Blood And Bullshit

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

What? Again? Why are we on this topic again?

Good Lord. I too am sick and tired of it. Trust me.

And yet there is a growing drumbeat for “America is a blood and soil nation.”

It’s ludicrous and laughable. I’ll be honest, it’s ludicrous and laughable even for other countries, but for the US it would be laughable, if it didn’t make me pull out all my hair and cry.

If you pursue that “blood” thing — and as an idea of how crazy this is, my husband thought blood referred to blood spilled in battle, which to be fair makes a ton more sense than “blood is genetic relationship” for our country — with its proponents, you get incoherent moaning and groaning alternately about how the founders meant the nation only for their “progeny” (but this is invalidated by the progeny reproducing with newcomers, which means they were only supposed to marry each other for 250 years now. Well. I guess they’d have eight toes per hand, but they’d play the banjo a treat.) Or we get moaning and eructations about “Anglo Saxon ancestry” or–

This is not just bullsthit. It is complete, utter, smelly scrapings of the filthiest stable you can imagine.

Look, guys, no nation is blood-and-soil. Not really. Even the nations of old Europe with their chest beating about the “French race” or the “Portuguese race” or heaven help us “the German race” are basically full of shit.

Humans are a randy lot. They run around and screw everything that moves. And before one of you comes by to inform me that most people live and die within 20 (or 100, or however many it is) miles of the place they were born. Sure. Most people do. And then there’s the outliers, like the guy of Iberian Jewish ancestry who came to the Americas with Columbus and cut a swath across the continent fathering children with Amerindian women and briefly causing a stir when tests were done, because it briefly lent credence to Amerindian tribes being the lost tribes of Israel. (Let’s take off our hats to his overachieving prowess, shall we?) But beyond that kind of adventurer, there were the guys (it’s easier for guys) who go 100 miles and father ten kids. In Europe that’s enough to cause a whole lot of genetic confusion. But then there’s wars. And wars, let me tell you, leave behind genetic residue from the enemy AND allies, and displaced populations pushed ahead of the armies. (G-d bless the men of Wellington’s armies, without which yours truly wouldn’t be writing this blog.)

So when my dad proudly beats his chest about the Portuguese Race, what he actually means are “people who can convince themselves all their ancestors were Portuguese, and they have these immutable characteristics.”

However, at least until the crazy EU experiment with open borders, it was possible for the nations of Europe to convince themselves they were all “one blood.” And that there were racial characteristics that accrued to that blood.

And you know what? By and large it was a harmless pastime that hurt no one, and probably made cultural integration easier. Because at any time, the people only knew maybe one person who was of foreign origin, and that person would be working really hard at seeming more of that nation than those born there.

Until, of course, this idea that nations were blood groupings hit a nation which had been a divided group of squabbling tribes until very recently. Germany. Germany which while not being as much “the autist of nations” as the US is more autistic than your average culture. Or was, definitely in the early nineteenth and early 20th century. And, ooh, boy, did that notion that a nation is a blood grouping explode and turn sour. Put a pin in that, okay? It’s important and we’ll return to it.

Regardless of whether other nations think they’re blood and soil, or hold to that pretense more easily than we do, no, nations are none of that.

Some tribes in Africa — but not the really big ones — are “blood” in the sense that they have a close genetic relationship with each other. Some of the more isolated and smaller nations in Europe might have managed it too, again, before the EU opened the borders wide.

The rest of modern nations? Not so much.

Now this doesn’t invalidate them as nations, and it doesn’t invalidate their right not to be invaded, or to have the people who come in assimilate.

Why not?

Because nations are territory and CULTURE. Culture is those things that aren’t hereditary — no, really. Like Portuguese tend to be good at creating networks, mostly commercial but not necessarily. This is not genetic. Perhaps a tendency to extroversion is genetic, but seriously? I’m an extreme introvert and I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS ONE until someone defined it as “people leave you drained” — which they do — because I was raised from infancy in a CULTURE where people live in each other’s pockets CONSTANTLY. — There might be tendencies to it, or have been in some original tiny tribal population that really influenced the culture. But the tendencies are imprinted or codified in the culture to such a point that they counter the individual’s natural, genetic tendencies.

Culture is difficult to define, and everyone confuses it with “blood”. It’s not. It’s more than “the rules we all agree on” and it’s less than “You do it whether you want to or not.” But those are the boundaries. To an extent, culture is almost a collective mind. Or that’s how it manifests. The truth is that you absorb it from a very early age, through language through expressions, through everything. And it becomes almost instinctive by the time you’re five or six.

This is why acculturation is so difficult and can take more than one generation (As Vivek decided to demonstrate to the nation at large.) You have to really work at it, and be self aware, and study how to change yourself, how to make yourself into the new thing, how to fit in.

The way it used to work, in the old days is that acculturation was enforced. You had to fit, at least outwardly. You had to speak the language, at least minimally. You had to dress like your neighbors. So your kids absorbed some of the culture — the public schools were great machines for this, too, back before “multicultural sensitivity” — and your grandkids were pretty much part of the new thing, with maybe some quirks.

None of this was blood, though eventually your kids and grandkids intermarry, of course. All of it was CULTURE.

Now, do we owe a massive debt to English culture, as it once was? Sure. For good and ill. The good, well, we’re distantly descended from the Magna Carta and more proximally from the Glorious Revolution. For ill… English culture tends to have rules and take them very seriously. Which has made the US the Autistic Child of Nations.

Which is our culture. Yes, we do have a culture. Though like English steals vocabulary we still useful stuff from other cultures. Oh, mostly food and clothing, but also cultural references, tales, useful things left lying around unused.

Now the thing is, the US can’t lie to itself and say we all belong together, cohesively, because of blood. As my mom put it, driving through Denver “This makes no sense. There’s no look to the people. They’re all different.”

Sure, we all stand a certain way. We all talk a certain way. Different regionally, sure, but you can tell Americans abroad. I know that, because I used to be foreign, and I could tell Americans very easily, even if they looked like Swedes or Irish or Germans (of which there were plenty around usually.)

But we’re not the same physically and genetically. And we can’t be made so.

So, what holds us together? The Constitution. The Founding documents.

Yes, we are a nation of words. We are a nation of oath.

Now, is that the only thing we are? Or are we going to go door to door and examine the minds of our co-citizens for faithfulness to the documents?

Well no. We’re going to demand they don’t violate the most fundamental and basic law of our land, which rests on these documents. And that they don’t spit on the Constitution to our faces by doing things like assume rights are collective, say.

In the same way that other cultures pretend they’re all the same blood without going door to door giving people genetic tests, we’re going to pretend that everyone born and bred in the US are believers in the Constitution, or at least agree to abide by it. What it boils down to? If you’re not, don’t make us notice.

And if you come from elsewhere? You have to prove you believe in the Founding Documents. That’s only the beginning, mind you. You have to fit in too. You have to imbibe the culture. And if you can’t make it all the way, you need to make it to where your kids will take it the rest of the way.

Which is why open borders is bullshit. You can’t absorb into your culture a massive wave of … well, the world. It doesn’t matter after a certain point whether they’re useful or not, whether they’re taking jobs the Americans won’t do or not. At a certain point, it’s too many incoming. How many are too many? More than ten percent every year, with the spigot open for more. It’s too many.

