There was an Argentinian (I think) comic I read when I was young that had a strip saying something like “Why can’t we have government by the people?” “Because then government would be full of sandwich wrappers and sausage casings.”
I found this hilarious, because the fight to get people to stop littering is still ongoing in Portugal. (Partly due to a lack of adequate trash service, partly because Portuguese have a problem understanding laws apply to each of them. They tend to think of laws as things that happen to other people.)
However this is the sneering attitude towards “the people” that we’re finding from our “elites.”
Look, sure, you don’t need to talk to me about the “dangers of populism” viewed as “of large masses of people wound up and thrown at someone.” I remind you I grew up with crowds of people with raised fists and screaming “the people united shall never be defeated.” Weirdly our elites approve of that kind of thing, as well as of “direct democracy.”
Or actually, not weird at all, since what they want is the APPEARANCE of having the people with them. That’s not, apparently, “populism” not in the sense that populism is bad.
And here I’m sure I’m going to piss off some of my libertarian friends who’ve become used to sneering at Trump as “populist” as though that were a bad thing.
Get a grip, okay? First, Trump is not “populist” except as understood as “the people want him.” Because the people obviously do. Is he saying things to be liked? Are you for real now? Give me the name of a politician who doesn’t. And at that, Trump is the one who does it least in my memory.
As far as that goes, Trump is less likely to use “populist” rethoric, as it always was understood than practically anyone else in politics in the last hundred years. Think about it, please. Does he get on a podium and talk about crushing the Russians, the Chinese, minorities, or whoever the grand pubbahs view people as hating?
If you’re going to talk “says what the people want to hear” Ron DeSantis is far more populist than Trump. (I mentioned long ago that it struck me wrong that all the things DeSantis preened about where “socon goals.” And I say this as someone who agrees with a lot of those, like “keep pron out kids’ hands” and “Parental rights trump state’s rights.” BUT the fact those were the achievements he touted above any others struck me as profoundly wrong in the sense of “what government thinks the people want.”)
Trump has principles. They’re bizarre as you’d expect of a NYC real estate developer. But they are his, and he’s not selling them to anyone. He hasn’t touted a big religious conversion — and every politician thinks the way to appeal to people is to be hyper-religious. Particularly if they’re not — and his own rather muddled views come through. He hasn’t scrupled from having gay friends, and he had gay appointees. He refused to stomp down on the BLM unrest because he didn’t want to usurp states rights. (Same with lockdowns. He asked governors to lift them, but respected states’ rights too much to ORDER it.) Just about the only thing he promises that people really really really want — okay, two things — is a stop to unending open borders, and drill, baby drill. And if you really are against those, I would like a cogent explanation. Because the people on the ground, facing the consequences of untrammeled immigration with no assimilation (in a welfare state) and of very expensive fuel are for them for a REASON. It’s not unthinking.
If he’s a “populist” he’s a very weird definition of one. Or not one at all. The truth is that “populism” is now being used as “Someone the majority of the people like.” And using populism in that sense is the equivalent of our elites saying “We know we stole the election and no one wants us here. So we will demonize the will of the people, and make it seem like people getting to vote for their representatives is WRONG.”
Look at Nancy Pelosi railing against the “Populism” that prevents people from giving up their guns, and has them too blinded by G-d and “gays” to see how the progressives want to do good things for them.
Look, her opponent is an idiot — and not an American — by saying that Trump should have “Accepted” the election results. I’ll assume he doesn’t understand mathematics or didn’t watch the results come in. NO ONE should accept impossible results that almost guarantee an election was tampered with. That’s known as disenfranchising the people, and any American should be revolted at the idea. There’s nothing sacred against election results. If there’s sufficient reason to SUSPECT let alone prove tampering, they should be examined, investigated and dissected. Which always happened till 2020. In 2020 the results were untouchable because they couldn’t stand examination. In the same way her opponent seems to only know the “made for TV” bs about January 6th. Taking a guided tour of the capitol is no insurrection, and no one should feel they have to bow to little Nancy’s insanity on that. Between the grey goose and the botox her two brain cells might be addled enough she believes it was an insurrection, but we don’t have to indulge her.
However, he’s right on populism. What is wrong with populism, or with listening to the people? What right do people like Grey Goose Nancy have to determine what’s best for us and cram it down our throats?
Sure, I’m religious. I do not however have a problem with either gay people or atheists. Do other people? I’m sure there are some. In the vast expanse of the US there are probably some benighted communities that dislike gays and atheists. Are there many that dislike them enough to violate their rights? Well…. We do have some majority Muslim communities I wouldn’t encourage Queers for Palestine to invade. But other than that? By and large, with the exception — always — of running into outright crazy people, no matter what TV delights in making up about flyover country, the biggest danger gay people or atheists or even gun grabbers run in flyover country is having someone be very rude to them. Or more likely — as someone else who tends to ping isolated communities as an outsider — have someone be VERY NICE TO THEM with a PATRONIZING undertone. (Please for the love of Bob, don’t shout at me. While I’m deaf, and I have an accent, I DO in fact understand English. Because of the quality of my deafness shouting actually makes it less likely I’ll understand you. And don’t for the love of Bob try to explain words like “warning” to me. Okay? I know this is all because you’re trying to be nice, so I’ll grin and bear it, but really.)
Americans by and large, possibly because of pioneer background, but more likely because of immigration in the 20th century, tend to be more live and let live than any of these would-be-elites understand.
The truth is the entire “anti-populism” movement is that of the “educated” trying to distinguish themselves from the masses they consider too stupid to know their own good. In its kind, it is an explicitly anti-representative-government movement. And as such it should be despised by all thinking human beings.
I don’t care if Nancy disapproves of my religious faith. It is none of her business. I don’t care if Nancy thinks she wants to do something good for my gay friends, who I’m sure would far prefer to be armed and left alone. (My gay friends are mostly sane. Also libertarian.)
In fact, I don’t care what any experts say about what I believe or how I should be living my life. I don’t even care if they sneer at me and call me stupid. I’ve been called stupid by FAR better people than they are. (And in a couple of instances, I actually was being stupid.)
I’ve also been sneered at and called stupid by mental midgets because I refused to follow the crowd and parrot back “the smart thing” of the moment. Like, say, most of the traditional publishing establishment. I was outright told my books would be pushed, if I wrote as I was instructed, and I refused to do it. How can that be anything other than stupidity?
And that’s part of it. The “elites” have no principles and no morals. They move only by the rule of “what’s good for me” and “what will give me power.” Therefore they’re curiously blind to anyone following higher principles. And they class those as stupidity. So to them the vast majority of the West is filled with “stupid people.” (And this is before we get to the rest of the world, of which they know nothing.)
Their use of ‘populism’ means “what those stupid people want.” And therefore they feel entitled to override it, because after all they want to do what’s “best for them.”
But PERSONALLY? I’m not going to tell anyone they can’t want to live in fifteen minute cities or eat the bugs, but I don’t want it.
I want to live as I want to, and not have “elites” try to force me into doing it their way.
Is my way better? I don’t know. But it’s mine, arrived at using my own mind, my own circumstances and my own beliefs.
And if most of the people happen to agree with me — looks like they do, in the US at least — and the elites don’t like that, they can call me populist all they want to.
If “Populism” means “what the majority of people in a polity wants that disagrees with the trained-elites” I’ll proudly call myself populist.
Because if there’s something that the last four years — not to mention the bloody slog of the 20th century — have proven is that never, ever, ever should we give power to a self-proclaimed elite, educated in the “best” establishments and residing in some central point to control our every day lives.
That way lie mass graves, grinding poverty, or at the very least people treated as cattle.
The people — unless propagandized — aren’t united, and heaven knows the bureaucrats can yet again manage to defeat us.
But while they can suspect the mass of the people are idiots, we know the “elites” are idiots. The mask fell off these last four years.
We know them for idiotic, petty, and toddler-like in their tantrums.
And what’s once seen can never be unseen.
Ahoy the people. Let’s hear it for refusing to bow to the experts and massive passive resistance.
Let’s make them really hate us.
According To Hoyt 
👍👍👍
Populism is the conspiracy theory that the people running things, are doing so for their own benefit, at the expense of nearly everyone else.
