The Cost of Your Self-Image

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve already done a post on this. And M. C. A. Hogarth did an excellent post on this. So, why do the third? Well, because we’re talked about the effect of the deeper game in not fighting back against the let’s unrelenting, ceaseless attacks.

But we’ve not talked about the effect on those who fight. Or what you’re doing to them. Yes, you. That the enemy will attack them, is a given. That you choose to condemn them to whatever the other side wishes on them is however on your conscience. And should be.

First let’s establish the situation, shall we?

Before I was born — I turn 62 this year — the left had captured and commanded all the institutions and definitely all means of mass communication.

What this meant is that they defined what was real, what was sane and what was possible.

This take over of the institutions was specifically sponsored by the USSR which first took over communications and schools. Whether the take over of educators (prior to taking over education) was facilitated by the fact that WWI had stripped the previous ideals from people who were never very reality-oriented and therefore more than willing to replace one airy-fairy ideology “our nation is better than all others and destined to empire” with another “No nations (except low key the USSR) and international communism.” I leave as an exercise for the reader. To me it seems obvious that WWI set this domino up, and the only way the disillusioned people could recover their self esteem and ideas of being the smartest ever was to come up with another overarching ideology that replaced the fallen one. (While on this our mistake when the USSR fell was not offering the same set of people a “just so/explains all philosophy” so like the dog to his vomit they went back to communism. Let’s come up with something better. Let’s give them USAanism this time.)

Anyway, by the time the Nazis were defeated, the USSR had gotten hold of the communications and arts and education in most of the allied countries. No, it wasn’t open, but if you go back it was blatant. And part of it was just that the winning of WWII also convinced a vast number of people that the government could do everything now.

How much that had to do with the press not reporting how fraught that win was or that things like rationing were actually injurious to the war effort is something else.

It’s also a piece with how they kept control until very recently, and how a lot of you will fight me tooth and nail on “But they weren’t in control.” Oh, but they were. They shaped everything people saw. They just couldn’t come out openly. However most of the history you think you know for the twentieth century is either subtly shaded or an outright lie.

Then how was the USSR defeated? Well, partly because communism just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. It’s an academically perfect way to starve out and destroy a nation, not to build anything, and certainly not to live.

But also because some people continued fighting. They had to fight with both legs in a bucket of cement, mind, but some people were just that cussed. People like Ronald Reagan and the other people he assembled around him, all of them determined to destroy the USSR.

And I know a lot of you will say stuff about how he didn’t do enough, etc. This is a mirage caused by the fact the times have changed. While the left controlled every means of communication, it was impossible to be out there, and get everything the Freedom Lovers wanted and not get destroyed.

As it was, it was touch and go. The left commanded enough of the opinion making, that Reagan got called crazy, and a warmonger, and evil, and above all –persistently — stupid. Even P. J. O’Rourke called him “His dumbness.”

When intelligence is defined by parroting communist cant, then someone who doesn’t is “stupid.”

As was his every utterance was distorted to make him sound totalitarian. And everyone abroad knew he was “a Nazi.” So has every Republican president been. EVERY ONE OF THEM. And every candidate. Even McCain who was really a soft-communist. (I’m not using socialist, because socialism is just the way to communism, and every communist nation calls itself a socialist republic. So I’m not indulging their desire to use shading to hide what they are anymore. And yes, our democrats are “socialist” but really communists, just hiding. Look at what they’re trying to do, from making the vote a merely show activity to silencing opinion, to controlling production and who can use what, to wealth taxes. They’re communists. There is no difference from the USSR’s plans. They even want 5 year plans.)

But Reagan took the hits. And he was already bit enough by the time he was elected and was savvy enough that they couldn’t stop him. Which meant the USSR fell, because it couldn’t continue without the complicity and connivance of the US government. Couldn’t survive without massive quantities of wheat, charitable shipments and ridiculous concessions from our presidents which allowed the USSR to swallow ever-increasing territory they could leech for sustenance.

Well, the USSR fell, but we didn’t give the loonies any other system they could use to feed their sense of unearned superiority. And the loons in the academic and communication system need that. So after a few years of fumbling, they went up to communism, telling themselves it had never been tried before. Not real communism.

And here we are. If it weren’t for the fact that we now have other means of communication and expression, we’d already be under the boot.

Well, that and because they still have their basic problem: Communism doesn’t work. Fascism does, barely, for a time, which is why China fell from Communism into the facto fascism. And why the system they’re trying to impose here is fascism under the rhetoric of communism. But the thing is — looks at China — that even fascism only works for a time.

Look, it’s the totalitarian, bureaucratic aspects, combined with an ideology that doesn’t mesh with the real world. What they think is inevitable, or perfect, or necessary NEVER WORKS. But everyone lies up the line, so people think it does, and it’s just them failing, or something. Until the wheels come off. And they always come off. And come off spectacularly.

All these centrally controlled, ideologically-infected systems have the fundamental problem of treating humans like widgets and governmental proclamations as laws of nature. None of them account for unintended consequences, which always bite them in the butt. And none of them can feed even the diminished population their starvation and lack of reproduction policies create.

To the extent they limp on is due to the fact that America, even hampered as it has been, has remained free enough in essentials that we can feed and clothe half the world, while they play at state socialism.

Which is why they must take us down, because we’re proof of how flawed their ideas are. And why they can’t take us down, because then their regimes will fail harder and faster, and therefore will be revealed as failures and go down.

And this is where we are. Only well, they are ideologues and very stupid. Stupid DESPITE or BECAUSE some of them have genius IQs. Which means they don’t understand the real world AND they must salvage their impression of themselves as brilliant and infallible.

So right now, their overriding concern is to shut down every opposing source of information, and everything that reveals their chose system for the failure it is, and history as a rebuke and proof of their insanity.

I don’t know if some of them are smart enough to realize that if they achieve their goal humanity dies out, but I suspect this wouldn’t upset them too much. Since the USSR fell, they’ve been furious at humans in general for breaking their little red — I speak advisedly — wagon.

So right now, even as we can communicate around their barriers to information, they are insanely preoccupied with shutting us up and silencing us in every way they can.

Note “disinformation” a Soviet concept is now uttered by them with no shame. (It sounded better in the original Russian.) There is no such thing as “Disinformation”: there is only truth or lies. “Disinformation” ends up meaning: this is true, but it goes against our objectives, so we don’t want people to know it.

Every one of them, from the Biden Junta to the WEF has been very concerned with “disinformation.”

We know they put through hell and destroy anyone who opposes their program since Reagan. We have seen what happened to Trump (And Palin). This will only get worse.

But this is visible and obvious. Below the surface, there’s been a war going on on dissenting voices in art and journalism, in academics and history, in broadcast, film, and even, yes, all the auxiliary arts to film, including costuming.

By the time I broke into publishing, now almost 30 years ago, this was already obvious from the inside. Not only couldn’t you, say, declare yourself an anti-communist, but giving them any reason to suspect you might not be fully onboard got you sidelined so hard you’d never work in that field again. I am told it is the same for every other field they controlled.

Yet people kept breaking through. Either by keeping very quiet until they were huge and couldn’t be taken down, or by a combination of accidents and ability.

This drove them insane, particularly the people keeping very quiet — which was my chosen strategy until it was untenable — and then speaking out. Since it often also happened because people changed their minds as they got older and saw more of the world, it was even more difficult to curtail.

So they started demanding more and more demonstrations of loyalty. Trying to tie you to having said increasingly more horrendous things, so you couldn’t walk it back.

This was the strategy of the Roman gangs where you had to kill a family member before you could join.

And some of us couldn’t. Some of us walked away. Others hurt themselves by proclaiming what they knew to be lies, to sell one more book, one more story.

Meanwhile, in public, we were told by people who knew nothing, that the right just wasn’t creative. It was because we were so conformist (as though arriving at an opinion completely different from everything the mainstream told you COULD even be conformism.) And those of us still working were told we were “peculiar” or “just not very bright.”

BUT and this is important, the NICE people on our side didn’t help. They didn’t say: wait a minute, I read so and so, and they’re not peculiar or stupid at all. They’re just not leftists.

They didn’t say: wait a minute, these people who are being pushed at us from every outlet are the height of conformism.

They didn’t say: So and so who is attacking this person for daring to speak up, is a rancid idiot with the IQ of a gnat.

Oh, no. We must be NICE.

Therefore, when I made up nicknames to people who were trying to destroy me (Partly because I’m dyslexic and remembering how to spell their names is often difficult) I got told I shouldn’t be mean or dismissive towards them, even though they were attacking me and trying to make it impossible for me to continue working.

And whenever one of us comes out and says something like “Well, fine. But communism doesn’t work” or “women are not the same as men” or “people’s opinions are not determined by their sex or race.” the left descends on us calling us everything but children of G-d.

And you nice people stand above and tell us we must be nice. We can’t even expose their real misdeeds, or call them names. Because that would be falling to their level, and that, for the nice people, is worse than death.

I don’t know how they imagine this works. What? People who are willing to kill and destroy to get to the top, will look at you being so saintly and repent and come to your side? That’s not how real life works. There’s more to Ghandi than the legend they sold you. Even saints engaged in war at times.

