Not Storming The Bastille

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

No, I’m not calling for a French Revolution. As I had to tell an editor at one point — he didn’t take it well, btw — there is a reason I didn’t have my character lead the future French-Revolution analog in the Darkship series. Because the d*mn thing was a proto-communist attack on civilization, as any attempt to impose equality on human society always is. The only equality we should have is equality under the law. Other than that, the only way humans can be made equal is to kill them all. (Which admittedly the French Revolution make a good attempt on, and people like Mao really made a good start on. Though nothing like the total population reduction the WEF has been hankering for.)

However the storming of the Bastille is a good image. Particularly since we now know that the Storming of the Bastille was not what you’ve been told in school, and it certainly is not what the French school children were taught.

It wasn’t a glorious fight, but an episode of deranged mob violence, that freed very few people (who were in the right place) and set the tone for the absolute insanity that was to follow. And yet, it is an important image.

Every July 14th the storming of the Bastille is celebrated in the same way that the fourth of July is here. Well, not exactly the same way. My best friend from childhood married a Frenchman and became a citizen at the same time I became an American citizen. I will tell you my husband bought me a plethora of fireworks and we had much fun that fourth of July, but my friend got to dance with the mayor of her French town, an indignity I was spared. Okay, it’s a joke, son. And not. The french celebration is more “official and top down” as opposed to every American blowing a couple hundred dollars on fizz pop bang and pretty lights in the sky. (Yeah, we have official celebrations too, but it ain’t the same.)

The point being the french are inordinately proud of that bit of mob violence even though it freed exactly seven people:

It’s true that the Bastille was stormed by a crowd, but at the time it was only housing seven prisoners, and none of them were known to have been rebelled against the crown in any notable way. According to records, the seven prisoners in the Bastille at the time were four counterfeiters, two ‘madmen’ and a nobleman accused of sexual perversion.

The thing, though — hear me out — is that it was not the real Bastille storming that is being celebrated. And it wasn’t the real Bastille storming that kicked off the horrors of the French revolution.

No. What kicked off the French Revolution was the perception of the abuses of the elite, the perception of the corruption, money wasting and sheer immorality of the elite.

A lot of that was propaganda. But not all. For instance, their elite wasn’t so much wasting money as truly abysmally bad at administering it — and society in general — at a time of great technological/social upheaval. They were however just as perverse as they were painted, something I didn’t know until ten years ago when a side-mention in a book about something else sent me hunting for personal memoirs and such, and I realized that that part of the incendiary propaganda that led to the revolution was not a lie. Hollywood’s most depraved parties had nothing on the French Aristocracy under l’Ancien regime.

The abuses were probably also true, though not uniformly distributed. I’m sure they had a lot of very decent noblemen doing the best they could, but the problem is that the system itself was so biased that abuses were inevitable and wouldn’t be thought about overly hard. There was no reason to avoid them.

Combine that with the fact that people — individual people, peasants — were growing more powerful in fact due to various technologies, and that this sclerotic elite didn’t even understand the new technologies or how relatively prosperous and capable the people were becoming, and you have the setup for a massive amount of growing anger. The anger of the many against the few who are perceived as holding a foot on the majority’s neck.

The problem is that, for various reasons, including the lack of an idea of individual rights in French society and the fact that intellectuals who felt hard done by the the hereditary class system were the ones stoking the fires of revolution, plus the fact that the ancien regime held on long enough for the anger to build, when it blew up with that major act of mob violence, the French revolution had already lost the plot. Instead of fighting for equal rights or equal opportunity, they fought for equality. I.e. they upended what they had in which some people were superior and deserving of more by birth into everyone being equal and DESERVING OF EXACTLY THE SAME BY BIRTH.

This is the same mistake made by all communists, including the DEI cultists in the US, who assume that if people have different results it must be because of unseen discrimination because — I don’t know, guys, apparently they never met more than one human being? — they think of humans as widgets, who are all exactly alike, and devoid of external controls on them will all do the same and achieve the same results.

The truth, if you need to hear it, is that we are all completely different. We’re CREATED equal, in the sense that we’re all endowed by our creator with the same rights. other than that, we’re all completely different. Take the person I live with, my other half, the person I’m closest to in the entire world. If you asked him to write a political-cultural blog every morning for years, he’d probably try to crawl under the coffee table and braid his hair (It would fail as his hair is very short) in hysterical avoidance.

On the other hand, there are the things he does because he just finds them laying about and no one is doing them, like in the first week of lockdown during the COVIDiocy, he created a program that pulled the latest (some updated daily) numbers of people diagnosed and hospitalized or having died from Covid in every county in the Union.

If you asked me to do that, I … would need ten years. Partly because my head doesn’t even bend that way.

For each of us, doing what the other considers fun, or relaxing, of just interesting, would be considered a form of hell for the other. Even when we read the same non-fiction, our take-aways are completely different. (This is actually great, as we always have things to talk about.)

Anyway, part of what sent the French revolution down that appalling path is that no one was thinking very clearly by the time things blew up and blew into insanity.

The Bastille had in fact been a notorious jail for centuries. People had been consigned to it with nothing but a note from the king. And once in there, they disappeared.

The fact that it wasn’t that by the time it was stormed, doesn’t mean it had not been that before, or that it wasn’t a symbol of what had been done to the French people for centuries.

I would like us to not storm the Bastille.

Look the anger is there, for both good and bad reasons, and though there are a few propagandists — there always are a few propagandists and in this case there are… ah… foreign interests who are very good at propaganda and who are trying to get us to blow up. because the only thing that can destroy America is America. The others aren’t even close to being a problem.

The most valid reason for being angry is the entire lockdown over Covid. A ridiculous ploy that used the virus as an excuse but (I’m convinced) had as its true goal the theft of the 2020 election. All of us were robbed by the lockdown, and everyone is angry about it, including the ones who aren’t aware of it.

Old people died alone. People didn’t get to say goodbye to parents and relatives who died. People’s checkups were postponed or stopped, leading to a lot of cancer becoming lethal when it shouldn’t have been. Children lost years. Older people lost functionality. And there is credible evidence that the vaccine robbed a lot of people of their health. Even those we lost to the virus were lost because the most effective treatments were demonized and forbidden, because they wanted to force their vaccine.