Ten or twenty percent PER GENERATION might be survivable. MAYBE. But I wouldn’t bet. It would be survivable in a nation that had an education system that enforced acculturation and taught its principles to the young. We don’t have that. We also don’t have a society at large that enforces assimilation. We don’t make people speak English. Hell, we don’t make people VOTE in English. We don’t make people be LITERATE in English. And G-d knows we don’t teach them civics OUR style in any language.

So, what does that mean? Oh, that we need a hell of a lot less immigration, if any, until we sort out how to transmit our culture and our civic values to the people born here, let alone to the foreigners coming in.

Lest our nation dissolve in a vat of globalist goo.

That’s what people are perceiving and why they’re blindly groping for some way to keep the stranger out and to fort up with their own kind.

And that’s why — with a good dose of our enemies’ agit prop (they’re just hoping to get a race war going, because they believe our media and think we’re 50% each race, and divided down the middle) — people keep coming back to “blood and soil.”

Dudes, we weren’t all one blood when the American revolution happened. And you can say all you want that we were all “white” and that too is bullshit. Part of the bullshit of the idea that we automatically enslaved all black people is that when the revolution happened there were free black people in the North, for whom no cut out was made in the founding documents. Beyond that their notion of “white” at the time didn’t encompass either Irish or Portuguese or French. It might have encompassed Germans. Maybe. Depending on Germans from where. But you know what, all were citizens and the rules applied to all.

Now? Now unleash the “blood and soil” demon on our land, where we’re both far more visibly different than the Germans were between the wars and FAR FAR more autistic than Germany (or any other country ever was) and the results will make the ghosts of Nazi monsters blench and say “Oooh. That might be too far.”

More importantly, we’ll fall apart. There will be no reason to stay together. The blue and the grey and brother against brother? People! There won’t be a household that doesn’t break into four factions or a village of a 100 that doesn’t have five competing armies.

Anything combustible will burn, and the blood will soak the soil for generations, till no two stones stand together.

So, no. Yes. We are a credal nation. No, we’re not going door to door and examine our citizen’s consciences and understanding. We’re going to assume they’re Americans and believe as Americans UNTIL AND UNLESS THEY PROVE OTHERWISE.

And then we’ll deal with it. Preferably in the courts of law.

Meanwhile, we’ll teach and we’ll behave and we’ll be AMERICAN.

And if you come in, you’d best be prepared to be American, to leave your former allegiances behind, and to teach your children to adopt our ways.

Sure, waving the flag and singing the anthem is superficial and showy. Teach it to your kids anyway. Teach them American history. Teach them to be proud of being Americans.

Or leave. Fit In or Fuck Off.

Live it. Believe it. Be it.

Or fuck off.

Now the culture is wounded. We don’t know much about cultures. No, really. The study of culture is … superficial and silly. Which is how they’ve come up with things like “Multiculturalism”.

But cultures have defense mechanisms and behave in ways that make them almost collective intelligences. And wounded cultures move to survive.

Again, this is not very well studied, but I’m going to say: Whether you were born here or not, we’re going to a time of FIFO Fit In Or Fuck Off.

FIFO.

Don’t try to pretend it’s genetic — not here. If you’re in Europe or Asia, that is a good idea, as much as you can. They’re undergoing their own defense reaction — don’t try to push out those who don’t look like you.

It’s a little difficult for the Odds. We stick out like sore thumbs, anyway.

But if there’s a place we can do it it’s in America. Because it’s autist-nation, and our belief in the principles of the nation will overrule almost everything else.

Be American. Believe. Take the oath. Take the oath in your mind and your heart.

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

Accept it fully. Believe it, live it, pass it on.

And hope the madness passes us by without the fire and the blood.

186 thoughts on “Blood And Bullshit”

  1. Ah yes, American as me. French, French Canuck (with a possible smattering of Native American in there), English (as in Great Grands Smith came from Jolly Ol’ before having their kids, and I think Grampa Smith was Cornish though lived east of London when he left) and Czech (as in Great Grandpa K left from Hamburg with a lay-over in Liverpool before ending (just up the road from where I now live in Menominee) in Carny-Nadeau, not to mention a few ancestors here of slightly blurry background.

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  2. Funny thing is the second largest ethnic group in the US, behind the British are the Germans, but during WWI, the German descendants that stayed decided to be not German at all anymore. Some ridiculous fraction of American comfort food is based on German cuisine.

    I suspect one part of the current blood and soil thing are the radical anti-leftists still running lefty code with the signs flipped.

    And the pot stirring from China trolls. As near as I can tell, most of Asia absolutely hates each other from millennia of invasions and atrocities against each other to the point that cultural ether can’t conceive of factions having conflicts that resolve without one side or the other exterminating the other as a peoples. I suspect the only reason the whole area hasn’t erupted into that since WWII is the US has essentially made Japan and Korea protectorates that we basically ignore so long as they don’t poking each other enough that we have to come back over there and separate them.

    I’m not entirely sure how handle the radical anti-leftists. They’ve been told all their lives that they are unredeemable monsters that some of them have decided that they might as well be hung for wolves.

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    1. Article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on China’s latest humongous hydroelectric damage project. Which will, just coincidentally, mess up the local ecology and screw over the downriver economies of their neighbors. The author believes Xi is firmly committed to China as the Middle Kingdom, the center of the world, and therefore noone else matters. The project (assuming they can carry it off; it’s bigger than Three Gorges) will certainly not improve Chinese/Indian/Bangladeshi/ etc. relations.

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      3.  The project (assuming they can carry it off).

        I’ll admit that I’m skeptical about that. China announces a lot of grandiose plans. The number of those plans that actually come to fruition are much more limited.

        But that doesn’t mean that even a failed attempt might not mess up economies and ecologies downstream and get the other countries in the area hating them even more than they already do.

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        1. Like the plan to divert the headwaters of the Indus River through a tunnel into the Taklamakan Desert so they can grow crops there. Yes, tunnel through the Himalaya.

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    2. Funny thing is the second largest ethnic group in the US, behind the British are the Germans, but during WWI, the German descendants that stayed decided to be not German at all anymore.

      For anyone who missed it, ESR had an interesting TwiX post about this the other day.

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      1. My German grandma from around WW2 would say she was Pennsylvania Dutch, but as far as I can tell her family were not Amish. I think the emphasis was to make it clear that the family was old American German (pre revolutionary) and deflect the distrust of Germans during WW2.

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      2. The Germans in WWI faced a lot of social pressure and distrust. Suspect Wilson’s Administration had a lot to do with it.

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      3. ESR said: “My father had grown up being told the family were originally French from Alsace-Lorraine. Late in life he did some genealogical research and discovered that the town of Clearfield, Pennsylvania listed the Raymond family as “Germans”. This came as rather a shock to him.”

        The Alsace-Lorraine region went back and forth from France to Germany a couple of times in the 19th century. AesopSpouse’s family came from the Alsace area, and his family remained “identified” as German, but I don’t remember when his first ancestor came to America.

        I think it might be a toss-up for others.

        If you want to see are real “blood-and-soil” dispute, look no further than the Wikipedia entry for that territory.

        Oddly, in that regard, Karl Marx may have made his one and only true statement: “If Alsace and Lorraine are taken [by Germany], then France will later make war on Germany in conjunction with Russia. It is unnecessary to go into the unholy consequences.”

