Out of Ammo

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This Sunday I realized the left — particularly the cultured, posturing left — is completely and utterly out of ammo.

Oh, probably not out of literal ammo. That seems to always be their last play, after all. Bringing out the hidden cache and trying to make a splash. In America, I’m going to hazard, it won’t go well for them. They might even know it, so that the outbreaks of nonsense we get are isolated and tiny. Still tragic. Still costing innocent lives. But not the open shooting war they hanker for at some level and which their revolutionary heroes in other lands managed.

But for you guys to understand the level at which they are out of ammo and the shock I experienced on realizing it: I grew up in a place and time where the left commanded all the heights of culture, all the megaphones of discourse. They could declare what was beautiful and not, or make your book/music/art untouchable with a word.

Even as late as the early oughts, to brand some novelist as “racist” because you deemed she had insufficient people of color characters in her books and/or insensitive and imperialist because she had those, while being herself obviously white was enough reason to destroy a career unless the person were already a massive success.

And now? Now they’re down to this type of utterly ridiculous meltdown over… a commercial. No, seriously.

Like, you know, commercials aren’t supposed to show an enticing, aspirational ideal.

Wait, for all I know the left doesn’t realize that. Their favored means of getting you to do something is, after all, to curl a disdainfully look and tell you to do it if you don’t want to be fascist/retrograde/stupid.

Which is what this precious specimen is trying to evoke.

He stompy stompy footed and told us that liking beautiful things, or heroes or rural scenes, or an evocation of the past makes us…. he looked into his little bag of tricks and hurled out the most horrifying word in it. Nazis!

Which is utterly revealing as to the kind of mind we’re dealing with, but let’s save that for later.

The most immediate thing is why he did it. The short answer is because he’s stupid enough he doesn’t realize the only reason that sort of thing worked is because they commanded all the heights of culture, there were no alternative voices and while people might not buy their bullshit and definitely not enjoy their “art” they largely had no way to talk back. This meant the institutions, art buyers etc (I am of the impression that the art buying in the present post modern world is a giant money laundering scam on par with book advances for lefty politicians) were fooled into thinking that these people were culturally significant somehow.

They had made themselves into the church of art and those they disagreed with were excommunicated. (Which incidentally was the worst possible thing for art as such. Except insofar as it continued to exist around the edges, things the establishment hated, which sold nonetheless.)

My friend Francis Turner (Of L’Ombre de l’Olivier) says the most revealing thing in that little screed is the fact that he’s upset at “conventional and banal ideas about beauty.” Like, you know, beauty cannot common and widely appreciated because it IS. Or like something widely appreciated can’t be both beautiful and art. Or–

Look, as Francis put it:
“I think the bit that really gets me is


conventional and banal ideas about “beauty”


That shows he doesn’t get it at all. Why do millions of tourists visit Paris or Kyoto or rave about the Golden Gate bridge or the Statue of Liberty or Machu Picchu* or wherever. It’s because they are beautiful. Sure they may be other things too – historic, natural wonders etc. – but it’s beauty that gets you there first and there is global agreement that these things are beautiful. The only people that don’t find them beautiful are miserable avant-garde sorts like the writer. And while there are certainly cultural idiosyncrasies about beauty there are many things in common across cultures and denying that or deriding it as banal or conventional is just a sign that you are being deliberately elitist.”

Of course he’s being deliberately elitist. Even though he also quite obviously has nothing that could be considered elite about his intellect.

How do I know that? Because only the most bizarrely conformist and yes banal mind could come up with the “They’re just like Nazis.”

I could see just throwing a fit (as he tries to in comments) over the fact “the right” (Bad news bucko, as Francis points out, it’s not just the right) is “pre-modern.” But this never occurred to him, until he realized that the examples weren’t just “just like Hitler.”

No, the fact that he reached for the Nazis means that his mental box is arranged by “things that would make me cry” and being called a Nazi if right at the top of that. And also that somehow everything pre-modern is Nazi.

This is his grand attempt at cowing the masses and making them feel unworthy. Judging by the comments, the masses are mostly pointing and laughing.

I joined in to show willing, because you know me, and as mom says “the beggar might go without alms, but he won’t go without a response.”

I really think that is a problem. At its core, the leftist project has defined beauty as banal and therefore worthless.

They got lulled by their dominance not of the culture but of the cultural press into thinking that they could create taste and culture wholesale out of their nether regions and also that value and art could be found in what they declared to be so.

In a way, in fact, it’s a lot like the propaganda art of Nazis (And Soviets) things proclaimed from above and imposed on the crowd with neither consent nor interest on the crowd’s part.

They were so busy at this little game they didn’t realize, as I pointed out, that the traditions they were trying to eviscerate and the people they were trying to shock were long dead. Guys, I’m 62 (ALMOST 63). Their half-assed nonsense might have shocked my great grandmother. It certainly wouldn’t have shocked my grandmother who was, albeit from a less cosmopolite millieu, the same generation as Robert A. Heinlein, and who read a lot. (Meaning she’d run into ideas that would shock this precious flower, likely.) And I’m not sure they’d have shocked great grandmother. I suspect it’s just I know less about her generation and can imagine her as a very proper Victorian lady. (If I’m to believe Agatha Christie, they had minds like sinks.)