There is a lot of anger just under the surface. No one has forgotten and only true saints have forgiven.

But what the entire thing and the subsequent steal did was show that there was a lot of gaslighting going on. And break people’s trust in government. (At least as much as the black plague wounded faith in G-d, or at least in the church.) People’s trust in science and the institutions is also pretty shot.

This leaves us with a very big drop before we find things we believe in.

It is people’s — relative — trust in the new broom, in this case Trump and the people he brought in, and the fact that we managed to overcome the margin of fraud in November, that is keeping us from falling through the thin veneer of normalcy and go insane.

Let me put it this way: when the people find out that they’ve been preyed upon by monsters, it is important that the monsters’ be exposed and slain.

You can either do it by letting the crowd run mad and kill real people, a process that tends to end with everyone being killed in turn, because revolutionary fervor becomes private vengeance and envy, and Madame Guillotine is always hungry, or you can slay the processes that allowed the abuses to happen. The processes that created monsters.

We have a lot of processes that need to be reformed, and G-d bless and keep people like Data Republican for all she’s doing. G-d bless Musk too, and grant him the ability to land on Mars.

Our Bastille, however, is our secret services.

They were never as good as they are advertised to be. The people who were duped by the Soviet Union certainly don’t know everything that happens in the country and they don’t control much of anything.

But are they as monstrous as the Bastille? Are they capable of bringing disproportionate punishment and perpetrate random and horrific evils for reasons that seem unfathomable to us and might very well be unfathomable — or just corrupt — for them?

I don’t know. And neither do you. We do however have suspicions. We have legends of men in black, and we attach our suspicions to things like the Kennedy Assassination; the MLK Jr assassination, and yes, Epstein’s list.

Look, I’m iffy on the first two, and the last I’m fairly sure was some kind of a secret service honeypot operation, a way to have blackmail on people.

The first two … I’m fairly sure JFK was killed by the Russians and G-d only knows why and how MLK Jr. was killed.

Epstein, though… The list might or might not exist where the government — the official government — can get to it. But it is important.

My only caveat is that I think people on the street care less about Epstein — they assume everyone rich or powerful is a perv — but care a lot more about MLK Jr. and JFK. There is a subgenre of literature about those assassinations. They haunt the public imagination.

However Epstein could flare into sudden relevance and become a focus of anger with very little propaganda effort or — and more likely — by something coming out that centers on it. Not even on the goings on, but on the blackmail resulting from the goings on. If someone is proven to have been blackmailed, and if the consequences hit the public hard — say in letting a stolen election stand, for instance — the issue will suddenly flare up, as the sudden hatred for the Bastille flared up.

Not only did ninety something attackers get killed in storming the Bastille, but the governor of the Bastille and the guards — who were, by that time, innocent men — were dragged out and killed.

Listen to me: I don’t know if ANYONE reading this has an in to Trump, Vance, Kash or Bondi, but this is very important: it’s not “We’re not hiding anything” or “We simply don’t have that information” that is going to save us from the madness of the French revolution.

The monsters MUST BE SEEN TO BE SLAIN.

The only thing that could have stopped the French revolution in its tracks would be for the governor of the Bastille to throw open the doors and show who was there, and why, and more importantly WHO WASN’T THERE.

I don’t care if there’s no there there for the assassinations. And I don’t care if Epstein’s list doesn’t exist all in one place. The games that Bondi played around the would-be release told us that she’s either a fool or a villain. She either lied, or she got rolled.

Either way, it means a core of the ancien-regime holds on, and who knows what hides in the deep recesses of the ancient and evil prison?

Who knows what our secret services have been up to? Who knows who they serve? We have reason to believe it is certainly not the people.

THE DOORS MUST BE THROWN OPEN before something happens that causes a crowd to coalesce and go insane.

Mr. President, you promised. And I will grant you that you are our Vimes, or perhaps even our Moist Von Lipwig, which means you’re working behind the scenes to get the results you want. Or for those who don’t read Pratchett: our president is so twisty he can go down a corkscrew without touching the sides.

But you promised. You are our new broom, and we’re trusting you to sweep.

Your time is limited, and you’re at the mercy of a sudden and explosive event. The clock is ticking.

I don’t want us to storm the Bastille. And Madame La Guillotine should stay in France, where — if anywhere — it belongs.

But the only way to avoid the storming of the Bastille; to make sure it doesn’t happen, is to open the doors, and show what is and isn’t there.

It’s time.

167 thoughts on “Not Storming The Bastille”

    1. The Reader notes that many of Sarah’s typos have been her subconscious making a point. Whether that is the case here….

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  2. When I grew up in France, we didn’t hear much about the Bastille on July 14th. Plenty about the French Revolution, but not much about the Bastille. My impression is that July 14th was picked as the annual celebration date simply because the storming of the Bastille was an event with a nice, easily-verifiable date. Whereas events that were more important, like the Third Estate* declaring itself to be the entire legitimate National Assembly, had much more fuzzy dates. Yes, the Serment du Jeu de paume (the Tennis Court Oath) had a specific date (June 20th, 1789) but that was kind of the middle of the process, and the National Assembly didn’t produce a single, specific document like the American Declaration of Independence. So rather than celebrate the signing of a document the way we did, they celebrate one of the first events that showed that a large number of people supported the Revolution.

    At least, that’s my impression.

    * The French National Assembly at the time was made of three separate bodies (divisa en partes tres, if you like): the First Estate, which represented the clergy; the Second Estate, which represented the nobility; and the Third Estate, which represented the commoners. For the Third Estate to say “We are the entire National Assembly” would be like the British House of Commons to say “We are the entire Parliament”, i.e. the House of Lords is hereby dismissed.

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    1. I didn’t grow up there, but we were in Marseille visiting relatives the summer of ’57; I was 11. About all the celebrating that was done on Bastille Day was because it was a holiday; we went to one of the Med beaches and spent the day snorkeling and spearfishing. If there were fireworks I don’t recall them.

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  3. Sarah, AG Bondi may not be a villain. She’s trying to suppress a mutiny in the secret agencies without triggering it. It’s a lot like disarming an unexploded bomb.

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    1. Sometimes it pays large dividends to appear to not be winning, or not very much winning, when you actually are.