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        1. On my husband’s mother’s side, the census entry lists them as Indian (feather) until they um…. started listing themselves as white in the fifties. This is a new discovery for us.
          On his dad’s side they’re English and Irish, save for a French Bride in the 1600s and a German bride, and….. yeah. NO ONE IS PURE ANYTHING.

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    3. The radical anti-leftists need the countermessage of being valued, loved, heard, supported, and redirected into constructive patterns…but I suspect that can’t happen so long as the left remains influential and with any power. This is one of the true incipient tragedies of our time: The left has created its own most implacable foes…but what happens afterwards?

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    4. The kids need to be taught civics and real history. Oh, and Heinlein. Tell them the free love thing and the overpopulation fear is “man of his times” but pay attention to the lessons behind lessons.

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    5. WW II finished off much of the “German” Texans. But that was different for many of them, because they didn’t consider themselves as “Germans” but as “Wends”. They had left Germany due to religion, they were Lutheran and the German state was Catholic.

      My mother was one of the first to go to “English” school although the family had been in the US for 3 or 4 generations. Family and church were more important than the state and the state was more important than the country back then.

      Rural electrification, radio, and automobiles helped connect the farms and small towns with the modern world. Also men were drafted to fight in WW I, WW II, and Korea and were exposed to the outside world. Commerce of modern goods became almost exclusively in English.

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    6. One important part about East Asia, imo – Japan is one of the most powerful nations in the region, which means that anyone who decides to provoke Japan needs to be careful. Further, Japan’s position on its archipelago means that it’s largely managed to avoid foreign internal meddling and atrocities – aside from us, of course. So while they don’t like their neighbors, it’s not the same revenge-drive that affects those neighbors where Japan is concerned. Meanwhile, I get the impression that the Japanese are a bit willfully blind when it comes to just how much parts of Asia hate them over events in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

      Chinese agitation over the latter isn’t helping, either, as it muddles the issue of how much is legit criticism of Japan’s actions, and how much is Beijing stirring up trouble again.

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      2. There’s attempts to kill Japan over things their grandfathers did now, too.

        …unfortunately for those who very much want hate hate hate, Japan makes cool anime, and K-pop is awesome, and visa-versa, and the younger generations are bonding over that.

        My husband and I dang near raised the roof cheering the first time we noticed a swath of very Korean names in the credits at the end of an anime we were watching.

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        1. Yeah, there are a lot of successful Korean animation studios. And while they don’t have the raw experience that the Japanese studios do, some of them are apparently getting quite good.

          There are also some popular Korean manhwa. For example, Solo Leveling is based off of a Korean web novel and manhwa, and is being released as an anime series in Japan (first season is already out, iirc, and second will be out soon). This is despite the fact that the Japanese in the story are depicted *very* negatively.

          I wouldn’t be surprised if that part gets toned down a bit…

          And that, unfortunately, shows that much still remains to be done in this area. The youth might be growing closer. But depictions of Japan or Japanese that I’ve seen in Korean media are more likely to show the Japanese as duplicitous schemers attempting to gain control of Korea, while Chinese are depicted more normally despite the much more immediate threat posed by the PRC.

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          1. Years ago I watched a Korean Drama on Hulu, it was basically Zorro in Korea during the ?1920’s? Japanese occupation? The male lead was a Japanese school teacher who’s Korean Fiancee was ?killed? ? Injured? By the Japanese army. Just like Zorro they could never guess the vigilante’s identity because he was Japanese.

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            1. The Koreans will sometimes have sympathetic Japanese. For example, the K-Drama “Live Up to Your Name” has a sympathetic Japanese general during Hideyoshi’s failed invasion of the Korean peninsula. It probably helps that the general in question is based off of an actual historical guy who apparently stayed behind and joined the Koreans when the Japanese eventually withdrew.

              But there’s another Japanese officer in that same series who’s quite happy to kill Koreans more or less because he can. And in fairness, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was an historically accurate attitude for quite a few Japanese in Korea at the time.

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          3. I read years ago that North Korea has worked hard to turn South Korean college students i to good socialists. That might explain the differences between the trattment of the Japanese and Chinese in Korean media.

            BTW, if you think American politics are, um, interesting, note what’s happening in South Korea. The last thing I saw was the impeached President’s guard refusing to let him be arrested for his attempt to declare martial law last month…

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    7. The German military atrocities in Belgium at the start of WWI had a fair amount to do with a lot of public distaste for all things German on the part of the general public then. (In the 1920s, the KKK in Texas was apparently even more riled up about German-speakers than they were about blacks being uppity.) Then, there was the rise of the Nazis, Hitler and the Holocaust, which really cemented that distaste for another generation. Up until WWI, generally Americans were rather favorably disposed toward Germany. The music, the science, engineering — all that cultural stuff, enriching the US. I think quite a lot of qualities that are though to be stereotypically American are also German – order, tidiness, cleanliness, etc. There were entirely ethnic German communities in Texas and elsewhere, which were entirely German-speaking, as far as churches, schools, newspapers, et cetera. Kaiser Bill put a horrible blotch on all that, Hitler put an even bigger blotch. I talked with an elderly fan of the Adelsverein Trilogy, doing an event in Beeville a few years ago, who told me that his parents made the decision around 1920, that from then on, they would speak English, and English only, at home. He had only a few conventional phrases of German vocabulary, bits of songs and poems – his slightly older brother remained German-fluent. Being German was about as popular as herpes for a couple of decades – all because of the two world wars.

      I wonder of late, if the mainland and communist Chinese are going to go through a similar reversal on acceptance by the American public – through being brutal and exploitative a**holes. Food for thought…

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      1. There was also FDR. For some (afaik unknown) reason, FDR hated Germany and the Germans. This was even before Hitler’s rise to power, so it wasn’t due to the Nazis.

        Though on the positive side, it meant that FDR never trusted a man (Hitler) that he probably otherwise would have initially respected (much as he did Mussolini).

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    8. Something I hadn’t really thought about before the subject came up a few days ago– yeah, the ancestors of a lot of Americans are “German.”

      It wasn’t Germany when they left. That didn’t happen until, what, like a generation before WWI?

      It’s like how a ton of Lake County in Oregon came from Ireland, and who cares what nonsense they came up with about “north ireland” and such gab– they were Irish when they got here, they’re American now, pass the beef, please.

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      1. Much, if not the majority, of the German immigration did predate German unification. There was a particularly large surge in the wake of the failed 1848 revolutions.

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        1. At the same time, there seems to have been an understanding that – no matter which German state they came from – they were Germans.

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      2. And a fair number came here to escape religious persecution. Like the Inspirationists, who tried to settle in upstate New York before moving to Iowa and founding the Amana Colonies.

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    9. Erm… no, there’s a ton of US comfort food that’s based on German cuisine. Lots of it doesn’t have a German name anymore, and the ingredients aren’t exactly the same, that’s all.

      Frankly, it’s pretty hilarious. If you read a German cookbook, and if you pick one that aligns with your local settlement pattern, it’s probably going to be full of stuff that you’ve eaten tons of.

      Not usually at a restaurant, though. (Unless it’s a diner or a buffet, something like that.) It’s what you’ve had at home, or at church suppers, or at picnics. It’s home cooking.

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      2. YES. Sweat and toil for the win. This nation wasn’t born, it was MADE. Millions of people bought into the idea behind it and, each working to create their own little piece of it, made something huge and amazing.