When the entire aim of your otherwise conventional and hidebound “art” is to shock, outrage or at least repulse those you imagine less enlightened, sooner or later you’re going to run into diminishing returns.

When on top of that you think there’s virtue in eschewing beauty what you get is the Obama presidential library which manages to make his (and his wife’s) official portrait look positively interesting, ground breaking (other than for wait? what?) and significant.

It’s like all the communist slums of every grey, totalitarian “paradise” had an orgy and laid an egg in Chicago.

And yes, that means you’re going to lose the public at large. Because the public now can find better stuff on their own. Or create it. And yeah, they can actually talk back to these half-baked art “experts.”

Who have nothing. Who are UTTERLY out of ammo. And bewildered their sneers no longer work.

Grid your loins, ladies and Gentlemen. It’s going to be a loooooong and strange ride.

But at least we can do as the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day did: Munch peanuts and pelt the performers with the shells.

Because we, like Shakespeare, understand beauty and truly significant art.

Art and beauty is that which remains, through the centuries, long after all the experts who told you it was cheap entertainment for the masses, have died and are moldering in the grave. Forgotten.

*I don’t know what is so beautiful about Macho Pikachu.

I mean, he has his points, but….

218 thoughts on “Out of Ammo”

  1. Macho Pikachu is significantly more beautiful than most recent critically approved art in much the same way that ruined Machu Picchu is prettier than the Obama library today, let alone when it falls into disrepair in a decade or two,

    Plus Macho Pikachu could simultaneously beat up all the artists involved in creating that deeck.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Hey now, the Obama Library would make a perfectly acceptable grain silo.

      Although one would think that they could have found a derelict industrial building to repurpose rather than building one from the ground up.

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      1. No, that building wouldn’t “make a perfectly acceptable grain silo”. There’s probably so much graft and corruption involved with its construction that the building would be lucky if it was constructed of paper mache, let alone anything more sturdy.

        Just look to the construction in the thankfully former USSR or in modern mainland China, and remember that commies are always gonna commie regardless of where they are.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. A post several months ago on Second City Cop talked about news reports that the concrete used in the Ob-Lib was already beginning to crack. Speculation on the blog post was it was the typical Chicago graft and grift with the contractors and the inspectors that let it slip through.

          Well, slip through for a while, until the news got a hold of it…

          Frankly, if the place is still standing in 20 years I’ll be surprised. Easy money says they’re going to start patching cracks in the structure within 5 years of “completion”, maybe sooner.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. Years ago on his visit to East Berlin (when the Wall was still up) noted that the commies love concrete, and they make lousy concrete.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. DadRed observed workers pouring concrete in below-freezing temperatures in Belarus, and then noted how fast the sidewalks, streets, and buildings crumbled.

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              1. Theoretically, you can mix concrete that will cure in sub-freezing. It’s expensive, it requires more know how than mixcrete for your patio, and commies are not known for quality control.

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                1. Here in Calgary, we have a number of office buildings that were built that way. Because the city centre is built on glacial drift, to put up a large building you pretty much have to excavate down to the bedrock and then fill it up again. It can take months to pour that much concrete, and we have had projects where the pour could not be started and finished during the frost-free season.

                  (My father worked across the street from one of those projects. All winter long, from his office window, you could see the concrete being continuously poured.)

                  Liked by 1 person

          2. There was a situation where the concrete contractor sued one the of structural engineering contractors for racial discrimination, for ‘unnecessary’ requirements, and for evaluating the concrete contractor poorly.

            I don’t have any knowledge, I just read an article somewhere. One or two weeks back I did a search on the timeline.

            One of the things that comes to mind is that inspection of concrete structures might be a bit more interesting than I had previously understood.

            Liked by 2 people

          3. This reminds me of MAD Magazine’s explanation of the rules of chess. They said that rooks move in straight lines as a tribute to mediaeval castle builders, who, when laying the foundations, used to skimp on the cement.

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      2. My heavens the Obama Library is ugly. The Boston City Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall) is often referenced as one of the ugliest of the late 60’s brutalist buildings. And yet compared to the Obama Library Boston City Hall is down right charming and elegant. The library looks like it is an OTH phase array radar like found on Cape Cod (look up Cape Cod Space Force Station on Wikipedia or PAVE PAWS I can’t put a second http reference in lest I transgress WordPress).

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  2. I suspect it’s just I know less about her generation and can imagine her as a very proper Victorian lady. (If I’m to believe Agatha Christie, they had minds like sinks.)

    Karl Marx was also a Victorian, remember.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. The Obama library is perfect for these Marxist grifters. As soon as I saw a photo, I burst into laughter. I can imagine a 60 Minutes crew walking through this abomination, telling us all how beautiful and important it is. Once, this worked in our culture. But no more. We can all point and laugh now.

    Liked by 3 people

      2. I saw Dubious Fast Food Emporium open at the Dead Kennedy Center in ’99, fresh off their ill-fated tour in Sandwich.

        —

        The Obama library reminds me a little of the Plymouth Arcology from Sim City 2000.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Oh, definitely. I had tickets to First Aid (scalped off of a guy named Triage), but completely missed Dosage. Fortunately we got in just as The Cure came out.

