It is said that those whom the gods love they destroy. And those whom the gods destroy they first drive mad.
Abstract the gods from it, and it makes perfect sense. The favored ones in any society, favored to the level of “no consequences” are driven mad and ultimately destroyed. This is part of the reason the left is how it is. For 100 years, partly because of the cultural overstructure, facilitated by mass communication with easy choke points, solidified in place by FDR though it started before him, in the long war of the 20th century, they have been beyond control and beyond reproach for 100 years and maybe a little longer now.
No? Go back and look. Even the red scare, who came out of it smelling like a rose and capable to stomping down on anyone impugning their pushing of outright communism and pro-soviet propaganda into the culture? It certainly wasn’t the anti-communists.
McCarthy’s biggest mistake was being too late. There was nothing he could do that wouldn’t be twisted against him and make anti-communists look dictatorial and ridiculous, because the left — the extreme left even — was already fully in control of all the choke points. In his defense, most people were unaware of it. My husband managed to be unaware of it in the eighties and thought I was nuts when I pointed it up, until after 9/11 when a lot of the masks fell off.
But the result of being able to do whatever you want, and having power conferred on you by belonging to a — rather toxic, in this case — group of believers (toxic because the beliefs are toxic) is that you’ll do what you want. And if your beliefs don’t come with limiting boundaries — and Marxism doesn’t, being based on envy and an inversion of traditional/Christian values — then you’ll go off the rails to insane. And you’ll quickly proceed to the level of insane that makes you blind to anything outside your belief system. Or to how amoral and corrupt the belief system you subscribe to is.
I came across this yesterday: He Eats the Souls of Human Babies. It purports to explain how blind the left can be about Trump, and to an extent it nails it, except the author accidentally reveals his own blindness in an hilarious almost bizarre fashion. Note I know nothing about the author. I’m presuming he is male, though one of the comments makes me wonder. And I have no clue if he’s right or left. It’s possible he is left and trying to stand in the center. A few of the recently red-pilled have blindspots the size of the universe. Or it’s possible he’s on the right and still has blindspots that tend left.
Yes, I’ll explain, in a minute, but first this is the thing: because until the internet, the culture we swam in was pervasive and default left, even the right has accepted some “rules of the game” that aren’t even vaguely so. Event he right tends to assume the left “has a point” on some completely insane things, where the left has no point whatsoever, not even remotely. An even the right knows a lot of things that just ain’t so, but which were proclaimed from the rooftops so long we don’t question them. One example of this in a recently red-pilled female (Wolfe? I think?) was her assuming that Trump making a bad comment about ONE woman was an insult to all women. WFT, out? A woman is a woman. There are a lot of women I don’t like, and some I hole in near-reverence. Why would saying that Occasional Cortex (if I remember correctly) has the brain power of a very small lab rat an insult to all women? Is saying that Joe Biden is a brainless ass and always was an insult to all males? Or even all white males? WHY? Why should women be beyond criticism, even individual women? But this woman seemed to think that without examining it. And none of her commenters picked up on this.
In this case, the rats in the writers’ head are as follows: he says that the left didn’t need to invent the pee smear there was a lot to attack Trump on in reality, and why weren’t they using this?
So he shows a capture from Trump’s Art of the Deal:
He says that thing about the 70 year old guy and three blondes from Sweden would be enough to attack Trump on.
This tells me three things about the writer:
1- He’s never read any celebrity-written books, which are usually ghost writer written books. Let’s be honest, they’re all pretty cringe. If you read Hillary’s supposed brilliance, or Obama’s or … anyone’s you’ll come across far worse (if SOMETIMES more politically correct) stuff. Probably the worst was Jimmah Carter’s (or Rosalyn’s. It’s been ten years) book, which for years we owned and used as a game where each of us read a passage at random, and the one that made people laugh the most was the winner. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if this is the secret revenge of the ghost writer.
2- He doesn’t understand males. No, seriously. Even if he’s a male, the left has gotten in his head enough that he doesn’t get the appeal of a club so powerful that even ugly old guys can pick up three babes. (The blonds from Sweden is a cultural moment. In the 70s for… reasons it was assumed every Swedish girl was a slut. I don’t know why. But this was “known” even in Portugal when Swedish girls were largely mythical. Blonds from Sweden, in multiples, were what every guy dreamed about.) If revealed, that cringe would earn him points with 99% of straight males, and get married women to go “he’s an idiot, just like my husband” which might dispose them towards him.
3- He doesn’t get the left. The left couldn’t use that because they themselves obsessively look for celebrities/bigger people to interact with that can pull them up. It’s 90% of their dominance. The “I wanna belong to the club of the powerful and have sexual access” is what the left does and their modus operandi right now. Whether they actually BELIEVE Marx or pretend to believe, until it becomes an unconscious reflex is up for debate, because all of them are the type of people who sells their soul for access. And access means “power and babes.” Whether the power is money or influence is immaterial, and it’s usually both.
