Preserved In Amber

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Reality is a horrible foe to fight. You can delay it for a bit, but it always wins.

Have you ever tried standing on one foot? I do it on the regular when I put my jeans or socks on. And it’s fine. However, if I try standing on a foot for more than two minutes or so… well, I can. It’s not a big deal really. Except every minute it gets a little harder, and eventually the other foot is going to come down on the floor.

The left has been standing on one foot since 1991, when the Soviet Union cracked wide open and was proven to be not just a paper tiger, but to have always been a rotten, miserable, impoverished kleptocracy no better and in some ways markedly worse than similar kleptocracies in South America and Africa.

Think about it. Their entire world view, their entire expectation of the future was predicated on the idea that eventually communism won because it was simply a superior system. Being the better system — a system that was better for everyone, even, ultimately, those who might think they’re hurt by its earliest imposition — justified everything done to bring it about. You know “the end justifies the means.”

In their case, they were both justified by the fact that communism’s win was inevitable and by the fact that it was so wonderful, so perfect.

If you are a kid — which these days (checks calendars) I define as 45 or younger — you probably aren’t aware of how wonderful the Soviet Union was supposed to be. Since the whole sewer cover was lifted when you were in your teens, you probably don’t remember all the argle bargle demanding that “capitalism” justify itself against a system that supposedly didn’t have unemployment, poverty or even boredom at your work, or in some views even sexual jealousy. It was supposed to be the perfect system, under which all your needs were met, and you were never frustrated or upset or even vaguely thwarted. “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.”

You know that never worked. And you didn’t have college professors lecturing you with a superior air about how the command economy would of course — through no waste, no duplication of effort — bring this about.

I mean, if you’re young enough you probably don’t know what a pit of horrors the Soviet Union was, or you think they are all lies, or whatever. Or you are ready to shriek “that isn’t real communism”.

But the left as a whole — and even those who didn’t consider themselves communists considered themselves as socialists which (to quote from my 11th grade history book and also for a while the Portuguese constitution) was a society on the way to communism — had thought communism was inevitable, that ultimately we’d all be communist. And that this would be a good thing. Even those who insisted they were not communist, or who thought perhaps that Russia was not the best place to implement communism, or whatever were weirdly protective towards Russia and the USSR. (Partly because the “internationalism” of communism was always actually thinly disguised Russian nationalism.) In their heart of hearts they knew Russia was wonderful and made their point for them.

And then the dream collapsed. for about a year they seemed lost, and then they regrouped.

And yes, yes, part of this was hiding their communism behind a bunch of other worth causes, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, anti-racism. The clue that these are masks worn by traumatized, defrocked communists is that the solution for every possible problem is always “more communism” even when they don’t call it that. I mean, seriously, go read the New Green Deal. You don’t have to scrape that green very hard to see the communist red beneath.

But none of those — it turns out — would even have taken without the US government pouring massive amounts of money into them all over the world.

For a while it all seemed to work. We seemed to be besieged by all these crazy, divisive causes which all flourished, found adherents, and all really were ultimately communism.

Except you didn’t have to look very hard — and remember, I always look, because I’m naturally a depressive, and before I jump off that bridge I want to make sure it’s not my mind playing tricks and that everything is actually lost — to see none of it was actually working.

Take environmentalism, in its “antropogenic global warming” which was not only supported with massive amounts of money (some of it obtained by blackmailing companies) but also with a seamless wall of propaganda so impenetrable that science fiction writers probably unwittingly and just because it’s everywhere (I don’t know maybe I should look for their names in the USAID site) couldn’t write the future without claiming that you know, in a hundred years Florida would be under water. And yet…. and yet, they keep having to change their name like a poorly run Chinese restaurant. Global Warming became Climate Change which became Severe Weather Events which…. well, is dissolving before our very eyes, even before their money was yanked.

I mean, the man and woman on the street couldn’t give two farts in a hurricane for the climate bs, and instead were concerned with things like illegal aliens.

At some point in the far distant future, someone with a lot more data points than we have will construct a perfect thesis of how the left’s wheels came off.

Was it the very fact they poured mad money into the mass media to turn them into propaganda organs that in turn brought about the replacement of the corrupt market with innovative markets, facilitated by the internet?

Because let’s face it, even before the internet Rush had become a major success and a force to be reckoned with in the information market, using an outdated not to say quaint means of communication.

Perhaps what drove us to the internet in search of information, in the disturbing turmoil post 2000 election and 9/11 was that sense that our streams of information were corrupted? Perhaps humans sense and crave accurate information?

(I like to point out that indie books have enough drawbacks they’d never have made it if our publishing industry hadn’t been in the process of committing suicide by ignoring the customers by the time indie became possible.)

As alternative means of communication became available, like a person standing on one foot, the left had to devote more and more effort to keeping the status quo, to keeping everything still, frozen in time.

Dorothy Grant made a good point about fashion yesterday. I hadn’t noticed because I’m older than she is and the last time I was passionately interested in fashion was the mid eighties, before kids and trying to be a writer took all my time away. (Well, trying to have kids actually. The kids took a while.) But she’s right. I have clothes form the mid nineties (I have been finding boxes not unpacked since we moved from Manitou Springs) which except for the fact that due to thyroid follies I’m double the size I was then I could wear to the next con without anyone saying “Wow, that’s retro.” As a student of fashion through time (because I write historical) that just AIN’T NORMAL.