            Apparently there’s an album with their full set: Max Dosage: Extended Release.

            Side Effects, of course, are much better known for their follow-on , Class Action Lawsuit.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. *Stentorian meows* Stand by for ICBC launch. Launch sequence initiated. Launch in four … three … two … One! *paw mashes big red button, roar, earth shakes*

              ICBC launch successful!

              *End stentorian meows*

              Liked by 1 person

      1. It looks like the kind of place that has a firey dungeon below where crazed beings are cranking out Orcs with white handprints on their deformed snouts.

        Say, has anyone seen Hillary lately?

        Wonder what she’s up to these days?

        Liked by 3 people

      1. Looks like me trying to clean out my MIL’s shed.

        Needs a touch of red for all the cuts and scrapes.

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        2. Quite likely, it’s ’48– I picked it because it’s between the Standard Issue Coffee Mug Rings As Art and the somewhat nice sketches. (Which were mostly 1950s in this collection.)

          It looks almost right for a statue, but just not quite, and I think that may have been on purpose for effect.

          Title is Prometheus Bound II.

          https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/225304

          Looking at the artist’s portfolio…. the ones that have dates have stuff that would blend in for artsy-farts snob above are from older samples.

          It’s kind of nudity, so I’m not linking, but Refusal would totally blend in, and it’s from ’25.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. “Prometheus Constipated” was the original title of the work. Then “Prometheus Bound by Intestinal Issues”, but they shortened the name to “Prometheus Bound I. I.

            Liked by 2 people

    4. Why are there so many titled ‘Advertising photograph of wallpaper’? Somebody’s idea of Great Art was literally pictures of wallpaper? Next you’re going to tell me a recording of traffic on a highway is Great Music. :-P

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          1. Bull.

            Seeing what a time and place called art– and the divide between what the loud officials did, and what the real people who buy stuff did, is vital.

            Which is why it’s got both the coffee-mug-rings “art,” and the advertising photos.

            They want it to become meaningless.

            They can want in one hand, and spit in the other, find out which gets filled first!

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    5. WPDE. And the recovery didn’t work again either.

      Oh well. I’m of Germanic descent and except for some castles, cathedrals, and some bridges, I’m not impressed with German art either.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Gerard David? Albrecht Durer? Tillman von Reimenschneider (sculptor)? Granted, they are all Renaissance or late medieval.

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      2. I’m glad you didn’t include music in that list. J. S. Bach and others for the win. OTOH, once you get within shooting distance of the 20th century (modulo a few, like Richard Strauss), 12 tone hell starts klanging away.

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  9. Erick Erickson has a blog today pointing out social media is giving people the chance to twist themselves into devils by amplifying their hatred. (He was quoting a post where someone commented on the murder of a female Blackrock exec (also a mother) with a vile pun). Where the bubbles of purity form and exile everyone who does not completely agree. And yes, he pointed out it’s not an exclusively leftist thing. But they seem to be promoting violence more and more.

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    1. For what it is worth… I don’t think it’s making folks go more nuts.

      I think it’s making it so that folks not sorted into the in-group get to hear it.

      In person, there’s usually a filtering effect– someone responds rationally, and swoosh the gaslamps come on. “Oh, I didn’t say anything like that, what silly misunderstanding!”

      You Notice too much, and it becomes a standing thing– “oh, So and so, they always take things so weird, really you must be careful around them.”

      (this can be freakin’ hilarious when they suck at noticing So and so is standing right there but doesn’t have to constantly flap her lips)

      I’d guess that’s actually where the unfriend-your-family-for-badthink movement comes from, at least for most of the push. Too many relatives who look at what someone’s friends are saying and goes “wait a minute.” Or someone keeps reposting stuff, and again, folks go “hold up right now-”

      Especially if they can do it slowly, instead of the speed of the conversation bulling the flow over, so you can’t object because the subject has passed. In text, it hasn’t passed. It’s still right there.

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    2. Social media also gives fools, bigots, cranks and the insane the peerless opportunity to make their foolishness, bigotry, crankery and insanity obvious to a wider audience than just those who are exposed to them personally.

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    3. Hillary Clinton is also a mother. Wouldn’t a good percentage of the right rejoice in her passing?

      In my faith, one doesn’t celebrate in the death of a person, one prays for their soul. But on the flip side of that, we are called to oppose evil. There is a whole set of moral questions as to the situation and the degree that is called for.

      Killing an executive of company that is actively doing questional bad things is dividing line between left and right, evil and right. But is the absence of any earthly justice, especially in increasing chaotic times, expecting business as usual is a bad bet.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I think that cash made sense, because we are not talking people who have a long lead time of prep for contingencies that they are surprised buy.

        The US military sometimes responds to a surprise or a ‘surprise’ with “hey, let us use these rockets we had saved up for a rainy day”. but, that is because of autistic (metaphorically), a cult (I’m not sure if I am being literal or figurative), and because they both predict and prepare for a wide range of possibilities involving violence. (Maybe they underprepare for non-violent situations, but a) out of scope b) when they are functioning well they prepare for disaster prep nicely. ) The US military anticipates a wide range of possibilities, they only look rote and ‘unthinking’ to the left becuase the military is never fully persuaded of the left’s happy path as the sole possibility.