His other misfire is his inability to understand why the left won’t use “Trump is still proud of the vaccines” against Trump. This requires ignoring that the left tried to make those vaccines MANDATORY. And made a lot of people take them against their will. And their most prominent governors were insane about locking people down for what turns out to be the sniffles. And–
So, yeah, they can’t do that.
But other than that, he is correct about how they miss reality by a mile. Or more than a mile. And keep insisting Trump will lock everyone up/put them in camps.
For the record, I’ve been seeing THAT since Reagan. It is a variation of Whoopy Goldberg’s bizarre idea that the Republicans want to institute slavery. Because, you know, the party of individualists, who want to free individuals to make their own decisions are… secretly slavers?
He’s right that they are fighting a war not with reality but with the stuff in their own heads.
It has been suggested what they think Trump (and each republican, who’s never done it) will do is a projection of what they’d like to do to us. That is possibly more than possible but probable now, looking at what they’re doing to Trump and don’t seem to realize they’re doing.
But it’s more likely they are so terrified of Trump/Bush/Reagan/whoever doing this to them because they are terrified of this person and have to SOMEHOW justify it to themselves. Or because they are inherently aware of the power of the centralized government, but still want it, in their own hands, so they’re only “allowed” to be terrified of “someone bad” taking it. Which is why they must vilify anyone who opposes them and tries to get power.
Or it’s possible this is a magnification of their “cancelling” tactics to individuals who don’t agree with them in fields they control. Usually when someone stepped out of line in SF/F what you got was “she’s a bad person” or “Do you know what she did?” or the even vaguer and more efficacious “Well, we all know about HER.” You never knew why this person was blacklisted, only that being seen with him/her was death to your career, and that they’d done something to deserve it. Whether the something was talking back to an editor (Waves hand in the air, and shakes it all about) or being an evil person who roasts and eats baby puppies on camera is left to the listeners imagination.
And to an extent, while they controlled the media completely the same was done republican candidates in a wink, wink, nudge nudge way. Sure, they assured us Goldwater would start world war III but if you go back and look at it, a lot of it is was wink wink nudge nudge.
But the openness, starting with Bush — Clinton, because of Rush, really — and expanding, as the internet expanded, has forced them to be explicit. Hence the “He’s gonna put us in camps” or “They want to enslave us” both of which sound completely insane to dispassionate observers. Mostly because they’re actually completely insane. It’s just insanity proceeding from their political creed, which makes no sense outside it, and which is still indulged by a lot of people who have been so exposed to their creed they think it’s reality at some level. As shown above.
The other thing this guy isn’t right about is his forecast of the future when he says the next 20 years of American policy will be:
HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN.HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN HITLER PUTIN.
He’s wrong, because this is late-stage insanity, and is already not being tolerated. Not by the people. I mean, the left can scream that all they want to, but most of them have already tuned it out.
And frankly, the biggest risk at this point is that they are retroactively white-washing both Hitler and Putin, by applying their names to people who are fighting for individual liberty. You already see this with so many on the right trying to defend Putin in comments, even though Putin is a KGB horror who HAS NEVER CHANGED and wants to rebuild the USSR this time under the name “Russia.” Like all the people who believe he is a “nationalist” — um…. no. He is like the Soviets, an internationalist, it’s just that he wants to build a supernational entity subjugated to Russia. But since he identifies Russia with himself (l’etat c’est moi) it’s difficult to know where that stops.
No one is — or no large numbers are — for now wanting to just defend Hitler (except on the left because of the Jew hatred) but if the left continues applying his name to their opponents and saying that someone inoffensive is just like him there is the risk of our profoundly mal-educated youth looking around and going “Well, if these idiots who can’t do anything right don’t like Hitler, then I need to find the Nazis and give them a phone call.”
Needless to say that’s one way things can go seriously wrong for a while. (I don’t think they will, not in the US, but in Europe…. it’s far more likely.) Not permanently, because again, that kind of government doesn’t work, and would fall apart, but for a while.
But more importantly, that’s not 20 years of American policy, because we don’t have 20 years. At most, highly extended, we have 10. And even then I doubt it. I’m seeing people I never expected, people who aren’t political at all, sniffing the air and smelling smoke. That’s even more shocking than the leftists being redpilled for some reason, because leftists in our sphere are already TUNED TO POLITICS. A change of direction when you’re already on the road is easier than someone who is miles away, in the middle of a field suddenly realizing that the road everyone else has been on is wrong, and deciding to do something about it.
You see, the leftist madness is not just in how they signal/campaign/what they see.
Yes, sure, that’s pretty terrible, because they’re stuck in the 20th century, and their techniques for the 20th century (demonize person in all the culture;make them look bad; have celebrities endorse the other guy) aren’t working, so they’re doing in the open a lot of things they did behind the scenes, and they’ve switched almost exclusively to censorship, legal/economic persecution of opponents AND FRAUD. Fraud being the decisive factor and what leads to insanities like opening the border to facilitate massive fraud. (Not seeing the almost inevitable backlash of that is almost amusing. If we weren’t living here, but in a galaxy far away, watching this on a movie screen.)
But nothing else they do works, including economic and social stuff.