And the same is true in almost everything, except that movies and TV and literature have gotten more and more preachy.

Because the effort to keep the culture frozen in amber has driven away all creatives or silenced them. In fact, no one was allowed to stir the pot in any realm, and if you tried you’d find yourself cancelled.

Anyone creative enough to have startlingly new thoughts sooner or later stumbled onto the truth that what we were being sold was utterly inauthentic. (Though even I had no idea it was being financed on this scale.) And then they became dangerous. And had to be pushed out.

Which eventually, these last four years became openly totalitarian attempts at thought suppression and speech procession, culminating with the Biden Junta trying to stamp out “disinformation” which is an old communist term for that which isn’t false but which disrupts the left’s narrative.

It didn’t work. Perhaps nothing could.

And so here we are. Will there be steps backwards? There might be. But my guess, and if you guys remember I’ve been saying this since before the election, is that they can’t actually force the clock back anymore than they could keep us standing still.

Reality is a bitch. Your other foot will drop towards the floor.

And no matter how much you try to keep society frozen in amber circa 1987 or so, reality will keep moving on, enabled by tech, and exposing the lies of the past, revealing the tawdry nature of would-be tyrants, and the fact they have nothing any of us want, and that all their offerings are candy-coated poison.

In the end, for all their attempts to stop the future, all they can manage is to reveal themselves for the pre-historic beasts they are.

Frozen in amber.

139 thoughts on “Preserved In Amber”

  1. latest “fashion” seems to concentrate on being non-functional and no one in their nearly right mind would wear the silly stuff going by the few pictures I’ve seen. The nonsense in the Jag commercial is more functional than some of the tripe.

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      1. Fashion has ALWAYS been about showing off wealth. Tyrian Purple was very expensive and so the sign of nobility for a long time. Pannier skirts in the 17th century used yards of expensive fabric and let women dominate the space around them. High heels (originally in a form for men) were a way of showing off that you didn’t need the boots the hoi polloi wore you were a man of leisure. The 19th Century fashions (particularly bustles which are basically the pannier clapped on your butt rather than your hips) were again ostentatious eating expensive cloth by the yard. Early 20th century upper class folk might change clothing several times a day often just to show off their finery. First Dress in the morning, then something for light exercise, riding in the afternoon or just tea and finally dressing for formal dinner. Men’s clothing tended to use studs and cufflinks to aid in laundering. Ladies tended to have lovely mother of pearl or bone or ivory buttons which we removed by the ladies maid before being laundered and then later were reapplied as laundering was very vigorous and would have smashed the buttons. and on and on. When standardized clothing became the norm folks still showed off with labels and by excess. Think of the 50’s circle skirts with several under layers. Clothing is a way of saying “If I can waste money on something this ephemeral I must be really wealthy”.

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        1. Also High Fashion was clothing that you’d need servants to put on and to take off.

          IE the Clothing showed that you could afford servants to help with that.

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          1. Certainly ladies clothing epitomized that. Fasteners at the back and if front closures the fasteners were laid out to be handled by a right handed person FACING you. If you want to get a feel for the level of servants actions take a servants tour for Breakers or one of the similar in the Newport area (or other spots across the US but the Newport Mansions are the peak of the “robber barons” probably the most insanely rich folks the US ever had. 18 hour days were not uncommon as you had to be up before you mistress and didn’t fet to sleep until things for her morning toilet were all in order. Better than shoveling coal, but not by much.

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          2. And in between. Long sleeves that cover your hands show servants do things that need fingers. White dresses show you can avoid all situations where the skirt will get dirty. etc.

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        2. I can’t remember the show, but all the ladies in it were wearing bustles. It was the first time I had seen it outside of pictures. I think they’re neat!

          But it’s sort of like having a tail: How do you sit down?

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          1. Very carefully. *snerk*

            But seriously, bustles were built to allow that since one HAS to sit from time to time. Some collapsed, some were hinged, etc.

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          2. That is a darned good question. There are reenactors and folks that just love late victorian/edwardian styles for the fun of it so likely the answer can be found on youtube.

            Yes Bustles the clothing where when you’re wife asks “Does this make my butt look big?” the correct answer is “It makes it look HUGE” and you would survive…

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          3. I have seen at least one historical hack that someone reproduced that had a full-on STOOL under the bustle so that the lady could discreetly get the weight off her feet.

            Anyway. The bustle doesn’t fit all the way around the backside, it’s just drifted on top. As long as you aren’t sitting in a chair with a back closeup, it’s no trouble at all to be sitting underneath the bustle.

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            1. Quite.

              I generally do eras before the bustle, but hoops require some of the same care. You don’t flop down in a sprawl NOR do you sit all the way at the back of the chair. You PERCH carefully on the front edge, tucking your skirts around your knees and ankles carefully.