        Left looks more at its happy paths.

        For a space far enough from their fractal prediction that buds off of their modeling theory being correct, they get surprised in ways they cannot prepare well for.

        This may be, in this specific hyptohetical, buying arms at a late date.

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      2. The implications of cash on the hidden cache issue is actually what came to mind reading that part.

        I think they drank their own ink when they saw the scale of the Summer of Love Riots and the rest of subsequent riot-y things, and thought they finally had the headcount with enough revolutionary fervor, and enough gullible stand-in-the-front-line idiots, to go for the ring… and then the “election” of 2020 happened, Autopen came in, and they had to stand down.

        I think they were all revved up for DJT winning and thought they’d break open those taxpayer-funded cash caches, and put those bastards to the wall.

        But when they came to 2024, and they didn’t take him out, and then, even against Kammy, he WON AGAIN OMG, and they were initially in shock. Then the sweet government USAID grant cash spigot got cut off, drying up seas of fungible free money, and all of a sudden their masses of protesters were twelve boomers in tie dye.

        No money, no footsoldiers, and no revolution.

        Are there caches? Probably. I bet there are CONEX containers with cosmolined stuff across the country, buried or hiding in stacks of innocent CONEX containers. But the absence of revolutionary masses, because the cash is gone, has just broken that side of the house.

        I would expect the standard descent into banditry will happen again, just like it did when the 1960s didn’t produce the Revolution, so Symbionese Liberation Army Two and Weathermen The Sequel might be on offer soon.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. But without the money to pay for rent a mobs, who will be the cannon fodder/bullet catchers for the revolution?

          you can be quite sure that the Obamas, Clinton’s, Soroses, et al, will be sipping chardonnay while the Useful Idiots risk their lives for world socialism.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. And a few True Believers who will do it for The Cause™. Doesn’t have to be many to get attention – like the two (thus far) who killed the insurance CEO and the Blackstone lady. The internet comments lauding their demise as a blow against evil are disturbing, and appear in places that surprise me (a few of which suggest plants, since they repeat the same talking points in similar order.)

              Liked by 2 people

                1. I hope so. Everything is moving towards de-escalation*…except the radical fringe working themselves up to violence. So far it’s been limited in scope, but it’s one of the few things that could still get messy within current trends. I’m hoping it settles down as more Leftists/Leftists find a niche in the new status quo.

                  * (Everything = CEOs making nice with Trump, academia bending the knee, protests fizzling, advertising returning to normal, media spinning its wheels, increasingly futile gestures from politicians. That removes a lot of the risk of violence because (1) Trump and MAGA are no longer outside the system, (2) there’s no institutional cover for attacks on them like there was for the last 8 years, and (3) everyone who might band together to support civil unrest, a la the Summer of Love, is now looking out for his own interests.)

                  Liked by 1 person

                  2. Working themselves up, the same way they have for… well, part of it is that I was a teen in Washington state, and was around a lot of Seattle folks. After the Navy, I actually lost a friend because he got spun into one of the nutty groups that thought Obama was a far right extremist. (He was a right wing moderate because HE thought that Obama was center-right. Which put my husband and I– actually American Republican-Right, completely off the charts.)

                    But the waves of messages follow the same kind of pattern, just like Rush noticed all those decades ago.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    2. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but they’re using literal OG(oblin) “Right of Stalin” type framework.

                      We probably would’ve agreed with the guys pushing this about Obama being way too politically close to Hitler, we’d just disagree about what direction he should be headed!

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. I have no problem believing Obama, Bernie, etc., are right of Nazi Hitler. Because NAZI’s are Socialists Totalitarian. Not anywhere near centralism, or right Freedom as defined by the US. My 2¢ or 5¢ (since pennies are no more).

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                    4. Some places, the quite-literally-century-old-style Communists never went away…. and they’re still upset they can’t be considered main stream.

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                    5. I suppose I’m unsettled due to a combination of (1) the positive reaction to the UHC CEO killer in certain political circles, (2) open threats of violence on Reddit and BlueSky, and (3) the possibility that, given the educational climate of the last few years, some people missed the “this is why we don’t kill our enemies” lesson, the same way they missed the “this is why we don’t censor our enemies” lesson.

                      No clue how this compares to other decades or how much of this is just Internet bluster/amplification.

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                    6. It’s basically one of those situations where we have some information about our individual threat environment. Some of it easy to interpret, some less sou.

                      At the same time, we have very limited information about the aggregate, adn especially about comparisons in time and in space.

                      There is supposed to have been a lot of bombings in the 1960s.

                      How frequent were bank adn train robberies in the 1870s?

                      We’ve never been entirely free from murderous lunatics. And, the sample data we have is incredibly contaminated with information warfare.

                      Our recent baseline is probably cracked a bit (after covid), compared to normal. There are other reasons to think that surprises will follow surprises.

                      But, lots and lots of people keep on referencing the third reich and that peace breakdown in Europe, while ignoring two preceding elements. One, the famine following the great war. Two, the Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic. Three, the Holodomor. Theses are stresses that we simply cannot easily replicate in the current day.

                      Yes, very definitely some other stresses.