To be fair, it never did. It only appeared to because control of the information allowed things to look like they were working. People might not be better off, but if everything told them the country was better off, they assumed their own situation was a fluke. Also, they were afraid to talk about it.
But now we have 100 years of crazy leftist policies, piled one on the other, and the left is trying to solve failures by pushing “the same thing but more intense and harder.”
And it’s all falling apart. All of it. From education to jobs. From retail to home life. ALL OF IT is DISINTEGRATING.
Mad people can’t establish sane policy. Or even save themselves. If fully in control of centralized choke points, they can maybe keep control for a while.
But it ends badly. Very badly. When, I don’t know, but the “badly” is obvious. And the “not twenty years” is obvious, because a lot of things are ALREADY at critical point.
The problem, of course, before you say it, is that they can hurt us a lot on their way down. Not catastrophically. Remember I’ve already seen a variation of this story: disintegration means everyone gets a little bit poorer, every year, not that next year we’re all wearing collanders. And rebuilding in these situations can happen bizarrely fast. When the boot is removed from the face of the society and the economy, rebuilding can be in a couple of years.
Look, we’ve had two really non-Marxist presidents in the last 50 years, and the left was permanently disrupted by them. They’re not NEARLY as strong as they still manage to project. They’re just loud and still in control of a lot of megaphones, plus the levers they installed in YOUR head from kindergarten.
Repeating: none of their five year plans worked, none of their grand wars worked. No communist regime, EVER was even able to feed its own people. OR perfectly propagandize its own people.
If you think they are now fulfilling a cold war plan, you’re giving them way too much credit. And yes, I know a lot of that interview. It works great as a “we meant to do that” if they get you to interpret everything that happened their way. But the interview itself is the psy ops. Whether the person giving it was really a defector or not.
They are not powerful. They are not strong. They are certainly no great planners. (Though they are all of that inside their heads.)
What they are for real is completely insane. And that’s bad enough. As grandmother would say “I wouldn’t take a madman to heaven with me. He might yet push me down.”
In the end we win, they lose. The interim will hurt like a mother.
Be not afraid. Fear fights on the side of the enemy. Be prepared. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
And build under, build over, build around. Because we’ll still need structures and functioning institutions (some of them) after the madness is gone.
According To Hoyt 
What was really Insane is when they went from “I won’t take Trump’s Vaccines” to “If you don’t take the vaccines, you hate the elderly.” (or some thing like that.)
They change their “stories” and expect people to “Do As They Say”.
Sadly, there are idiots who go along with their insanity. 👿👿👿👿👿
The American Communists were pro-Hitler after he and Stalin agreed to carve up Poland…then turned around on a dime when Hitler went after the Soviets. They are relying on their supporters having the attention span of a six-month-old.
Identify one substantive difference between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.
I’ll wait…
Nazis had spiffy uniforms. And (providing you weren’t Jewish or a Communist), it was possible to dodge the Nazis to an extent. The Communists wanted control of EVERY aspect of your life.
The Reader thinks that should be provided you weren’t Jewish, Communist or any one of a long list of ‘undesirables’ (i.e. most everyone in Eastern Europe all the way to Ukraine). And if the Nazis had managed to conquer the Soviet Union that list would have gotten longer. The Reader concedes the spiffy uniforms.
As you said, the uniforms.
National Socialists all have snazzy uniforms, from the bottom up. International Socialists all have ugly uniforms, from the top down. Actually the people at the bottom probably look better than their ‘betters.’
Both control all aspects of life. The Nationalists do it more subtly, doing the control thing through regulations and ‘laws’ and such, telling companies what they can make and sell, telling the schools what can be taught, telling the religions what can be worshiped. You know, kind of like the USA today.
The Internationalists do it directly. Direct ownership of factories and schools and stores and religion.
They had Hugo Boss as their clothing designer.
John in Indy
Nazis dressed better
The Germans had better beer. (Though, I’m not sure how much brewing happened between 1939 and 1945.)
Nazis and Fascists allow private ownership of big businesses. Granted if you didn’t do what they wanted you to do, you might find yourself, at best, in disfavor and not making much profit, At worst suffer a sad demise and someone else replacing you.
Oh, you can ‘own’ a business, on paper, but The Fatherland tells you how to run it, who to hire (and who not to), how much to pay them, what to make, and what price to sell it for. Other than that, you’re free.
Any resemblance to our current economy is purely intentional.
In short, Nazi and Fascism, you still own your company, but the state owns you.
careful you don’t strain yourself
s/The Fatherland/Mommyland/
People here have mentioned the Toxic Mother/Toxic Father Government metaphor. Daddy says “be tough and Follow Orders!” Mommy says “be nice and Ask Permission.”
Toxic Daddy says anything you do is OK unless Daddy Told You No. Toxic Mom says nothing you do is OK if you didn’t Ask Mom First, and wait for permission. Mommy wants you to be safe. And be nice! Anybody starts crying, everybody else gets a spanking. And a Time Out.
No, the Nazis and Fascists allowed private ownership of *small* businesses – the ones that were basically too small to bother with micro-managing. If you had a big business, then you were likely told how you should run your business.