      “Oh my! Foiled again by those overwhelming baddies! Drat!” Right before you toss Mister Grenade in their Secret Lair Conference of Badguys.

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        1. To be fair, Willie Pete grenades don’t make a lot of noise. That doesn’t mean that those who get a *visit* from them aren’t rather loud in voicing their discomfort.

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      1. I think she had seen everything she had been told about.

        Insufficient skepticism; I think she’s learning.

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        1. I believe that’s correct; it’s certain that when she discovered she’d been lied to by that NY FBI a$$hole she didn’t let it pass.

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      2. The timing of that whole rigmarole, just before Starmer and Z showed up, looked to me like it was meant to rattle some cages, possibly foreign ones. But I stopped pretending to understand real world politics a long time ago, so what do I know?

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        1. Yeah, that rhymes – the Epstein stuff that’s already come out put paid to one of the royals. If those files has something on Charles…

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    3. I’m leaning this way myself. The Phase 1 release was botched on a couple of levels, but it’s too soon to write Bondi off, especially given the rot she’s up against.

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  4. “But are they as monstrous as the Bastille? Are they capable of bringing disproportionate punishment and perpetrate random and horrific evils for reasons that seem unfathomable to us and might very well be unfathomable — or just corrupt — for them?

    I don’t know. And neither do you. “

    Hmm. that didn’t quite sit right with me. Ruby Ridge, Waco, Winter Hill Mob, Fast & Furious, Russian Collusion; yeah, I know, tip of the iceberg, outside the normal distribution type of events. But they happened, and unless I misunderstood you, I think they happen to meet the proof I think you’re saying we don’t know. You can put the best cleaning lady you can find at the top of the Augean Stable heap that are the enforcement arms of the USAG, but digging down through the rot is truly a Herculean task. She may be able to get rid of some of it, and prevent any real regrowth while she’s there, but she’s unlikely to get all or even most of it before she’s replaced.

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  5. On DEI – not even “equality of outcome”. DEI is the stage where the “communists” declare the Others deserve to get shorted in outcome, then necks. “Equity” = explicitly UN-equal outcome, AKA “punish the bastards”.

    On Pervs – Over time they have to escalate. Shock and Shame are part of the Perv kink. That requires, mandates escalation, as shock is situational and based on prior experience. And if you review historical civilizations noted for Perv, you will see a trend where they start off fairly tame, even straightlaced, then eventually get to “Are you kidding me?” teamed with “Now watch this!”. Our own USA Pervs seem right on template. Just wait for what is done to shock the current “people of colored hair” and Epstein clients. Consider that the E list is being withheld to prevent an upheaval, when it leaks that they weren’t just “molesting” minors, but dining on them. Or much worse.

    On Covid – it wasn’t a plot or plan. it was an epic eff-up by CCP lab minions, followed by opportunistic grabs and more eff-ups and grabs and repeat the F-G cycle. It was too uncoordinated to be an overall plot, and too unsuccessful to have been an overall plot. (Trump and us folks won 2024 – QED). Because they -didn’t- have a good/overall plan. It was opportunistic, situational, and missed the overall objective of “No more threats to the insiders”. -Trump- on the other hand -has- a plan, and has been working towards it since he got kicked to the curb. This plan may, or may not, align with our preferred long term goals. (Careful for what you wish.)

    See monsters to kill – Pish and tosh. “Indirect fire” and “carpet bombing” -work-. So does throwing grenades before entering a next room. Just costly in money, time, and broken things. (grin)

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    1. I’ve always believed the govt knew Covid was artificial because it was the only way the hair-on-fire panic made any sense at all. Desire to keep “the masses from panicking,” combined with, “It’s artificial! Who knows what it can do?”

      But once it became clear it wasn’t the Black Death Come Again, the, “never let a crisis go to waste,” crowd, and the, “‘let’s see if we can manipulate people into doing this!” crowd took full control. And it didn’t take that long for anyone paying attention (or with any grasp of history) to realize it wasn’t the Black Death Come Again. I’m sorry to say it took me longer than it should have, but I got there in the end.

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      1. Fauci knew that COVID was artificial because he helped pay for it. The NIH under Fauci was giving money to Eco-Health, which was spending that money on Gain of Function research at the Wuhan lab. Obama banned having anything to do with Gain of Function research, which stopped the payments to Eco-Health. The NIH – under Fauci – changed the definition of Gain of Function research, and started sending money to Eco-Health again, which resumed funding the research at the Wuhan lab that would result in SARS-2.

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      2. Note it’s not true it wasn’t amazingly coordinated, though.
        It didn’t TAKE in a coordinated fashion in the US, but European countries were lockstep with our most compliant states, all the way down the line. This implies coordination.

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        1. Except Sweden, and comparison of the health outcomes there vs. most of the rest of Europe has opened more than one pair of eyes; IIRC they did slightly better than the average while not implementing anywhere near the level of “scientific help” as most of the rest.

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      3. There is no question the public health people knew. In the same emails and slack channels where they made up from whole cloth “six feet” and “six weeks to flatten” and “no masks” then “mandatory masks!” , they talked about how the bug basically could only have come from the Wuhan lab, where it had clearly been the result of fiddling-with. The only open question, fully on the Chinese side so only answerable after they change governments, is “leak due to incompetence” or “purposeful release”.

        If someone over here now insists they didn’t know, proof, for that is an extremely high bar, so full public disclosure of all contemporaneous private emails and sms messages and slack channels and chats, and if they did anything sketchy at all, like using private emails accounts to dodge public records laws or buying burner phones, that overrides any such claims and constitutes a guilty plea.

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      4. Government is a twisty word here. Some knew, some didn’t. Let’s not overlook the fact that a bunch of tech bros in California associated with Bill Gates sent an email to just about every jurisdiction in the west that said “if you don’t lock down # of people in your jurisdiction multiplied by the ridiculous early death rate would die and it’d all be your fault. Once they locked down, they’d have to admit they were wrong, and that was never going to happen. hence the magic vaccine, which gave them an out. I only wish they’d shot us up with distilled water, it would have been as effective and much less harmful. more profitable for big pharma too, which is double plus good.