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              1. I know … I do Edwardian, and Natural Form late Victorian costume, as part of my marketing strategy when I do book events – and yes, there is an art to moving gracefully, going through doorways, and sitting down in hoops, bustles and an array of fluffy petticoats …

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              2. Thus the teaching of young ladies to sit demurely on the front edge of chairs, knees angled to one side, or the other, and ankles crossed. Or at least I was through the ’60s and early ’70s. Failed. But whatever.

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      2. She’s right. I can remember (yes, I’m older than 45) the “flares” or “bellbottoms” of the seventies. And not too many years later, the diametric OPPOSITE happened: the girls at my school were wearing jeans SO tight at the ankle that the NON-STRETCH denim had a little zipper there so the wearer could get her heel through.

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          1. Sorry, but what does OG mean in this context? Old Guy? People keep using that phrase, and I really don’t think you’re trying to say you’re “Original Gang.” As in the guy sent to start a new branch of a gang in a new area.

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  2. I would add that a year or four after I went to Romania, I visited Kenya and Tanzania, which were (are) varieties of African Kleptocracies. Aside from the weather and the wildlife there was not much obvious difference in quality of life between country peasants in Romania and those in Kenya. Both had a total lack of basic infrastructure like roads that weren’t dirt/gravel, plumbing or widespread electricity.

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    1. I believe every word. Did you ever take any of your communist guests to Home Depot, or an appliance store? They would have been shocked to see a dozen refrigerators, just sitting there waiting to be bought. No need to stand in line for 2 days with 50 other people on the rumor that a store was expecting a delivery of 4 refrigerators.

      “But they live Closer To Nature! They conserve resources by not having so much!”

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      1. A college friend “O” who escaped the Iron Curtain as a toddler, was able to get our her granny as an adult. When Babushka first saw a Publix grocery store, walking into Produce, she thought she was dead and in Heaven. When persuaded she was in fact on Earth, she was then terrified that our KGB would punish her for being in a Commissars’ store, versus Prole. Took years before she could go grocery shopping unescorted.

        “O” was a -rabid- patriot. She married a combat-arms serviceperson, and wanted “Eight sons to go destroy Communism”. She was wearing that boy out!

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  4. Common folk fashion: 60s vs 70s vs 80s vs 90s…..then kinda muddled off. Like a large but run-down pendulum, it still swings but the amplitude is rather tiny.

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    1. Fashion *has* changed at least a little bit since the early 2000s, and thank God it has, because those low-waisted “skinny jeans” that made even the skinniest of women look weirdly pudgy are pretty much gone. I never thought I’d get tired of gazing upon the pulchritude of female posteriors in general, but there’s only so many inadvertently revealed coin slots you can see before a plumber’s-crack sense of revulsion starts to set in.

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        1. Dad used to take the train to work, and he’d comment on the factory workers going to the place before his. Circa 1960s stretch pants, and he mentioned one lady who used her butt as the strike-anywhere surface to light her cigarette. (No idea why she’d use such matches, but Dad wasn’t prone to fantasies.)

          Now it’s yoga pants, and I learned what “camel toe” really stands for. TMI!

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  6. “Being the better system — a system that was better for everyone, even, ultimately, those who might think they’re hurt by its earliest imposition — justified everything done to bring it about.”

    The problem with communism, well, any totalitarian system for that matter, is that those who aren’t being hurt by it have zero incentive to change it.

    I was never impressed with communism. Humans aren’t ants or bees, and I could at least recognize that communism disincentivized people to produce anything right from the start. My bigger problem was thinking the government had all the smartest people working in it, knew the rigth answers to running the country, and wasn’t filled with corrupt people. Big centralized government was the best thing to sliced bread. Which is horrifying to consider that I was dumber than a rock, and so are millions of Americans today.

    I’m a guy. I live in the northern U.S. My idea of fashion for men is a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and either sneakers or high work boots (with or without steel toes.) If outside, then add a hat of some sort, and plenty of bug spray for cologne.

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    1. Regular Guy fashion: A shirt, pants and shoes or boots. A coat if it’s cold. Gloves and a hat if it’s really cold.

      Gal fashion: Incomprehensible to Regular Guys. We just know what looks good to us.

      I’ve heard that the fashion ‘industry’ is dominated by gay men. So women’s fashions are whatever makes women look attractive to gay men. Maybe that’s why our birth rate is in the dunny?

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      2. I’m not certain that is the dominant reason but it is part of the reason. Another part of the reason is it is FAR easier to generate something quickly that looks decent for a woman with slim hips and a small bust and derriere. Think a 20’s flapper. Dresses are tubes plus assorted accoutrements. No need to work about hiding undergarment lines or about having foundation garments. Pants are VERY simple essentially male pants scaled down. Similarly Blouses are rescaled and prettified mens shirts. A more traditionally shaped woman with curves takes far more effort to design for and to consider how cloth will drape. Also what fits one set of curves will usually only fit another set with modifications, certainly not suitable for prete a porte designs. Sadly what they make for the stick figure models looks bad on anyone who hasn’t been smoking 3 packs a day of cigarettes and shooting up heroin at a prodigious rate.

        I also think that those designers that are not male attracted are attracted to women who appear to be entering or just exiting puberty. It is not clear to me which is the cart and which the horse, Are they attracted to barely nubile women/girls to start with, or do they find them attractive because that’s who they make clothes for and associate with?