        We exist as a nation because those who came before us put blood, sweat, and tears into creating a place and a culture in which everyone who’s willing to be part of it can benefit from applying their own sweat and toil. And we’ll continue only so long as enough of us put sweat and toil into continuing the culture.

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      3. Both of you need to drive it all the way home.

        Churchill’s stirring words from the Battle of Britain should again resound with those of us wanting to return to a solid, strong, safe, and successful America, after almost 9 decades of creeping leftism infesting the education processes.

        “Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears!”

        Or, as one of my mentors put it long ago, “You sweat and toil in training, so that neither you nor your (patients/comrades) bleed; When you are standing on the North Pole, and there is no where to go, but South!”

        (yes, The Art of Medicine has been diluted just as has many other things, partially because of the ‘kinder, more genteel’ training methods. I’m not saying go back to the grueling 90 plus hour weeks of my training, but the training needs to be tough enough that a well trained 3rd year Resident can make the proper decision with minimum information and less sleep, when someone under her/his/its care is truly, magnificently, trying to DIE.)

        To keep your sanity, you need to be able to cry in the aftermath, when things did not go well. That’s part of what caused me to have to leave medicine.

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  4. they were only supposed to marry each other for 250 years now. Well. I guess they’d have eight toes per hand, but they’d play the banjo a treat.

    Yeah, apparently marriage to first cousins is allowed and encouraged in Islam, and it’s producing the results you would expect. This is from 2015 and apparently it has NOT improved.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html

    First-cousin marriages, which are are legal in the UK, are practised within Britain’s Pakistani community, as well as among some Arab and African families. Medical data previously suggested that while British Pakistanis were responsible for 3 per cent of all births, they accounted for 30 per cent of British children born with a genetic illness.

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    1. There’s a good argument to be made that the Catholic church breaking up cousin marriages is part of what made European technological advance take off like a rocket.

      Frankly I know enough about inbreeding, line breeding, etc. from animal breeding – and how much culling it takes to produce desired (not necessarily good!) results – that I sometimes want to beat people over the head with the Hapsburg pedigree. “Do not marry first cousins! This is a Bad Idea!”

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      1. BTW for what it’s worth polydactyly is a (mostly) autosomal dominant in humans and by itself not an indication of anything harmful. (Mostly because it involves a bunch of other genes to get expressed, including the Sonic Hedgehog genes, which is just amusing right there.)

        The problem is getting the extra digits to actually be useful and not a hindrance, which is… kind of luck of the draw, so far.

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      2. Not just genetically– if you can’t marry close cousins (and how close depended on the culture involved, I think Sarah’s mentioned that things like “milk-brothers” are treated as if they’re blood kin) then you have to actually deal with outsiders.

        And communication brings advancement, especially when before anybody further out than “our grandparents were at LEAST half-siblings” was sus as heck.

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          1. Realized I didn’t explain, so this is for the other folks– k, the back story is you could only trust family, right?

            Well, milk-sibs– nursed from the same mother, usually but not always the mother of one of the kids– were considered adopted for the trust-circle.
            So they HAD to be treated as adopted for the marry-outside-your-core-group thing.

            (This was also done with a ton of other adoption schemes, and it works well enough that even “bring child-betrothed into household to raise” starts hitting the “sibling, do not sex up” taboos.)

            Which, incidentally, also tears the heck out of personality based power structures. You can’t have the Patriarch From Heck if he’s butting heads with a dozen other such Patriarchs From Heck.

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            1. Until fairly recently, you were supposed to treat godparents as also close kin for marriage purposes. A lot of times this didn’t come into play, since you were probably picking older people of note who could help your kids.

              But you weren’t supposed to let godparents marry godchildren, and this often extended to not letting a godparent’s kids marry the godchild.

              So there was definitely a good amount of incentive to keep marrying out, even if it was just to the next village over.

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              1. That was intentional. Blood ties were much more important, and feuds much more frequent. Forcing marrying out was an anti-war measure.

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            2. Interesting. So there’s a social justification for a discussion I had with a boy I was babysitting. I was explaining one of my stories to him.

              A girl foundling is found by a queen who also has a son the same age. She sends the girl away to be fostered. Years later they meet and fall in love.

              The boy I was babysitting was horrified because they were siblings and shouldn’tget married. They weren’t. But to him they were.

              Liked by 2 people

    2. Eh. It’s legal and encouraged in Portugal. It’s not that bad unless that’s ALL you do.
      Mom’s side of the family tried it twice in recent memory. It’s not…. great for various systems in the body.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It is also legal in many US states ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States ). As noted by our Hostess it is usually only a problem if continued for several generations (CF Hapbsburgs, Queen Victoria’s descendants, and likely many of the Egyptian Dynastys). It seems particularly common in Muslim countries who veil as the only women you would ever see without a veil are your direct blood relations(sisters being right out) and cousins. This had probably started to die out in the 50s to 70’s in the larger cities, but with the growth of fundamentalist Sunni and Shia in the late 70’s it returned as a general practice. It likely never left in the more remote sections of Saudi Arabi, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others where veiling was still common. It tends to reinforce undesirable recessives and certain sex gene related issues (e.g. hemophilia, color blindness). This is not to say there aren’t detrimental dominant genes, just that they don’t need the inbreeding to reinforce them. Also less of an issue as someone with a really nasty dominant tends not to make it to breeding age.

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          2. Ouchie Uncle/ Niece is closer consanguinity than cousins I think. say 25% the same. Brothers share 50% of genes on average Daughter gets half her genes from Dad so 1/2 of 1/2 means 1/4 average shared. As opposed to two arbitrary unrelated people who would average 0%. And yes I knew the Pharaohs did brother sister to keep the line the same.

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        2. Or as Jeff Foxowrthy put it, “If your family tree does not fork….you might be a redneck.”

          Love his humor, laughed myself sick when my (arguably redneck) cousins introduced us to his work.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. You know what’s fairly annoying is how much libs hate Foxworthy and the rest of the Blue Collar Comedy tour. One smugly informed me of how “Larry the Cable Guy” isn’t really like that and I responded “REALLY?! You mean his playing a character for comedic purposes?Next you’ll be telling Stephen Colbert isn’t really like he is on his TV show either!” Stupid dipshit.

            Like

            1. Actually, I suspect Colbert and a lot of other left-wing ‘comedians’ are exactly like that in real life.

              Don’t forget Bill Engvall and “Here’s your sign!”

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              1. Well, to clarify, this is when he was doing the Colbert Report and acting like a parody of a right-wing TV show host. Seth McFarlane hates them too and makes fun of them relentlessly, probably becuase they’re funnier than he is and don’t have to rip off the Simpsons and indulge in gross sociopathic humor.

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    3. IIRC, a bill was recently introduced in the British Parliament that would ban first cousin marriages. It was attacked as an anti-inmigrant bill. But if course, no one would explain *why* it was an anti-immigrant bill, instead of just good practice to avoid genetic inbreeding.

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    4. Cousin marriage is a bad idea not just from a genetic perspective but a cultural one. It encourages insularity by suggesting that you should look for a spouse only among your close relatives, members of your own clan. It encourages the mentality that only the people of your tribe are real people.

      Heck, even switching from parallel cousin marriage (marrying the children of your father’s brothers in a patriarchal culture) to cross cousin marriage (marrying the children of your father’s sisters or your mother’s brothers) can make a big difference in how a culture interacts with outsiders by using marriages to reinforce alliances between clans.