                      I still take the missing murders as diagnostic, and suppose a strong and broad will to peace.

                      Liked by 1 person

          2. There’s plenty of leftist billionaires, domestic and foreign, still funding the madness.

            Only now, they have to use more of their own money and more plebs are aware of their shenanigans.

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            1. Yes, but they are less and less likely to spend their own money as time goes on and so much of that money is wasted, besides, the more they spend on failure, the less they have next time.

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              1. Money does not work unless it’s fungible and finite. The 🐫la 2024 campaign was absolutely desperate since they could see the true polling, so they just kept throwing in all the money, and their fundraising vacuumed all of the money available out of all the left side fundraising channels. They kept hammering the big donors and PACs and dark money people for more, more, more. And by all accounts they spent more than they took in.

                But in the end it was nowhere near enough given their candidate, and especially against DJT after the assassination attempt. IIRC correctly there were grumblings from the left side donor class about the campaign’s spending decisions even before the election, and afterward that just exploded.

                That’s why as fun as “🐫la 2028! Word Salads On Joe Rogan And We’ll Win!!” is to promote, there is no way the donor class will pony up that cash.

                Liked by 1 person

              2. Another factor is that there is no Plan. Before, they could sink a certain amount of money in certain ventures and expect certain results. Right now, nothing is working and everything’s up in the air. Protests? Failed. Media? Ineffectual. NGOs? Disoriented. Academia? Capitulating. The best they can do is try to swing some elections as usual, but that’s not going to accomplish much until the midterms, and even those are looking dicey for the Dems.

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        3. Also, “Kammy” burned through a lot of the donor cash (often on frivolous stuff) that could have been used to oppose Trump, if her campaign hadn’t wasted it.

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          1. Better her campaign wasted it than properly invested it – we might have gotten a different election result in 2024.

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          3. This makes more sense than what I wrote about them being in shock after losing to DJT – the reason they could not instantly hire their standard huge riot mobs from Election Day+1 to Inauguration Day was because the Kammy Kampaign spent absolutely all of the cash available on the Left on “influencers” and vodka.

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            1. There’s also the effects of China and Russia both being short of cash, Saudi cash taking a hit from that prince flexing his muscle over the last decade or so, Musk taking out TwiX, a bunch of states closing off fund-raising “loopholes” via informing folks how to deal with credit card fraud, a whole bunch of states having cost-cutting measures that dried up funding sources…..

              Oh, and a lot of folks working from home, so everything is documented, and the Boomers are retiring, so a lot of in-place support (which ruthlessly removed threats) is gone.

              Long term investment stuff is paying off.

              Liked by 2 people

            2. The Harris 2024 campaign lasted just three months, but blew through $1 BILLION in that short period of time. I also see the number 1.5 billion mentioned, but I suspect that includes another half billion that she either spent before she declared, or possibly expenditures by the Biden campaign (of which she was a part) before he dropped out.

              In short, a lot of donor money went into her campaign over a very short period of time. Shortly after the election, I started to see articles about how the Dem donors were suddenly very tight with their wallets. They’d just dumped a lot of money on her campaign, which meant that they didn’t have their usual donation reserves Additionally, the money that they spent wasn’t managed very well (there were a number of stories about this), which also makes the donor class (who in theory have some basic money management skills, which is how they earned and retained their fortunes) a bit skittish about who they want to financially back. It’s one thing to give money to someone who will spend it carefully (even if they ultimately lose). It’s another to give money to someone who spends it like a kid in a candy store.

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    2. “Look, now Commies really are sh~tting bricks.”

      Though my first reaction was more, “Where the Emperor Palpatine loves to stay, whenever he’s in town.”

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    2. Hmm, haven’t been able to bring up the headerless comment box. So much for <strike> and <blockquote>.

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      1. Strike and blockquote, and other, HTML has been broken for awhile. Can blockquote when the top header shows up on new paragraph with / keystroke, can select “quote”. Smiles, and other special characters I use the MS window key and period. But if not using windows then IDK what can be used. No way to use strike out at all, which is irritating for some humor sarcasm, sigh.

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  13. So one of the authors I read and enjoyed as a child was Daniel Pinkwater.

    Like Jean Craighead George, may have had a goal of influening me in a left or activist direction. With George, because I am so gullible, it worked for a time before I turned hard against environmentalism, outdoor sentiment, and animal sentiment.

    Anyhows, I did not really see how he was trying to code his protagonists, and I got influenced by some of the talk about Dada, etc.

    I was a bit influenced by some of those esoteric ideas in my later approaches to humor and to trolling. (Also had other influences, and I forget what my real takeaways from Dada were.)

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  14. “Everything is Nazis now, Comrade. That pretty girl in the Jeans ad? A NAZI, you villain!!! People who drink water? YOU KNOW WHO ELSE DRANK WATER? NAZIS!!! NAZIS!!! NAZIS!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”

    Make the Institutionalization of Gibbering Maniacs (Hi, Mr. Brin) Great Again.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Screeching “NAZI! NAZI! NAZI!” never got them that far to begin with but now it’s just sad. They’re failing, they know they’re failing, yet they cling to the very things that cause their failure because they have nothing else.

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    3. Except that those who are actively and right this minute killing and torturing Jews in the Gaza tunnels can’t be called Nazis. Has your head exploded yet?