It gets popular during periods when it is self-evidently true.
the biggest danger gay people or atheists or even gun grabbers run in flyover country is having someone be very rude to them.
Which usually depends on how rude and offensive they were first,
I remember a story about a conversation between a gay and his co-worker.
The gay proclaimed “You hate me because I’m gay”.
The co-worker replied “No, I hate you because you’re a jerk”.
[Don’t think I heard how the gay responded to that statement.]
“No, I don’t hate you. I don’t care about you enough to hate you. You piss me off by being an asshole, but that’s about it.”
———————————
Toohey: “What do you think of me, Mr. Roark?”
Roark: “I don’t think of you.”
Well, now, I’ve been somewhat rude to a couple of cute and polite petition people this cycle.
The first (infanticide for any reason or no reason) just got a glare and a curt “NO!”
The second (let “independents” vote in any primary they feel like) got a glare, a curt “NO!” and then a “Join a party you agree with. There’s plenty of them out there, pick one.”
I am unaffiliated, and I accept that I don’t get to vote in any partisan primary matters. That’s the deal.
And seeing how the “jungle primary” results shake out, I don’t want to mess with it. What a horrible, horrible thing that is.
Oh, that was one from several years ago that I got VERY rude about.
The biggest dangers they face are in large Democratic Party run cities, because they, like everyone else, are subject to criminals running amok who when caught are given at most a slap on the wrist, while the law abiding are persecuted for daring to defend themselves.
“The government is displeased with the People and wants a new People”. [Sarcastic Grin]
[I likely butchered the original.]
Unfortunately, that’s not sarcasm, it’s real. Like all the ‘Right-Wing Ultra-MAGA Conspiracy Theories!!’ that keep turning out to be true.
Sadly true.
Indeed. The time lag between satire and the satire becoming reality is down to about a week and a half lately.
No. Only feels like a week and half. Pretty sure it is down to less than a week.
Three days now. I think.
Berthold Brecht, The Solution
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Those bastards are now working on “The Final Solution”
The Democrats are trying to ‘Save Our Democracy!!’ from a majority of the American people voting for the ‘wrong’ candidates.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
When Democrats say “Democracy” they mean “Rule by Democrats.” That’s what they’re trying to “save.”
Yep
WP spamming me again…
100 percent. That’s why they call it “our democracy” whenever they talk about it. Or at least they used to; haven’t heard “our” appended to it so much recently. Maybe they realized people were starting to hear those words for what they really meant.
“OUR democracy.”
What one must remember is that when they use “democracy”, the “t” is silent.
That is, “democratcy”.
That’s Why I it call Die Lösung immigration
“After the uprising of the 17th June/The Secretary of the Writers Union/Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee/Stating that the people/Had forfeited the confidence of the government/And could win it back only/By redoubled efforts. Would it not be Easier/In that case for the government/To dissolve the People/And elect another?”
You have to be really careful down here in Earnhardt Country or else you might get very aggressively told to “bless your little heart.” You’ve lived around Charlotte, Sarah, you know what I’m talking about.
Oh yeah. Happened to me a few times, but I learned to do it too.
Ah. Heck. Started using here in Oregon. Along with “Well aren’t you just sweet, anyway …” (not complimentary either). Get some funny looks. Someone asked if I’d moved from the south. Replied. “Nope. Born and raised Oregonian.” I am a 5th generation Oregonian (6th if one counts great-great-great-grandfather who came on the 1843 wagon train as an adult; great-great was born here soon after the family’s arrival). “As an Oregonian I steal the best.” (Because Oregonians go somewhere and take up accents unconscionably. Or so I’ve been told. I am certainly guilty.)
Just Oregonians? I’ve had, at different times, a New England accent, a Bostonian accent, a Georgian accent – probably a few others.
Doesn’t take long, either. When I was a teen in S Florida (Lauderdamndale, as Travis McGee used to say) my best buddy went to visit his dad in NJ for the summer, and when he returned he had picked up the NJ/NY “fast speech” mannerisms, and had the beginning of a “Joisy” accent. He got rid of it all just as fast. Humans mimic the culture they’re in.
Spent a week at a family reunion (in Minnesota) when I was in my 20’s. Spent most of my time with my cousins from McBean, Ga. Came back to Florida with that deep south accent. Took a few weeks to fully get rid of it.
I grew up in Ohio and normally have that Western Reserve accent softened a bit by years in Florida.
Not saying others don’t. Just saying I do. And I’ve been informed I am not the only Oregonian. Actually, pretty sure they said “PNW”, because OR/WA/ID apparently “don’t have an accent”?
PNW doesn’t have an accent? So the state’s name really is pronounced “Warshington”?
😋
“Warsh” is an accent?
Yes. I have been guilty of this.
It is wAHsh! Dang it.
Yep. Same thing in rural Indiana.
So, “PNWed”?
😀
Oh, that’s wonderful. Don’t have much occasion to use it as I rarely run into anyone from Washegon* where I live, but I’ll definitely be stealing that should occasion arise.
* Or should it be Orington?
Idaho has an accent. The consonants are a bit soft (especially at the end of words), but it’s mostly inflection pattern. There’s a lilt to it.
Dryside Oregon has a similar accent, but with more rounded vowels.
Wetside Oregon (Except for around Astoria, which is its own weirdness) is almost Californian in accent.
Biggest irk about the Idaho ‘accent’ is the way they all ignore the ‘to be’ verb. ‘This needs fixed’. ‘What needs done?’ It drives me up the wall. Embrace the ‘to be’ verb and let it into your life, please!
I mimic accents and rhythms. That’s why German speakers think I’m Bavarian or Austrian. I caught myself accidentally copying all the Scottish dialects I heard in ’22, as well. Awkward, that was. But while I fall into accents and rhythms in English, my vocabulary usually stays Southern+Western Plains. That messes with people’s minds.
I only have one accent. And it’s weird.
Pottsylvanian?
I have three. 😆 but they blend together so.
That would certainly mess with my mind!
When I was in college we had a prof in the speech dept. who taught a course on the International Phonetic Alphabet which can accurately record almost any accent. He could listen to you talking for 5 min. or so and then tell where you had grown up to within a hundred miles or so.
‘Conservatives’ don’t hate gays. Most of the time we don’t think about them much, if at all. We mostly notice them when they become obnoxious pains in the ass. Then, when we react negatively, we’re called ‘Homophobic!!!’.
We mostly notice Moslems when they commit atrocities. When we strike back, we’re called ‘Islamophobic!!’.
And we notice government when they start thwarting our ability to live. And when we talk back, it’s called “populism”
Or ‘Insurrection!’
There needs to be an 8th Article in the Constitution:
If the various officials elected and appointed to administer the Government should abuse their positions, pervert their Offices, and impose Conditions of Tyranny upon the Nation, it shall be the Right, and the Duty, of the People to oppose or overthrow them.
This has been my biggest disappointment with the Constitution, in that there are very few penalties enumerated within it for failing to follow it. I guess our Founders had a more positive view of people than I do.
…
…
Bless their little hearts. 😉
The problem was/is “how does the government enforce the Constitutional limits on itself?”
One thing that the Writers of the Constitution hoped for was with a three-way split in the government (Legislature, Executive, and Judicial) that the other branches of the government would enforce the limits if one branch violated the limits.
What we got was a government where all three branches ignored the limits.
And yes, we got better people on the Supreme Court but they are dealing with judicial garbage that predates them.
I hope that We The People can clean-up the mess without violence but I’m afraid that the violence will come. [Sad]
What we got was a government where all three branches ignored the limits.
Not merely ignored the limits, but actively took it upon themselves to do the other branches’ jobs.
It would solve a lot of problems if they’d stop doing that.
Nod, Congress gave a heck of power to the bureaucrats in the Executive Branch.
Congress and the President allowed the Supreme Court to “Make Law”.
And so on.
Congress could take it’s power back pretty much at will. But it’s too lazy to do so.
strike lazy
insert corrupt
and feckless
They foist off the work on the unremovable. Thus they take no blame and don’t even have to do the work.
How about a 4th branch of government that exists solely to undo damage done by the other 3? A branch that can’t pass laws, but only repeal them. That can’t appoint or hire bureaucrats, only fire them. That can’t act against anybody outside the government, but can vacate unjust convictions and order compensation.