How it works is that the right tries to be oh, so fair. So, say we do manage to won a publisher, or a journalistic outlet, or a school — usually because we saved money and started it — we don’t say “No, we won’t hire commies.” No, we’ll say “These two candidates are about the same, but the commie is slightly better. I’ll hire him.” (Since the ‘slightly better’ is often by credentials, and it’s easier to get credentials if you’re a leftist, because the left will hire you and push you ahead, this doesn’t even denote real competence.)

Meanwhile on the left, they will look at two candidates, and one is brilliant, but not quite so leftist, while the other is barely passable but an outspoken communist. And they’ll hire the communist. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Which is how, eventually, even “right wing” institutions and outlets get taken over by the left. The leftists have better resumes, after all. and one has to be fair. We can’t be like them. Oh, no. We are nice. And we don’t descend to their depths.

We will punt a president and call him names, and believe an OBVIOUSLY STOLEN ELECTION that deposes him because “he did mean tweets, so obviously people hate him.”

We will not mention that Kamala Harris is REALLY Commie LaWhorish and a complete dunce and intellectual nullity with it. Or that she was hired because Biden promised a “black woman” VP. Which caused her to undergo a convenient race change, of course. No. We won’t mention any of that, because that would be sinking to their level. And we couldn’t have that!

We will pluck out our eyes rather than see that our behavior just means the left takes more and more institutions, and jobs, and means of communication, causing also a disproportionate imbalance of their having all the money on their side. (Oh, but we can’t say they’re really the rich. And we can’t say we’re for everyone else. That would be populist. And — fans self — we all know how bad that is.)

AND THEN we’re surprised no one speaks up. We’re shocked that a president on our side can’t find anyone to hire. It’s almost like there are no reliable resumes, or something. We are confused that the only people who speak up on our side are either dunces, evil or uncouth. We know they are because the left told us so.

And we can’t understand why every form of entertainment sucks, our college presidents are illiterate and our scientists are bought and paid for. We can’t understand why civilization is falling apart at the seams.

Why, we’re so NICE and we’re not like THEM.

Look, those of us in the trenches are getting really tired. We don’t demand you knit socks for us. But can you please stop joining the enemy in their attacks?

It’s all we ask. Despite it all, we have a fair chance to win the war.

It’s not that you’re good or supportive. It’s that the enemy is not only wedded to a system that doesn’t work, but they’re as stupid as they are vile. Seven decades of hiring for ideology rather than competence will do that.

So we can win this. We really can. If you stop stealing our weapons and trying to beat us unconscious.

No. I won’t be nice. Yes, I will descend to their level. (With the difference I won’t lie. I don’t need to.) I will take a tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye. And I’m better at it, particularly when annoyed.

You keep on this war for yourself image and preen in front of the mirror with how nice and civilized you are.

Me? What I’m fighting for is nothing less than the survival of humanity and civilization.

It is a cause worthy of being a little rude.

Don’t you think?

261 thoughts on “The Cost of Your Self-Image”

  1. Meanwhile, Google is suppressing search results on the Trump assassination attempt on July 13, and Facebook is flagging the iconic Trump fist-pump photo with the blood smear on his face and the suspended American flag in the background as “altered” according to their “fact-checkers.”

    As I often say, you (plural) don’t hate these people enough. There is no situation right now that could not be improved by half the workers in mass media working behind cash registers at the local McDonalds because at least they’d be getting an honest $7.50/hour for the first time in their lives.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Reader thinks your suggestion would destroy McDonalds. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is an open question.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. McDonalds can’t get any worse. Seriously. Them getting involved at any McDonalds as a minimum wage worker and making McDonalds go under? It would be a good thing. We avoid McDonalds these days.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. As I often say, you (plural) don’t hate these people enough. 

      If we did, you would see Sons of Liberty 2.0 administering tar and feather body washes. If feeling generous.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. With a nice complimentary scenic ride on a soft comfy rail to round out their You’ve Earned This! spa-day.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. We have a totalitarian news media inside a free society. This is the cause of so many of our woes. I don’t believe there’s ever been a situation like this before in the history of the world, either, and that’s why we can’t respond properly.

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    4. “Meanwhile, Google …”

      Well, there’s your problem.

      A day or two after the debate, I ran an experiment. I typed “2” into a different search engine (in this case DuckDuckGo, but results might be similar on others). The #2 autocomplete it offered was “25th amendment.” I tried it again a little later (without having followed that autocomplete link to bias the engine), and it had become #1. That was a nice bracing moment.

      The only problem is the numerous people theorizing that the debate debacle was all part of the plan. I’m stuck wondering whether DDG was somehow in on the hoodwinking. I hate living in a world where I might not be paranoid enough.

      Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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      1. More likely they’ve been drinking their own bath water for so long they have no plan, but are spinning so hard because they believe they are doomed if they don’t pull this off.

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        1. Literally different way of understanding reality.

          They like ‘theory’, but are not great theorists. Great theorists might converge on the group consensus, but will at some points be in disagreement with whatever authority. Skilled theorists are not always vocal, but to get anywhere, you have to stumble, accept stumbling, and learn from it.

          So they do source tracing, to supply their ‘theorist magic’, and get their ‘leadership magic’ from having people with formal positions make symbolic statemetns.

          They don’t think of plans as a starting point for implementation. The plan, by way of the magic invested in it, causes the results to happen if one obeys. Their ideal does not leave enough room for personal initiative in fixing plans, because someone else really understood what they were doing.

          And, left ideas, shortcuts and magical thinking are pretty broadly distributed, including among those that identify as right.

          There are a lot of people, who have made their happiness of other people having a plan. They can’t emotionally cope with the idea of chaotic stupidity.

          So, they see a situation. They analyze it. They conclude that there must be some plan somewhere.

          Whether they are a leftist convicned that victory will suddenly appear, or a conservative certain that a loss will suddenly appear.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. ‘Cats’ logic: if we all wish cast hard enough and the big bad magic interloper will be expelled and our rightful hildebeast returned to her proper seat of power.

            That was such a bizarre acid trip of a movie.

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              1. Best staging of it I ever saw was not done in cat costumes, but was set at “The Victoria Grove Institute for the Mentally Infirm.” It actually made more sense that way.

                Liked by 2 people

    5. Local McDs are going to self service touch screen order consoles, so, sorry, no jobs for j-skool grads there.

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      1. McD’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, plus Starbucks and Johnny Walker are al. Reporting lower sales.

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  3. Oh, and right on cue here come the polls saying that The Ho has caught and passed Trump in swing states and therefore the Republicans are DOOMED and PANICKING.

    Pollsters can be the fry cooks. And pundits can be in the back alley behind the Mickey D’s scavenging through the dumpster.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Yeah.

        The thoughtful statistically literate view was to look at the failures of the 2016 polls, and then systemically ignore political polls unless and until they sufficiently improve the methodology so as to plausibly be more than fraud and wishful thinking. (Then we had 2020.)

        That polls are mentioned at all without a reflexive ‘these are bankrupt, but’ is either a lot of dishonesty, or a lot of innumeracy. Or both.

        Misinformation or deepfake level handwringing would actually be appropriate for polls.

        Anyway, lots and lots of people come out of tertiary and secondary school without a sound education in statistics.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Right there with you, boss. I know they’re BS. But what amazes me is how many allegedly smart and savvy Republicans either DON’T know they’re BS or are very good at pretending they aren’t BS. All hail the Uniparty.

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      3. Rich Baris. Maybe a few others OK.

        All of the rest are hacks or crooks or both.

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      4. Emerald City Polling

        Put on your safety goggles, folks, lest the bright green light blind you.

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    2. As the Reader explained to a class of seniors last spring in a session on polling in his ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics Class’, the first question to ask of a poll is who paid for it. That will normally explain the tilted internals.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. If they were smart, they’d say that Kamahlammadingdong was being absolutely crushed by Trump, looks like a landslide worse than Reagan vs Mondale, and make the Republicans all happy and complacent so they’ll stay home thinking they don’t need to vote. But instead they’re doing the opposite.

      Dumbasses, the lot of them.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. I find myself continually torn between “Despair is a sin and the left loves blackpill psyops” and “They successfully frauded in 2020 and 2022 so why would they be unsuccessful now?”.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. I’m halfway expecting Venezuela to become “Romania West”. Not the best possible solution, but perhaps the only one available that might actually work.

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    5. The New Yorker put out an article labeled. “Welcome to Kamalot,” with Harris sitting atop a giant coconut. The Monty Python memes came forth.

      I just barely stopped myself from making a, “What is the velocity of a swallow,” joke.

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        1. I think it was actually the carrying capacity of a swallow, but not sure. Either way I didn’t have the nerve.

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      3. “Kamelot!”

        “Kamelot!”

        “Kamelot!”

        “It’s only a model.”

        “Shhhhhh!”

        It is only a model, made by adult-sized 3-year-olds.

        “Ehhh, on second thought let’s not go to Kamelot. It is a silly place.”

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      4. My first thought is that she’s brown on the outside and white on the inside… But apparently coconuts and lawhoreish are also a progressive thing….

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        1. Calling her a coconut is a fairly blatant racial slur: “brown on the outside, white on the inside. “

          I’m surprised it was allowed to air… unless she knows who’s paying for it and can’t offend them.