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    5. It hasn’t — and apparently, it’s several degrees worse in Saudi Arabia, where it has been generation after generation of close cousins marrying. Almost worse than the Hapsburgs, whose’ family tree resembled a straight stick.

      Like

  5. About 20 years ago, I was working in a country in West Africa. One of my friends, whom I’ll call Steve, was an American who was black; his skin color was visually indistinguishable from the local people. Yet one day, as I was driving from my office to the restaurant I usually ate lunch at, I saw a black-skinned man walking along the side of the road in front of me, and thought “That’s an American”. Passed him, looked in my rear-view mirror, and recognized the face of my friend Steve. He was wearing local clothing, so it wasn’t his clothes that clued me in. There was something about his body language — head tall, shoulders back, confident stride — that made me recognize him as an American even when I didn’t know who it was.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. I swear the only reason people in Romania assumed I was British or German (because a near-six-foot redheaded female with distinctly NON Romanian or Hungarian features stuck out a bit over there) is because I was speaking Romanian fluently and while, with an accent, a not-very-identifiable accent, and they just couldn’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that an American spoke their language. (And, in fact, I heard that more than once, when someone did learn I was American, during the time I was there.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have a good friend, an American who’s very good at languages, who spent six months in Brazil during college, doing language immersion. After about four months, he was chatting up some local girls, in Portuguese, with a good enough Brazilian Portuguese accent that they flat-out REFUSED to believe he was American until he produced his passport.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I remember one of my classmates from high school I met at a reunion had joined the USAF and was stationed in Germany. Said he was learning German, but every time he tried speaking it to people in Germany they switched to English because they recognized his accent.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. We spent a day in Quebec, at a small town art street fair. My beloved tried speaking his few words of French (My mother-in-law was fluent). The locals instantly showed mercy to him by switching to English. But we noticed his just trying upped our credit with people.

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      4. And oh my, the “Slavic type,” is so common there. Those of us without high cheekbones, blade-like noses and a vague, slight, “slant,” to the eyes do stand out. (I wasn’t there long enough to learn to speak Romanian, but we were in class with Romanian grad students).

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yes. And coloring/height aside, I have VERY Celtic features, lol.

          I can still usually spot an Eastern European even now–those Slavic features are *quite* distinctive!

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  6. One “lefty” on another site was responding to the idea that the so-called Palestinians should be moved out of Gaza.

    He “claimed” that they “belonged” there which sounded like that “blood and soil” nonsense.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. It is. So is Israel itself. If you are Jewish or Christian, Israel belongs where it is because G-d gave that soil to the blood descendants of Abraham. Move outside of that dimension, and it turns into who has a better claim to it, and the only non-abstract answer is whoever can take and hold it by force of arms against all comers.

      (Can’t avoid bringing religion into this discussion, Sarah; it’s an integral part of the whole issue.)

      Laws, treaties, inalienable / natural rights “endowed by the Creator” (damn, there’s that pesky religion thing again), none of them matter two cents against “boots on the ground”, except as an encouragement to add your boots to one side or the other.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Yeah. We kind of write that into policy for Amerindians here, because our government has decided their myth of being created here is fact and must be respect.
      The truth is all humans moved around a lot. There are no “people of the soil.”

      Liked by 1 person

      2. There was a Navaho talking on TV about “their land” being created by “G*d” for them.

        He didn’t mention that many of their neighbors lived there first and have “interesting” stories about the Navaho entry into that territory. [Twisted]

        Liked by 2 people

        1. The fact that they had to slaughter the people who were already there wouldn’t change his mind one bit. They probably deserved it for living there in defiance of God’s decree. Besides, the Navajo consider themselves the only people.

          I had an interesting discussion with an older lady, who was upset that her grand-daughters had defiled themselves by marrying white men. She absolutely refused to acknowledge her great-grandchildren.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The Navajo are hardly unique in that; I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve read that all or nearly all aboriginal peoples’ name for themselves translates as “the people”, the implication being that anyone not them doesn’t qualify as “people”.

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            1. The method for handling pagans is laid out by Paul when he was in Athens:

              Acts 17:

              22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. 29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: 31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. 32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.

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  7. Re the incoherent meanings on what the founders “intended” – alternately they could go read what the founders actually wrote, complaining about that George fellow actively opposing in-migration to the colonies:

    He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. And speaking of incoherent moanings:

    Since the election, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s favorability ratings have hovered around where they were before the election, around net even favorability. However, Vice President Kamala Harris’ favorability has fallen significantly, and some Democrats are now questioning whether she should run for office again in the future.

    https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/kamala-harris-favorability-down-post-presidential-election

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m recalling many years ago when Jesse Jackson was considering/doing a run for president. IIRC, there was a bumper sticker “Run, Jesse, Run”.

        Certain politically incorrect types said it should be on the front bumper. Same holds for Kamala’s.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Hildebeeste had one of those. I never saw one for Jesse, but I did see hers for the front bumper that had “reversed” lettering……..

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              1. And in annoying morning news, Biden is giving her and Soros Medals of Freedom.

                “Freedom.” My middle fingers are twitching.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. FICUS/FJB is certainly giving the middle fingers to America and Americans. Meanwhile, he’s reduced presidential recognition to a meaningless state. (One wonders if the intent is to poison the well for future [DJT and onward] presidential awards.)

                  Like

  9. “We don’t make people speak English. Hell, we don’t make people VOTE in English. “

    This. This so much.

    Having a democratic republic and a marketplace of ideas means you need to be able to argue and make your point so that other people can understand it. If you can’t do that, the whole system is injured.

    That and just not speaking the local language, or trying, is incredibly rude.

    (Then again, so is asking someone to “speak up, your voice is too soft” when you’ve got airpods in your ears. That’s been happening a lot. What the heck.)

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I suspect reaching out to pull an airpod would be considered assault. OTOH, forming a horn with one’s hands to shout might be OK. [VBEG]

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Do not tempt me….

        In part it annoys because they’re apparently oblivious to all the VERY LOUD security devices they’re setting off, and when you move in to deactivate the noise, you get a nasty, “What, did you think I was stealing?”

        Oy.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Remember the Star Trek (original series) episode “Arena”, where Kirk gets embraced and smooched by the Gorn? (Dish but cant take, Jim?) He slap-boxes the Gorn’s ear-equivalents to stunning effect.

          Why bring that up? Oh, no good reason…. (grin)

          Liked by 2 people

        3. >>nasty, “What, did you think I was stealing?”<<

          A polite “Well sir, that did cross my mind.” Especially when the idiod(?) is setting off the security devices. Depends on store management as to whether such a response is allowed. Sigh.

          Liked by 1 person

      1. Deaf I get. The airpods are a rudeness. Used to be you didn’t answer your cellphone in a public place. Now when I have to ask a customer a question to finish the sale, they glare at me ’cause they’re on the phone.

        Seems a bit unfair, that. *Wry G*

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Aye. Right ear took the prosthetic implant on the first try (Otosclerosis binds the middle ear bones and really kills sensitivity.) Left ear took three tries before the implantation didn’t fail, and that ear has had some nasty noise exposure over the years. (Mostly luck it was in one ear, though I had an MG that generated horrible wind noise until I found a hard top cover for it. The last round of prosthetic implantation involved a really small, really loud jackhammer. Didn’t help.)