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        1. I watched ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. Pretty good movie, but Anne Hathaway — Anne F*ing Hathaway — was portrayed as ‘too big’ to be a high-fashion model. Told me everything I need to know.

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          1. Sadly she fails in several dimensions for model qualifications. Internet says she is 5’8″ 121 lbs with 34-25-35 for measurements. That is likely 2-4″ too short, 5-10 lbs too heavy (!!!) and they would prefer something more like 32-24-32 (or maybe even 30-24-30). Essentially they want someone with a early teen / late pre teen body shape suitable for say basketball but too undernourished to play. Yes there are exceptions to that form ( Ms. Bundchen, the Glamzons like Christie Brinkely), but your Mk I bog standard runway model is NOT meant to excite the male gaze but to sell the clothes to buyers for the large stores who are usually women. Or they’re to show off designs to fellow designers who really prefer boys with some girlish features. It’s all about the clothes and actual women be darned…

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          1. “M” walking in BDUs was far more entertaining than most strippers.

            You just had to see her to believe it.

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          2. At 17 and having spent two months seeing nobody out of BDUs except the (late-50ish) lunch ladies in the DFAC, when I got done with Army Basic anything female in civvies was practically Marilyn Monroe, or (more to my tastes then) Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Almost anything female in civvies, of age and not my own mom or sister.

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      4. My ancient (mid-late 1970s) wool mittens were the only things I kept from cross country skiing days. When the temps are +20F on downward (we had -13F the other day), they work better than gloves. Hard to use keys on locks, though.

        Hat all the time outside. If it’s not cold, the UV at 4000′ is a killer.

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  7. Communism – a system so powerful, so inevitable, that every other thing must be completely destroyed by something else, before Communism can take root and flourish.

    That is kinda dumb, but a whole bunch of folks see no problem with that.

    Also occasionally point out to “intellectual communists” that as college peeps, they are by nature Bourgeois, thus the intractable enemies of the Proletariat, thus on the liquidation list. Since I have worked both farm and factory, and they haven’t…. (grin).

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    1. The DFL (the Minnesota flavor of demonrats, a jumble from the WWII-era Demonrats and the Farmer-Labor parties) have been none of the above for as long as I can remember. Not democratic (see Kommiela), not for farmers (see all the restrictions they impose on agriculture), and not for labor. For labor *unions*, maybe, but not for the actual workers.

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  8. I was listening to a mellow playlist from our media server last night when the lyrics of song just reflected my mood about the Lefts big coverup over the decades.

    –

    Courtesy of the band Ace :

    How long as this been going on?

    How long as this been going on?

    Oh, your friends with their fancy pursuation

    Don’t admit it’s part of a scheme

    But I can’t help but have my suspicions

    Cause I ain’t quite as dumb as I seem

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  9. Appropos to this was JD Vance speech this morning in Munich. Worth the time to watch. He took it to them on free speech and liberty and individual rights in the context of security and protecting civilization. Very few applauded. I suspect struck dumb by the fact that the US VP was not kowtowing to the woke BS they spew.

    Always a great read Sarah, you support our hearts in ways uncounted. Thank you

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                  1. Speaking as one who probably has some Scots-Irish Appalachian in him (or at least grew up within viewing distance of the Virginia Blue Ridge, so I’ll identify as one!), the only thing mountain folks do better than hold grudges is make moonshine.

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    3. I watched the speech (which was brilliant and hard-hitting) and then the 14 minutes of media bleating that followed. I want somebody to ask those yammerheads:

      “How can a majority of a country’s citizens be ‘outside the mainstream’?”

      Donald Trump won the 2024 election by a clear majority, but his supporters are ‘outside the mainstream’. Who defined that ‘mainstream’? By what right?

      Germany’s second-largest political party was excluded from the conference because those in power don’t want to listen to them. Just like the Democrats tried to do to the ‘Ultra-MAGA Republicans’ here. Those idiots should remember, Germany has had a lot more civil wars than the U.S. and not listening to people who feel they’re being done dirty is a good way to have another one.

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  10. The Leftroids will never put the other foot down. They will stand on one foot until they fall on their asses, and then blame their fall on ‘Capitalism!!’ or ‘White Supremacy!!’ or whatever other epithet rattles out of their empty craniums. They can never, never admit that they were full of shit all along.

    And they’re still trying to get revenge for their slaves being freed.

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    1. Nope. “Climate Change!” Unlike those you mentioned, it’s their near-universal fallback, even more so than “Racism!!!”.

      IMHO, and YMMV.😉

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      1. Nah they have changed that racism causes climate change. Racism is the Original Sin for the liberal religion starting first in 1619 having never been seen on earth before.

        And they say I’m stupid for believing the well attested Gospels…

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  11. With things loosening up, I occasionally revive my movie fantasy – a faithful adaptation of Stranger In A Strange Land. Yes, I know, it can’t be done. Certainly Hollywood could never bring themselves to do it. Plus I know that if it’s ever made I’ll hate it. But hey, we all have to have our fantasies!