I would dearly love a group dedicated to unmaking laws. As a general guideline, all laws that have not been enforced for twenty years get put into review (with the exception of certain needful ones like high treason.) If the group can determine that they are unenforceable or only inequitably* enforceable, out they go. If they are stupid legacy laws (like the ones that end up in humor collections), out they go. If they’re only there for “gotcha” purposes, out they go.
Furthermore, if they are duplicating effort, they should either be merged or the most updated version takes primacy and the older ones are vacated. (I’m thinking about building codes as an example; those are definitely needed, but if you have them layered unnecessarily, streamline them.)
*This means actual inequity, as in “we will only catch a fraction of people with this and will prosecute them fully while letting the rest go free because they have money to buy us off.”
Poli-sci types say that the executive branch agencies (three-letter and more, plus Post Office, Amtrak, and a few other things) are the fourth branch of government. They have reached the size and complexity that they are separate in authority and duties from the Executive Branch (POTUS).
YMMV
But I was assured by all major news organizations from 2016 to 2021 that the existence of a “Deep State” was a conspiracy theory, and “misinformation”.
It is also why the right to free speech/assembly and the right to bear arms were and are considered so fundamental. It is far more difficult to impose tyranny on a citizenry that can speak and communicate freely with each other and are armed. Contrary to what Pelosi and her fellow fascists believe, “weapons of war” were exactly what the writers of the Constitution contemplated the public at large having. Thus, there were artillery units during the Civil War that provided their own cannons.
Both the Revolution and the War Between the States. And privateers had their own cannon. In fact, a merchant ship engaged in international trade that left port unarmed was foolhardy.
And cavalry often provided their own horses. And still do to this day.
https://firsttroop.com/
We have that in the New Hampshire Constitution:
New Hampshire is the only state which is vocal regarding the intent of the Founders and sticks to it. “Live Free Or Die” isn’t just a platitude there.
Probably works better in Latin, so the “who” is more explicit for both verbs.
Becasue, properly, they are not the same.
Oh, the Government-Media-Activist Complex doesn’t like it one bit when us uppity commoners dare to speak back. People should have done it sooner, and maybe we could have avoided the current mess.
I used to be a Libertarian, until that turned mostly to “we want to be able to smoke weed”. Now I’m a Constitutionist. If it is not directly in the Constitution, the Fed’s don’t get to do it, PERIOD.
The thing about Trump that has me go “huh???”, was that he said a lot of stuff on his 1st campaign that I took as politician cotton candy, no real substance to it. Then he actually tried/did what he said. That did more to earn a vote for rather than against pudding head than anything. Not perfect, tried to do what he said he would, and had some overall good results. I’ll take that.
Now I want him to behave more like Milei, and chainsaw half the cabinet’s to start.
For anyone reading this: I didn’t write this comment. I know you could be confused.
LOL. Given his known longstanding connections to the Clintons, early on I was very suspicious of President Trump, but was pleasantly surprised by him once he was in office. I think he’s the best president since Reagan. I think Trump accomplished more on the domestic front than Reagan, since Trump didn’t have to use so much of his limited political capital on opposing the Soviets like Reagan had to.
I was unpleasantly surprised by the behavior much of many Republicans in Congress, and of supposedly-conservative pundits. Unfortunately, I can’t say I was surprised by the behavior of the Democrats, though – gone are the days they sent such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan or even Joe Lieberman to Congress. Though John Fetterman has surprised and amused me quite a few times in recent months.
I think there were quite a few people who in 2016 were voting against Hillary and who in 2020 voted for Trump.
Raises hand.
#metoo.
Oh. Definitely. Voted for Trump 2016, 2020, and I will in 2024.
In 2024, by the polls (I know not anywhere near accurate, what was the percentage of those who said F*****F?), there are those voting for Trump, and even more voting against Biden (whether that translates into a vote for Trump or RFK Jr? Who knows?)
I’ve seen much sighing over President Javier Milei. The usual comparison is what he’s done vs the perception of what Trump didn’t do, usually with a side order of how DeSantis would do the same thing Milei would do.
However, they overlook a chief factor in Milei’s success:
“President Javier Milei entered office like Jack Nicholson breaking his way into the bathroom in “The Shining” — with an axe. Armed with emergency powers granted by the Argentine Congress, he balanced the country’s out-of-control budget in one month, fired government workers by the thousands, eliminated more than 200,000 “corrupt” social welfare programs, and even cozied up to NATO.”
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/05/09/milei-is-absolutely-killing-it-in-argentina-n4928888#:~:text=President%20Javier%20Milei,up%20to%20NATO.
Does anyone think that our UniParty Congress would ever pass the necessary laws, no matter who the President is? Or that they wouldn’t have the votes to confirm impeachment, giving the Deep State all the justification they need to disobey, if the President tried Executive Orders?
Point being, we can’t leave it to “one guy”, because the system has been thoroughly captured by the people who hate populism.
Granted. But that’s what we wish Trump could do.
And unfortunately, that’s the reason why this dumpster fire is likely to go kinetic. Once the first three boxes have failed the fourth is all that’s left, or so many will believe, not without reason, and it only takes a single match to start a forest fire which consumes everything in its path. That is almost exactly what happened in 1775/1776 after over a decade of trying to do it “the right way”. I sincerely hope it doesn’t go that far, but…
Clothes. Weapons, Dark.
😒
BUT the raving idiots think they can just fraud themselves in again, and no one will say boo.
Why not, they’ve gotten away with it 3 times already. 😦
Yes, they have, but it’s getting difficult to survive. And the normies will go to war on THAT.
Perhaps but people got used to living in the Gulag.
The Civil Service laws probably prevent Trump from wholesale firing bureaucrats without Congressional action, but couldn’t he use his power over the Executive Branch to re-organize and re-assign bunches of them to positions where they had no duties and no authority to do anything? With no power left, many of them would probably quit in frustration.
Well, he COULD…. but they would have an injunction in place within hours. By the time it clears the DC appeals court and SCOTUS gets to overturn, much time has probably passed, based on his first term.
“(Same with lockdowns. He asked governors to lift them, but respected states’ rights too much to ORDER it.)”
Eventually. Early on, President Trump was criticizing a few governors who lifted lockdowns and other restrictions earlier than the recommended by the Feds. But at least all he did was criticize – as you mentioned in your point, he respected states’ rights enough NOT to order restrictions reimposed.
Yes. Early on he was bamboozled by the experts. Don’t get me started on that.
Given his known extreme Mysophobia, he was manipulated. Doubt he’d react the same again. He isn’t known for being fooled twice. It’d been worse, it was worse, under anyone else. Because the opposition while I believe they didn’t believe the BS they were spewing, they took the information and embraced the recommendations because of the perception that it empowered them. (As in closing fist over sand or water. Tighter held, the more that slips through out of the hand.)
Then there’s the [redacted] who think we don’t have internet nor memories who are now claiming they never said what came out of their mouths and all over the media from the beginning. Looking at Birx for the latest, though Randi Weingarten deserves a place of “honor”. What the rewards for such gaslighting should be will be left to the student.
#teamheadsonpikes
I tend to prefer that the way Vlad did it:
#TeamSeatsOnPikes.
Same ultimate result, but -much- more instructive.
#TeamHeadsOnPikes – the “still attached to the torso” faction.
(Me? Hanging was good enough for the Nazi war criminals, and it should be good enough for them. Just use accurate historical replicas of the WWII gallows to make the point.)
The Reader has money set aside for the tee shirt…
Not just Trump. The panicdemic hit a large portion of the Right in a psychological weak spot. I remember how in the very early days there were those on the Right who wanted to Do Something, while the Left screamed “Racist! You Should Go Out And Celebrate Chinese New Year!”
As for Trump giving the State governments free rein, that had some practical political benefits: It put a number of State governors in the spotlight and on the spot, earning them notoriety and loathing as they polished their tyrant-boners. When they mandated masks, it removed their masks; they couldn’t hide behind blaming it on Trump or faceless federal government bureaucrats. They took the heat themselves for evil edicts like “You May Not Buy Vegetable Seeds” and “Your Toddlers Must Wear Masks Too.”