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      1. Even though,as a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, Hamas’ their organizational lineage goes right back to Heinrich Himmler, via the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

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  15. My first and likely truest reaction to socialism was aesthetic. Everything they make is ugly, drab, poorly proportioned, and badly made. Every Damn Thing.

    My intellectual rejection came much later but the aesthetic one still dominates.

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        1. And the ones made here in the States, free market, work so much better.

          Until the AK was made here, the best ones were East German. LOL. -Thats- gotta hurt.

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      3. The Kalashnikov as produced by Russian Communists is a piece of crap. Chicoms are even worse. Utter garbage. Ptui. Melt it down for horse shoes.

        The Kalashikov as produced by Valmet, the M-76, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The Galil, also lovely.

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    3. As a side note, one sentiment I’ve seen a lot of is “The Catholic Church should sell off its art [and pretty buildings] to feed the poor.” Thereby ignoring two things: 1. Once it’s sold, it’s gone—and that includes all the tours that people get to take of it. Private hands are going to charge to show these things off, or hide them away entirely. 2. You need to feed the soul as well as the body.

      Of course, the type of people who espouse such sentiments don’t believe in souls. Or beauty. As shown by their rejection of popular taste.

      Liked by 2 people

          1. I have recently begun attacking those arguments with “as long as (current commie) has ONE CENT more than they need for basic food and shelter, they are STEALING from the poor and hungry. (current commie) needs to get off the internet and go get a second job and donate all proceeds for the needy.”

            I don’t know if it convinces anyone, but they don’t argue with me, either.

            Liked by 1 person

          1. Why do the poor get to lie there and have socialists drop food into their mouths? I want to have free food dropped into my mouth! Where do I sign up for that?

            Like

      3. And then there is someone else who has the art and should sell it to feed the poor. There is no way to turn the art into food.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Rips off banana taped to art museum wall off and hands it to the nearest homeless guy.

          Now we have no art and the homeless guy is still hungry.

          Liked by 3 people

  17. “If it’s popular, it must suck, by definition” has been a core belief on the left and in the arts (but I repeat myself) for at least forty years, and probably a hundred. And it’s a convenient crutch for the mindless, because it presents a simple algorithm that lets them appear smart without having to think.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. More than a hundred years, speaking as someone with a casual love of art history. In particular, look up post-modernism and Dada as art movements rejecting earlier artistic styles.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. And in music, Schoenberg (sorry, I don’t do umlauts) perpetrated 12 tone atonal “music” starting around 1901. (The guy who taught music theory at U of Redacted loved him some atonal music and played some for each class. He finally broke out Terry Riley’s “A Rainbow in Curved Air”, and my sheer relief at hearing something pretty-much tonal was overwhelming. I’d rather not mention the B-side of that album. I just ate lunch.)

        Liked by 1 person

      2. The avant garde of dadaism and modernism didn’t become the garde instantly, and the “it’s popular means it sucks” idea was certainly around for a long time (the complaints about “vulgar” art were about popularity with the masses). But it wasn’t a blindly accepted truism by everybody creative at that time. It has been, most of my life.

        Like

  18. If you illustrate a deep truth – a Truth – you will upset somebody. In every crowd, there’s someone who hasn’t come to terms with that slice of reality, whatever that slice may be.

    The problem is that people without talent or skill didn’t see the Truth being illustrated, but they did see the upset. They have decided that the purpose of the Artist – that they desperately want to be – is to upset people. So they do, and are perpetually outraged that they are still being outed as hacks and talentless apparatchicks.

    While the real Artists are creating, illustrating things that are Good, True, and/or Beautiful; something to aspire to. Which further outrages those that think outrage click-bait is the primary aim, rather than an unavoidable byproduct. And it’s the real Artists that show something that people want but may not yet have, and so end up being involuntary leaders, rather than the politicians that ran over and put themselves at the head of the crowd trying to be a leader (coughBidenCough).

    So it’s a terrifying thing for the System NPCs, becuse there’s something over there that’s Not Approved, is atttracting attention anyway, and is creating a leader that hasn’t been vetted and who is promoting Wrongthink and Wrongfun and who doesn’t even have to spend money to get attention for their revolutionary ideas that are going to upset the rice bowl of everyone that has put in their time to become an Annointed Artist (rather than those that have something to say with skill and talent.)

    So someone should tell this I/O person that we see that they are hacks, and we don’t really care what they say becuase they’ve already proven that they don’t understand actual Art. Maybe they should take a class in basic syllogisms and foundational logic before they come back into the public square and embarass themselves again.

    Poor little NPC, speaking up like that and proving that they’ve missed the boat on comprehension and competence in front of everybody … it’s just made us so embarrassed on his behalf.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I worked at a newsradio station for a bit, and there were often promotional books lying around. I read one of them—it was an award-winner, BTW—that felt like a lit-fic writer discovering science fiction for the first time and spouting New! and Unique! concepts that any SF reader would know were tired cliches 50 years ago. And then there was the book of poetry.