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          1. The left, who can’t meme, have been trying to make Coconut Pilled a thing, for how everyone LOVES Kamala, because she told a stupid rambling story about her mom and coconut trees.
            No, really.

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        2. Someone posted that cover next to a dung beetle atop its ball.

          The resemblance was uncanny.

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      6. The first derivative of the function of the distance and direction traveled by said swallow.

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  4. There will be a scene in one of my stories where the main character yells at one of those soft-on-crime liberal pukes.

    “Two innocent people are dead, a dozen more are locked in a room with a ticking bomb, and all because coddling a violent psychopath made you feel better about yourself. Go tell their families it was worth it.”

    Liked by 1 person

  5. “Look, those of us in the trenches are getting really tired. We don’t demand you knit socks for us. But can you please stop joining the enemy in their attacks?”

    Or, if you’re determined to join their attacks, please turn your coats and cross the line already. At least be honest about whose side you’re on. If you have any honesty left, that is.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I admit this is what came to mind….

      On the personal scale, one of the things that frustrated my attempts to get help for decades was, when I told people what family members actually did, the reactions were, “You can’t say that about your own family!”

      As in, I couldn’t say it because it wasn’t nice.

      The heck with nice.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Indeed. Nice goes out the window when survival is on the table. Seriously, “You can’t say that about your own family!”? How about saying something like, I dunno, “They did WHAT?!” That would be a more helpful response, at least as a start. :grumbles under breath:

        Liked by 2 people

        1. It would indeed.

          …And this is why I’m not going north of the Mason-Dixon line again without an alibi, I might need one….

          As far as the left’s attacks go, I’ve mostly just tried to write characters that ring true as human beings… and stand like a stubborn rock when people say “oh, but that term’s horrible and racist and-!”

          Gypsy is historical. Eskimo is historical. You do not get to take history away from me. I will fight you for it.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Besides, the Eskimos prefer to be called that. And sorry-not-sorry, but if they can have a “mostly peaceful”…demonstration in a town in England largely populated by immigrants and Romanian Gypsies, I see no reason not to use a term the British have no problem using.

            You do not get to control my language. I can be tactful, I can be blunt, but you do not get to decide what I say or how I say it. If you can burn the flag and call it speech, I can say you’re a yellow cur, since that is speech, too. Like Mary said in The Secret Garden movie, “I can scream louder and longer than you can” if that is the game you really want to play.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Having been to Romania and both encountered Rom and heard what the Romanians say about them, I say, fire away. I had a six-year-old Romboy tell me to either go to Hell or f***off because I blessed him (it was a decade or so ago, the exact words are gone but he cursed me) and the adult females in the group didn’t say a word. Talk about patriarchal….

              Liked by 3 people

  6. And the more I dig into WWII history, the more I discover just how deep the propaganda ran.

    The Memphis Bell wasn’t the first bomber to hit 25. It was a B-24, but the B-17 was the most photogenic, so that was the one that got declared and toured the country.

    The bomber mafia blocked all fighter escort and drop tank production and led directly to the 8th Air Forces devastating losses. Except at the same time, the 5th Air Force had started mass production and deployment of drop tanks and fighter escort in the industrial center of, checks note, Papa New Guinea.

    Then there was the Mark 14 Torpedo. Failure is like onions. No-one got held accountable for that one either.

    And it is the same over and over again. Massive errors covered up by the newsies, and us only winning, largely by the ability of the boots on the ground to work around bad orders from the top, or that we screwed up less magnificently than the other guys did. (Hello Tiger tank…)

    It’s pretty amazing, all told.

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    1. The Reader notes that Army Air Force drop tanks in the Pacific were a matter of competition with the carrier navy. So of course they got done quickly and on an improvised basis.

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      1. Also, the guy who did it was not part of the bomber mafia and apparently had pissed them off, so had no ego to protect.

        As I recall, the admiral who worked on the magnetic detonator on the MK14/15 torps demanded they be used in his fleets well after it was realized they weren’t working…

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        1. Can’t remember which book covered it, but yet another problem with the torpedoes was that they were developed and calibrated in fresh-water tanks. Running in salt water, they tended to run a bit too deep, just enough to wave at the ship they were supposed to destroy.

          The P-38 was tried for escort duty in Europe, but the plane was wrong for the conditions; freezing your pilot isn’t an optimal use of firepower. They did a lot better in the mostly tropical Pacific, and one Charles Lindbergh did yeoman’s work at teaching the pilots how to get good range and performance out of the beasties.

          FWIW, Dad was a REMF headquarters company draftsman with the 8th AF, but in Okinawa under General Doolittle. Before the Green Machine, he was drafting plans for various factories. Once they had enough, he finally got drafted, around age 27.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The P-38 was a wild case. Lockheed actually snuck the drop tanks on by using the same Wong pylons they were using on the Ventura’s they were making for the British, and sweetened the pot for the AAF by presenting it as the perfect opportunity for a cross continental speed record.

            There were a number of reasons it wasn’t the right plane for the European Theater (of which heating was actually one of the lesser issues) but it was an absolutely remarkable aircraft, competitive with planes years newer than it was.

            Really exceptional, especially given it was Kelly Johnson’s first combat aircraft of any type.

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            1. If the USAAF supply plane that was carrying all the kits to retrofit the in-European-theater 8th AF P-38s with the dive-brake fix that Lockheed had come up with to deal with the “compressibility” issue had not been intercepted somehow by the Luftwaffe and gone down mid-Atlantic, the P-38 would have ended up with a much different reputation more along the lines of what it had in the Pacific theater. Frankly all it needed to escort bombers all the way to Berlin were bigger drop tanks, basically what the P-51s in the Pacific got as “Tokyo tanks”.

              The heater issue had a fairly easy solution too, since they had all kinds of very hot air coming off those ginormous turbos, just some ducts and a mixer valve and Bob’s your uncle, but that work was back-burnered when the 8th P-38s were switched to low altitude missions due to the issues diving from high altitude after the LW fighters on bomber protection missions because of compressibility/transonic shock wave/elevator blanking, see above.

              It was more expensive to build than the Mustang, but having that spare engine would have made it easier for shot up fighters to possibly get back to the UK, thus addressing the fighter pilot shortage issues late in the war.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. And it should be noted at low altitude ground attack in all WWII theaters the P-38 was just a beast. If it had retained it’s reputation post war well enough to be retained in the occupation squadrons in Japan through 1950, use of Lightnings instead of Mustangs for ground attack in Korea would have saved a lot of USAF pilot lives: Get a hole in your radiator in a Mustang and you are going down; in a Lightning with that spare engine you have a chance to be going home.

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              2. I believe it was more expensive to build than the P-47 too.

                The dive brakes would have helped, but there were more issues. Part of it as part of the mission of the 8th Air Force was to destroy the Luftwaffe. Even with the dive brakes, while it would have been able to defend the bombers, the German planes would still be able to disengage at will, because of its low mach limit. That’s also why it never saw the four blades props or 150 octane updated engines a lot of the other allied fighters saw during the war: it was already pushing it’s compressability limits at the beginning of the war.

                It also has some cockpit ergonomics issues that made it difficult to fight in effectively in the environment of the European theater that didn’t apply so much to the environment in the Pacific. (Basically it needed a lot of separate steps to go from cruise to combat, and in Europe there were a lot more opportunities to get ambushed, while the Pacific tended to be more localized, and the IJ tended to not be able to have the altitude advantage.)

                The P-38 cockpit was one of the areas that really showed this was Kelly Johnson’s first combat aircraft. The engine controls on particular were all over the place. And if you did things in the wrong order you could blow an engjne.

                The P-47 and especially thebP-51 had much better cockpits. The P-47 had all the engine controls on one pivot, so, in a hurry, you could literally grab all the knobs and run the forward without risking the engine to much. The P-51 had an even simpler throttle setup, and had very close to the modern six-pack of essential gauges on the panel. Even the P-40, really just a reengined P-36 let you grab all the critical engine controls with one hand.

                Again the P-38 was an incredible design, but it did have some issues that ultimately did impact it’s combat effectiveness in certain theaters more than they should have.

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                1. If the USAAF had trusted the jets would be coming along and actually thought through what the piston planes they kept would have to do, they would have been smarter to keep the P-47s, especially in Japan. The P-47N was quite the airplane, and that big radial would have made ground attacks as “safe” for USAF pilots as the Corsairs made it for USN pilots.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Taiwan did keep them, but apparently in the post war period, the Bomber Mafia were able to use the atom bomb to come back with a vengeance. They erased ground attack from the Air Force repertoire. It was bad enough that during Korea, Army units preferred having Navy and Marine units provide them air cover over AF units. As I understand it, the Air Force still hasn’t entirely forgiven the Marines for so thoroughly one-uping them…

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Fair point. LeMay was in the “there will be no ground combat; we just nuke anyone who bothers us” camp, so USAF close air support, or indeed any attack aviation, was redundant since they’d just be bombing glowy bits.

                      The issue roots back to the big split, with the bomber folks taking over the new USAF budget and doctrine. The Marines were able to keep their in house aviation even if they got stuck with old planes, but they trained on close air support, and the USN tagged along because the USMC air deployed on the CVs, and the squadron leadership kept the institutional knowledge from the Pacific campaigns. But the US Army was left with only artillery before helicopters became practical.