I’m still outraged that Cuomo was removed from office for making a few women ‘feel uncomfortable’ instead of prosecuted for mass murder.
And then replaced with the even more unpleasant authoritarian Hokum.
There were people I admired whom I was shocked with during hte pandemic.
And no small number who I thought knew better were completely into listening to the “experts” and thinking the gov’t knows things we don’t.
So much this.
I guess much of the problem is that often people tend to think of right-leaning populist parties when in fact there is a strong tradition of left-leaning populists. This is more apparent here in Europe but did start with you lot over there and the Peoples’ Party in the 1890s. A good agrarian populist party now largely forgotten. We need to reclaim populism for what it was.
I don’t, however, understand American politics at the moment. How you have got yourselves the present choice to make is beyond us over this side of the Atlantic. Our choice is pretty abysmal but Trump/Biden ???
Extremely few people have any understanding at all of American politics right now.
Partly, it is in a stage where models as previously accepted seem deeply broken.
In particular, the model of the Democrat politicians (heavily aligned to critical theory, perhaps by funding critical theory), and the model of the Republican politicians seem to both be much more incorrect than they think they are.
The Republican politicians screwed themselves over by choosing to fight Trump while the Democrats were seemingly attempting mass murder. This basically results in a lot of Republican voters being very disenchanted with the current Republican politicians, and deciding that Trump is more trustable than the rest of the Republican pols.
Beyond that, it does not seem like there are any real hardcore Lincoln fans among the Democrats. If there were, some of them would have done the analysis, and gone ‘Guys, if it is illegal for the President to act when the courts are not able to ensure rule of law, then the emancipation proclamation, and the 13, 14, and 15th ammendements, may be legally invalid.’
If we take Lincoln’s results as being valid, then we would need a very clever justification to accept those and reject his premises. And, according to Lincoln’s premises, Pelosi’s claims of Trump’s acts, and actual objective facts of mathematics, it would have been lawful for Trump to authorize the militia to hang congress.
All of the incumbents have poor long term prospects.
Long term political careers can start after they stop pretending that the current shenanigans are valid. But, until that actually happens, no way to reliably tell which political strategies will be reliable enough to build a career on.
Look, you don’t understand because I know you guys over there assume our news are TOO right leaning them spin them more to the left. While our news are full of communists.
There is nothing wrong with Trump. He was president before, you know? NOTHING wrong. Biden? Well, you see, they’re going to cheat, so they don’t care who’s in.
Can we defeat the cheating? Who knows?
As for left populism in Europe, kindly pull the ohter one, it plays G-d save the King. All the left populism in Europe was memorex. STILL IS. It’s astroturf and used to be funded by the Soviet union. Now? I’d guess Russian cartels and China funny money.
I KNEW THAT when I lived there and I was a kid. What’s your excuse?
My excuse is that hope springs eternal
The thing to realize, for the basic analysis from the outside?
Almost everyone in America now is insane by American standards.
American metaculture uses smiling to communicate ‘I have no plans to kill you at this time.’
This is functional, because the combination of local cultures makes more subtle communication channels too unreliable.
Very very few Americans have been well mentally since about summer of 2020.
We have been twitchy, we have been waiting for the fight, and we have been controlling what signals we send so that the fight does not start in the wrong way.
Possibly some peaceful sequence of events will occur, and then we will calm down.
Your solicitors and barristers map to our lawyers. Ours are university trained, and hence often steeped in critical theory. The critical theorists are conspiracy minded, and think in terms of word magic. This disables lawyers in their traditional function of using common law arguments to persuade armed people that justice was done, and that the peace consensus can continue to hold. Lawyers and Judges tend to have a JD degree. Difference between JDs and everyone else is that JDs are very often inexperienced with technology, and poorly trained in statistics.
Choice of nominal champions is kinda irrelevant. Nobody prestigious in American politics is actually in a position to deliver on anything that would calm Americans down, or settle any of our disputes.
There’s also the fact that Americans are honestly insane compared to most of the rest of the world. We think things and do things and say things that confound people from other places. I’ve heard several breathlessly question how we’re ‘allowed to do that!’ Honey, America is the only country on the planet based on the idea of ‘you’re not the boss of me’. This baffles people from other places. They seem to have trouble wrapping their brains around it. Americans have the opposite problem. We see what’s going on in places like, say, Kanukistan and are puzzled that the people there put up with that sort of nonsense. But Canadia is not like us. They have never had the freedoms we do. Freedom of Speech is not actually a thing there. We look around at countries that sorta resemble our own and have trouble understanding that the resemblance is superficial at best, and that underneath, they are quite different.
Crazy is as crazy does, and crazy is relative, though my relatives are crazier than most.
Sarah has said that Americans Are The Odd ones of the world population. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Americans barely tolerate their government quite proudly. Everyone else worships it to some degree. If it stops working, we have no problem breaking out the toolbox needed to set it to rights again no matter how much the people “in charge” don’t want us to do the needed maintenance. Other places tend to run the government until it breaks, then rebuild it from the ground up with either a new royal dynasty or tear it down and put something less-than-optimal in its place (see the French and Russian Revolutions, plus Nazi Germany, as exhibits A, B, and C) and accept that the “people in charge” have sorted it all out (for degrees of “sorted,” of course).
The “people in charge” are nuts and want a new mindless constituency they can abuse with impunity around the world. Biden is at the forefront of that movement in America. Trump represents the opposing view. Or, to put it in more popular terms based on a franchise film from 2014: Trump is Captain America and Biden is Alexander Pierce.
Helicarriers in rivers are an option.
One Irishman (elsewhere) is trying to tell Americans that the Irish Government can do “Central Planning” correctly. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Aye, and there’s a king on every bush in Ireland. :eyeroll: The last guy who had any central planning that worked in the Emerald Isle was Brian Boru, and he’s not prophesied to return and lead Ireland to greatness. Also, for a country that won’t pave over fairy rings, yet wants to chop down every tree in order to set up wind farms…. They can “central plan” themselves right off a short pier to meet the selkies in person. Or move to England. Either option would be better for the Emerald Isle, frankly.
And if that’s how an American tolerates foreign governments, it should demonstrate just how well Americans tolerate their own. :big, American grin;
I saw the Irish entrant for Eurovision. What is WRONG with these people?
(Note, showed her photo to my beloved and we agreed we’ve seen weirder things in our breakfast cereal, but still….)
Yeah, someone called “Thug” who dresses like a demon is criticizing a woman who wears white dresses called “Eden”. Reality is laying it on a bit thick.
In fairness, she’s from Cork.
Eurovision contestants generally fall heavily toward the “weird spectacle” end, and have for some time now. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Israeli contestant is how *normal* her photo looks.
The winner this year claims to be a “they/them”, and by own admission, apparently decided on that status three months before the competition. Pandering to the judges much?
The Israeli contestant placed fifth, and I’m confident that the only reason she placed anywhere near that high is because apparently the public rabidly supported her. But the public only gets a part of the overall vote, and the judges (read: members of the European elite) get a bigger vote. They didn’t like the icky Jew.
The good news is that the vote appears to indicate that the general European public doesn’t like Hamas.
Or in other words, Hamas only continues to exist because a bunch of elites in the various power centers of the world continue to insist on propping it up.
There’s plenty of us who are sick of the WEF whores in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, all of them are traitors who deserve nothing better than to meet the Queen of the Crows. We got the Saxon out, and let Saxony in instead to colonise us in the name of being European. spits The cat and the devil are too good for these cute hoors.
All palms, forehead. I might not have enough palms. that’s a triumph of stupidity over knowledge.
*looks up the size of Ireland*
*first hit is that it is the size of Indiana*
IMO it isn’t the size of Ireland that’s the problem. It’s the size of the people doing the planning that’s the problem.
IE Ten people could make a plan and could follow the plan (and easily realize that the plan isn’t/can’t work). But a hundred people could make a plan but not realize that the plan isn’t working and needs to be changed/discarded.
I’m sure that the Irish government (and deep state) is larger than one hundred people.
Exactly. The U.S. government is far too big to administer ITSELF effectively, much less the rest of the country.
Which, of course, means it needs to be EVEN BIGGER!
No. it means it needs a chainsaw. Milei’s chainsaw.
Do you think he’d loan it out?