No business is too small for today’s Leftroids to micromanage.
Being the socialists they were, they told everyone how to run things, they just paid closer attention to the bigger ones, though they were less intrusive if you did what they wanted while doing your thing in little ways, or if they saw it as a booster to the nation’s reputations (Auto Union, Benz racing, etc)
Nazis left the control of business in private hands for the purposes of working out how to carry out their edicts.
spelling
Bad Moustache size: Joe’s was bigger.
I think a six-month-old has a better attention span, to be frank.
Oh, yes – that was the week that disillusioned a lot of hitherto mildly progressive sympathizers in the US: the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939. Here you have a lot of anti-Nazi progressives allying with the Communists because reasons … and then suddenly the Nazis and the Soviet Commies are Besties Buddies Forever! And barely two years later, whiplash when Besties Buddies Forever became Total WAR, upon invasion of the Soviet Motherland … yes, a lot of 1930s-era progressives had their eyes opened by that little bit of Realpolitik.
Not creatures like Lillian Hellman and her die-hard Commie pals, however. (Spit!)
It is also where the “Nazis are rightwing!” comes from. When Hitler turned eastward ahead of Stalin’s expectation, he wrote off their former alliance by saying they’d gone rightwing. All their supporters dutifully followed.
Stalin’s complaint was “How dare you stab me in the back while I was reaching for my dagger!” 😛
I thought it was Uncle Joe’s club that called Adolf’s “right-wing,” not the Führer himself.
“That which opposes International Socialism is Fascism.”
Often rendered today as “That which opposes Communism is Fascism.”
Thus Trotsky was “fascist” and right-wing.
…
Listening to Maoists argue with Stalinists can be entertaining. Especially if they think no outsiders are watching.
Crab Bucket arguing.
there’s an episode of The World At war which is on the English home front and illustrates it even more clearly. British leftists didn’t want to fight Hitler while thr Luftwaffe was bombing England, but as soon as Russia was invaded they immediately became rabidly pro war. The hypocrites.
“…where the left has no point whatsoever, not even remotely…”
This. Especially since around 1930. Communism has an inherent problem – revolution is a cornerstone of their doctrine. They mean to murder their way to Utopia. And the modern Left is 99% Communist, either secret or open.
Yeah, right, Whoopy. The party that ended slavery wants to bring it back.
Here’s a question for ya: Why do you adhere to the party that enslaved your ancestors, rather than the one that set them free?
Why do you ignore all the blatantly racist Democrats while falsely accusing Republicans of racism?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a Republican law. The only reason that racist bastard Johnson [spit!] signed it was because the Republicans had enough support to override a veto and make him look even stupider.
This. Democrats started a CIVIL WAR to keep the new Republican President from being able to do anything at all to or about slavery, which killed 2.5% of the U.S. population, the equivalent using todays population to 8.4 million people dying.
And the Republicans ended slavery permanently hard enough that the Democrats had to wear sheets to do things to ex-slaves.
Of course, anyone on that show is a moron, so paying any attention to what any of them say is a massive waste of time.
But the historical ignorance is staggering.
The South didn’t want to conquer the North; they just wanted to be left alone. After they seceded and formed the Confederacy, they were satisfied. Lincoln and the Northern oligarchs pushed for a war to force the South back under their thumbs.
They pounded the anti-slavery drum because going to war for taxes and rich men’s profits wouldn’t play well.
Which is not to say that slavery wasn’t a horrible remnant of our primitive past which needed to be abolished.
It’s Time For Another Reminder.
Sarah (our host) dislikes “discussions” about the American Civil War.
Thank you, Drak.
Plus 100 for the dragon.
I’m guessing it’s because of how few comments such a discussion takes to go “hot.”
I have wondered before how long it takes for people to stop being angry at circumstances long before their births, but since people are still upset about the burning of the Library of Alexandria, I’d guess that number approaches unity with the historical record.
Lee got lost in Pennsylvania.
“the equivalent using todays population to 8.4 million people dying.”
how many of us have they killed off by creating a bioweapon and then a fake vaccine that kills more than it helps, and by forbidding doctors to use common medications to help, and by causing bankruptcies and suicides and tearing families apart?
The (D) propaganda wizards must have taken a leaf from the Arabs about rebranding. Arabs became “Palestinian.” Democrats became the party of justice and equality.
“Freedom is Slavery” gets reversed and explains much of Donk efforts.
Dad told me about the 1964 election. “You heard it everywhere, all the time. ‘If you vote for Goldwater, we go to war in Southeast Asia.’ Whaddya know, they were right. I voted for Goldwater and sure enough, we went to war in Southeast Asia.”
Case Study #6 in Why Democrats Are Bad For National Security.
I had a relative who was able to hear LBJ express some decidedly old-school Southern views on folks with high melanin content. He certainly didn’t call them “blacks” when the press was absent.
LBJ was one vicious SOB. To dang near everyone.
As far as I can tell the only folks LBJ liked were his basset hounds and the SOB picked them up by their ears. Probably one of the nastiest pieces of work to reside in the Whitehouse since Wilson.
they are actually very few but the Bolsheviks were fewer and look at the damage they did.