                      Liked by 2 people

          1. In case WP ate the preceding post, another part of the torpedo problem was the fact that they ran too deep. Apparently, the depth was calibrated in fresh water tanks, and never verified in salt water. So you’d have torpedoes waving at the ships they were supposed to destroy.

            On fighters: They tried the P-38 as an escort, but it wasn’t suitable for Euroweather. Frozen pilots aren’t that effective. Set up in tropical Pacific (and have one Charles Lindbergh helping train pilots for optimal range and performance) and you had a good fighter.

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            1. Are you sure about that, the fresh-water calibration issue? ISTM that’s backward; salt water is denser than fresh and thus more buoyant, so I’d expect torpedoes to run shallower in salt. Or was it something to do with the control sensors?

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              1. OK; I should have followed the thread to the end, since this was addressed and answered.😒

                Shoot From the Hip strikes again…

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          2. And WP just put that in moderation. (Torpedoes: ran too deep. Calibrated wrong.) (Fighters: P-38 better in warm weather than Europe.)

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            1. The reason that’s referred to as an “onion problem” is that the “running too deep” masked a problem with the “magnetic exploder” (runs too deep, doesn’t enter target’s magnetic influence, no explosion) which in turn masked a problem (because they wanted the torpedo to run under the target and break it’s back) with the “contact exploder” being built too fragile so that it was crushed by a straight on impact. Until they found and fixed that, the skippers were ordered to try for “glancing blows” in the hopes that it wouldn’t get broken.

              Anyone who does any kind of testing should read up on it, because it’s a classic example…. especially of how your project management is “pennywise and dollar dumb” by refusing to spend the money on testing back at the torpedo factory instead of letting their end users find the bugs while the depth charges are raining down. After the war, Lockwood said that failure cost at least a dozen subs and their crews while allowing DOZENS of targets to escape.

              Christie should have been court martialed, keelhauled, and shot, since he was the one who “tested” the magnetic exploder, and refused to deactivate it when Pearl Harbor did.

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            2. That doesn’t make sense to me. Why would the torpedo run deeper in denser water? The depth sensor must work on pressure; a given depth of salt water exerts about 4% more pressure than the same depth of fresh water, making it think it’s deeper than it is. Plus, the torpedo would be more buoyant in salt water. Both of those factors should make it run shallower in the ocean.

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              1. Don’t know any details on the depth-keeping fiasco, other than empirically by reports of the sub crews US early-war submarine launched torpedoes did run too deep vs. their settings, and it was later determined to be a design flaw in teh torpedo itself, but on buoyancy I believe torpedoes are generally negatively buoyant so as to help them remain under the surface while running, maintaining set depth via control surfaces and speed. The guidance failure mode that would cause them to be seen by the target via teh torpedo popping up out of the water as it ran was called “porpoising” and was very much to be avoided, alerting the target and pointing a nice straight wake line back toward the launch point.

                That was almost as bad as the guidance error that would put the torpedo hard over so it circled back around at the firing sub.

                When you hear the WWII sub movie sonarman announce that torpedoes fired are running “hot, straight and normal” the “straight” part is a big important point for them to confirm.

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                1. That was almost as bad as the guidance error that would put the torpedo hard over so it circled back around at the firing sub.

                  And that’s still a problem, as Hunt for Red October showed. When Capt Mancuso says “I want full safeties; I don’t want those fish coming back on us!” that’s what they prevent. I’m not 100% clear on the mechanism, but it used to be that when you detected that, you crash dove. With homing torpedoes, that problem gets complicated….

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                  1. Another book (really can’t remember the name) on post-WWII submarine issues posits that the Thresher was destroyed by a “hot” torpedo. OTOH, it wasn’t clear if it was released and did a Jen Psaki, or if it was literally hot and exploded in the tube.

                    Doc says I can start doing things, but there was an implication of “Don’t be stupid” in that allowance. I’ll start getting the mil-history books in a week or two.

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                    2. The terminology I’ve always heard is “hot run in the tube”. The torpedo isn’t released, but the motor starts and the propellers turn. If the tube hasn’t been flooded, it may just sit there; if it has, those propellers will do what they do and try and move the torpedo. That can damage the outer doors, so even assuming you can get the bad torpedo out of there (usually by firing it with the compressed air), you can’t reload the tube, because it’s an open tube to sea and the only thing keeping the water out is the inner doors into the torpedo room.

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              2. I have to admit it’s been a long time since I read the relevant book. (Maybe the test tanks had the wrong salinity?) Something was off; it worked OK in testing (for values of test), but not in use.

                Best guess at the book: Dan van der Vat’s Pacific Campaign. When I can do ladders (soon, now), I’ll retrieve it from storage.

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              3. Because they trimmed it wrong when they tested it, and the rudder throws were misaligned to compensate.

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              1. Considering my posts, only the ones with that name (including the “testing” one) went into moderation. I think Steve Nelson has it right. He’s doubleplus ungood badthink. Sigh.

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                1. Try calling him Charles Limburger, or if WordPress even eats that one, Charles Stinky Cheese. Everyone will know who you mean.

                  Like

          4. Yes. Mentioning the name of the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic gets a post in moderation. WordPress, you are really weird!

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            1. Since that person is widely associated with the history of “America First”, perhaps not surprising.

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        3. Admiral Ralph Christie, COMSOUWESPACSUB. Not sure about his relationship to Chris Christie. His chain was up through MacArthur.

          Liked by 1 person

    3. Hey, the Tiger tank was a beast. One Tiger against 5 other contemporary tanks, it could wipe the battlefield with them. Logistics killed the Tigers, as well as facing 20-to-1 (or worse) odds. Keeping them fueled and supplied with spare parts was a constant struggle.

      In the Battle Of The Bulge, all the German vehicles were supplied with siphons and jerrycans to steal fuel wherever they could find it. The offensive literally ran out of gas in a month.

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      1. Well, it was more that US tank platoon operated in units of 5, and Tigers couldn’t be produced enough to operate in units of two.

        Which they needed to be because only a Tiger could tow a Tiger that got stuck in the mud. The FLAK 88 was also absurdly overkill for anything either side had. So you ended up with a massive, massively expensive tank, that was about as combat effect as a 76mm armed Easy 8, but less mobile.

        There was very little that the Flak 88 could penetrate that the 7.5cm kwk could not, for 1/4 the installed weight.

        And for all that, they got a tank that was only marginally better protected than the medium tanks it was going up against.

        It was huge, intimidating, and giant sucking sound on their resources for little real to show for it.

        It may have been an engineering marvel, but it was a requirements disaster.

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        1. The development teams apparently never heard the maxim that professionals study logistics, and developed accordingly. Of course, when Der Fuehrer said he wanted the biggest and baddest he generally got it…

          Liked by 1 person

    4. And the more I dig into WWII history, the more I discover just how deep the propaganda ran.

      —

      Keep reading, and you’ll keep coming across too many “pulled a rabbit out of their hat!” situations where things went against what would normally be expected. Often enough that after a while, it starts looking like there’s either a bunch of backstory missing, or a thumb on the scale.

      Liked by 2 people

  7. These are the same “nice” people who will end up staying home on Election Day rather than vote for Trump, thereby handing the country over to the Communists.

    Since July 13 I’ve been visiting corners of the web I’ve rarely gone to, not being a conservative, a Christian, or a Republican, and the number of RHINOs and never-Trumpers that come out of the woodwork is enough to make you think half of them are paid shills, and the other just half hope that by being “nice” they will be eaten last by the Communists.

    RE: polls: Remember that a sizable percentage of the talking heads on the “news” are married to current or former State Dept. or CIA employees. It’s almost like they are not even trying to hide the capture of the media anymore.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. “Ignorance is Strength!”

          (lots of ‘1984’ going around, right now)

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            1. Don’t forget the economic policies cribbed from Atlas Shrugged, and the information environment of Fahrenheit 451.

              I’m glad I read all those Anti-Utopia classics, even Ayn Rand’s cinderblock. It gives such a better intellectual grounding to my horror.

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              1. it really blows my mind that people are so ignorant that they support the collectivist BS, i mean look at the big cities, totally screwed up, yea, some stuff is ok but overall mostly just screwed up. But they actually vote for and support tis crap.

                shit for brains

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                  1. And for some reason (holds tongue in cheek), there are a lot of people leaving big cities. (Wonders about the numbers for Portland’s population decrease.)

                    Liked by 1 person

  8. What’s wild, apart from the cringey pro-Harris nonsense, is the fact that the media is trying to downplay the fact that someone nearly assassinated a presidential candidate. Not to mention the remarkable timing of the other candidate being forced to step down a mere eight days later.

    If only we had journalists. Oh well.

    Like

    1. I know – We do have a handful of real, fearless investigating journalists who will ask the uncomfortable questions of authority figures, crunch the numbers, and write up their answers and conclusions for the news consumers … unfortunately none of them work for the Mainstream Establishment Media, so their megaphones are relatively small…

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      2. And the courts and Legacy Media keep trying to silence that handfull, which speaks volumes about the panic among the courtiers when someone points out that his imperial majesty’s birthday suit is in view.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. And being totally unsurprised that Mittens Romney and DOCTOR Nurse Ratched thought the ceremony was just right.