      So here’s the thing about poetry that I discovered while skimming through this book: Appreciation of a poem relies in large part on layered allusions, wordplay, and generally good metaphors. This *cough* poet had a phrase something like “like the picture of a donkey above an Athenian cafe,” and I realized that the writer of those words was never going to make it big, because as a metaphor, there is zero connection with the reader. Those words follow the form of comparison without being grounded in a shared experience.

      I’m sure that they felt like they were being deep and meaningful, but you can get three times as many points of connection in two lines from the musical Hamilton. (Oh, wait, three times zero is still zero, so maybe call it a dozen connections instead of none.) I’m sure there are chatbot poems out there with as much depth.

      And yet these folk were published and awarded. Hope they enjoyed the plaudits, because I don’t think the Benjamin Award followed…

      Like

            1. https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-vanishing-white-male-writer/

              This is further to the link above, I went and had a look at some of the “source” material for that blog post of mine. It is worth a look because of the utterly idiotic stance of the author on what constitutes “literary”.

              “But despite these pressures, there are white male millennial novelists. Diversity preferences may explain their absence from prize lists, but they can’t account for why they’ve so completely failed to capture the zeitgeist.

              The reasons for that go deeper. All those attacks on the “litbro,” the mockery of male literary ambition—exemplified by the sudden cultural banishment of David Foster Wallace—have had a powerfully chilling effect. Unwilling to portray themselves as victims (cringe, politically wrong), or as aggressors (toxic masculinity), unable to assume the authentic voices of others (appropriation), younger white men are no longer capable of describing the world around them. Instead they write genre, they write suffocatingly tight auto-fiction, they write fantastic and utterly terrible period pieces—anything to avoid grappling directly with the complicated nature of their own experience in contemporary America.“

              Emphasis mine. “Genre” being the [ptui!] trash that masquerades as writing. (Meaning what -I- do. Yeah, sure thing bro. Try it some time.)

              So the whole rest of the piece, I’m rolling my eyes at how hard this Jacob Savage schmuck just simply doesn’t get it. Oh noes, all the white guys are wasting their lives writing “genre?”

              I would hazard a guess that all the white guys are out there doing something else with their time to make a buck, because they’ve had the door slammed on their fingers for 25 years.

              The ones that are “writing” and getting published are self-evidently smearing poo on Western Society and going for the cheap shock outrage.

              I also think the best thing to happen this year on the culture front was that American Eagle jeans commercial. The hot blonde with the well-cut blue jeans has done more to be-clown the Left than a million memes. Oh noes, an attractive woman selling clothes! REEEEEEE!!!!!!!

              Like

    2. “If you illustrate a deep truth – a Truth – you will upset somebody.”

      Maybe so, but that does not explain the “art” these days which is designed to upset everybody. ‘If you’re not offended you’re not breathing’ type thing.

      Then there is the fore-mentioned banana taped to the wall. Find me a deep truth there.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “Find me a deep truth there.”

        Fresh fruit is ephemeral, and at the end it draws flies.

        The color yellow is pretty, and pleasingly contrasts with many other colors.

        Duct tape has many uses, and some ab-uses.

        There’s got to be a pony under all this.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “There’s got to be a pony under all this.” sounds about right.

          I was thinking more that the deep truth is it’s a money laundering scheme of huge depth and reach, a grift that’s been going on since just after WWI. Who buys an NFT of a banana taped to a wall? A money launderer.

          Like

    3. Ah, but since if you reveal a Truth, you upset someone, the way they upset people proves they are revealing Truths.

      Like

  19. My man H.L. Mencken commented, ‘way back in the 1920s, that the only “avant-garde” art or literature worth anybody’s time was produced by people who had shown that they had mastered traditional forms. The rest of it was produced by frauds and fools.

    A lot of “modern art” reminds me of the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Which makes sense. You need to have an understanding of something before you can start screwing around with it in ways that are productive.

      Like

  20. The Hard Left today is squeamish. Unlike the 60s folks, they are hesitant to pick up the rifle or bomb and start creating abominations in blood. Be it distaste for the mess, or distaste for a trip to prison, they are not quite the wannabee revolutionaries we saw in the 60s and early 70s. Even their black-clad nincompoop troops are softies compared to the folks who threw rocks (and more) at the Ohio National Guard. They mostly acting where its still permissive, without realizing how that has been hurting their own side.

    So far.

    They seem to be stuck on needing the Right to kick off the festivities. I suspect there is a legacy of a plan in there, somewhere, that didn’t count on Trump being in the driver seat and able to act. The critical time will be the last six months of Trump 47, and the first 6 months of whatever comes next. That “after” the next presidential election is going to be a great big temptation to roll the “oh no it wasn’t” dice, unless they legitimately (or at least plausibly) win big.

    A Trump handoff to Vance or DeSantis (or Vance + DeSantis), with a Republican House and Senate secured, will FREEEEEK the Left the eff right out. If -that- happens, I expect every leftroid dingbat and puppet to go command-kinetic.

    Popcorn?

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Where a forecast model breaks is one of the interesting and relevant topics.

      This, case, what we are talking about might be after a preference cascade that basically causes everyone who pretended to be left, to abandon the left. This is one of the things that could happen, but the information warfare environment is so noisy that we would be most accurately deducing that it had happened, in hindsight afterwards.