Rob Henderson had an interesting observation that all the communist groups push eating the rich (I hate you daddy) destruction and mayhem, None say join us to feed the poor or anything like that. at the end of the day that’s the current left’s biggest weakness since the, false, claim that they were for the poor and oppressed it what gave them their moral stature. waiving the freak flag doesn’t have the same resonance.
Waving the Freak Flag? If only. They’re beating everybody over the head with the Freak Flagpole.
While they scream Nazi with their Anti-Fa arm bands and black SS clothing. May God have mercy on them, we should use them for fertilizer to feed those same poor they want to enslave.
Trying to feed the poor, in foreign lands seems to result in a lot more poor farmers and starving mouths – if the food isn’t just stolen at the ports by warlords and corrupt governments, or sold by corrupt NGOs before it reaches its supposed destination nation.
The best way to feed the poor is free trade. It’s a real Pity the free traders don’t make that argument effectively, when they make it at all. Then again, you’ll find very few free traders among the republicans never mind the legions whose rice bowl is filled, directly or indirectly, at the public trough.
BGE,
A couple of points on “free trade”:
Is it still free trade when absolutely none of our so called trading partners feels obligated to practice it?
How about when our own government has imposed such a crushing “regulatory tax” on our labor, raw material production, and manufacturing that it all moves overseas in self defense?
This is the kind of free trade that moved our supply chain to China, Mexico, and any where else our domestic Marxists wanted to enrich at our expense, until 2016 on.
You won’t like what I have to say and I don’t intend to argue it. I’m going to write a short piece and go to bed since this is well beyond the scope of a comment on a blog post and I’ve had a long, sh-t day.
We don’t have free trade here and I never said we did. We once sorta did. The comment was how to feed the poor and the more free trade, the more the poor get fed and many stop being the poor. To the degree that those poor are foreigners, well …. sigh.
What we have in America now is central planning more akin to fascist economics than to free trade. If you would like a villain, look toward the central planning central banks — a Marxist concept, mind — whose financial repression changed the balance between the cost of labor and capital in the west. Add to that massive corruption of the state, education, and management and you get what we have now.
I’m actually quite sympathetic to the plight of the people who’ve lost their livelihoods with the loss of manufacturing and I don’t blame it on the unions, though they didn’t help, because the comparative productivity makes the inter country output fairly comparable. Nope, the cost of capital was driven to effectively zero by central banks while the price of labor remained higher. Borrowing money and buying back shares is a much more efficient use of it than employing factory workers and the gains accrue almost entirely to management and other well connected people. Remind me to tell you all about Boeing (e.g.,) and how the tech lords wouldn’t exist without the free money if you’d like.
Again, I doubt you’ll like my reasoning, but it wasn’t free trade, but rather the lack of free trade that caused the situation we’re in now. the FRB did this through financial repression. Abolish the FRB, and the ECB, and the BOJ, and the PBOC, and all the rest of the fascist central planners. Let the cost of capital float, let interest rates float, let currencies float, let the massive productivity advantage that America has — has mind you, not had, has — work.
The US would benefit from free trade more than anyone since productivity would then dominate and Mexican factory workers and African farmers would benefit too because comparative advantage is a real thing. China doesn’t do so well in this because they aren’t very productive, nor are they very cheap without the free money.
As a human and as a Christian the poor getting less poor is always a good thing.
As long as it’s clear we’ve never had it. Too many people in the National Review crowd have lectured us to stop being xenophobic by insisting that we haven’t had anything remotely resembling free trade for a LONG time.
The other thing is this term “comparative advantage”. I have no doubt that it’s real…. but so is “inflation rate”, “unemployment rate”, and “climate change”. They’re also incredibly easy to manipulate, and an awful lot of people inside and outside of government have been doing just that for quite a long time.
Once trust has been broken, how do we get it back? Especially since there’s also been a pretty systematic effort to corrupt or destroy the original data?
Comparative advantage is a concept that goes back to umm Ricardo in the mid 19th century. It’s a real thing and a useful economic concept.
The classic example is Portugal making (Port) wine to sell to England and England selling manufactured goods back to Portugal. England had (has) fossil fuel resources that Portugal doesn’t so therefore the English cost of energy was lower and therefore factories in England could make things cheaper than ones in Portugal where they would need to import the coal/oil. Portugal on the other hand has the climate to make wine far cheaper and better in quality than England . Hence both sides benefit when Portugal specializes in wine and England in manufacturing.
Its also not really susceptible to measurement manipulation unlike, as you point out, inflation and unemployment.
We’re in violent agreement here that climate change is basically a scam.
Oh, climate change is real. The climate has been changing for 4 1/2 billion years. For 90% of that time, the environment has been unsuitable for human life. If you had a time machine, and went back more than about 400 million years, you would die.
“Its also not really susceptible to measurement manipulation unlike, as you point out, inflation and unemployment.”
Counter example: Your example, wine vs manufacturing, involved a natural resource, wine, whose production is dependent on factors such as climate and soil composition which are verifiable factors more difficult to manipulate (you can improve soil). My counter example is also a natural resource: oil.