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      5. In my COVID idle time (not sick, but there was nowhere open to go to) I reread Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year”. My impression was that nothing much had changed in medical practice dealing with an epidemic since 1721.

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  6. Covid – I doubt we will get a full reconciliation or justice. Enough of the truth is out that you could make a case for attempted mass genocide or absolute intentional malpractice by thousands of officials, doctors, and a more than a few elite. Nobody to my knowlege has taken a “shot” at any of the conspirators.

    There’s enough documention to make a RICO case to exceed the scale of the corruption of the ongoing USAID scandal. I don’t think it is a high priority of the Trump adminstration, although I think Junior would like to make it part of his MAHA program. Hopefully medicine and food can be “uncorrupted”, but for now it’s everyone on their own, doing their best.

    JFK – There were enough parties with a means and reason to off him, that I don’t think the actual facts matter at this time. Our intelligence community was/is dirty enough to do the deed or let Oswald do it or be patsy or the Russians.

    LBJ, one of the most evil presidents in our history, benefited from the act. He finished the “Progressive” foundation that Wilson and FDR started. Indirectly he’s probably responsible for a good percentage of US decay and death through increased immigration and the “Great Society.” Also involved deeply with the intelligence community.

    The “Intelligence” community – Do they “miss” information or do they use that as camo for deeper intentions. I tend to believe the later. We don’t have the time or warehouses full of paper to document their misdeeds and evil acts. Much is documented if you search, but much is hidden. USAID was one of their slush funds and they really don’t give a shit about the United States or it’s citizens, only power.

    They seem to be their own power, but are connected to foreign services and the worst of the multi-national elite. The same folks that funded the Russian Revolution, Mao, the Nazi’s, Islamic terrorists and migrations… The small “gods” aka the semi-hidden aristocracy/club that has presisted over the last 3 or 4 centuries.

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    1. I want to see ‘Granny-killer’ Cuomo prosecuted for mass murder, rather than simply removed from office for making a few women ‘feel uncomfortable’. And then was replaced with an even more blatant tyrant.

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        1. And Heaven help us, he probably has to be considered the favorite. Eric Adams is walking a tightrope that may not even exist. There may be no room between satisfying NYC’s progressives and making some accommodation with the Feds and ICE.

          Just desserts, in New York? Cuomo may be about to prove there is no such thing.

          Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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          2. Did I stil,live there and Cuomo was running, I’d probably vote for him. Some of the rest of that gang are actually frightening and we won’t survive another diblassio, who was better than the available alternative who was Christin Quinn … who makes DiBolshevick look like LaGuardia. Better does not mean good and sometimes better is the best you can do.

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    2. Those folk used to be called “the Illuminati” in certain circles, an imprecise use of a proper name to cover a general concept. Rather like “fascist” et al when used as other than a reflexive slur. In a sense it actually captures the essence well, at least of how they view themselves.

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    3. A full reconciliation is a pipe dream, in my opinion. There will ALWAYS be holdouts, some crazies, and the ungovernable in the mix (I may or may not be within this partition). True justice for all would require mind reading in some cases, which does not exist, and would probably contravene justice itself if it did.

      What I suggest is a demonstration of intent. Real intent. As in, prosecution, conviction, jail time for egregious offenders up to and including top officials heavily complicit in the act. I believe that if the consequences of the uncovered corruption are insufficient, we SHALL see more corruption in the future, as those very same consequences are proved insufficient deterrent.

      Yeah, it is better that the guilty go free than the innocent suffer- I do hear and understand that. But the guilty are, have been, and continue to be quite open and brazen in their contravention of law (not to mention common decency). Dig up new, or very old justices that understand the rule of law. Apply it ruthlessly. By the book. Which does include permanent termination of proven traitors.

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  8. I have not ‘lost trust in science’. Science is a method and a process for finding facts and correlating them using logic and reason. Science demands that we constantly question what we know, or think we know. The greatest scientific theory can be demolished by one verified fact that it can’t accommodate.

    What I have completely lost is what little trust I ever had in Official Science. In the pompous pronouncements of Official Scientists, most of which seek power rather than knowledge. The few actually seeking knowledge are trapped in a system that demands they spend most of their time begging the power-seekers for research money. Which they won’t get if they don’t hew to the Official Science. Or worse. See all the doctors and scientists whose careers were destroyed for daring to suggest that COVID19 was tinkered up in a Chinese biological weapons laboratory.

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      1. Yes, but for the majority of people, who don’t really grasp (or care) how science works, those can taint the entire subject in their minds. This is a Bad Thing (TM); the trick is to separate real science from sCieNCe in those minds.

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      2. Then there is the clickbait media headlines “Scientist/Experts recommend/suggest/caution/fear/warn/etc. of something.” The words of a “Scientist” or “Expert” seems a magical nostrum.

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        1. Many times burned, more times shy.

          It’s become the usual thing for me, whenever I see either “experts say” or “studies show”, especially in any of the MSM, to automatically disbelieve whatever it is unless the “experts” and their qualifications (not credentials) are listed and the “studies” are identified, with links to at least the abstract. And even then I’ll check carefully if I’m interested in the subject.

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    2. I thought she implied it was loss in trust of Science!™ and for the laymen, that erodes faith in actual science, as well. Not everyone knew the ins and outs of Science!™ v. actual real science and I run into people who now really distrust any form of science, though hopefully it is out of once bitten, and not turn them into Science Luddites.

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    3. Typo, methinks. “lost trust in THE science,” as Fauci the fraudster declaimed himself. Science, actual science, which involves use of, y’know, the actual scientific method- that method that has been soundly ignored in favor of grant money for politically favourable “conclusions”? That has never been denied or derided here that I have seen (absent visitors of the green and smelly appearance, e.g. trolls).

      I think we’re on the same page, just mucking about in the weeds, as it were.

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  9. Honestly, I have wondered for years how our government “intelligence” operations managed to so totally miss the shakiness of the Soviet apparat, so much so that they appear to have been caught completely by surprise when the Iron Curtain fell, rusted into oblivion. If they were really on the ball, wouldn’t they have … you know, noticed something. Anything? Geeze, I remember reading an article in Harpers or Atlantic about the disgraceful state of the Russian Army, dependent as it was on two-year service draftees, who weren’t anything like properly trained, abused, badly housed and horribly fed. Article was called “Ivan the Terrible Soldier”. I can only think that the intelligence services needed the looming boogyman of the Russian military juggernaut to continue being so generously funded…

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    1. Our military still seems to believe in Russian Might. They are still being told that Russia is All Powerful, Way Ahead technologically and could squash the US bug anytime they want. Therefore we must placate and grovel…

      It’s just weird. It’s also possible that it’s not all the military. My information is coming from limited sources, admittedly. “Russia so strong, Russia so advanced, Russia invincible.”