Trump can afford his own chainsaw. 😛
Anyway, this is America, and the U.S. feral government. Trump will need one of those huge 24-foot chainsaws for cutting down giant redwood trees.
Governments are not immune to the Curse of Groups; in fact, they seem to exemplify it: “To find the intelligence of a group, divide the intelligence of the least intelligent member by the number of people in the group.” I’d add, “Then, if the quotient is positive, take the square root”.
I’ve argued for an exponential function: Ig=nth root of Ia where Ig is the effective group intelligence, Ia is the average intelligence of the group, and n is the number of individuals in the group. So a single member is as smart as he is. A two member group is effectively as smart as the square root. If the Ia is 100 {normal} the effective Ig is 10. A four member group with the same Ia=100 would rate as Ig=3.16)
That works, too. Perhaps it could be modified by a term (divisor) accounting for the effect of the personality of the loudest member; “active-stupid” could cause the Ig to decrease by, oh, maybe 90%? 😉
Okay, so I love me a fun disaster/PA piece of entertainment (doesn’t have to be good, just fun). And if you consume enough of them, you start to notice trends.
American disaster/Post Apocalyptic movies/books tend to assume that the government will all but vanish and need to eventually be re-established in one way or another by the survivors.
Black Tide Rising, government is reduced to a dude in a silo with a couple military folks and no one to command. Civilization is restored by a dude in a boat, with his family and a lot of ammo. Dies the Fire, government crumbles entirely and is reestablished locally by whoever leads the largest group of local survivors. The Postman, government is loooong gone and is accidentally re-created by a conman looking for a meal ticket.
Australian stuff, on the other hand, assumes that anything left of the government will actually be part of the problem.
Wormwood, Zombie Apoc, where the government is running around kidnapping any survivors and experimenting on them. Mad Max, the remaining government is more interested in controlling the remaining survivors than in protecting them from outside threats. Resistance, soldiers seeking to control a bunch of farmers and the food they produce, rather than protect them.
I think this ties to the subconscious views of government of both countries. Americans view government as useless and mostly unnecessary, until it comes time to have someone talk to other people, which no one really wants to bother with, as there is more important things to be doing, what with the surviving and all. Australia seems to view government as sinister and malevolent.
Now, these are gross generalizations, but still, things that make you go, hmmm…. and then ponder plot bunnies.
Well, part of it is we were Colonies by choice and without much government on purpose, whereas Australia was a penal colony. So…. “We came here by choice, got along fine without government, can and will do so again until we need the darn thing back” vs. “The government forcibly sent us here for crimes ranging from murder to stealing a loaf of bread not to starve” makes the divide rather stark.
And yes, it DOES make the plot bunnies decide to go have a party once one notices those disparities. 😀
And then there’s Canuckistan, where the government IS sinister and malevolent.
Promoting Socialized Medicine: “There will never be Death Panels!”
After Socialized Medicine was imposed: “Those are not Death Panels!”
No, you just spend so long on waiting lists you croak before it’s your turn. Except for ‘MAiD’, THAT you can get immediately. Whether you want it or not.
Contrasted with Oz: “…Canuckistan, where the government IS sinister and malevolent.”
Ummm, taken a look at Oz and NZ lately? They’re not quite to the “kill the sick to save money” point of “health care” yet, but based on recent history “yet” is the relevant word.
“which no one really wants to bother with, as there is more important things to be doing, what with the surviving and all.”
Not exactly. Americans like news (gossip and otherwise), and Americans like to trade. The two of these tend to go hand in hand, and rely on the ability of people with goods to travel from point A to point B. That means no group of people halfway between the two points that murders all travelers and takes their goods. Dealing with groups like that usually requires some sort of organized authority. It’s worth noting that the protagonist in The Postman gets his foothold because he claims to bring news (letters) from the outside world. Yes, he claims that the American government has been rebuilt. But at least initially, the claim is only important insofar as he can borrow its authority to claim to be a mailman. If he wasn’t delivering letters, people wouldn’t care what he had to say about the supposed rebuilt government. He solidifies his reputation within the region by building up mail networks between the different communities (claiming that he’s been tasked with rebuilding the postal routes before the rest of the government arrives), and getting messages going back and forth between them again.
It’s also worth noting that in the last part of The Postman, the nascent regional government is dealing with what is effectively a large, organized group of bandits (who adhere to an in-setting nutjob’s philosophy; but at heart they’re just an organized group of bandits) that’s moving against the local settlements. And the bandits are moving against the local settlements because *they* are being pushed out by a revived government in California, which has probably decided that “enough is enough” where the bandits are concerned, and is apparently conducting its own offensive against them.
I wish we tolerated our government a lot less. It’s long past time we kicked all those feckless bureaucrats out of the halls of power and dens of “expertise.” We’ll do better making our own decisions for our own selves, thank you very much.
It’s high time we kicked them on or about the fracas.
Hmmm, I never heard it called that. 😉😃😃
If you read the Declaration, their list of grievances look trivial compared to what we are facing today. To take one example, taxation was less than what applied in Britain itself. The real issue was taxation without representation, IOW colonialism. Election fraud accomplishes the same thing, although rural areas have faced colonization since sometime in the 19th Century.
“dens of expertise” is a fine turn of phrase. “Iniquity” = “Expertise” in far too many instances.
Not quite correct. Take into account the advice credited to Gen. Mattis, but which I had widely heard in many, many venues for a lot of years before some J-skool grad heard him say it in Iraq:
From an American, smiling communicates that, at this point in time, I have no plans which have been activated to kill you. But things could change.
In this case, I read Bob’s use of “plans” as ‘Intentions’ vs. “organized set of steps that I could implement should I need to.”
In addition yo “You’re not the boss of me!” Individual Americans have this quaint idea that no one is superior. May be richer, have a nicer home, a fancy degree, or something else- but none of that makes them any better then someone just eking out a living doing the best they can. And THAT thoroughly confuses most of the people in the rest of the world.
Sort of like the question that missionaries in China had trouble (and likely still have trouble) answering. “How do you treat your peasants in America?”
Seems like there was more resistance to the COVID lunacy in Canada than down here.
“Americans are Rude”. So often I hear that, but it’s not rudeness. It’s stating items up front and very plain language, as that is how we had to do it at the start of the colonies in order to not end up killing each other over agreements on what to do. And I didn’t miss-type that. So many cultures mixing together the only way to make sure everyone understood each other was to step out of the “everybody knows what touching the left elbow means” and state what was up front and verbally.
Thinking about that, I wonder if it’s part of what made the US workable, the Odd’s of the world communicating.
The “Ugly American” trope in a nutshell. Dang straight we’re “ugly” – when we call out someone for doing something nasty in plain language it’s going to sound bad because it is. Pretty words hide foul deeds, and Americans don’t like those. We may end up tolerating or living with some pretty nasty stuff but let’s call a spade a spade rather than a Quaint Earthmoving Device. Policing speech and saying you “can’t say that” is meant to make Americans “not ugly.” Well, it’s about dang time we started getting ugly again….
I want to go back to the days when Bob didn’t make sense.
Those were saner days in general, and devoutly to be wished for…but I also like this saner Bob a lot and wouldn’t want to lose him (wouldn’t want *him* to lose him either).
You’re not alone.
I want to go back to the days Bob didn’t make sense, but I want to bring the Bob that has become sane enough to make sense with us.
There were problems then as well.
What has bloomed now seems to have already been rooted then.
I also always had some views that were reasonably sane, and made sense to more than just me.
Very short summation on America in general:
Or the D-Day paratroopers. Small groups of young Americans, heavily armed, looking for trouble, and without adult supervision. 😀
Well, their orders were to fight their way through the front lines. It wasn’t their fault someone dropped them in the wrong place. 😉
Many sites on this; this one is fairly comprehensive:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lgops-power-collective-intent-james-ress
😁
There have been several (possibly apocryphal, but probably not) quotes from various foreign senior military expressing their thoughts on why American troops have been so effective; the above site shows a typical example. “Take the initiative and complete the mission” is almost instinctive after training.
Some examples I’ve found (again, possibly apocryphal, but…):
The Soviets: “One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
The Nazis: “The reason that the American army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis.”
America: “If we don’t know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can’t anticipate our future actions!”