The US showed for a long time and as recently as 2020 that it had the resource in abundance and could produce it in the quantities demanded at a lower price. So why are we a net oil importer again? Because the “comparative advantage” was systematically manipulated against the US by various factors. There are very scientific looking “studies” to back up that perception. Does anyone believe them?
Comparative advantage is not a natural law.
The best explanation of comparative advantage I’ve heard uses the example of a professor who can type 100 words per minute compared to a secretary who can type 60 words per minute. The professor is better off hiring the secretary to do the typing, despite her being less skilled at it, because the secretary has a comparative advantage in typing. The value of the secretary’s typing skills vs her other skills has a higher ratio than the value of the professor’s typing skill vs his other skills.
The higher ratio is the secretary’s comparative advantage in typing, while the professor’s superior typing skill is an absolute advantage but not a comparative advantage.
So maybe you should be concerned with those problems instead of handing the people causing the problem EVEN MORE POWER, which they in their perfect benevolence and innocence will of course never misuse.
Haven’t handed anyone any such thing.
While also denouncing the flagpole as a misogynistic phallic symbol being used by the partriarchy for oppression.
OTOH,at least one of the Hamass groupies had another use for a flagpole:
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2024/04/22/poisoned-ivy-jewish-yale-student-stabbed-in-the-eye-during-campus-protest-n3786943
Quite literally in the case of one Jewish student, who was reportedly poked in the eye with a Palestinian flag just the other day. She was trying to cover a demonstration at her university for the local newspaper. But the demonstrators attacked her, and then formed a line of bodies to block her from being able to see what was going on.
Which also feeds into another absurdity of the whole thing. They demonstrate because they want to scream their position to the world. But only approved news sources are allowed to report on what happens at their demonstrations.
Odd that the Hamazis here and now seem to follow Communist tactics, not the ones typical for annoyed Arabs/Muslims in and around Israel.
Basically, the same (usually very pale) scumbags swapped “Back Bloc” attire for Keffiyehs.
Note to folks of thus forum who frequent college campuses. The opposition is seeking to reproduce the Kent State and Jackson State shooting events of the 60s. They will ramp up until things get kinetic. They need martyrs, especially “uninvolved” ones. Don’t volunteer.
This!
And the Reader notes that the Dumb Party immediately plays into their hands. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/23/josh-hawley-tom-cotton-urge-biden-to-mobilize-nati/
c4c
c4c
We won’t even have to burn down their Universities, they are doing it themselves. Can’t wait for the DNC Convention, in Chicago, where the police don’t arrest criminals, only those who try and defend themselves. I can’t wait until they let the people who riot and protest out of jail the same day so they can get rest a good meal and be back on the streets again by dusk. I wouldn’t put it past the cops to just drop them off a few blocks for the convention why waste the time driving all the way downtown? If you live in a Blue/Democrat/Soros is your God, State and City. I’d move soon. Real Soon. Because they are starting to eat themselves, at this point anything could happen in blue cities and states. Pass the pop corn, it’s the good part.
P.S.
You know the crooks just can’t wait for all those out of towner’s to show up. All thoise rich democrat liberals and all their supporters, easy pickins. And don’t for one minute think all those Illegals aren’t thinking the same thing. If we get lucky, an Illegal will kill and rape a few Liberal Democrats, no, that isn’t an evil thought, poetic justice if anything. And yes it is with malice, but they have earned it, my heart is saved for the innocents they are destroying, not the people who caused their destruction. I’ll leave it to their Karma and Satan to deal with them. I’ll pray for the innocent and damn the Democrats.
The donks have zero problems using the State enforcers to protect their key games and essential players. Any uppity Leftroid nincompoops at the Donk convention are going to get arrested, probably after some liberal application of Hickory Shampoo. Otherwise the Donk’s lunatic RedSturmAbteilung will eat them.
The alternative is a “Night of the Long Knives” scenario, where the “out of favor” donks get eaten, leaving the “in” crowd to regroup for November.
But either of those is just timing. The stick-time and roundup occurs when the RSA are no longer useful.
I could see 1968 redux, or the 21th century version of, “Triumph of the Will,” for the Democratic convention. it’s going to be interesting.
Of course, the Republican convention could see massive protests, as well.
Comparing 1968 with the potentials for 2024, I expect:
a) A fair number of the less-woke PD will find ways to avoid that duty.
b) The woke PD will be as violent as some of the responders in 1968, though focused on different targets.
c) There will be a fair amount of violence from Extremely Left vs Not-quite-so extremely Left. I hope that normal people find another state to be in for the duration.
d) Archer Daniels Midland will incur a shortage of Orville Redenbacher popcorn in August.
I was too young (and not stupid enough) to get to downtown Chicago for the ’68 games. IIRC, it’s Larry Niven’s advice: (sort-of quoted from memory) “Never throw shit at an armed police officer. Never stand next to somebody doing the same.”
The typical Marxoid shit-flinger will stand behind as many uninvolved persons as possible, explicitly to draw fire and make you their needed martyr and increase discontent in whatever groups they can get shot.