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      1. That wasn’t the message they gave us grunts in the mid eighties.

        Our stuff was better, especially the new toys Reagan was deploying. Our troops were better trained, better supported, better motivated.

        What they had was sheer overwhelming numbers. 3-9x troops. 5x-10x tanks, 10x-20x artillery. We spent significant time discussing “what to do after you get overrun” (fight back to friendly lines. screw with their heads and timetables meanwhile.) Hold Europe while we ran “Return Forces to Germany” (REFORGER)

        Would the Soviets start the game with chem/bio/nukes, or wait until we were kicking ass? What then? A decent view was a book “Team Yankee”, Howard Coyle, for the grunt/company level view, or Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” for the theater/global view.

        We spent a great deal of time learning how to fight outnumbered and win. Example, National Training center NTC) at Fort Irwin California. The fake Soviet unit we had there played Soviet, but with American sneaky. Fought like bastards and did Soviet doctrine better than Soviets.

        We were planning on winning, after one B -word of a long fight, but the concern was we would be the winners of a radioactive global rubble pile.

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        1. Same for the Air Force. We expected to lose bases and have to fight our way in, but long term expected to take down Frontal Aviation and the IADS (with a lot of casualties on our side).

          Heck, the first defensible terrain line in Korea after the Han river was south of Osan, so I firmly expected (and prepared for) the need to bug out in the case Kim came south (I always had a compass on me, since knowing which way was south would be a crucial bit of information in that situation)

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          1. Oh, yeah – every six months or so, the Norks performed their semiannual unitary dance of international chicken – wherein they would make warlike noises and scare the hum-hum out of the newbies. The old Korea hands got pretty blasé about the performance … but yeah, I remember comforting some of the baby troops in my section by outlining my own plans in case of a mass bug-out to Pusan. It involved getting our weapons from the armory, a pair of bolt-cutters to liberate some handy bicycles for them (I already had my own bike) and persuading one of the unit KATUSA to come with us as an interpreter, and heading south on back roads and trails.

            I didn’t say it was a good plan, but it sounded workable, and it reassured the baby troops.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. A good portion of a friends family is on the verge of panic, thinking we’re getting into a war with an unbeatable foe.

          Her husband (career Army) says that “our intelligence” knows we can’t beat Russia because of their secret technology and all their nukes. No mention yet of massive population, but I expect it to come up at some point.

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          1. And the Rooskies are holding back their sooperdooper seekrit technology in their desperate fight against their next door neighbor Ukrainians, and instead using meat-wave infantry attacks across open ground, why?

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      2. I’m seeing, “Russia’s massive resources! Sanctions don’t work, they actually strengthen the Russian economy! Russia’s endless manpower will totally overwhelm Ukraine! Ukraine is full of corrupt oligarchs! America First!” from people who present themselves as true conservatives, not like those “warmongering neocons.” To be honest, at their most dogmatic they really do sound like useful idiots.

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        1. Russia got is Red ass kicked by Ukraine. They didn’t win, despite something like 10:1 odds.

          The -only- way Russia wins is if they get some other folks to convince Ukraine to give up. If the Ukies don’t quit, Russia bleeds to death because they -cannot- overwhelm Ukraine. Or they already would have done so. There is -zero- good reason to hold anything back if the goal is to actually win the war by force of arms.

          But, that isnt the goal, and hasnt been since about week three.

          Sadly, way, way too many folks wan the Ukies to quit for reasons. If that was Alaska and the PNW, I would not be willing to negotiate beyond “Leave right the (HONK!) now and we wont genocide your asses. Somehow, someday, and we or our Yang descendants -will- exterminate you.”

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          1. “…our Yang descendants…”

            Should have ended “…exterminate your Coom asses.”

            (Hadn’t thought of that episode in years.)😁

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              1. You may be correct about the pronunciation; I was relying on a memory from the first broadcast of the episode.

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          2. And even any cease-fire-for-now does not really favor the Russians long term as they are in a large demographic hole.

            The Formerly-Red-Army had their best shot in 2022 and could not close the deal. With their lost military-age-males and, more importantly, the destroyed Soviet-stockpile equipment, they won’t be able to do it in future, unless their current “disarm Ukraine” conditions are imposed.

            I am starting to see glimmers that maybe DJT is playing some 8d chess on Ukraine. He gained a lot of diplomatic high ground with the WH Zelenskyy-being-a-moron thing and it’s aftermath, and then getting Ukraine fully complying on starting negotiations proved who has the power, and then Russia comes out with totally stupid “basically they surrender” preconditions and gets whacked with major additional sanctions, again proving who has the high cards.

            There’s a new interview with Boris Johnson on Triggernometry’s YT channel where he is fairly positive about DJT shaking up the diplomatic status quo on Ukraine. I think he’s correct. While he took credit, I am pretty sure Brandon’s autopen was basically dragged along by Boris’ government in the beginning when “Ukraine does not get overrun” was the only objective, and that was never superceded in all the time since.

            The Ukraine posturing was the most disappointing thing about the DJT campaign. I hope it is 8d chess, like a lot of his other stuff is proving to be.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. And as an aside on the Boris interview, the disappointing part was, while they did most of their time on Ukraine, a bit on UK immigration, and then a bunch on Net Zero, the only time they had any questions on Boris’ COVID stupidity was after the publicly-playable interview in their subscriber questions section, so none of Boris’ answers on that were included on YT.

              Because Boris did majorly stupid stuff on COVID, and I don’t mean the staff party thing.

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            2. Anyone have anything on the story of the kidnapped Ukrainian kids? It was being passed around as gospel for a few months, then fizzled.

              Liked by 1 person

          1. I wonder how much of it, among the 45-and-older set, is “Russia = USSR = superpower, therefore Russia = unstoppable!” Not consciously, perhaps, but it’s still back there from when we grew up.