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  9. So, the key thing of communism, socialism, NSDAP ideology, facism, etc., is actually just a combination of ‘here is an academic style speculative or descriptive theory’, ‘it is prescriptive and must be realized’, and ‘any cost is acceptable to achieve this’.

    The ‘these guys are bad because their academic theory includes race’ is just an unnecessary claim. ‘our theory makes us good, because we are not fixed on race’ is often a dishonest and incorrect claim. The focus on a theory that looks at categories and aggregates is going to inspire -isms, actual -isms, no matter how it is cosmetically dressed up in epicycles.

    The fundamental problem with ‘we must pay any cost to realize this theory’ is that theory of human behavior must be reduced order, so it always becomes an exercise in murdering the error term of whatever specific theory.

    They must have speech control, because otherwise their appeals to leadership magic, to theorist magic, and to consensus magic do not withstand really open debate. (Magic here is intended to mean theories of leadership, theorists, or consensus that are questionable, and perhaps objectively false. Emotionally resonant to some people, but it is definitely not clear to everyone that they are true, and that the phenomena really does work that way.)

    Pretty much, any ‘ideology’ is bad if it does not explicitly include and value a lot of caution, theoretical uncertainty, and willingness to debate, deliberate, and wait.

    To some extent, ideology is often also a religion, based in mystical experiences around theory, and various group phenomena. Communism is very definitely an evil religion.

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  10. “… until it is time not to be nice…”

    Or, more accurately….

    “I aim to misbehave.”

    …

    “Liberty Now!”

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    1. One supposes it’s better to aim to misbehave before/unless/until one has to aim for center of mass.

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      1. Don’t remember the source, but the line “We aim to please, we shoot to kill” has stuck in my mind ever since I saw it / heard it a couple of decades ago. I suspect it may have come from the Marine I knew back then; I was in a country in West Africa, and he was one of the Christians who attended our weekly Bible study. He was, IIRC, assigned to the protection detail at the American embassy in that country. Nothing happened to the embassy in that country — my friend had a boring tour of duty, which is exactly what you want guard duty to be — but events in other African countries reminded me later of why embassies have guard details.

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  11. am i the only one or has anyone else noticed that whenever they go to a youtube video theres a harris commercial?

    i freakin hat these POS yahoos

    Like

      1. YouTube changed the terms and conditions so I can’t use Adblock. If you’ve got a workaround, I’m all ears.

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          1. I had it successfully blocked on my iPad for ages then they gave me Hobson’s choice. Damn. Oh well.

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        2. I still use AdBlock. Not applicable for all youtube videos. If it is. Guess I don’t want to see that video.

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          1. (No account, but) I’ll get the occasional ad before the desired video comes up (still rare for me, due to the joys of metered bandwidth), but once the Skip button comes up, I hit it. Have seen a few vids since the coup, but have missed any unintentional Kneepads adverts. (Did see some of the parody one that Musk promoted, and I saw several seconds of “Cackling with Kamala.” Needed ear and brain bleach for that one.)

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                2. I’m happy to say I don’t know the song, so my filking “talent” won’t be inflicted on the Horde. :)

                  Like

                3. Gotta make a move to a girl that’s right for us

                  So we can all forget she threw her boss under the bus

                  Well, the papers and the TV and the Google keep on schmoozing

                  Try to get, try to get, try to get us moving on

                  We gotta move on

                  Gotta move on

                  Gotta move on

                  Can she take us to — Kackletown?

                  Can she take us to — Kackletown

                  Can she take us to — Kackletown?

                  Don’t wanna go to — Kackletown!

                  Gotta buy the rap that she’s anything she wants to be

                  Indian or Black, it doesn’t matter, she’s got energy!

                  Well, she’s talking now for hours and she hasn’t said a single thing

                  Talkin’ bout, talkin’ ’bout, talkin’ ’bout, this ding-a-ling

                  Time to move on

                  Time to move on

                  Time to move on

                  Don’t wanna live in — Kackletown

                  Word salads suck in — Kackletown

                  Please God don’t bring us — Kackletown

                  We Odds can’t live in — Kackletown!

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                  1. It’s not a pun, so a Carp is not appropriate, but surely this effort deserves some sort of Ballistic Fish. Maybe a bucket of Anchovies flung from a trebuchet?

                    Like

          2. Adblock is also my practice.

            I never log in to YT or G; I get some 1 or 2 second ad displays, then my video continues.

            Like

        3. The Brave browser eats most of them. There’s something inherently stupid about a browser responding to a server-side request of “is there an ad-blocker running?”. Brave doesn’t seem to do that, although I haven’t packet-sniffed it.

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          1. Yes, I still get that with the Pale Moon fork of Mozilla. For a while, the Qwant* search engine objected if a blocker was running, even if Qwant was explicitly allowed. That got fixed, though Qwant tends to be a bit crufty for me. DDG is my backup, though I remember that it uses the Google database and shares data with Microsoft. (Not that they can do much; I’m on Linux.)

            ((*)) Seems to be French, though not Olympic level.

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          2. I haven’t kept up recently, but as of last I checked (a few years ago) it wasn’t an explicit “Is there an ad-blocker running?” check. Rather, it was a thing where the server would try to serve up something that looked like an ad, but was in fact a piece of Javascript that would “phone home” to say “Yep, I was allowed to run”. Then if they didn’t get the “phone home” message, they’d trigger the “adblock detected” code.

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            1. Which tends to explain why they don’t know which adblocker is running. Never figured out the issue with Qwant. Had to kill the blocker (and script blocker) to see it on Pale Moon. Gave up and went to DDG. I have a bog standard copy of Firefox to deal with other issues. I like Pale Moon, but there’s a lot of stuff it can’t do properly. (Like Disqus comments on Insty. Small loss, use it to read comments maybe every other week.)

              Like

    3. Anything beyond a few minutes long I might want to watch on YouTube, I just fire up some downloader program and get myself a local copy to watch, in case it gets dissapeared. About the only exception is something like a live SpaceX launch. (Also, some of the job sites I go to have little coverage, so can take videos with me and watch anywhere.)

      Like

    5. number two son finds my reaction to the ads entertaining. Get that f—-ing wh—re b——h off the f——-ing screen. Why won’t the f——ing skip button work? J—-s Ch—-t it’s that wh-re again!

      The wife’s been away or I’d have to say it to myself since the wife doesn’t hold with swearing, Then again, she hasn’t actually disagreed with me, just the precise wording. Hmmm…

      Liked by 1 person

      1. $SPOUSE isn’t fond of me using “Kneepads”. Will try “Commie la Whorish”. We already agree on “Commie”.

        I’ve been doing (groan) yardwork, as much as my healing knee will let me. (1-2 hours per day, max right now.) Trying to figure out if the garden hoe should be called a “Harris” or a “Kamala”. Or one of the above nicknames.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Reminds me of a line from a Tom Lehrer concert. “The rest of you can look it up when you get home.” (Into to “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” from Evening Wasted with TL.

            It fits…

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Fewer syllables. “Damn ho.” might work. I’ve been using a Pulaski and the adze head is quite therapeutic. Fun(?) fact: Local sage gets loooong surface roots. 18″ high plant, 6′ root after I severed the taproot.

              Liked by 1 person

      1. I speculate that the delay in announcing the changing of the Ficus Plants was to allow the actual governing junta time to get Kamala’s commercials ready to go.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. My biggest comment refers to “Let’s give them USAanism this time.”
    That doesn’t work, unless you want to occupy the country for about three generations to make it ‘set.’ Much like dying a cloth without a mordent, three or four washings and it will wash right out.

    Unless a people (not a nation, a people) want to be free and are willing to FIGHT for USAanism, it’s not going to stick, and we’ve proved that in nation after nation.

    Like

    1. It will, yes. If we sell it as a system, not habits. These critters don’t do well with habits. that’s what “the people” do. It doesn’t take. Look at Europe.
      But sell it as a system, they’ll bite hard.

      Like

  13. Somewhere, somehow I dug out from the foolish idiocy and after high school turned into a “conservative” of sorts and the ‘left’ never got me back. I got fooled a time or two but always came back to reality. I worked as a mid west small town cop for awhile and we had a State Attorney that had started to go soft on DWI arrests pleading that they ‘had families’ and needed to not loose a job and such. We had a DWI wreck where the drunk walked away with a few scratches and killed a Mom, Dad and a couple of kids and left the rest of that family as orphans. A Trooper, with city and county assist, went to the Attorney’s house, dragged him out to the car and took him to the site of the still working wreck where the Fire and Ambulance crews were still trying to get the bodies out of the wreckage. We never had issues with him after that.