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      1. They don’t have word-heavy scripts because the “actors” cannot act, although they can perform. The word-heavy, all-naked movies are dreadful. Or so I’ve heard.

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          1. The producers and writers loved Heinlein.

            I would like to see it, and also the Japanese adaptation of The Door Into Summer. (Honestly, having that one be Japanese works on several levels, including the absolute love of cat.)

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  12. And the Liberal-Doids “Writers” can’t really imagine a Better World.

    IE Their Future-Worlds have to be worse than “today”.

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      1. Nah their wet dream varies from 1984 to Brave New World to A Clockwork Orange . Every once and a while they stir in a bit of Harrison Bergeron. Presently they are in a 1984 phase busily turning the UK into Airstrip One with more success than I like. I expect Big Ben to strike 13 any time now,,,

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        1. It doesn’t vary. They stew it all in a witch’s brew, and they add Atlas Shrugged and Orphans of Sky to it.

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  14. Two points buttressing your climate tangent. First, on my own and long before this post, I did a running tally on the stories in the most recent issue of Analog, to see how many included big climatic changes on Earth as plot points. Depending on whether you count ecological catastrophe from unnamed sources in the group, it came out to a little more than half. (The denominator includes one story taking place entirely in 1970s Communist Poland, with no time travel element.) So it isn’t all the futures being written, but it’s close.

    Second, the latest nomenclature change is in. Governor Newsom of California has said publicly that rebuilding from the L.A. fires will be done from a basis of science (presumably The Science[tm]) and … wait for it … “climate reality.”

    How dare you stand against reality? I repeat, how dare you?

    Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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  15. When I was young, I liked various collective schemes. As I grew older, I learned two things: Human nature requires incentives, which are at best misaligned in collectives, and collectives require leaders, who always seem to live much better than anyone else.

    I recognize the futility, if not outright idiocy, of the idea, now.

    What I find odd is that people – particularly old people – keep pushing it. It has failed over and over and over again, in non-subtle ways. How can people not learn from this?

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    1. WPDE

      When I was young and arrogant, and was reading waaay too much Futurian SciFi, I thought the world could be controlled and made better through mathematics. I was lucky that the implications of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem managed to penetrate my skull and show the absurdity of that notion. And, then I discovered Hayek in the discount rack at the old 18th Street B&N and everything was different.

      That said, the notion that the world can be controlled and made better through mathematics is the controlling notion at all the orthodox economics programs. Harvard and Chicago differ only on who/whom. If the priests tell you this over and over and you don’t have the wherewithal or cussedness to challenge it, how would you overcome it?

      N.B. Arrow’s Impossibility Theory proves that there is no ranking rule that can satisfy rational choice. essentially it, along with game theory generally, invalidates the whole concept of General Will by showing that no General Will can be defined. You can do that in other ways because it’s an absurd notion, but it’s always nice to be able to do it within one’s specialty.

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  16. I just loved, loved the story of the hysterical judge who “ruled” that Trump’s administration must immediately resume all USAID funding. Trump knew this would happen and is letting it play out in the courts. In the meantime, the USAID people showed up to work but the name had been removed from the building and Trump had sold the lease. He’s not defying the courts. But the USAID people can’t get to their computers to resume funding Hamas, the Taliban, and Moroccan pottery classes.

    This is so much fun to watch. Let them stand on one foot until they topple into the dust like the statue of Ozymandias. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Heh.

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    1. But the USAID people can’t get to their computers to resume funding Hamas, the Taliban, and Moroccan pottery classes.

      They have their work from home laptops, and the actual servers they connect to aren’t in the DC office building. They can run a Disaster Recovery drill, the first since it was set up. 😁

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      1. I imagine the DOGE team was well aware of this and made sure to prevent any access from remote laptops. If you know of any USAID funding that’s still going out, please let the DOGE team know on X.

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        1. Oh, I will. Although I’m being half sarcastic. Most of the Disaster Recovery plans I’ve encountered don’t get a realistic test until there really is a disaster.

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        3. From what I’ve heard, this is one of the very first things they did. Probably among the easiest; and with the majority of them no longer in the office, it ended “the resistance” before it could even start.

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        4. USAID doesn’t cut checks, only treasury can cut checks. Not that they care, but Article 1, Section 9 Clause 7 is the governing law. That’s also why the delightful datarepublican has been able to do her magic. It’s all, public information. the tragedy is that no one ever bothered to look.

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          1. To give credit where credit is due, what datarepublican is doing is non-trivial – yes, nobody before attempted it, but that’s not to mean it was easy. The work datarepublican is doing is a big lift, and I am happy someone with the necessary deep-dive database skills has taken it on.

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            1. I hate WP. Itruly, truly hate WP.

              I hope that I did not understate the amount of effort and talent that datarepublican has brought to bear here. I’ve done a fair bit of network theory based work over the years and have some inkling of how much work was involved. I just regret that no one looked before, since the data have been available.

              Then again, perhaps it was for the best because now there’s enough processing capacity to process it, enough open and free distribution capacity to spread the word, and the country primed and receptive to the message. Much like the Revolution, or the Reformation. The message needed the right time.