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        3. Sanctions don’t work, they actually strengthen the Russian economy! 

          Sanctions don’t work, because our “brave European allies” torpedoed their own energy production, and then buy from the Russians rather than the Evull Americans under Orange Man Bad.

          The Europeans have been doing as little as possible to defend themselves since before Reagan, and undermining our efforts at every opportunity, so they could look down their noses while keeping a welfare state.

          And this is why I am in favor of letting the BlueGolds and the Reds go hang, before we send another dime we can’t afford or troops better used on OUR border. Time for them to take up the burden, and time for the US to quit being played for suckers.

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      3. I don’t know that our military believes it. A lot of that “Russia is all powerful” is civilian reporters and former military pundits being paid to keep eyes on the screen/page.

        Based on my experience in the 80s (AF vs ground pounder like 11B, but similar experience) I think it’s more an attitude of “OK, we know it’s inflated, but if we train to fight and win against the propaganda Russian military, then fighting the actual Russians will be much easier.

        I think the attitude is actually more like, prepare to fight and win against the PLA. If we can do that, with all of the logistics and other challenges, then we should be able to handle the Russians in Europe.

        Honestly, I think with some air and naval support Poland and Finland can tear up the Russian military as it exists today.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. You may have a point; at both Parris Island and Lejeune they made no secret of the fact that the intent was to make training as tough as, or hopefully tougher than, actual combat, for that exact reason. Nobody cheers about it, but it pays off.

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        1. See my comment regarding the Soviet Union. The Sha thought he was secure and all the info CIA was getting went along with what their sources believed

        2. That was just after Jimmy Carter gutted the US HUMINT programs in favor of “National Technical Means” A lot of our HUMINT assets were hung out to dry, there was no one left in CIA or State to manage them anyway, and no one wanted to work with us after seeing what happened to their predecessors.

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        1. I think the Israelis had a clue and tried to warn us, but Carter hated the Israelis so much that the political types (appointed and career) at the top of the Intel agencies quit trying to relay those warnings.

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        2. Don’t ignore the 1975 Church Commitee hearings and subsequent Ted Kennedy-wing actions by congress to kill off the old WIld Bill OSS-legacy IC capabilities. Jimmeh just grabbed onto that and carried it forward.

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      2. Well, Jimmeh was not a fan of the Shah, and somebody facilitated Khomeini getting out of France and back to Iran. I know there were CIA and U.S. military people on the ground who were supporters of the Shah, but I have heard (from exiles who can’t go back ever because of family who were pretty high up, so they are still on a list) that they knew who the internal bad guys were, but “advice” from the U.S. embassy to the Shah’s government was to not crack down on those revolutionaries, with the threat of withholding U.S. aid if they did.

        Once it kicked off and the old government fell, it was the standard “the radicals round up the moderates and shoot them”, and the rest is history.

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        1. And as this was pre-Reagan, the Cold War was still going full blast, so the KGB and GRU were still fully staffed up and fully engaged in Iran with the objective of breaking off the strongest U.S. ally in the Middle East.

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        2. There was a comment on the Diplomad blog a few years ago, where a couple of old hands in the State Department who recalled those days were reminiscing about matters diplomatic in the 70s. How we had managed to screw over one of our solid mid-east allies by somehow painting the Shah as the most awful human-rights abuser evah — and how on earth this ever came about, almost out of the clear blue. (Yeah, the Shah wasn’t a saint, by any means, but he was certainly no worse — as has been painfully demonstrated ever since.) This commenter was IIRC mid-rank service in the State Department at the time, and he recalled that from the moment Carter was sworn in, it all started – that the Shah was a bad, brutal, human-rights violating dictator, and he had to go. And it all came from Jimmuh Carter, apparently. He had, for some unfathomable reason, a stone dislike of the Shah, and shed no tears over him being overthrown and replaced by worse. Some of the other Diplomad commenters wondered if basically, Carter destabilized Iran at the instigation of the Saudi Arabians … and if all the instability in the middle east since then could be blamed on his meddling.

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    3. On big reason is that the CIA was reading the Soviet Leadership’s mail, and knew what the Kremlin “knew” and believed. They never took into account the fact that the Soviet system of providing progress reports and statistics were lies from the bottom up. Never report failure, always exceed your quotas by a small percentage. The data the Kremlin (and CIA et. al.) was getting was corrupt from inception and more corrupt the more levels it went through to get to the leadership.

      I think that is also part of the “failure” to find advanced WMD programs in Iraq. No one was going to report failures to Sadaam. He believed he had more capabilities than he really did, no one was telling him otherwise, and our Intel agencies were taking that belief as fact.

      (Note this is not “Bush Lied People Died” nonsense. As an Intel officer in USCINCPAC during DS, I know for a fact that WMDs (chemicals) were there in 1991 and had be used in combat in the late 80s. And the nuclear and biological programs existed and were making progress. (and thank you IDF for knocking the nuclear program back a few years with the Osrik strike) The only real question is where they went between then and 2003.)

      Liked by 1 person

      2. And, IIRC, leaked intelligence from Brits, Germans and I think French all suggested WMDs were there, as well as several Iraqi generals thought it was there.

        Tough to accept that everyone was wrong on that. I don’t think they were.

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        1. From something a returned GI mentioned when we were discussing “stupid press tricks” in the early 2000s, I think people were right. What the media et al wanted were glowing, smoking, or otherwise labeled cans saying “Caution: Contains WMD.”

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        2. And ISTR something like a year and a half of stalling and stonewalling and “negotiation” about where the inspectors would –and would not–be permitted to look for Saddam’s WMDs before anybody actually started looking.

          I’m no fan of 0-dark-thirty, no-knock SWAT-team shoot-the-dog drug busts, buuuuut……

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          1. And even then, it took something of a historian to recognize some things. A 1940’s style mean of separating U-235 from U-238 might not be terribly efficient….but it STILL WORKS. And the “historian” recognized a calutron. As Tom Clancy put it, “Second best also goes boom.”

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        3. A number of Iraqi air bases were found to have bunkers full of drums labelled “insecticide” that set off all the chemical weapons detectors…. but I never heard what the concentrations were or how easily the mixture inside could have its’ concentration changed.