(They’re not absolutely true, and yet…it sounds like Americans just being American.):
“Basic American tactics: take a bunch of 18-20 year olds, give them a whole bunch of firepower, remove any adult supervision, and point them at the enemy.”
😉😁😁
Beware the LGOPP!
You forgot the rule of “Don’t touch our boats” 🙂
It’s not necessarily about people doing unlimited freedom, so much as it’s that people mind their own business and expect other people to take care of their own business also.
But when people take care of their own business and offer individual help when needed, there’s a fair range of approaches to a problem. And since we don’t want other people telling us how to do our business, we like freedom.
I remember reading somewhere that in WWII American mechanized troops were actually mechanized. Truck breaks down, at least one of the soldiers will know how to fix it. Driver killed/wounded, another solder can take over and drive. The German mechanized troops, by contrast, were just passengers in a truck.
And when you started looking at the TO&E of a German “mechanized” unit, there was a lot of animal drawn transport still involved.
IIRC during WW2, it shocked the British officers when the American officers were willing and able to fix mechanical problems.
In their minds, officers Didn’t Do That.
Please realize that there is a fundamental difference of approach between your news media and ours. Your news media usually lies by omission. They traditionally down play EVERYTHING that might look bad. Our news media has much the opposite orientation. While they will lie by omission they will as often or MORE often simply LIE, straight out. And they actively try and make things look worse than they actually are.
And this doesn’t get into the fact that your left and right don’t mean the same thing as our left and right. Our left are largely communists. Our right are largely ‘get off my lawn.’ and “you aren’t the boss of me.”
First wake up call on this one. Was May 18, 1980. What we heard was “the mud flows, are going to decimate Longview and Kelso as it comes down the Toutle, to the Cowiltz, into the Columbia, blocking the Columbia! The new Spirit Lake mud flow plug/dam will breech and bury Longview/Kelso!”
What friends and distant extended family of my parents and of my inlaws heard was “Longview and Kelso were buried!” All as we were sitting in our rental house in Mint Valley, directly on the canal. Learned the latter when we heard from folks and inlaws who were taking the latter calls and replying “They are okay. The towns are okay.” Columbia River shipping wasn’t, because the mud flows did fill the shipping channels. Mud flows did reach the Cowiltz but no flooding in either Longview or Kelso. Castle Rock took some river mud overflow, but nothing devastating (HS fields flooded). Everyone saw what happened at the I-5 bridge, and the devastation along the Toutle and to the mountain. It was Bad. But did they overstated it a whole lot.
In OUR defense, I was 23. Hubby was slightly older. We weren’t working so we went visiting family, took 2 of the 3 cars (still had hubby’s ’58, it stayed), and the pets, dog and cats. A week later we got called back to work, so we went home. When we bought later in ’80 we did buy up on Columbia Heights. West Longview sits not only on the canals but behind flood levies. Um. No. We were just as leery of the higher neighborhoods that sit on old slides.
Yep. Right in the US is more “Small government and leave me the heck alone.” Which is why calling Trump authoritarian or “fascist” is mind boggling insane.
Also, in some sympathy for people getting their view of Trump from European media. My mom assured me Trump was retarded and infantile. I asked “What?” She said “It’s just the way he speaks.” I said “You mean the way he’s translated?” “No, the way he speaks. I watch him speak.” “And when did you become fluent in English?” (She doesn’t speak it AT ALL. She might watch him, but she’s relying on translation.) LONG silence. I don’t think she accepts my POV, but I also think she got a prickle of doubt and perhaps realized she’s been propagandized.
He’s not a feckin’ trained public speaker, for the love of Macha, like the rest of these arseholes. And that’s a fine thing to me mind.
Well… I wouldn’t say that. I’m pretty sure he took speech class in high school, and I’m pretty sure he got sales training and motivation training at some point. He might have been in one of the old clubs for public speaking, like Toastmasters, when he was young.
The thing is… he’s internalized the rules, learned how to break them, and now schmoozes his audience like he knows them personally and he’s their uncle in the business. It’s the way a lot of businessmen used to speak to employees or colleagues.
concur
He is probably trained, but not by pure rote.
He is very skilled, but he has made a deliberate, and unusual choice of audience.
Quite a lot of people who write speeches were trained in academia, and to an extent have people trained in academia as their audience.
Even theory obsessive academics are among the people that understand that academia is too big for its britches, and hates everyone, especially the ‘uneducated’. These speeches very calibrated not to offend the sensibilities of the ‘elite’ halfwits who are sure that they are better than everyone? Okay, yes, I’ve been conned many times by the ‘thoughtful’ approach; Even I am a bit sick of it.
So – gays, Muslims, hicks, rubes, democrats, republicans, independent, etc…. they have all sort of become the same to me – nothing but a bunch of labels that are tossed around. I will put ‘populism’ in there too but have to admit there is something going on where a huge chunk of “the people” out there are not happy and want change.
For the sake of discussion and ongoing communication – populism it is. The elite types think they have it all figured out, and maybe do for about twenty seconds and then things shift, change, morph and become something they have no clue about. Plain old common sense (which ain’t common anymore) says the individual and the individual family unit along with those that comprise a community want to take care of their own, prosper and be left alone. Given that opportunity (being left alone) they can and will, for the most part, thrive and do well. That is the true strength of “the people” and nothing the elite types do will ever be able to erase or control that.
The small percentage of actual people standing around in the USA that are ‘ crazy gay’ or trans stuff, support and cause demonstrations, are supporters of the crazy DEI and associated stuff has to be about 8-12 percent?? Maybe even less? When confronted with authorities supporting communities (Florida example – drag the protesters off the highway) the small percentage have no real response and can only whine about being victims and every day life gets to continue without them.
I fear it will be a ‘hard time’ when the massive corrections in our current social and political structures take place – I am certain the outcome will be for the people.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I do want the Democrats and Rhino Republicans to die screaming in their beds in untold pain. I leave that up to God to do, it is after all his job. I do notice he is behind on his work though.
If it’s God’s work, and He’s doing it through human agents, then there’s no such thing as “behind on His work.” Whenever they go is the correct time for them to go.
I don’t presume to speak or know of Gods plans or his workings. Not my job, not my forte. Just an opinion. I would like to see justice for the wicked, knowing full well I too am a sinner. I just try and sin less. All any of us can do.
Justice for the wicked is -guaranteed-.
c4c
Trump is actually very popular. No one who works for him has a bad word to say about him. I have thought for quite a while that the venom against Trump is down to the fact that black people, especially black men, seem to like him. That makes him an existential risk to the democrat party.
For the rest, they want to see themselves as the good people despite holding views that are objectively evil. The fact that the rubes don’t hold these evil views gives them a way to convince themselves that they are the good people and it functions as the modern equivalent of pointy shoes or bound feet setting the elite apart form the commons, otherwise, given how rich the US is, there’d be no elite.
Sure. But they’re starting to get an inkling we despise them…
that adds a certain frisson to the whole thing. Being hated by the rubes is a superb confirmation that they’re the good people. I spent last Sunday with my sister and her Ivy offspring and they forget I’m not one of them so I get to see the stupidity without any concealment.
I know it from growing up. I don’t think they get JUST how mad people are.
I’m very afraid there’s an inflection point coming. People — friends, acquaintances — who were secure are suddenly in financial trouble. And people pay attention when eating becomes a consideration in their budget.
We’re very lucky — knocks on head — so far the kids are making it.
I wonder how many of the people in NJ this past weekend were there because they are p-ssed off, not out of true love for Trump?
Most of them. The left imagines there’s a cult of Trump. I ALWAYS said Trump is OUR weapon. If he fails, we’ll find another.
TPTB seem to have this belief that Trump caused his supporters to follow his platform. But they’re badly mistaken on this. Trump recognized that a majority of the people wanted certain basic things, and were being ignored by TPTB. So he stepped in to fill that gap.
NJ had been a “purple” state until very recently. Republicans can win here, my district flipped in the last disaster. Demographic changes, mostly various forms of Asian though the Chinese have been getting red-pilled recently, tipped it over. You find huuuuge Trump banners all over the place.
