy should have taken more care with his actions given his enemies.

    Anyway, reading your comment about not being rude to strangers gave me a chuckle.

    Like

    1. Really? I know who it was, and he’s since gone nuts. And you were UTTERLY wrong and empowering leftists digging through people’s past and such.
      As for “Pile on” I’ll point out many people agreeing you’re wrong is not IMPOLITE. It’s political argument.
      I can and often am rude when someone is being an idiot. I rarely call names unless I’m called names first. And often the names I call are LITERAL.
      Like in this case, you’re revealing yourself for a twitterpated nincompoop.
      Have a nice day.

      Like

    2. You wrote a story supporting him lamenting his situation. I wrote a comment stating that while it was unfortunate that he was catching shit but given his position he should have been more careful.

      And then hell broke loose. You along with some of your minions read me the riot act, castigating me for saying that the guy should have taken more care with his actions given his enemies.

      Oh, horrors!

      Her “minions” engaged you like a freaking adult, quickly, to the fainting couch!

      :eyeroll:

      Like

      1. I find it hilarious that commenters, with whom I often engage in arguments in the comments — i.e. all of the regulars — are my “minions” Like, you know, I command them. (Herding cats would be easier.)

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        1. The guy who claims to be a “former marine” insisted that I am you over at Insty.

          Which is extra funny, since he’s been interacting with me (very minorly) for YEARS before either of us were here.

          Like

          3. Nope, sorry. No insurance wants to work with us after the last incident with Fluffy.
            The good news is that Dr. George Saint, DDS, has successfully modified a lance into a dragon-sized toothpick, which seems to help.

            Like

      1. Yeah. I remembered. It was that kind of bizarre position, so of course people yelled at him. Apparently he thinks I control every commenter with surgical precision.
        Note it was a guest post, which means I wasn’t even ….. paying much attention. That’s why I have guest posters.
        Also, his characterization that I was fond of Milo or some such. Nah. He was always fairly annoying. BUT this doesn’t detract from defending someone unfairly jumped.

        Liked by 1 person

  31. I think a distinction needs to be drawn here between “nice” and “polite.”

    When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
    (Winston Churchill)

    But oh beware my country, when my country grows polite!
    (Kipling)

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  32. This is a discussion I often have with my fellow Jews. Good, kind, polite, and nice aren’t, and should not be, synonyms. Yet too many think they are.

    This is why we were so easily herded onto the cattle cars in Europe 80 years ago. Too many European Jews didn’t want to make waves or cause problems. If more Jewish communities had emulated the Warsaw Ghetto, and had done so earlier, things would have gone down quite differently. If Israel hadn’t been so worried about “being nice” for most of the past 70 years, they wouldn’t be in the current situation either.

    One of the ways this is evident in Judaism, is how Tikun Olam has been coopted as “be nice no matter what.” That’s not the lesson we want to teach our kids. Be kind, be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone in the room if it turns out to be necessary would be a better one.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Be kind, be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone in the room if it turns out to be necessary would be a better one.
      …………………………..

      “Be kind, be polite,” remember “Never Again”, have a plan to kill everyone in the room if it turns out to be necessary would be a better one.”

      FIFY

      Just saying.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Yes. Which is why I helped fund the gent back east who developed a coat that meets his congregation’s understanding of men’s dress (the belted coat) with concealed-carry functionality. He has the will, he just needed help with the way.

          Liked by 1 person

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