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  17. Your comment about how the left is frozen in time made me realise something. I just posted this over at Instapundit on a thread about some pro-Palestinian protestors actually facing consequences for breaking their college’s rules (AIUI their overnight encampment wasn’t allowed by existing rules). My comment was this:

    You know how the Democratic Party’s leaders are constantly stuck in the past? Treating everything like it was the 60’s and the Civil Rights movement all over again (and pretending that the Democrats of the 60’s were on the correct side of the movement)?

    Well, I just realized what they’re trying to do with all these student protest groups. They’re encouraging students to form more and more insane protests, until eventually one of them crosses a line and commits violent acts that result in their getting shot in legitimate self-defense. At which point the Democrats will immediately wave the bloody shirt and talk about that poor, innocent student who was just protesting for Justice™ and was gunned down in cold blood by a Right-Wing Fascist™. They didn’t care about the student’s life when they encouraged her (80% odds it’ll be a woman that it happens to) to take actions that were going to get her killed, but as soon as she’s dead she’ll be the martyr they trot out every week to make their points.

    In other words, they’re trying to create another Kent State.

    What they don’t understand is that this time, it won’t work. The sheer number of cell phones that will be filming protests like this one will mean that the student’s aggressive actions before she got shot will be captured on camera, and this time, X is not going to censor the evidence. So unlike with the original Kent State protests, where you’ll find people to this day who think the Kent State protestors were innocent and didn’t originate any violence at all, this time the only people who will think that about the dead pro-Palestinian protestor(s) will be those who are willfully blind. And President Trump isn’t going to cave to emotional blackmail the way, say, GWB would have if such a thing had happened on his watch.

    Now, hopefully their strategy fails and nobody actually gets shot. I’d much rather have that happen than to have a bunch of idiotic college students end up dead because they were dumb enough to trust the Democratic Party’s leadership. But that’s their strategy. They’re so stuck in the past, they’re trying to re-create Kent State, because they are also dumb enough to think that it would work again.

    And if anyone tells me, “Welcome to the party, pal!”, well, fair enough. You all probably realized it months ago. But I haven’t seen anyone writing about it, so I had to figure it out for myself. So if I’m slow, *shrug* so what? At least I got there.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Keep in mind, a significant fraction of the left, possibly the majority, will routinely ignore their own eyes if told to do so by their chosen leaders.

      Thus the reporter citing a “mostly peaceful protest” as the block behind them burned down due to rioting.

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    3. That’s could be another reason Kyle Rittenhouse was so hated by the left. Can’t turn a non-government-affiliated teen into Kent State II. He ruined their propaganda!

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      1. I can’t stress enough just how effective one semi-trained man can be if -willing- and -able-.

        That is why they hate and fear him, and his example.

        Liked by 1 person

    4. I keep half expecting the Patriot Front, which noone takes very seriously, to spill put of their vans fully armed and shoot down a bunch of protesters, preferably without warning and for no discernable reason. Then salute, shouting, “Heil Trump! Heil Trump!” and vanish.

      After all, the protesters said they were willing to risk it all, didn’t they? Can’t make the socialist omelet without breaking a few eggs.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, those guys work for .gov, so they are too busy filling out their “Fork in the Road” buyout application paperwork to dress up in the provided costumes and show up anywhere with tiki torches or anything else in hand these days.

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      1. Almost exactly. Difference is, it wasn’t foreseeable that Rachel Corrie would choose to stand in a bulldozer’s blind spot. That wasn’t a case of self-defence, that was a case of bloody idiocy causing a fatal accident, with the operator literally having no clue she was there. That the Democrats’ eliminationist rhetoric will cause someone to go overboard is entirely foreseeable. That someone would be so stupid as to stand in a bulldozer’s blind spot… not foreseeable. I know you’re going to point me to the many, many people who block the road, putting their own lives at risk and trusting in the innate human decency of the drivers not to run over them. But the difference there is that they know they can be seen. That Rachel Corrie would be so stupid as to stand where she should have known (based on mirror position and so on) the operator couldn’t see her… well. That’s actually suicide. She didn’t intend to kill herself, but nobody but her can reasonably be blamed for her death: she deliberately stood in a spot that anyone with sense would have known was fatal.

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  19. I see Ayanna Presley is still calling for “suppression” (her word, not mine) of speech. Which really makes me think she’s dumber than a box of rocks, or just so enamored of the thought of tyranny that she’s willing to completely ignore the entire Constitution.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Constitution: a “Living Breathing Document that Must Conform To The Times”.

      See also: “Dead Letter”.

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    2. When a Supreme Court Justice (!!!) says, “The 1st Amendment is hamstringing the government!”, and means it as a problem, the fact that a semi-literate Congresscritter does the same isn’t really very surprising.

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      1. Obama and Biden, but I repeat myself, put some corrupt and brain dead women on the court that well likely have to wait until they’re dead to replace. Congress critters continually get voted back in by the brain dead populace.

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  20. As odd as it is for fashion to be static or… perhaps “stuck in a loop” might be better for women’s fashion – the current fashion for the college age set is high-waisted flare legs and crop tops – I have to wonder who much of it is that we’ve been used to something different every decade for so long that we think that’s normal.