    It helped a lot to grow up and go to school/college in the mid-west (back at the start of the 1970’s) where a lot of the staff were vets from WWII, Korea and Viet-Nam conflicts and not fooled either. It all went downhill from there shortly thereafter and had started to slid even then; but by then I was out and tried teaching – me, a high school history teacher! You said: “However most of the history you think you know for the twentieth century is either subtly shaded or an outright lie.” To which I will agree but I was lucky and got a lot of the real story (not all for sure but enough) and that’s how I taught my classes. I had the History students use source material, like period news papers, diary and journal records, talk to the “old folks” and get the stories they were told by their grandparents. Using that, they were to develop reports about what the issued history book said and how it missed or didn’t get right parts. It was called ‘critical thinking’ and I pray a few of them got it. I did this as a white guy on the reservation. Needless to say, the way we went over the western expansion of the US and stuff like Custer was not the usual song and dance. My college bud from those days (now retired ex-Army) was on the same page. He is now living (as a white guy) on the Reservation out in Four Corners and takes great delight in teaching the native kids in his neighborhood about their real history. He’s regarded as that crazy white guy who knows his stuff.

    When I retired, I literally walked out – did a quiet job on the paperwork and lined it all up so one day I just didn’t come back from lunch and was gone. The agency had become more concerned about the “disparity” issues and (what is called DEI) had become the key force driving decisions. Nope. Not me. I was no longer able to fight off the fool ideas and had become marginalized within the system so it was time to leave. Never regretted it.

    Sorry, long ramble from the old fart… But, our host is right in that we/you or us – whatever – need to keep up the fight for reality where and how we can and in the end we win.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I didn’t particularly like my high school history teacher. He was also a coach and definitely favored the athletes. Our history textbook was very boring. I mostly read novels in his class; as long as I passed the test, he didn’t care.

      But there was one week when something set him off. He spent the week teaching things the textbook either skipped over or got wrong. That was a great week in history class.

      I’m pretty sure I learned about Athens, GA, here. I also have a great book called Lies My Teacher Told Me (I think; it’s not on the bookshelf behind me).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Back then, a book had come out – Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria Jr. I think about 1969. Anyway that was one we read that year. Another was: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published in 1970 that covered stuff about AIM and “Indian politics” as did the first one. A lot of the popular records cast the Seventh Cav and Custer as either hero types or poor victims when in reality they and the army were know for outrageous acts and killing out of hand in the west. The ‘local’ view point was more interesting and closer to what went on. The gold fueled push into the Black Hills and federal government policy of pushing out the natives – treaty or not- and huge issues with the entire Indian Agent system caused a lot of grief too. A lot of the kids there had no idea about any of it or their own cultural history. We were lucky that the older families agreed with a local point of view and contributed stories from back then.

        Eh, it was a fluke that any of that worked and I was just there a year and had to move on as the funding kept dropping for the tribe overall and the schools took a big hit.

        Liked by 1 person

  14. Thank you for that, Sarah. I tried for a long time not to engage with idiots, but, once pushed, I pushed back. They’ve got nothing, but they scream it very loudly. And nonstop. The Left has helped me greatly in getting over the Left. It’s like gunfire: I was rattled at first, now I know what to expect.

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  15. It comes down to this:

    If there is anything you love more than the truth, more than reality, such as “niceness” or your “perfect system which will work if just one more Bad Person is deleted”, then you are not committed to anything but destruction. Because reality must be destroyed in order to fit your preferences. And that makes you the enemy of life.

    Sarah, you are wrong about one thing. They did not start wanting humanity destroyed after the USSR fell. They started that with the environmental movement in the 1970s. It began as a man-hating, life-hating movement, and it has never changed. Only the cover stories, the excuses, the lies they want to present as being real have changed. But they have hated life itself from the outset.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Earlier than that, I think. The ’60s had The Feminine Mystique, Population Bomb and Silent Spring.

      I suspect it goes back further than that, but it’s been a long day.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. Consider the trends in computing. Way back in the Stone Age there was the Citadel Model. One computer, with dozens to hundreds of users connected to it with dumb terminals. All computation and storage was centralized. The terminal was useless if not connected to the Almighty Mainframe.

    This was necessary, because computers cost $millions and required a dedicated staff of Geeks and Gurus to keep them running. The High Priests, as it were.

    Starting in the ’70s computer prices dropped to mere $thousands and there could be more than One. Workstations had local processing and storage, and were useful all on their own. The Distributed Model became the standard.

    Today, you can get a Raspberry Pi 5 with millions of times the computing power of those old mainframes for $80. Computing is only getting more distributed.

    IF THE CITADEL MODEL WORKED BETTER, WE WOULD STILL BE USING IT!!!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Welcome to The Cloud™️.

      I annoyed my manager a couple years ago by pointing that out.

      Like

      1. Which has multiple providers and is only able to scale the way it does because it is constructed from (literal) tons of small parts distributed across the world..

        “The Cloud” is not a citadel. The citadel model had nothing to do with the action of paying for compute and everything to do with a single centralized resource.

        Liked by 2 people

        2. The computing and storage resources are distributed, but you access it through a single centralized interface, handing all your data over to a potentially hostile middleman. What do you do when ‘the cloud’ is having ‘technical difficulties’ and your data becomes inaccessible for some indeterminate interval?

          Just Say No. My data stays where I can keep an eye on it, backed up on multiple devices.

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          1. “Just Say No. My data stays where I can keep an eye on it, backed up on multiple devices.”

            Yes. 100%. Just buy more multi-GB hard disks. Make sure to check for access.

            Granted most of our stuff now days are pictures (we have A Lot!). Plus my Calibre database/subdirectories. Even Quicken is just a checkup on the various financial institutes. Lose the file and you will be hearing me grumbling from here to eternity, but the file can be rebuilt. Nothing stored online to facilitate multi system access, except stuff that is sourced from there.

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            1. Given my gray white hair, was accused of being a technophone when I was explaining this at dinner one night when asked by a friend. Most of you can guess my answer. “Sure. Yes. Whatever you say. Oh, wrote software for 30+ years. Huge technophobe alright.”

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              1. You know that old joke about “I write software for a living, which is why the “smartest” thing in my house is a printer from 2006, and I keep a gun ready to shoot it if it makes a funny noise”? … Ah. found it in image form.

                If you had been talking to me, I would have taken “wrote software for 30+ years” as a perfectly valid reason to be a technophobe. Not in the literal sense of “afraid of technology” (because I don’t know how it works), but in the much better meaning of “doesn’t trust technology” (because I know perfectly well how it works).

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. “I know too much about computers to trust them with anything critical.”

                    Especially when the hardware and software are deliberately obscured. When testing the machine’s security, and finding it ludicrously weak, is considered a felony.

                    Like

                2. “Not in the literal sense of “afraid of technology” (because I don’t know
                  how it works), but in the much better meaning of “doesn’t trust
                  technology” (because I know perfectly well how it works).”

                  100%

                  I don’t trust those in charge of the servers to do what needs to be done. Not because they don’t try. Not because they don’t know what they are doing (some don’t, but that is a different story). Because they won’t have the resources to do what needs to be done.

                  Like

          2. So MUCH this! As a retired EE I know exactly why I keep all my data local, with a daily incremental backup plus two monthly full backups, one of critical data on a 2TB USB drive, and one a clone of my system disk. Plus occasional CDs/DVDs burned with everything I CANNOT afford to lose, kept off-site.

            “Wanna put all your stuff on my Cloud server, little boy? It’s so convenient!”

            Nope.

            Like

  17. Some people can envision good change with some pointed comments. Others are blissful in their ignorance, unless you hit them in the head with a brick. The ones that require a brick are the toughest to convince the boxcars are not going to Disneyland. It’s unfortunate that it’s this way, but I’d rather his someone in the head with a brick, than bury them, with their family, in a barren field after they starved.

    Like

    1. Not really. But I saw a video that was supposed to show a group of Venezuelans toppling a Chavez statue. So…

      My guess?

      It might very well depend on whether or not Maduro can successfully impose martial law.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Given the disarming of the Venezuelan populace (except for agents of the regime), Maduro’s chances look very high.

        The past example I would love to be a parallel for Venezuela today would be the Ferdinand Marcos-Corazon Aquino election in the Philippines in the 1980s, which was similarly frauded if not necessarily to the same extent. The Marcoses had all the guns (and the shoes), but the Aquino voters drove them out. The difference is that the Americans could apply leverage (with their heavy military presence) and provide Marcos an escape route (which he took, to Hawaiian exile). We don’t have much influence on Venezuela right now, and our Powers That Be probably appreciate how Maduro didn’t let the voters stand in the way of winning the election.

        Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

        Like

        1. Quite a few Central and South American nations have publicly come out against the announced results. It’s not just the US that can influence events in Columbia.

          Like

        2. Two items regarding guns in Venezuela –

          1.) . In some regions, there are reports that the military and police aren’t opposing the protestors.

          2.) Apparently the government has been working with a number of gangs in Columbia, and these gangs have been permitted to keep their guns. Now many of the gangs are siding with the protestors.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The Narcos will sell anything to anyone.

            Those same folks supplying illicit drugs and food also supply arms.

            There has been enough time for clandestine arms to start piling up.

            If even the Narcos are finding it hard to keep the kids fed, they will go over to another side.

            So Venezuela may be due for another spicy round of “throw the bastards out”.

            “Freddy”, hope you are doing OK. Vaya con Dios.

            Liked by 1 person

                1. Though that does remind me of the cross-border hostage rescue raid by the Colombians that ended up finding evidence of covert Venezuelan support back when Chavez was still in charge.

                  Like

    3. They’re still using The Voting Machines Which Shall Not Be Named, right? The ones that were designed to rig elections for Hugo Chavez? Then the results will be whatever Maduro says they are.