        I should get hearing aids, but am being stubborn about it. Have discovered the joy of using closed captions when we watch DVDs. Especially Vera. Between the accent and Britslang words, I need all the help I can get. Even Inspector Morse is easier with captions enabled.

        “I’m sorry, what did you say?” is a common sentence for me.

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    3. Oh, and it’s not … Look, the older kid and I spent months speaking French all the time, including in public. He was preparing for his IB final exams, which are GRADED in France.
      And of course, I realized he knew NOTHING of French the summer before his final year. (How was I to know? He had Bs!) So I deployed the full court attack, starting with memorizing vocabulary lists and practicing grammar till his eyes bled, then moving on to reading books written in France for natives, and speaking French with me constantly including while out in public.
      Yes, we got snark about how rude it was from other people. And also congratulations for teaching him “my culture.”
      Both were answered sarcastically, though the first less, as I just said “I’m preparing him for his French exams.” And people got somewhat embarrassed.
      Now, I admit our situation was rare, and honestly, the conversation was only “Get me that jar from the upper shelf” and “Do we need milk already?” and deducible from context.
      BUT I don’t think we should utterly forbid the use of foreign languages in public, just yeah, good manners dictate one not do it outside special circumstances.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Needing the law to forbid something like that is an indication that the culture has failed.

        Interesting that your son was in trouble with his French IB exams; in our school, the foreign language exams were some of the ones we thought easiest; if you could make yourself understood, even with poor grammar, you were almost guaranteed a passing grade. For us, the difficult exam was the math one, because the teacher (a) believed that calculus was the pinnacle of math and refused to teach any other advanced subject, and (b) hated the IB exam and actively sabotaged us by lying to us about what the exam would be like.

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      2. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, the use of languages besides English should be safe, legal and rare. And the Reader adds it should be nonexistent for government business.

        Liked by 3 people

    4. Back in the ’90s, California passed a ballot initiative that pronounced English as the official language of the state, and required it to be used in certain circumstances.

      It was promptly neutered by the courts, of course.

      Liked by 2 people

    5. The internet is helping, I think it was when Rubio was in primaries and some one discovered he had a completely different platform for Spanish speakers from his English platform? But the internet is full of translators and video is forever. And the media didn’t understand why Southerners were voting for a New York Real-estate Tycoon since he so obviously didn’t have a Southern accent… and in the media’s mind people only vote for people just like themselves….

      Liked by 2 people

  10. Blood and soil is nonsense for that large fraction of Nomadic Americans who up stakes every 4 or 5 years and move halfway across a continent. Or have a military career. Or just dote on the idea of the Ultimate Road Trip. All of whom delight in meeting fellow Americans who are completely unlike them.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Blood and soil is an old method of control. One of the oldest, probably. Out of fashion after WWI because it doesn’t play well with socialism.

    Now being trial-ballooned by the big brains in the media/industrial complex because their control is slipping.

    Just remember that it is CONTROL they are after, and everything else becomes easy to figure out.

    Liked by 2 people

  12. The good news is that the current debate is the result of cultural pressure, which is transient. Closing the border and fixing woke culture should take the pressure off, leaving the blood-and-soil types without a platform. It’s just a question of identifying and implementing sane solutions before anyone does anything too stupid.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Yes. I know that. Which is why I said if the HB1 BS continued, it was going to imperil me and my kids. (No one will take us for migrants come in over the border, but H1B people who stayed? Yeah, that’s likely.)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. There were two Nisei families in my childhood church. One had the usual WW2 internment story. The other….

        “O” family gets notice that the Army would stop by to pick them up. Neighbors show up first. Armed. Army sends two men, an officer and a Truck. Neighbors tell Army to go fight the Japs, these were Americans. Buzz off. Army gets annoyed, but leaves. Comes back in strength. Dang near whole town of men turns out, heavily armed, to tell Army that they had best go elsewhere and stay there. Army wisely withdraws to reconsider options.

        Some wise wag provided the face saving endgame. The “O” family were declared -Irish- “O’s”, “There must be some mistake.”

        So very proud of those folks.

        Lesson for House Hoyt? Hook up with like minded neighbors and associates. Have commo plan and stay in touch. Code phrases for “brownstorm” if fertilizer hits impeller. Give friends chance to remind idiots who Americans really are. You have my info. Have puns, will travail.

        Liked by 2 people

        2. Problem is that the sort of thing she’s worried about wouldn’t be official. It’d be done by an unofficial group. Groups like that often don’t work in the open, but instead might resort to anonymous violent acts.

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          1. We’ve got history for dealing with the Kopy Kat Kids, brush it off and do game prep and don’t even give the figleaf that it’s not the Klan take … whatever they’re up to now.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. When “unofficials” bump in the night,

            Bump back. Hard.

            (Grin) in that novel folks are writing.

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    2. Add to it that older son the one who tans speaks with a British accent when nervous (he learned a British accent to get over his speech impediment. it worked, but left residues.) and you’ll see why I worry.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Yeah, I’m hoping we get this worked out tolerably well and let the pressure off ASAP. I don’t think we’re going to go down the dark road, but I’d rather we didn’t push our luck. The upshot is that it’s vibes-driven, so just the impression that something is being done should do most of the work.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Maybe he could switch to a Brooklyn accent, or Cajun ?

        I’m serious.

        Have him watch Andy Griffith episodes and learn to talk like Gomer Pyle.

        Especially if he can sing like Jim Neighbors..

        Liked by 1 person

  13. That was …..

    outstanding …

    chilling …

    made the hairs on my neck stand up.

    I will need to read through the original more than once before reading comments.

    Mrs. Hoyt, thank you (always good, but this one is a grand slam)

    Liked by 2 people

  14. The political Left and E!Democrats right now is trying to find anything to break apart the Republican/Trump coalition that is coming in on 1/20/25. And if this means dragging things up like “blood and soil” or blood libel or racism or any number of monstrous and dismissed “ideas of the past” to try and dangle them in front of us.

    Why? Because if we swing at them just right, the press and their enablers will spin in into “look at them! Look at them! Look at them!” rather than look at what they have been up to the last five to ten years, minimum.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. One curious development is that it doesn’t seem to be working the way it used to. The H1B debate should have been a kill shot for the coalition. Instead we got a heated but productive conversation that exposed a lot of abuse the Powers That Be didn’t want getting attention.

      That’s not to say there weren’t some ugly parts, or that the coalition is bulletproof. But it looked much more like a family argument (as Sarah said) than the media hit pieces of yesteryear. That seems like an improvement, but I guess we’ll see.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. H1b is only a kill shot when the Dems were not publicly the party of the Silicon Valley elites who vastly benefit from the H1b indenture scam, no matter where they are resident, AND they could control ALL media to have them “skip over that bit” when inconvenient facts like the 10x overapproval (vs. the legal per year limits) as documented in this thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1873174358535110953 (I think this is one Sarah linked on Insty) come up.

        Even now the mainstreams are quoting the congressionally authorized 85k/year limit in their reporting, in spite of 868k approved H1b applications in FY2024.

        If we were still back pre-internet it would have worked, too.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. The media is very good back in the days when they were really the only source of news out there. Or at least a source that people trusted.

        Now? A lot of people are pissed with the British government because the current PM is why a lot of the “grooming” gangs didn’t get prosecuted. And it took Twitter to have it appear, post-Musk.