Even the margin of fraud in the cities is under threat because they’re increasingly Hispanic and Trump is quite popular among a lot of Hispanic voters here, and of course see above Black Guys like Trump. whether they’ll turn out and pull a lever remains to be seen, but it makes the fraud much more difficult to calculate.
Trump will likely lose here, of course, both parties and the whole machine are against him and the margin of fraud is eternal, but don’t be surprised if it isn’t closer than you might think or that they’ll have to pull off something in a hurry, something that will leave a record because they won’t be prepared for it.
And they’re being told how wonderful Biden’s economy is, and how they should be grateful – why don’t they appreciate the Hard Work the President has done for them? Yccch.
THIS
Oh, the economy is working great — for Biden and the rest of the corruptocrats. Bribes are just pouring in.
———————————
“Oh, sure, that’s how the government works in theory, but in practice it runs on lies, bribery, blackmail and brutality.”
Hey, they just took coffee out of the few remaining things included in the inflation index because it was going up too much.
Pretty soon there will be nothing included in the index, and inflation will reach zero percent!
Indeed. Allergies mean a lot of groceries has to be meat and vegetables – I’m allergic to too many “other protein sources”. When the price of decent meat that used to be well within budget goes up two dollars plus a pound, YOU NOTICE.
Ooh. Sorry. I had a minor taste of that with my cousin-in-laws (blessedly, we’ve had very little contact since that long-ago meeting where they took it as read that “of course,” Bob Dole was too stupid be be President and nobody who was “anybody,” would ever vote for him.)
It did not apply, thank Heaven, to my mother-in-law. I miss her.
I truly think we only return the hatred they have for us, back to them. If they left us alone we would do the same, but that is not the nature of their beast. Was it Chesterson who said “They may claim they want to rule beneficently, but by God they aim to rule” .
BUT there’s a lot more of US.
The main complaint throughout history has been how unruly us poor americans are. The early ones here set the pace, the rest of us are just trying to live up to them, why the left has suddenly turned to destroying the founding fathers with such gusto lately. It won’t work, they went for their bridge too far with that one.
I just don’t understand how they could miss how much we despise them.
They don’t care how much the plebes despise them. They despise us, after all, and what are we gonna do about it?
No, no. They wnat us to hate them, not despise them. It’s social signaling, see?
So much this … that no one who had worked for him in all those years had anything bad to say. That he spent decades in the public eye, and the worst that any semi-respectable media outlet could say about him was that he had a roving eye for beautiful models and did run around on his wives …but he never dipped his wick in the company inkwell. His ex-wives were all civil to him, and all his children seemed well-adjusted and on good terms with him. Never mind the bombastic TV persona … in everyday relations he seemed to be a genuinely nice person.
So, all this making him out to be THE WORST PERSON EVAH! after thumping Hillary in the election always seemed very strange to me. All these years in the public eye, and now suddenly he’s the worst person in the world?
I have heretical beliefs about homosexuality as far as my Roman Catholic upbringing and my current Orthodox Catholic doctrines go. In the New Testament, it was only Paul who condemned homosexuality and it was always coupled with promiscuity. Paul frequently wrote to the Greeks whose culture at the time looked on grooming adolescent boys for sex with adult males with approval, so he had every reason to insist it was wrong.
In any case, I personally, have no objection to homosexuals who live a committed and otherwise chaste life-style. I’ve known some. Gay bath houses? Drag queen story hours for kids? Gay pride parades that flaunt the crudest of sexuality? Yeah, those are bad things.
Populism is just another word that the cocooned wrench far away from its meaning to turn into a meaningless insult, like racism. At least with justice they prepend it with social to make it mean the opposite of what it means, and they invented their own term equity (at least in the meaning they give it) instead of openly trying to turn equality into its opposite.
“Paul frequently wrote to the Greeks whose culture at the time looked on grooming adolescent boys for sex with adult males with approval, so he had every reason to insist it was wrong.”
yuuuup. I believe there’s also something about doing harm to little ones and millstones in the Bible. So—for no apparent reason—where’s that Epstein client list again?
It’s classified. The Democrats were so terrified Trump had it, they sent 30 Fibbies to raid Mar-a-Lago before dawn and get it back.
90% of ‘classified’ documents have nothing to do with National Security; they’re evidence of corruption being kept from exposure.
The Reader doesn’t know about Trump, but from his experience, if he had Epstein’s client list the last thing he’d do with it is classify it.
The slimy (HONK!)s that used those children should be tossed in general population so they can better understand their victims’ perspective on abuse.
The cons will straighten their asses out.
No, THEY classified it, and were terrified that Trump had taken it home with him.
We can be assured Trump’s name is not on that list because the media would have found a way to leak that–and only that.
That, and –
1.) Trump banned Epstein from Mara Lago, and made sure that a police report was filed following the incident in question, and
2.) Before the split between the two, apparently whenever Trump visited Epstein’s residence, he would spend more time with Epstein’s staff – enjoying a meal – than he did with Epstein or any of Epstein’s guests. IIRC, there’s grand jury testimony stating this.
Well, originally all the foofaw as reported led me to believe the entire thing was a “Trump declassified then Biden reclassified retroactively” conflict.
But the latest revelations about where the presidential docs were being held, when the National Archives demanded Trump immediately take that huge pile of boxes with who knows what all in them and find places to store them on zero notice, when the “oh noes there’s classified stuff being stored incorrectly” started, the highly publicized seekrit raid, and specifically whether the classified documents “discovered” after the raid were in those new boxes that the National Archives people demanded that the Trump people take immediately, are pretty interesting indeed.
That chain of recently exposed events, plus the fiddling the FBI did with the boxes after they were “evidence” so there’s now no way to say if a classified-looking doc was in this box or that, has changed my thinking. That kind of fiddling with evidence does not happen by accident, and such fiddling can only be intended to hide what was where if what was where matters.
The whole thing smells like the fish market at 2pm, and is sure appearing to me to be a bungled frame job.
The FBI used to be better at stuff like that. Sad, really.
That pile of protective covers with various markings? The FBI brought those along. For the photo of the docs on the floor.
Of course.
At some point, it becomes aburd.
We passed that point a long, long time ago.
Wait a minute — aburd?? What kind of aburd?
Maybe a Norwegian Blue? 😀
“oh bother” said pooh as he tossed another frag….
(Grin)
type? Why they are shitburds.
It’s likely that Judge Cannon is about to throw the whole case out. She’s getting annoyed with the DOJ shenanigans that have been coming to light. And she’s also agreed to hear arguments that the Special Prosecutor for the case wasn’t legally assigned, and doesn’t have the authority to bring charges.
And then the Democrats get to claim it as a miscarriage of justice, the fix was in, yada yada yada. They’ll pull out all the stops to destroy Judge Cannon and all of her associates down to the court clerk.
Same as they’ll do if their other Stalinist show trials fall apart. “Donald Trump is above the law!!” they’ll screech, while Hitlery and the Zombie Turnip go unpunished for the far worse crimes they actually committed.
The thing that really gets me is that DJT is accused of keeping stuff, that stuff being stuff he was allowed to have and even declassify at whim, while the boxes in the garage next the corvette had some stuff that Joe, being a Senator at the time he took them, was never allowed to have. Leave out sharing classified docs with his ghostwriter, who of course had no clearance whatsoever.
And don’t get me started on having staff use scissors to remove classification markings so docs could be moved out of the “SCIF” closet. The Dowager Empress of Chappaqua was way, way, way over all the lines, but she’s got the magic D.
And reportedly between boxes of Chard she’s still expressing her grudge against Comey for that news conference where he codified the “Democrat exemption” and issue her universal pre- and post-emptive pardon.
If that is indeed, as she seems to believe, what cost her the election and her coronation, then the nation owes a debt of gratitude to James Comey.
The only documents I’ve heard confirmed that Biden had included notes that he’d written in the margins while he was Vice President. So he was qualified to have at least some of the documents. Now that doesn’t change the fact that he should have handed them back, and they shouldn’t have been stored in an unsecured garage.
Biden had documents from both his time as Vice President and his time in the Senate. Neither position allowed him to have the documents outside of their secure storage location. The Reader and his coworkers at the Great Big Defense Contractor would have been in jail if we had done what Biden did.