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      3. And thank you fpr pointing out that, regardless of what the idiots in the MSM “think”, chemical weapons are WMDs, along with radiological and biological weapons. So Saddam did have WMDs, even though not nukes or tailored germs (yet).

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        1. It seems to have disappeared, but I had a folder of multiple links of non-us reports of the WMDs/Programs in Iraq, used in an argument over at the old Elf Life/Winger forums. The excuses ran from “But we already knew of those/they had been tagged by the UN for destruction (and not destroyed was firmly ignored). Too old to work (why no, they’d not want to be right there when one went off to prove how safe they were, tyvm), or just argue something else. Then the article explaining the yellow cake transported to Canada for refining was not proof either, he didn’t have operational centrifuges, it still existed! but because he thought the centrifuges ruined by burial to hide them worked when they no longer would, it means we didn’t find any because the UN supposedly had marked that as well. Not long after that I stopped trying to prove points with leftoids, Smack them in the face with facts and they reset like everyone else but Bill Murray in Groundhog Day

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    4. I attended college in the eighties at a school with a strong Russian and Slavic program. The NSA and the CIA visited campus every year to recruit. And I know EXACTLY why they weren’t on the ball. These student spend four (or five) years in college getting instructed by people who tended to be liberal academics who were rather fond of the Soviet Union. The ones who did the semester in Leningrad pretty much all came back entranced. Not like the Soviets didn’t do their best to seduce the American students at the university in Leningrad.

      I think it would’ve made more sense if the CIA and NSA had a program like what a friend of mine went through in the Air Force. She attended the defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center where she learned Russian. from other members of the military. I have no doubt that the people who went to work for the CIA or the NSA were “trained” by them, but they all spent four years hearing how WONDERFUL the Soviet Union was.

      FWIW, people in other Slavic language programs were not as brainwashed since most, for example, Poles were not that keen on the Soviet Union.

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  10. On the subject of whether most Communist intellectuals have ever met more than one person, I’m pretty sure they cannot have understood them if they had. They do seem to see the rest of the world as either cardboard cutouts or just like them.

    On a side note, that couldn’t stop beating me over the head while reading this, in Witches Daughter, are Michael and Albinia based on you two? Intentionally or otherwise? Because the way you describe the way the two of you interact reminds me of them so much.

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    2. Pretty sure communists of all flavors, not just their “intellectuals”, don’t really believe “other people” are really people at all.

      Liked by 1 person

  12. Having been forced to read the Marquis de F***** Sade in college (120 Days of Sodom) I absolutely would believe that the French elite were every bit as perverted as it was claimed, or even worse.

    The elites being a bunch of perverted nasty weirdos seems to be a recurring theme across history, now that I think about it, particularly so before getting overthrown.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. A common recurring theme is a group of elites refusing to believe in much of anything (because religion is so déclassé, of course). This means that you have to pursue physical sensation, because if nothing outside of the physical is real (including concepts like kindness, love, and mercy), it’s very important to get the most out of the physical side.

      But here’s the thing: You do the same thing for a while, and it gets boring. So when you have Cluster B types, where nobody else is real, you escalate. And it starts getting nasty and destructive, and they have to keep escalating, pursuing the elusive sensations. Just eroding away anything worthwhile…

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      1. So it’s basically an addiction, like heroin? You need to keep increasing the dose to get the desired effect?

        Sounds reasonable (as a conjecture; “reasonable”, like “sane”, doesn’t describe them in any way).

        Liked by 3 people

    2. Sade is just slasher porn for pseudo intellectuals. They’d have been better watching Friday the 13th like normal people. not me, life is horrible enough that I don’t need to watch it on screen.

      Liked by 2 people

  13. So the question that comes to mind for me re the Bastille prisoners, given how things turned out, is did the “nobleman accused of sexual perversion“ escape his cell only to subsequently make close acquaintance with Madame la Guillotine?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. If he was smart, he’d left town before Madame la Guillotine came calling. [Grin]

      Oh topic, but one Dracula comic (Marvel) had Dracula as one of the Bastille prisoners and the “storming” of the Bastille aided in his escape.

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      1. Encyclopedia Britannica has a weird chronology of him being sent to an insane asylum a couple days before the storming holiday date, then getting out later, joining the revolutionaries, being accused of “moderatism” and queued for the chop, then: “He escaped the guillotine by chance the day before the Revolutionary leader Robespierre was overthrown.”

        I won’t bother with that awful wiki site.

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      2. I think part of the problem was that he “went public” with some of his garbage.

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  14. The thing that kills me is that St. Vincent de Paul, and his merry band of donors, volunteers, and religious/priests, seem to have cobbled together a really nice way to help people out, without violating anybody’s rights.

    If that line of work had kept going, there wouldn’t have had to be a French Revolution, because there would have been a lot more prosperity and social mobility.

    But as soon as de Paul was safely dead, the royal government that nominally had supported his work, started dismantling all the many charities that he and his volunteers had assembled. Anything that was nationalized, turned into a way to give money to grifting government employees, and was no longer voluntary for the objects of charity.

    It was the French kings and their government grifters who turned really nice halfway houses for the needy poor, full of encouragement and interesting, fun activities, into workhouse prisons.

    Even if the people who are doing something powerful have absolutely no intention of exercising power through it, there’s always somebody determined to take it over and do their worst with it.

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      1. What do you expect? The “experts” and bureaucrats know far more about what people really need than do mere saints and on-the-streets volunteers, don’cha know.

        /sarc, just in case

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        1. The woman who wrote the NYT “We was fooled!!! And it’s all those internet commentators fault for being correct all along!!!” thing was profiled back in 2020, according to something over on Insty, where she express her deepest desire as follows:

          “But in the ideal world, people like me are kind of superfluous, and we have these faceless nameless experts and bureaucrats who tell us: This is what you have to do.”

          There you go. The convergence of academe and j-skool idiots in one swell foop.

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  15. Re punishing the monsters – Trump has declared that all of the auto-pen signatures are invalid, null and void. Even the most corrupt “judge” can’t rule on that until charges are actually filed for actions that were “pardoned.”