      Like

  19. I’ve been speaking to my Idaho rep (Russ Fulcher) daily, via emails, demanding the details of what happened with the assassination attempt and also providing him information, and sources.

    That SOB had his little baby staffer write me back with this f*cked up milquetoast bullshite non-response that makes me madder than I’ve been in some time. These POSs aren’t taking anything seriously. F*ckers.

    More effort will be required and it annoys me that I have to fight with my own damned representative in order to get him to take this seriously. And you never talk to him, it’s always some very polite child whose voice quavers if you raise your volume.

    Great post, Sarah.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. We have a perfectly serviceable system design in the US Constitution. Translating that back into reality is the sticking point.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. some still say we can vote it right!

            🙄

            if it worked so well we wouldnt be here.

            watch for something similar to what is going on in venesuela,

            can feel it

            Like

            1. And then it might be “Merry Romanian Christmas!” Unlike Venezuelans, we have not been disarmed, and they haven’t really tried. Yet.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. Oh gracious Hostess, even after all the facets of personality you’ve shown us over the years, I never would have taken you for a Phil Collins fan.

                Not that that’s a bad thing … [self-conscious grin]

                Like

                2. Oh yas, Phil Collins and Miami Vice with Don and Rico rolling down the deserted street in their fake Ferrari chasing after the bad guys. . .

                  Liked by 1 person

  20. This was the strategy of the Roman gangs where you had to kill a family member before you could join.

    ABORTION!

    If they can get mothers and fathers to murder their very own children, what CAN’T they get them to do?

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Which is why abortion becomes a rite of passage, and even men have to pay lip service or be silenced.

      Like

  22. Totally off topic, but inspired by the WW1pic up top.

    Back one day, long ago, while I was off playing Soldier, Mom was shopping yard sales for decorative knicknacks and useful bargain items.

    She found a vintage picture of me in pre-WW1 private uniform and helmet, sitting on the ground eating from a messkit.

    (record scratch noise – long)

    Yup. Apparently someone with my face was an enlisted man in the pre WW1 army. Mom re-framed it and posted it proudly in the living room. It confused the beejeebies out of a bunch of folks when she would point to it and say “my little boy in the army”.

    Decent likeness. But as far as I know, I haven’t served in WW1, or worn that uniform. At least yet.

    Occasional WW1 pictures thus tend to induce some weird memories of my old childhood home, and Mom’s very Odd sense of humor.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. …. not that I remember.

        Yet.

        But that might explain why certain key mementos have disappeared over the years.

        heh.

        Like

  23. I really don’t have a flag etiquette question (click my name). I just wanted to post a picture of the flag. Although, if you happen to know the answer, feel free to comment (no one ever comments on my blog; not least because I’m not as prolific as our hostess).

    The other day I cut across the parking lot of the Baptist Church just down the street and noticed it was easily readable from anywhere in the lot. It wasn’t windy last Sunday; maybe this week.

    Like

    1. As the Wicked Witch in ‘Into The Woods’ once sang, “You’re so nice. You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.”

      I’m not nice. I am often kind, but I’m not nice.

      Like

      1. And the next line is “I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right.”

        Incidentally, you can very much tell what her mother was like and how it messed her up, especially in how she treats Rapunzel. “Couldn’t you stay content safe behind walls, as I could not.”

        Like

  25. Note “disinformation” a Soviet concept is now uttered by them with no shame. (It sounded better in the original Russian.) There is no such thing as “Disinformation”: there is only truth or lies. “Disinformation” ends up meaning: this is true, but it goes against our objectives, so we don’t want people to know it.

    Hm…

    :poking at the idea:

    I think I get what you mean, but… there’s accurate, inaccurate.

    Warning, this is applying calibration to philosophy, but I think it’s important.

    It’s kind of a sliding scale, with “too accurate for reality” on one side and “so inaccurate it doesn’t even scan” on the other.

    One cup of water, accurate down to a single molecule, to “dogs have seven legs.”

    …there’s also “how testable is the accuracy” which gets more into utility, some things are true but you can’t test them and then there’s the history of the laws of physics where we go “well, that’s not quite right”….

    But, anyways-

    the problem with disinformation, and “politically correct” (its more honest twin), is that it tries to treat “information I do not like” in the moral place of lies, which is a knowing spreading of relevant inaccuracy to someone who is entitled to accuracy.

    Why I say it that way: if I say “good morning” it’s recognized as a social thing, not a statement about my actual morning, or your own, and sometimes it’s not even morning. OK, frequently. And if it is, I probably said ‘good afternoon’.

    The whole idea of disinformation is unjust. It’s trying to warp justice– that which one is due– to political ends.

    Like

    1. My understanding is that “Disinformation” was originally/is technically lying propaganda dressed up to appear truthful and especially reliable, by having it seem to come from ‘respectable, neutral’ sources.

      So the Left is projecting like WWII searchlights when it lies about stuff being “disinformation.” And I don’t think we should allow them the Humpty-Dumpty power of redefining the meaning of disinformation in our own minds as “Truths we don’t like.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Poking around, it looks like the Russian dezinformácija would more accurately translate in Modern American as “propaganda.”

        While technically propaganda doesn’t have to be false, that’s how it’s used.

        Yeah, they’re projecting. Especially since it pops up like all the talking points, showing that it is actually propaganda, not grass roots.

        Keep the word for the specific tactic of fight the accusations by showing that htey’re true. Just like we’ve been doing.

        Liked by 1 person

  26. I see that today that Commie LaWhorish is stating that Trump is behind the abortion ban in Iowa. Funny, but I don’t remember him being an Iowa resident, let alone king of, or even any part of the legislature, in Iowa. But its what’s being promoted by the “news” even here in ND.

    And left is all up in arms about the recent SCoTUS decision about Presidential actions being immune from prosecution. I know civics isn’t a thing in the public schools anymore, but even they should know that if they get their way about reforming what actions the President can take that are “immune” from criminal prosecution, every living President is going to be behind bars for violation of our civil/human rights and will be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. That doesn’t even get into how they end up leaving the DC cesspit with greater wealth than when they arrived, making only $400K/year.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. The leftists really should stop cherry-picking the text of the ruling. See:

      https://thehill.com/opinion/4771547-supreme-court-presidential-immunity-rule/

      The relevant part is:

      “The new rule of ‘absolute immunity’ states that when the Constitution grants the president ‘conclusive and preclusive’ power — meaning that the Constitution delegates a specific government function to the executive branch alone — the legislative branch cannot make any laws, including criminal laws, to restrict him.”. Also:

      “The president is also ‘presumptively immune’ for ‘official acts’ if a prosecution would intrude on executive branch power. To demonstrate that this rule is narrow, evaluate the argument proposed by the dissenting justices that a president who stages a coup, assassinates a rival, or takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon would now be immune from prosecution. None of these hypothetical fact patterns would qualify for “absolute immunity,” because each involves competing Constitutional powers. In such cases, the president’s acts would not be ‘conclusive and preclusive.’ Each would also involve unofficial conduct, which remains fully prosecutable. Presumptive immunity would be overcome for the same reasons.”

      So, once more, they’re lying by omission; the ruling specifically does not do what they (and the three dissenting Justices) claim it does.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. OK, WP (which DE) apparently lost it, so let’s try again…

      Regarding the tendency of leftists to leave out somewhat important bits, this is what the “unlimited immunity” rule actually said. From:

      https://thehill.com/opinion/4771547-supreme-court-presidential-immunity-rule/

      “The new rule of ‘absolute immunity’ states that when the Constitution grants the president ‘conclusive and preclusive’ power — meaning that the Constitution delegates a specific government function to the executive branch alone — the legislative branch cannot make any laws, including criminal laws, to restrict him. So the president cannot be prosecuted for a veto or an appointment, for example.

      The president is also ‘presumptively immune’ for ‘official acts’ if a prosecution would intrude on executive branch power.

      To demonstrate that this rule is narrow, evaluate the argument proposed by the dissenting justices that a president who stages a coup, assassinates a rival, or takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon would now be immune from prosecution. None of these hypothetical fact patterns would qualify for ‘absolute immunity’, because each involves competing Constitutional powers. In such cases, the president’s acts would not be ‘conclusive and preclusive’. Each would also involve unofficial conduct, which remains fully prosecutable. Presumptive immunity would be overcome for the same reasons.”

      Like

  27. I’m wondering why I turned out the way I did…in deepest Blue of California.

    And…it’s weird.

    I went to a private high school, because my local high school was going to-
    1-Convert from a grade/junior/high school model to a grade/middle/high school model and the local high school was going to get the whole 9th grade next year.
    2-The school district was closing one of the three high schools “due to low enrollment”-and sticking portables on both campuses.
    3-Class sizes were going from 40 students to 60+ students.
    -and despite my private school being in the middle of the Berkeley Hills, most of my teachers were “Blue Dog” Democrats of one kind or another.

    Then I went to a JC that boasted how many people they graduated from their nursing and CAD and auto repair programs (at the time I went, it definitely is different now).
    I worked for the campus newspaper with a teacher who viewed his job as going after everyone, because that’s what you did.