Re projection vs. terror-driven synthesis: Embrace the power of “And”.
There are absolutely those, like the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua, who would clearly happily sign execution orders all day long seven days a week, and has been fantasizing about that over box after box of chard since November 2015. But there’s also piles of folks who have been taught to fear the bad R’s and have had to keep escalating their “if they get in” prediction over and over as their own side keeps eclipsing the last prediction. “They will search your communications without warrants!” “They will drone strike Americans!” “They will weaponize Federal law enforcement against constitutionally protected activity!” “They will jail political prisoners and ignore due process and timely trial and writs of habeus corpus!”
Oops, we did it again, gotta ratchet up the boogeyman prediction, AGAIN…
It sounds, frankly, exhausting.
It reminds me of how hard Mao had to force the Chinese to work to maintain “permanent revolution” and frenzy for the cause.
For the most part, the Chinese (as a people) tend to just outwait new dictatorships and Emperors and resume doing things the same way they always did. Perhaps with a few different things, but about the same.
This was part of Mao’s “perpetual revolution” and why Deng was so hard-core about capitalism with Chinese Communist characteristics-they knew that if they rested on their laurels, it was just going to go back to the way things were before.
When the China boosters* boast about “four thousand years of Chinese history“ (sometimes five or even six, I guess counting back to Neolithic agriculture starting along the rivers) what they are really bragging about is “Four thousand years of Chinese Empires”, so the actual people of China have lots of family lore and advice handed down on how to survive the Imperial Government of the moment.
Individual Chinese people, if they end up trusting you, will relay some really wonderful skepticism of all the crap they were taught growing up in mainland China at their Party-run schools.
—
* Actual people talking up how wonderful China is, not the rocket boosters that fall on Chinese villages.
RINOs, DINOs, and the ….Wino
(grin)
RINOs, DINOs, and the Hildebeeste: 4 limbs and all ugly.
The Donks and the GOPe have both long been playing the game of “Vote for us, even when our policies suck because the Other Guys are twice as bad!!! And the worse our policies suck, the stronger that ‘The Other Guys are twice as bad!’ argument becomes.”
Or: “And always keep a-hold of Nurse/For fear of finding something worse.”
Whoopi’s real name is Caryn. That explains everything. 😛
speaking of marxists. The China rains are early this year with large scale evacuations already in the Pearl River delta. the rains usually hit there in May with Yangtze River rainy season starting in June. Gonna be interesting. The rest of China is economically irrelevant, except for Peking I suppose, though that’s mostly government and so a net drain.
Sarah, the Reader hopes that on the other side of the oncoming unpleasantness, we regain a world where future generations no longer have to keep their clothes and weapons where they can find them in the dark.
I suppose the Lion and Lamb will someday be playmates again, but until then the “handy C&W” advice will always be prudent.
Because humans.
“Someday the meek may inherit the Earth, but so far, it’s small plots, about 6’by3′ by 6′ deep.”
The meek shall inherit the Earth; the bold will take the stars.
Two thoughts (not original)
The Lion and the Lamb may lie down together, but the Lamb won’t sleep well.
Second, when asked how he got the Lion and the Lamb to lie down together, the man said “it wasn’t hard but I had to keep replacing the Lamb”.
[Very Big Crazy Grin]
Me too. At least for a while. Unfortunately the bad always comes back. Sigh.
It’s all very tiring. Sometimes I think I won’t be free of leftwing insanity until I die.
For me that’s a distinct possibility. I don’t know if I have more than 10 years.
I recall a quote about the periodic required refreshment of the Tree of Liberty…
“For the record, I’ve been seeing THAT since Reagan. It is a variation of Whoopy Goldberg’s bizarre idea that the Republicans want to institute slavery. Because, you know, the party of individualists, who want to free individuals to make their own decisions are… secretly slavers?”
Yes, I’ve seen exactly the same thing, so many times now that I expect it. A party which seeks a smaller, less intrusive government that has less power and does less things… are secretly slavers.
I have concluded, after so many years of watching them twist into pretzels trying to blame us, and then turning right around and oppressing everyone they possibly can ever chance they get, that the Left are actually the ones lusting after slavery. They just can’t be seen wanting that, to they project it onto everyone else.
The Prime Minister is an example of this. Anything he blames the other parties for, he’s doing.
“Well, if these idiots who can’t do anything right don’t like Hitler, then I need to find the Nazis and give them a phone call.”
I’ve seen examples of that kind of thinking in Ukraine. Most people see how stupid the idea is, but I think it is part of the reason for militias like the Azov group. My Ukrainian step-daughter would put more venom into the word communist than anyone else I’ve known.
That Hayek quote needs repeating:
“The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.” – FA Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
I think that anyone who isn’t an “old-school” or “regular” Democrat (i.e. what my parents believed the Democratic Party was/is) has decided that they’ll throw in with the E!Democrats when the time comes.
I’m remembering that the middle class in Germany signed on enthusiastically with the SS when it was formed, seeing it as an aspirational way to raise their lot in life.