    Look back farther in fashion history and I’m not sure that things ever changed as rapidly as they have since the invention of fashion plates.

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    1. I’m pretty certain that for ordinary people, they didn’t. Cloth was expensive, until machine-woven became widespread, and most people didn’t have but two or three sets of clothing, if that. There are examples of 18th century gowns being taken apart and remade, decades later. Outside of the royal courts and the tip-top upper classes, most people wore the same outfits for years, perhaps sparking them up with a small accessory, cap, belt, or shawl. Look at housemaid uniforms, from Victorian times – pretty much the same style of black dress with white cap and apron for decades. Look at the enduring and unchanging preppy style, which didn’t change much from post WWII. Unless dedicated fashionista, in a highly visible arena, I think most people are and have always been pretty conservative about clothing themselves.

      I, myself, still have some blouses, a raincoat, and a leather jacket from the 70s, and a whole range of business suits from when I had office jobs for about fifteen years after 1997.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. True enough — but if you really aren’t a dedicated follower of fashion, you can pretty well dress in the same old-same old for years, without ever changing very much.

          (I had a self-help style book, bought in the 70s, I think — that pretty much advised creating a kind of uniform for yourself. Pick styles that fit you well, colors that flattered, superior quality of accessories – and basically wear it forever.)

          But Dorothy maybe right – that even mainstream fashionistas are kind of stuck in stasis – how they look in Vogue this year is pretty much how they looked in Vogue 20 years ago.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Flour used to come in cotton bags (with the company name printed on it) and repurposed by mothers. One Midwest girl noted that she was 16 when she learned that Pillsbury didn’t make girl’s underwear.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Seeds used to come in bags with floral prints and the like exactly so that women could repurpose them. Undergarments of course could use stuff without the prints.

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  21. Sadly, the same type of people, often the same people, who thought the USSR was a paragon of virtue and truth also think the ChiComs, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, the new South Africa and other hellholes are also paragons of virtue and truth.

    I’ve had people try to tell me that Cuba is so wonderful, so great, so fantastic. Fortunately, being in Florida, there’s usually enough ex-Cubans around that I don’t have to say anything.

    But the same useful idiots are still out there who think anything but Capitalism is the best form of government ever.

    Makes me sick. People who refuse to see reality no matter how many times it hits them where it hurts.

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    1. I have to think that the reason I’ve always been anti-communist is that I learned from the Cubans who taught me Spanish in kindergarten in south Florida in the 70’s.

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  22. This is tangential to todays, but relevant to the long term discussion. My wife saw the report last night that they are going to start laying people off. While there are personal reasons for here, she can only see the people being laid off as poor helpless victims of the evil power mongers (really….a long long story). So she is now dead set against anything and everything Trump and Co. are doing. Also, for religious reasons, she is firmly convinced they are going to usher in the final battle. (I know people of her religion who thought the same of Reagan, plus all the college stupids in the 80s who thought so too. We should just surrender. At least we would be alive.)

    My family, both sides, are full of people that if they are paying attention, it is all the MSM and they all feel more or less the same way. Mind you they have never answered me as to what he did bad the first time around, not even mean tweets.

    This is what we are up against. If they clean 100% of the rot out, within 20 years it will be back because of power greedy dummies, the reformers who are outraged that the world is not as they think it should be, the ones who think the 5 minutes of their childhood they remember (either good or bad) should be set in concrete or banished to the outer darkness…or both.

    If we had Pipers veradicator and Kratman’s crosses, it still wouldnt be enough.

    So we remember this…..we DID VOTE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS. At least for now. That the bullet box was at hand certainly helped. God does watch out for the US, at least this time. We will have to do it again, but at least it will be in orbit and on the planets and throughout the galaxy and in virtual cyberspace. It is the never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.

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      1. Could be because I live in a relatively small town that’s dominated by a relatively big state college and is a very “progressive” blue, but I’m positively surrounded by those people. Some of them even live with me. As long as there’s media supporting the benevolent government and look at this puppy, how could those dreadful conservatives/capitalists/Republicans/nationalists/Christians even THINK of hurting it as they so cruelly are, we’ll have those people. Hopefully fewer and fewer as the propaganda organs bleed out without government support.

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    1. Saw that, and it really is glorious. If Congress holds up their end there’s not much the Dems can do to stop it.😁😆😁😆😁😆

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      1. I am not NEARLY as optimistic as that author, but hey, happy warriors are a great thing. As long as it doesn’t veer into Pollyanna territory. Still, that’s a great take on what President Trump is doing. 4D chess, baby.

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    2. Mailclerk, thanks for posting this. This is an Arc-Light. Virtually all the things I cynically expected MAY have been removed from the board. If Congress is backing the play, then “I will MAKE it legal” may be working in our favor.

      Finally, Musk’s DOGE status report put uncooperative public officials on notice. It’s now a possible criminal investigation. They can resist, but resistance only draws more attention to themselves. And, while corporate media continues trying to deny it, since Elon brought receipts, the bureaucracy is on notice. The counter-leaks will continue.

      The Deep State thought it could box in Trump with legal challenges, but he’s moved the fight to Congress and to public disclosure, where the judiciary has no power.