    I dropped out of my four-year college program because of depression, but I kept learning and doing things at the “ground level.” And seeing how they weren’t working…and how many people of the same people that were complaining about their living situation and re-electing people that were going to raise taxes on “the wealthy” to support gay, AIDS-infected transsexual sperm whales.

    I’m also, due to depression and my own issues, far too good at “fawning” by not saying anything. If you don’t say anything, you don’t get called out for being all sorts of horrible and despicable.

    But something has to change, and if that means I have to start being despicable…

    Like

  28. The problem of the control is that people don’t see it because so much of it is indirect. It’s a lot like the sweepers in Curling. They direct the stone not by touching the stone, but by sweeping the ice in front of it.

    Like

  30. There’s rioting in Caracas after the socialists blatantly stole the election. I hope our locals lefties take notice, but they won’t, because they’re stupid.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. They clearly and quite blatantly left him out there to die. And let us not forget, one man is dead and another person was seriously wounded. You notice we haven’t got an update on the person who survived being shot? Isn’t that super interesting, given that the media normally can’t shut up about stuff like that?

      IMHO, the United States of America is in the middle of a slow-motion coup right now. They’re working to subvert every single mechanism that restrains their power. If I had to guess who “They” is I would say the banksters. They have all the money, after all. But I don’t know. A look at #HeelsUp’s donors might be instructive.

      But don’t feel bad, Canada has already fallen to a slow-motion coup. The coalition of Liberal Pink and NDP flaming commie red is passing legislation right now that would make Joseph Goebbels blush. Jasper National Park burned to the ground last week and the Minister in charge had this to say:

      “Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday said it was “simply not true” that Parks Canada mismanaged fire preparedness at Jasper, Alta. However documents show the agency from 2015 halved the number of controlled burns needed to create firebreaks at Jasper and other parks.”

      He also said the fire was caused by Climate Change, capital C capital C, and not the woefully stupid Ministry of the Environment greenies refusing to cut down dead trees or spray for pine beetles. Even though MOE are the ones lawfully responsible for doing it, or in this case not doing it.

      But, in other news, it does seem that there are some fatty politicians who see an opportunity to toot their own horn. #BlubberDougie the Premier of Ontario came out in a speech yesterday and threatened all the judges and Justices of the Peace in Ontario with “responsibility” for the rampant criminality going on in Ontario lately.

      Did you know that sleepy old Toronto is simultaneously the gridlock capital of the world AND the car-theft capital of the world? Yep. Traffic only seems to move for stolen cars.

      “Officials announced the results of the provincial carjacking joint task force and Project Titanium, an investigation into a criminal network involved in violent auto thefts, home invasions and other non-violent vehicle theft incidents.”

      “TPS said 124 arrests have been made, and investigators have laid 749 criminal charges. Over 170 stolen vehicles, valued at more than $10 million, were recovered.”

      124 arrests, and guess what they found? A healthy percentage of the arrested were out on bail from prior offenses. And guess what happened? ALL the arrested are now… wait for it… out on bail. They were mostly out the next day.

      Yesterday, #BlubberDougie publicly announced he’s had it with the judges of Ontario’s courts, and he is going to “hold them accountable” for what goes on after they let these cretins out on bail. I don’t know how he plans to do that, given that he doesn’t have the power to unseat a judge by himself, but I’m sure he’ll find a way.

      Which might reduce the number of car jackings and home invasions, but also takes us a step closer to a police state.

      Welcome to Canada.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Don’t know if it was Parks Canada involved or not, but know for a fact that someone was responsible for clearing out ALL trees south of Jasper out of Whistlers and Wapiti Campgrounds, and surrounding Becker’s Chalets. Hadn’t gotten to along 93A, across the river to Wabasso Campground. Also signs of clearing out dead trees west and north above town. This is personal observation from spring 2023. Someone was trying something.

        Why they weren’t spraying for the pine beetles, IDK. Is there an effective option that can stop, not just slow them down? Using fire? Even by 2019, using fire would have just created the problem they just had, even if they’d done it when snow was still on the ground (again, personal observation, fall 2019).

        FYI. None of the tree clearing helped. This south/western section was particularly hit hard, including the mentioned Chalets (where we were hoping to stay at our next trip. The Jasper Inn & Suites, on Geikie street, where we’ve stayed, twice, appears to have survived.)

        What people can’t appreciate, is how Steep it is in the area surrounding Jasper township and the Athabasca river valley.

        Liked by 1 person

  33. AI image up top: No technical image issues (other than that’s a darn straight trench), but it’s obvious why those guys look so worried, as they went up to the front but forgot their rifles.

    It’s like the “show up at school/work/event and realize you forgot pants” dream, but with mud and artillery.

    Like

    1. Oh, and that wire looks more like it’s been strung to keep the herds of no-mans land cows out of the trench.

      Like

      1. Likewise with Russia. They had an immense army, and the industrial capacity to arm a moderate percentage of it. A lot of German militarists wanted the war to happen, and soon, because they were terrified Russia was building up its industrial capacity to the point where they could arm all their soldiers.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. There’s a bad old joke about the Polish soldier who goes to the front without a gun.

          Having nothing else, he grabs a broom handle, points it over the top of the trench and shouts “Bangity-bang”, and a Russian soldier drops into the trench, dead. He can’t believe his luck, even more so when it happens again.

          Then he sees four Russians walking up, slow, in a group. He shouts, “Bangity-bang!” Nothing. Does it again, still nothing.

          Finally, as all four Russians march directly over his head, he hears them chanting to themselves: “Tankity-tankity-tankity-tankity”.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. wasn’t there a scene in We Were Soldiers where the Sgt Maj said something like, “If it comes time for me to need a rifle there’ll be plenty on the ground.”

            Like

  34. The evil of the leftist is that (he) craves external power and is willing to sacrifice integrity to that end.

    The evil of the “conservative” is that he craves continuity and is willing to concede his rights to fools and devils to that end.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Look, I understand not wanting to break the system. It’s the best system in the world. And who knows if we can put it back, once broken.
      BUT enough is enough.

      Like

      1. Everyone’s family owned slaves. Slavery was so all perversive and pedigree collapse so inevitable that we are all descended from slave-owners — and slaves.

        Like

        1. I’m aware of that; no “race” has not been slaves, and no “race” has not been slaveowners. But that’s not the context my post concerned.

          Like

  36. As of now it’s being reported Maduro has fled the Presidential Palace and some of the bullyboys have started waving at (rather than shooting) the protesters.

    Romanian Christmas in July?

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Don’t bother with the BBC coverage. It leans toward “people on the street are worried about fraud but Maduro is totally in control and won fair and square, young people leaving Venezuela are an economic concern, move along …”

      That was as of 1100 central time in the US, so updates might be coming in.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. If Maduro cant feed his minions, they will throw his ass out and join up with whomever is most likely a) not to shoot them out of hand, and b) to feed their kids.

      Liked by 1 person

  37. While on this our mistake when the USSR fell was not offering the same set of people a “just so/explains all philosophy” so like the dog to his vomit they went back to communism. Let’s come up with something better. Let’s give them USAanism this time.

    There were some attempts. The classic example would be Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History. It wasn’t strictly USAanism, for example the title implies end of the Hegelian dialectic with freedom (in the form of Western Democracy) winning, but attempts were made.

    The problem is, as you point out later

    Well, the USSR fell, but we didn’t give the loonies any other system they could use to feed their sense of unearned superiority. And the loons in the academic and communication system need that.

    We cannot use USAanism as a replacement because its core tenants include some variation of the following:

    • “Be the best you can be.” (or use the Army version).
    • “You are rewarded for ability and effort.”

    Those two alone mean a need for superiority can only, if at all, be made by effort building on skill.

    Marxists believe in neither, as embodied by the classic Marxist quote:

    For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

    That the man who fishes all day will be a better fisherman than a man who fishes half the day but hunts, animal husbands, and criticises the other parts is alien to them. They literally cannot accept the concept of skill.

    Also, a man who considers being a “critical critic” as equal in labor to a hunter, a fisherman, or a herdsman is lazy to the core.

    So, while we might get many on board with USAanism and could have done better doing so I suspect the Marxists who have remained so are for reasons of moral failing (sloth) and mental failing (believing they are as good at anything as anyone else).

    Like

  39. This remark at Not The Bee is definitely relevant to Sarah’s post.

    https://notthebee.com/article/x-just-took-away-the-government-gray-check-from-venezuelas-dictator-after-his-election-shenanigans-

    For the squishy, terminally online folks who like to shout opinions from their air-conditioned living rooms: If you feel like Elon is being a big meany by changing the color of a dictator’s verification badge on a social media platform, feel free to head down to Caracas and let the commie stormtroopers show you what mean really looks like.

    Liked by 2 people

  40. Went looking for info on the ‘White Dudes For Harris’ event that a coworker hadn’t heard about yet.

    Came across the following quote from a ‘Daily Beast’ article:

    “When you’re liberal, you wear “weird” like a badge of honor. Only when your power comes from fear does weird become an epithet.”

    And yet it is THEM using it as an epithet. Gee, I wonder what that REALLY means??

    Liked by 2 people

    1. It means they’re as far from “liberal” as it’s possible to be. Neither communists nor fascists (BIRM) are in any way “liberal”.

      Liked by 1 person

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