What’s worse is that I can see the car crash coming…and nobody I talk to will believe it.
Been there for 20 years. It was always obvious to anyone who looked.
Oh, I’ve suspected since the 1990’s, at the very least after looking at the news and watching how things move behind the curtains.
I’m only surprised the mask has taken this long to fall off, and Trump caused them to rip their mask off and throw it far away.
Theme song for Earth Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72AVXpeo_ZI
The rules are continually changing and the game seems utterly rigged. With all the insanity and TDS these days, it’s difficult to choose the red pill over the black pill, but one must.
The Marxoids, in their Hamazi personas, are starting the slow-motion Krystalnacht. Campuses first, as highy ‘permissive’ grounds. 2020 v2.0 is kicking off.
As Luke said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
I think we’ve all got a bad feeling about this. *Sober nod.*
In my bleaker moments I wonder if my various Problems will do me in before the mob does.
Trying not to focus on that, because I want to write more books. But the “smell of smoke in the air” does distract….
“The Marxoids, in their Hamazi Terrorist personas,”
FIFY
redundant word
True. Redundant. Redundancy is required to be crystal clear, to everyone. YMMV
Sorry. Not crystal clear enough.
Some people just nod and agree. Others need to beat over the head with the verbal redundancy.
In the 21st century, the Democrats are applying 19th century solutions to 20th century problems.
Hence their penchant for pushing choo choos on cities everywhere as a fix for transportation issues . . .
They just don’t get that today’s problems were the solutions to yesterday’s much worse problems. They want to solve today’s problems by bringing back those old problems.
“Well, if these idiots who can’t do anything right don’t like Hitler, then I need to find the Nazis and give them a phone call.”
Was the primary reason why “communists” existed in the setting of the pencil and paper RPG Paranoia. No one actually remembered what communists were anymore. But the Computer that ran the Alpha Complex was against Commie Mutant Traitors. So there must be *something* good about communists…
Regarding Swedish Girls…
It’s not that they were/are/will be sluts. It’s that they were/are/will be unobtainable to most guys no matter what.
And they’re tall, built, blond, feminine. The very opposite of the ‘Twiggy’ model generation, where women in America were told they needed to be built like 12 year old boys and guys were told they had to like women with no figures.
Precisely! You, teenage you, never needed or hopeds to have sex with the ‘Swedish Blonde/Model’. You aspired to have her sit somewher near you and laugh at your joke. And permit you to bask in her improbable beauty. Or permit you to be within eyesight (yours) of her.
Clearly, in spite of how carefully I have researched my votes, the wrong lizards have gotten in.
Maybe we aren’t going to vote our way out of this no matter which lizard we vote for because, after all is said and done, they’re all lizards.
Note at no time did i say that. I said Reagan and Trump made a massive difference. Goldwater would have made even more.
FRAUD is what’s preventing it, not “they’re both the same.”
And we might not. Or we might. It depends. DO YOU THINK THE VOTE IN ARGENTINA IS CLEANER THAN HERE?
Have they pissed off enough people to flip? Maybe not, but it’s worth a try.
That lizard bullshit was British “superior” bullshit, like most of that book. I saw the sneer in the humor, and could never appreciate it.
Your vote doesn’t count for much when there are a dozen dead people voting the other way.
When the machines are rigged to flip your vote the opposite of how you cast it.
When pallets full of ballots appear from nowhere in the middle of the night.
When…well, you get the picture.
Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election, it was stolen from him, and from us. This year the Democrats are terrified that a large majority of the American people will vote for Trump, enough to swamp their fraud. We used to call that democracy. Now the Democrats call it a threat to democracy.
Since the alternative is obscenely murderously bloody mayhem, we had best give it at least one more try at the ballot box.
THIS. It will probably fail, but in the name of humanity, let us at least TRY.
“The blonds from Sweden is a cultural moment. In the 70s for… reasons it was assumed every Swedish girl was a slut. “
The ”blondes from Sweden” thing dates back at least to the 1950s.
Catch-22, which came out in 1961, had a moment where one of the characters daydreamed about fleeing to Sweden to cavort with them. It’s been decades since I read it, but there was something about the state providing child support (in addition to their neutrality, so he wouldn’t be extradited for desertion) that made Sweden particularly attractive.
I read it too, but I don’t remember it. It’s been a long time, and I didn’t enjoy it.
The main issue to take from this article is that every single thing the Left believes is wrong – they must all be rejected out of hand. Conservatives can have ideas on the same topics as the Left – but they are completely different ideas. In our discussions with other conservatives, we can discover some variation. There are multiple ways to deal with issues – which is what will be discussed. Note: most Leftists will never ask you what you think, instead they will always tell you their straw-man versions of our beliefs as a ploy to win the argument.
BTW, the terms Left and Right originate in the French Revolution and refer to variations in the beliefs of the revolutionaries – who had already committed mass murder. Anybody who did not go along with their ideas had learned to keep quiet about it. People who believed in individual freedom were not included in that political spectrum – ever.
Left and right are completely missapplicated to the US, yes. but it’s what we have.