        Liked by 2 people

  15. The last time the US had such a large proportion of immigrants in its population as we do now was the late 19th/early 20th century. Eventually this caused a popular backlash that resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924–the first comprehensive Federal immigration act ever–and the institution of the public school system as inculturation for immigrants.

    The 1924 Immigration Act caused what I refer to as the “Great Pause.” From its enactment to 1965, when it was superseded by Hart-Celler, it effectively slammed the door on mass immigration to this country (the Depression and the War helped a lot, needless to say). In consequence, for forty years the existing immigrants (and of course their American-born children and grandchildren) had the opportunity to be assimilated and inculturated.

    I expect we will see some version of this shortly, though it will be a lot harder lift for all the obvious reasons. I suppose it’s ironic that it will happen almost exactly one century after the first time.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The sort of people coming during the age of immigration where a different sort, we didn’t have all the social safety net stuff. Lots of immigrants came and then when they found out the roads weren’t paved in gold they returned home, leaving those who wanted to work…

      And there was a huge effort to assimilate. My Czechoslovakian side of the family quite intentionally didn’t teach their kids their language. Only got food recipes passed down on that side of the family.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. While I do not like the current inundation of our country, I am a history buff with a very long memory, and I remember that previous waves of immigration brought problems in their wake. We sentimentalize the Irish, but for generations they had a bad reputation for brawling and fighting, not to mention serious cultural/religious clash with the dominant population. With the wave from the mezzogiorno regions of Italy, we got organized-crime syndicates that ended up eating the other ethnics’ gangs for lunch (of course, Prohibition helped—without it, the Mob wouldn’t be nearly as powerful). And during World War One and in the years leading up to it, German-Americans found out that being heavily identified with a foreign country had major drawbacks. Even if their ancestors had been here since the 1600s—what do you think the “Pennsylvania Dutch” are?

    If we could absolutely slam the gates shut for a century or so, we could absorb our current influx. But that will never happen because too many Americans were weaned on propaganda about Ellis Island (which leaves out the fact that people WERE sent back from there) and happy immigrants weeping with joy to see the Statue of Liberty.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It will happen. Right now the fear is that it will happen violently, and then try to be an eugenics movement.
      We’re leaving through a time when what we were taught is being genuinely turned against, as people realize how much of it is outright lethal.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. I’ve always felt that the best outcome at this point is that anyone who stays here will be required do overt things to single assimilatation. This is intended to be silly, something akin to having to wrap themselves in a US Flag and recite the Constitution from memory. I can just remember when all good Americans had a mid western accent, and no one was any sort of hyphenated American but just an American. It was culturally inforced as the ideal and until the 80’s when people started exploring their heritage.

      Don’t get despondent, America has been here many times and has usually used soft tactics to force assimilation. Teddy Rosevelt complained of hyphenated Americans.

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  17. Speaking of Bullshit…..

    https://nypost.com/2025/01/02/us-news/new-orleans-isis-terrorist-shamsud-din-jabbar-had-bomb-making-station-and-quran-open-to-chilling-passage-new-photos-reveal/

    You really have to watch the video for the full impact, but at one fell swoop, the FBI (who took control of the crime scene) have destroyed chain of custody.

    This means two things:

    1. It will be much harder to bring additional charges (Federal or state) against the perp, or any accomplices who were also associated with that address. You also better hope nothing was overlooked because what you recorded and took away is all you got.
    2. Any defense that might be mounted has no chain of custody either, so exculpatory evidence also has problems.

    Rule of law, mofos. Do you speak it?

    This is well past simple incompetence, and it fits the pattern of mis recording, not recording, and or altering any raw data so that no one has any inconvenient facts to challenge you with.

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  18. Borders (not necessarily contiguous)
    Language (one primary, unlimited but unofficial secondaries)
    Culture (Shared, blended, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over)

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  19. When Peter took the oath of citizenship, It was a… vastly more profound and moving thing to witness than I had expected, despite all the bureaucrats could do to it. Because that room was filled with Hopes and Dreams and the culmination of years of Sacrifice… and the ghosts of those who’d died along the way.

    Peter told me later that as he walked up to that platform, he could feel the ghosts of all those in his past who hadn’t made it, walking with him, cheering him on. He wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot.

    It’s not mere words. It’s a physical, cultural… spiritual severing of ties, to renounce all earthly powers and principalities, all the oaths, expectations, and obligations that once you held, and willingly taking up this new identity as a citizen of the United States of America.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. That’s why I would like to see dual citizenship removed. Especially for those elected to some office. Pick one or the other, because by its own wording, you can’t have both.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Dare not to notice dual citizens, they are patriots and have the nation’s very best interests at heart.

        The question is which nation?

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        1. Depends on the dual citizens. They’re not supposed to have them at all, if they’re American. But I’ll make a cut out for those people who must have a back up to flee to if people here get stupid as the left did after 10/7. I know plenty of them, and they’re as patriotic as you or me. BUT the twentieth century has taught them it’s important to have a place to run to.
          The others? Nah.
          Personally, I sent back the passport and renounced all allegiance.

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  20. My ancestry, as far back as my LDS relatives have been able to trace, is human. Mark I, Mod. 1, homo sapiens. Only one race. Don’t get me started.

    Point is that the would-be fuhrers always need “jews” or “slavs” or “blacks” or “whites” or some other physical differentiator easy enough for their chowder-headed serfs to name as “The Enemy(tm)”. And thus easier to control.

    They always want serfs. Stalin killed off the successful farmers (i.e., “kulaks”) because they were smart enough to see what he was doing. Then there were famines that killed 60 million Soviets. Mao chased after the sparrows and grasshoppers ate the grain–90 million Chinese dead. Mugabe shut down the white-owned farms, giving them to his inner circle as estates, and, to no one’s surprise, 30 million died across Central Africa.

    Do you see the pattern?

    Bill Gates is trying to bury forests and farmlands.

    Pray as though America and your family depended on God’s Providence. Pray for Trump to be wise, appoint wise and honest people, and for time to set things right.

    It may be too late; but I we can die on our knees in prayer to God instead of the tyrants.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Right now with the current native population of Americans?

    1 million new immigrants per year.

    Period.

    And even those need to be spread all over the country; they can’t be allowed to band up into ghettos or flood any municipalities. Total immigrant population must be 5% or less. Not even the overly generous 10% our hostess mentioned above.

    Because it takes an average of 20 years for someone to acculturate into Americans after arriving on our shores. Sarah did it quicker because she damn well worked at it. And some immigrants don’t care and never get it. So, 20 years.

    And everyone in Congress for the past 50 years have been complete and utter idiots when it comes to immigration. The current batch, even with over 50% GOP aren’t any better in that respect. Neither are Elon or Vivek.

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    1. 20 years?

      Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 generations. Add in “Press 1 for English…”.

      Go down to the Rio Grande Valley and meet “citizens” that have been here for 70 years and still can’t read or speak English to have a converstion or understand simple documents without a translator.

      Throw in Johnson’s “Great Society” and export/replacement of semi-skilled labor and you create large masses of people, that turn into cultural parasites with little or no positive contribution to society. There’s a lot of that at both fringes of my family. Cultural de-evolution.