    I’m going to be watching this, to see whether it is actually part of a plan. The best indicator will be if they do NOT attempt to send the already convicted back to jail. That would short-circuit the investigation process when it came before a “judge” like Boasberg or Berman.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Speculation I am seeing is that this a ploy to keep the MSM talking about the pardons and perhaps why they may have been thought necessary.

      As well as talking about who really was ‘running’ things at 1600 (*cough* Edith/Jill)

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  16. I don’t think the Covid Panicdemic was about frauding Trump out of office; it was bigger than that. The Panicdemic boosters saw a glorious opportunity to win all the marbles, establish a new normal, and liquidate the people in favor of electing another. Besides, it was an irresistible opportunity to polish their tyrant-boners.

    Establishing perma-fraud elections was just one aspect, and reversing the result of the 2016 election was just a perk of that one aspect. Now it turned out to be a perk with unintended consequences, but it was just a perk.

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    2. Aha – the first name of the current UK monarch causes a comment to go into “awaiting moderation”.

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  18. I must admit to some bemusement at the spectacle of Democrats suing President Trump for enforcing U.S. federal laws. That’s his JOB, dumbasses! Just because the feckless incompetent buffoon that last occupied the office didn’t do the job, makes no difference. Trump is acting entirely within his authority, doing the job we elected him to do.

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  19. The monsters have to be punished, and in full, because otherwise we will believe that they are still out there.

    Waiting.

    And if we think that…some rabblerouser is going to use that fear to make us do Stupid Human Tricks.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Defanged. Punishment in full is never going to happen, but if you can convince people that the monsters have been defanged, you get America back on track. Punishment is a means to an end, but it’s not the only means to that end.

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      1. Counterpoint: appearance of punishment is just as damned important, if not more than, than the actual punishment. Is the guilty contrite? Were they actually submitted to the full force of legal justice, as one of *us would be? Was the punishment of scale and scope to the purported crime? Is it likely to deter future criminal exploration into similar schemes?

        Or, to put it another way, hang the first few, impale the copycats, and burn the ringleaders alive, and the rate of recidivism/reoccurrence is reduced markedly.

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        1. It seems impossible, but I agree with both of you. I want them punished – although burned alive seems a bit much; hanging is sufficient – but we need them removed/defanged.

          That’s why I’m fine with the crazy-generous severance package. Just get gone.

          Liked by 2 people

          2. ^ This. Top priority is giving them the boot, even if that means a generous retirement package. Second priority is making some examples. We’re already seeing this around the edges (e.g., ICE raid leakers, Fani Willis fine), and I suspect we’ll get a few more to hammer home the new rules (maybe the J6 Committee, if we’re lucky).

            But taking down the big players is a tall order. They are well-equipped, they will fight tooth and nail if they’re directly threatened, and any attack on them will be a major political setback in the likely event it fails.

            I’d love to see some high-level convictions, but anything less than a slam dunk case with good optics is going to be a net negative. Nuking their reputations is the next-best thing, and Trump’s been doing a great job of that (Biden and the autopen, Obama burning his cred stumping for Harris, all of the 80-20s, etc.).

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            1. The big guys are also, likely, the ones screaming the loudest for arrests, now, and brutal.

              Don’t wait for evidence

              Don’t pick through and make a solid case that will let you arrest their superiors, and then the next level up, and next.

              No, hurry up, do it now, and do it as flashy as possible.

              Ignore that this is exactly what organized crime does, and is part of how they enforce people staying in- the low level guys will be caught, and punished, and not be used to get the higher ups that set this all up.

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              1. Yeah, the time pressure of the next election makes it psychologically hard to slow down and do it right, especially when any progress will be behind closed doors. Trump’s been doing a good job of serving up red meat and quick wins to keep attention off the slow and frustrating stuff.

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  20. MAGA has two moods: God-Emperor Trump and Killdozer. Trump has to lead them towards the former so they don’t drift into the latter. The laser pointer is as much for his base as for his enemies. (Not that that’s a bad thing.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Would that make the Dems Chaos Marines?

      I assume the RIFs are the ‘nids, and the Euros are the Craftworlders.

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  21. Does anyone still care about JFK? I’m almost retirement age and it was before my time. I barely remember Nixon on TV.

    As for the Epstein Files, why do they even exist? Do they even exist? First, why would anyone write anything down, originally? It’s just dumb. Second, why would anyone hide them, rather than destroy them? Third, at this point the chain of custody is so murky that anything that comes to light is dubious, at best.

    As a side note, couldn’t the same tech that was used to read ancient scrolls without unrolling them be used to un-redact documents?

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    1. The “scan fragile scrolls and determine the printing on them” is basically fine enough 3d scanning that it can differentiate ink from papyrus/vellum/whatever, then do the math to digitally unroll it and take a look.

      Modern redaction, either in scams or digital documents, replaces the characters with black rectangles in the digital form, so the redacted text is not just covered up, its’s gone.

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      1. ^^scans^^, rather than scams. It tried that substitution in the first para and I caught it, ut it was just a feint…

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    2. RE: JFK. Not as much as they used to. The parties involved are all either dead or in nursing homes, so it’s sort of a moot point. I’m glad they got released, and I hope we get some closure, but I don’t see it leading to anything else.

      RE: The Eps. Files. Mike Cernovich, one of the drivers behind the release of the original batch of civil suit files in 2019, had a good breakdown of the situation on X a few weeks ago. The gist is that the NY FBI arrested Eps. in 2019 to contain the damage on the pending release of the civil suit files.

      Uncharacteristically, they charged him only for a bare minimum set of crimes and only raided his place in NY. Other, unknown people showed up and cleared out what is assumed to be blackmail material/evidence from his other properties around the world. That material is now in the wind.

      So the NY FBI has some non-public material related to his arrest and the subset of crimes they charged him with, but the bulk of the dirt probably isn’t there. They stonewalled Bondi on the stuff they had. And, as someone else pointed out, there’s a strong possibility the files have been tampered with, so everything needs to be cross-checked before release.

      I’m not sure what they got from Maxwell, but she has an appeal pending, so releasing any of that info is tricky. I haven’t been following closely enough to say if they have any concrete info on clients, or how far that has spread if they do.

      TL;DR: The government has some non-public material of interest, but probably not as much as people are hoping for. There’s also a chance it’s been tampered with.

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