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  25. Here’s the thing: all of those bureaus and agencies and departments are part of the Executive Branch of government. The President IS ‘the boss of them’. In a very real sense, the President IS the Executive Branch. All of those organizations operate solely on authority delegated to them by the President.

    If they don’t obey the President’s orders, if they waste our tax money on fraud and corruption, the President should have the power to rescind that authority. Congress might still fund them, but they wouldn’t be authorized to spend the money. And, since they’re not doing anything, there’s no reason to keep them on the payroll.

    The ‘power of the purse’ was meant to rein in a rogue Executive Branch by cutting its funding, not to force money into Congresscritters’ pet hobby-horses in defiance of the President.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I read commentary by some constitutional scholar the other day to the effect of: “If the elected Executive cannot control the Executive Branch, then elections are meaningless, and we live not in a democratic republic, but in a dictatorship of a completely unaccountable bureacracy.”

      What needs to happen now is Congress needs to pass law to limit federal circuit judges ability to issue nationwide restraining orders, “temporary” or otherwise. One low level federal judge of dubious judgement should not be able to countermand the results of an election.

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  26. The amber that we’ve been stuck in has been laid down, like layers in a pearl, since the late 19th century, when Marx and Engels and his disciples tried to deal with their own self-loathing antisemitism and belief in a gnostic universe, inspired by the worst excesses of the French Revolution where “intellectuals” were the new aristocracy.

    It grew thicker as revolutionaries and bored upper-class housewives looking for a visceral thrill sponsored and supported “the people” in their own unique ways. Then one of them won in a country that was ripe for disaster since the 18th century and Lenin and then Stalin decided that they weren’t going to have a Napoleon show up and destroy their revolution.

    Meanwhile, the Victorian Taxonomists spread to Germany, England, and the United States, all of which believed that you could plan everything perfectly and it would all come out perfectly, down to the last moment. Oh, and the subtle antisemitism and anti-Catholicism became “acceptable” antisemitism and anti-Catholicism in their children.

    Then, we had the old world collapse after the Great War, with Germany lamed and angry and wanting revenge, France broken and bled out, Great Britian almost ready to fall apart, and the United States not quite knowing what it would do next. Just that everybody knew they didn’t want a second Communist country in Europe, so they supported…

    …an Italian dictator in the classic Roman style with a new layer of paint, who had an admirer in Germany who played off the upper-class housewives and the various people that were angry at how Germany was treated at the end of a Great War that everybody fucked their way into, but seemed like he wasn’t going to support the three-Russians-in-a-Communist-trenchcoast New Russian Empire (i.e. the Soviet Union).

    Or at least not support them openly…

    …then trying to keep Spain from going Communist caused another dictator in the proper Roman style to appear, helped by Germany and Italy, who decided that nobody wanted a war but them, so best to bite off territory while the getting was good…

    …and that lead into another war, and Stalin decided that next year he was going to stab Germany in the back…

    …and Hitler beat him to the punch.

    The Japanese screwed up and got the United States into a war that FDR wanted to get into years ago (mostly to support Russia, but he had to support Great Britian as well, oh well). Of course, the United States had to defeat Hitler first, but after that FDR could restructure the world how he wanted it, along with Uncle Joe…

    Then FDR dies. Damn.

    (Cue a few thousand words of WP-eaten text that can be summed up as “Taxonomists and Communists thought they would win, they didn’t and they have been making us all miserable ever since.)

    Now, it’s all cracking and falling apart and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

    But when all that amber cracks…we can make some neat jewelry.

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    1. Marxism is a religion, with prophets, saints, saved and damned, featuring the formalized worship of envy. The only major difference is the absence of an afterlife, so any and all actions taken to immentize the paradise-on-Earth of “communism” are not just excused, they are encouraged.

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      2. Envy and spite. Those are their two devotions. Envy, spite and an impenetrable sense of entitlement. Okay, three. There’s some smug self-righteous posturing in there, too, so, four. Where was I? :-P

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  28. Unrelated topic, is anyone else going to the 2A Freedom Fest set up by Florida Carry next weekend? I know occasional Hun Tom Knighton will be speaking there, but if anyone else is going I’d like to say hi in person.

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  29. “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.”

    This high-minded principle really is nothing more than what slaves got in the Old South: “work ’em to the limit of their endurance and give ’em absolutely no more than they need to stay alive”.

    Some system…

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  30. Back in 2000, I had a thought about what would turn out to be the characteristic architecture styles of the 21st century. The turn of the 20th century brought a bunch of new styles in architecture which are strongly associated with the century and much beloved now: Art Nuevo, Art Deco, Craftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style and Usonian, and later Streamline Moderne and Mid-Century, and near the end of the century there was the post-modernism of Frank Gehry. What would be the new iconic styles of the new century?

    Well, here we are a quarter of the way through the century, and… there isn’t one. Just fads. McMansions, with no coherent style. Plain slab-sided commercial buildings with no distinguishing features. “Revivals” of various 19th-century styles. There’s the color-of-the year type of thing (currently all-white interiors, harsh on the eye and utterly impractical). But an actual new architecture? I haven’t seen one.

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