I may need to review events. I s think that the July 5, 2016 press conference where No Reasonable Person Would Prosecute was the coup de grace for the republic.
clark: There is little argument that Comey’s “no reasonable person” invention was a historic low in the legal history of the Republic, essentially stating “no True Democrat” would bring charges, so the Sotoero DOJ’s pet FBI could not. His choice thus being to bring charges or not.
But in the Dowager Empress’ chardonnay besotted conception, the choice before Comey was in fact “bury the whole thing silently until after the election, then let her off the hook” or “hold a press conference in which she would be let off the hook before the election”, the outcome being predetermined. As he chose the latter, which included a long detailed exposition on what was in fact a whole pile of her criminal offenses, followed by his invention of new legal concepts amounting to “got a D, no crime here!”, his choice cost her the election, as she has asserted in interviews.
If that is in fact the case, well: Thanks, Jimbo.
Trump has been vilified for a whole lot of things that were never crimes, or weren’t crimes when he did them.
Such as the endless screeching about the bankruptcy of a failed company, or how he didn’t ‘pay his Fair Share’ of taxes. All completely within the relevant laws, but ‘not FAIR!!‘
Ask the screechers, if they could legally avoid paying any taxes at all, would they? If they don’t admit they would, they’re lying.
Then, they aren’t singling out Trump on the taxes. “Fair” is their favorite term for taxes because they are some combination of innumerate, greedy, foolish, and trying to hide their agenda.
MOSTLY innumerate, though. The rest aggregates to it.
If Trump had taken it home, someone slipped it in. Because if Trump knew he had it, it’d been declassified, and released if it was the last thing he did.
From what I remember Paul’s mother was Greek, and he had family over there. so….
I never heard that his mother was Greek.
He was often referred to as “Saul of Tarsus”. Tarsus is a city in what is now Turkey.
But that area was likely “Hellenist” so he was likely exposed to Greek thought growing up there.
But IMO if his mother was born in what was Greek territory, I suspect she was a Jewish Greek.
What little we know about his family indicates that that his family was strict in Jewish Law so IMO his father would have married another Jew.
Paul could not have claimed to be “a man of the tribe of Benjamin,” if his mother had not been a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin. (According to my understanding.)
-See Rom. 11:1 and Phil. 3:5.
Um…. I don’t know if they tracked through the mother back then. Judaism has gone through some weird periods when they didn’t.
I mean, I don’t have a horse in htis. It was a long ago “biography of Paul” that I bought at a library sale. I don’t know how reputable. I just remember it.
More curiosity on my part than anything else as scripturally we know very little about his parents.
On the other hand, if it was Catholic teaching, I wasn’t going to argue with you about it. 😉
No. It was a bio.
I do wonder if the author of that book you read was mixing up Paul and Timothy. Though as I recall, Timothy’s mother was Jewish, it was his father who was Greek. (Could look it up — pretty sure Timothy’s mother is explicitly mentioned in the Bible at least once — but in a rush for time right now.)
IIRC Timothy’s mother and grandmother were Jewish.
An interesting note is that Paul circumcised him as his Greek father hadn’t.
Interesting, since Paul was the one telling Peter and some of the others that it was time to give up circumcision and keeping kosher. “Why load the gentiles with a burden neither ourselves nor our fathers were able to carry?”
Not really. His position was first that gentiles didn’t have to become Jews to become Christian and secondly that Jewish Law was secondary to accepting Christ.
Yes, when witnessing for Christ to gentiles he wasn’t concerned about keeping kosher when sharing meals with them.
But here was Timothy, a young man raised in the Jewish Faith but likely in his mind he was not a Real Jew because he hadn’t been circumcised.
If Timothy asked, I think Paul would do as he requested.
And Paul never preached that all Jewish Christians must ignore kosher law.
Acts says he did it to make Timothy more acceptable to Jewish Christians (and Jews).
No idea, but I kind of doubt it, because the guy was a Bible historian of some sort. Baptist background I think
Interestingly, I found Great Lion of God: A Novel About Saint Paul by Taylor Caldwell.
In it, his mother was a Hellenist Jew (of a wealthy family) and is father was a Jewish scholar (not so wealthy).
I’m wondering if this is the book you remembered.
That’s the current Jewish rule but did it exist in Paul’s time?
Is there *any* -ist or -ism that wasn’t coined with division and denigration in mind from the outset? If so, I doubt that there’s a single one remaining that hasn’t been corrupted toward that end.
I’m of the opinion that “equity” is one of the few prog buzzwords that they’re using both purposefully and accurately. In the DIE system, “equity” is nothing more nor less than an investment in their ideology, which pays a particular kind of dividend. Like many investments, some people are born with the silver spoon in their mouth (having an identity that lets them play the oppression card), while others with no such advantage scrape together the only resource they can marshal (slavish devotion to a cause that hates them) and hope that it’s enough to let them keep up with the Kendis.
LOL! Good point.
Also, it’s kinda heretical to ignore the moral teaching of the OT, which is what got Marcion in trouble (along with his deleting of most of the NT for being “too Jewish” or “I don’t like it” — it’s pretty hilarious to read the highly abridged Gospels according to Marcion of Sinope).
However curse you, I’m now up to my neck in Marcion of Sinope. SIGH.
Had NEVER heard of him.
I discovered him in my readings on the selection of New Testament canon.
Danger. …. Danger …. Gnostic rabbit holes Danger …. Danger.
Or more likely — as someone else who tends to ping isolated communities as an outsider — have someone be VERY NICE TO THEM with a PATRONIZING undertone.
There are times when being told that someone is praying for you can be a deadly insult. Especially when you never asked for prayer, nor have they taken the time to find out what you actually need.
What you do in your closet is between you and God. There is no need to come bragging to me about it.
You will eat bugs, walk everywhere, do without lights, heating or cooling, clean water, sanitary sewage systems, own nothing, and like it.
Nope.
If we wanted that, we’d move to the bad part of Calcutta*, or the Congo, or really poor parts of Brazil.
*Unless you’re a Jain. Then you try very hard not to eat bugs.
“A [slave-worked, antebellum] Southern farm is the beau ideal of communism…”
Of course it is. Why else would such a sentiment be uttered at Davos by those who would be our masters?
It’s “democracy” (“Yay! Good!”) when the people support the positions of the elites, and “populism” (“Boo! hiss! Evil!”) when the people oppose the positions of the elites. Maybe it’s a Greek vs Roman thing?
Why be part of the problem when we can be all of the problem?
I dislike being told what “must” do and that I “must” like it. Even by my wife. Even when she’s right.
Bu we’ll be damned if we surrender our liberty to unelected bureaucrats in Belgium or wherever the bug-eaters come from.
And I’m just not in the mood.
For the most part, Americans regard politicians in the same way they regard plumbers and prostitutes.
Most people don’t need their services and most people think they can handle the job on their own. But if they ever needed one, they want someone competent who isn’t going to con them or trick them or roll them.
If the aforementioned person-with-a-career-starting-with-the-letter-P can do that-provide good value for a distasteful but necessary job, they are going to get a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations from people and will never be out of work. But, if they’re a scam artist, they can only get away with it for so long before people know…
Our local political class, for the most part, has proven themselves to be scam artists of the first order. And like any con man, they’re going to double-down because they think nobody is going to call them out on their lies.
The problem with that strategy is that sometimes…the guy they’re trying to scam is going to punch them in the face, no matter what.
And that’s what we’re going to see in this election if it’s anywhere remotely not honest or fair.
Oh, this election is going to be an absolute shit-show. The Democrats can’t help themselves. They still believe they got away with it. If you thought fuckery was afoot in 2020, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.
I know, and I’m wondering exactly what KIND of a shit-show it’s going to be.
Probably the only good thing will be that the reconstruction contracts will be huge.
And I bet they are darned sure taking down all those pesky cameras in the vote counting rooms in potentially close state urban centers, so we won’t see nuttin’ then, either.
Isn’t it amusing that Kamala Harris is known for working her way up the ladder by means of her oral activities, but has zero reputation for doing it well?
Tragic, simply tragic.
I don’t know…. spouting that word salad must take a fairly nimble tongue? Or is it just forked? 🐍👅🐍👅
Considering who her first sugar daddy was (“Slick” Willy Brown), that she was able to stand him says a lot about…something, I suppose.