      Trad GOP loves illegal immigration since they get money from businesses that take advantage, ag, construction, factories, lawn care, etc…

      And Trad GOP is just as racist as the Dems, they just think the n-words instead of speaking them out loud. Wouldn’t let their daughters marry one of “those” people.

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      1. There were a couple of very nice junior NCOs who were black ladies that I was very friendly with at two of the bases I was assigned to. When I was talking about them to my grandmother, she was absolutely horrified that I was even associating with them. /laugh

        I will admit to thinking the N-word when faced with someone of color with a strong malicious criminal bend; but that’s just my early acculturation leaking through, and I’m constantly aware of it as a possible bias. I just don’t let it rule me. It’s those early childhood acculturation and socialization programming that BLM and DEI target and exploit for their own enrichment. They conflate those into full blown racism, then slather on the guilt trip, and finally sink the hook of depriving you of your wealth and opportunities to expatiate your egregious sin. Grrrr.

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      2. Sorry, update there on GOV = Business. Not No More.

        The Dems swept up the people running most every business past “small business” just via their academic dominance. Anyplace they only hire MBAs to anything above line managers is leftish unless they’ve made a concerted effort to, say, keep HR on a very short leash and only recruit from the few rightish schools. And c-suite for anything big enough to be listed, where the rightish fraction is in the endangered species fractions, is all Dem.

        Tech is worse, but from talking to relatives in the midwest, the imported MBAs that the banks basically require to do financing deals ruin everything for any successful local company too.

        Exceptions define the rule, but exceptions are pretty rare.

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  22. And yet more bullshit.

    https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/03/judge-orders-trump-sentencing-before-inauguration-day/

    Judge Juan Merchan ordered President-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced before his inauguration on Jan.20.

    Merchan found there is “no legal impediment” to imposing a sentence and ordered Trump to appear in court on Jan. 10.

    If I were Trump, I’d go home to Mar-A-Lago, not even bother to show up, and get the appeal to SCOTUS kicked off as soon and the gavel drops.

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    1. I saw that, but your recommended response doesn’t quite mesh with the guy who went BACK to Butler, PA, and started off with “As I was saying….”

      When I read that story, I said to my husband, “He needs to get on the phone and call people. ‘Hi, this is the Donald, wanna be part of my entourage for the sentencing circus?'”

      Demonstrate the absurdity of it all by turning the volume of absurd up to eleven.

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      1. This whole thing is a show. Merchan has already said he’s not going to sentence Trump to jail (for what that’s worth), so what’s the net result? He gets to make Trump jump thru his hoop, lecture Trump in open court, put unsupported allegations in the record, and maybe get Trump to lose his temper and get a contempt order.

        What he does do is get Trump to be in a certain place at a certain time, in an area we know in advance is populated with a maximum concentration of people who hate him, and have suicide attacks as a standard tactic. Not to mention a low sightline urban environment in the age of drones?

        Heck, Joachim Steuben and the White Mice (Hammer’s Slammers) wouldn’t take this assignment. This Secret Service isn’t up to the job.

        I understand that Trump is a brave man, but Jesus.

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        1. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it…they might really be trying to get him killed. Well, if they succeed — or even come close — it’ll be the fuck-aroundest of times and the find-outest of times, and that’s all I have to say about that.

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        2. I hadn’t thought about that aspect either (cf. Ing’s comment). Quoting portions of your comment via copypaste, with Ing’s. (With which I agree.)

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        3. Once officially sentenced, the “convicted felon” applies. They want that on the board so they can use it without getting sued down to boxers. Even is later overturned, they can still say it with “was”.

          They may have some other litigational trickery planned. But I think it is just to get those two words in play “officially”.

          Liked by 1 person

  23. What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a man whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations.

    Letter III of Letters from an American Farmer, written ca. 1770-1778, published 1782

    And this ignores the admixture of American Indian and imported African, not to mention the addition of Chinese, Japanese, etc a century later via the west coast.

    Then there’s the way American Jews are American, which by international standards is really strange.

    So the idea of America being a nation of ‘blood’ is so far off as to be a case of, “That’s not right. That’s not even wrong.”

    Liked by 1 person

  24. I wonder how many people pay attention to the fact that that oath precludes them from keeping citizenship in whatever country they left.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Culture is difficult to define, and everyone confuses it with “blood”. It’s not. It’s more than “the rules we all agree on” and it’s less than “You do it whether you want to or not.” But those are the boundaries. To an extent, culture is almost a collective mind. Or that’s how it manifests. The truth is that you absorb it from a very early age, through language through expressions, through everything. And it becomes almost instinctive by the time you’re five or six.

    Something like, “shared assumptions that are hard to focus on.”

    It’s the water that the fish swim in.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. I’m with Dan Hoyt. The only way the words blood and soil can be applied to America is the blood of patriots and tyrants watering the tree of liberty. It damn sure isn’t the “Blut und Boden” of Nazi Germany.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Regarding the presence of Jewish DNA in the (known) pre-colonial period, I offer the following anecdote:

    It was from a missionary/speaker who is very athletic, and likes to commit wild and crazy stunts whilst exploring G-d’s creation. (We sponsored a mini series at our church, and took him and his wife out to lunch – among other stories, he told us of his friend, a native tracker in South Africa, who asserted dominance on a lion/lioness via relieving himself on a “bush”.)

    He was in New Mexico/Arizona area, and was invited to see a certain site within an Apache reservation. It was a lone butte, with a single path up to the top. Halfway up, there were two columns (one fallen), that had clearly been worked by hand. Carved into both of them, were what he recognized as Hebrew characters. Cue the “You shall carve these into the pillars of your house . . . .” His theory was that it was some sort of trading expedition/caravan, possibly entirely Jewish, but certainly in part, that somehow made it to the South West, and at least one family decided to settle on that butte (for security?).

    It is presumably still extant, but not known of, because Indian Reservation.

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    1. Given the converso-heaviness of the sailor population from the region of the reconquista, an entire trading expedition going north from the Spanish conquest territories in Mexico which was made up completely of converso guys who were all still in fact practicing Jews is completely within reason.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I have a Cherokee friend that is completely convinced that he is descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel. There would be no evidence to dissuade him in this belief.

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  29. Teddy Spaghetti is nursing his exploded head over at his website, where I’m proud to say I was blocked long ago, but he does have a point about nations needing to have cohesiveness.

    Mr. Spaghetti thinks civic nationalism ideology doesn’t cut it, but, we don’t even have that, so, his blood & soil theory is not being tested properly.

    If I could ask Mr. Spaghetti a question, it would be to ask him to explain the fact that all of the Loyalists in the American colonies during our war for Independence were pure British, whilst the biggest supporters of America the new nation were the Irish, the Scotch, and the French.

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    2. There were English too, but even by then English and Scottish bled together.
      BEYOND all that, it doesn’t matter. They didn’t say other colors/nations couldn’t be citizens. That’s the salient point.
      He doesn’t remember America. And he has no idea how mixed we all are.
      A nation DOES need cohesiveness. Our cohesiveness has always been one of ideology. It’s what makes us different from the nations of the world, which belong to their government.
      And the nations of the world MOSTLY pretend to genetic cohesiveness. But here we can’t pretend.

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    3. Also his minions can stop attempting to leave comments. My assistant deletes them without me even seeing them. She’s just getting tired of them. She says they’re uncreative and irrational. If I want the opinion of the Russian Front, I’ll have the post translated.

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