      If it is after a cascade, and if the current energy levels on the left depend on them having resonant chambers to amplify the nutjobbery, then the cascade would also break some more of the chambers.

      My fellow dude bros, 2020 was one single year with a lot of fast shifts, whose fall out we are still seeing develop.

      Basic arithmetic has failed me for the moment, so I am not sure if 2028 is like three years away.

      Anyways, there seems to have been some randomly noisy terrorism from more or less madmen, and those numbers are sparse enough, and difficultly objectively sourced enough, that we could be in a downward trend and not know it.

      They aren’t ready to go, and do not seem to have the energy levels to lunatics to go. There is a remote possibility that they jsut peter out.

      One of the apples to oranges bits between now and the 1960s where bombings are concerned are all the deliberate and accidental ways that technical know how has been made inaccessible.

      I dunno.

      We shall see.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Part of the problem for the left is all the young dudes, who are generally the cohort who can, will, and are able to successfully kick off all the best festivities, are joining the other side.

        A horde of Squeaky Fromms doesn’t really have much of a chance against the dude bro contingent.

        Sneering down your nose at dude bros invites mocking and laughter.

        An attack against the same invites a bully beat down.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. One of the things various guys of that age cohort have said is they went to the 1960s antiwar demonstrations to pick up girls.

          I do not think this opportunity exists with current leftist college age females, and in fact any such efforts would probably get one reported to the university DEI zampolit.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Most of the proggy movements in that era had various declarations around the fact that a woman’s place in their movement was on her back.

            Some of their declared-resources got notions about not being temple whores.

            Liked by 2 people

      2. One of the apples to oranges bits between now and the 1960s where bombings are concerned are all the deliberate and accidental ways that technical know how has been made inaccessible.

        Not just technical know-how, but tech. The current generation has begun to realize the panopticon they live under. Without their fellow travelers in various bureaucracies, there’s a lot less freedom to operate…. Let’s hope they stay gone.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The person who placed the pipe bomb in DC at the Dem HQ had a magic hoodie which protected them for all detection, so it can be done.

          Like

          1. It’s easy to evade Justice when the Fibbies make zero effort to look for you. :-(

            Just like all the rioters smashing in doors and windows on Jan 6 2021. SWAT raids at dawn on Grandma who stood outside the Capitol building for half an hour, but no effort to find the paid leftist instigators.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/02/05/doge-spotted-at-fbi-after-revelation-5000-out-of-its-13000-agents-were-focused-on-january-6th-1520743

              5000 agents for Grandma. Over ONE THIRD of the FBI. I never want to hear the “It’s only a few rotten apples” horseshit again.

              But they have their jobs and pensions, right?

              Note that once again, Donald Trump has pointed the way forward. Kash Patel really lost his job and pension for speaking out. Now he’s running the place.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Thank you for once again joining the Democrats in pretending the guys physically attacking folks before Trump even started his speech were totally MAGA. Don’t know what they’d do without you.

                Of course, if you actually read even your own article… it doesn’t say 5,000 agents.

                It says the employees, from the survey sent out, had “participated in grand jury investigations, execution of arrests and trial testimony.”

                And it even kindly notes that’s 13% were ever assigned something connected to Jan 6th.

                So, you are the guy who went over warrants and nixed them?

                On the list.

                You’re the guy who went after the violent proggy activists from the entire week/month/year before, with any of them being in the multiple groups known to be shipped in?

                On the list.

                You’re one of the multiple guys who tipped of Trump’s team about the attempted concealed evidence?

                On the list.

                Like

                  1. Says the guy Horribly Outraged that people answered a survey that would result in actually identifying who was wasting resources.

                    And, again, got caught lying when you look at what he actually linked.

                    Maybe you should read something besides the headline.

                    Like

                    1. Yawn.

                      From the article:

                      Without revealing names, ID numbers, and job titles were returned with the details of over 5,000 employees from the agency comprised of 13,000 agents and a total workforce of 38,000.

                      Where’s the lie. They don’t send the janitors to kick down doors.

                      • This isn’t happening, you’re just a conspiracy theorist (black-pilled, etc.).
                      • “That will never happen, and when it does, boy will you [homophobes, transphobes, racists, sexists, whatever] deserve it.” aka The Law of Merited Impossibility.
                      • “That’s not happening and it’s good that it is.” aka The Celebration Parallax. <—– Foxfier is here.

                      Like

                    2. Out of Ammo

                      5000 agents for Grandma. Over ONE THIRD of the FBI.

                      So, you were aware that it was 5,000 of 38,000.
                      And just decided to lie about it being agents.

                      Where’s the lie. They don’t send the janitors to kick down doors.

                      You want us to believe that you think there are more than two janitors for every FBI agent, AND to ignore that the numbers included being called into court to testify.

                      Like

                  2. True. But Foxier reasoning by providing the list. Which, personally, I appreciate. (Yes, I know. As my husband would have said: “If I wanted the list I’d have asked for it.” Me: “Doesn’t work that way. Must underscore reasoning.” It is, um, a process, 46+ years and counting.)

                    Like

    2. That was only the hardcore even in the 60s and 70s.

      Rittenhouse was to the Left, now, what Kent State was to the Left, then. The softcore supporters realized they were not protected by their Moral Perfection and melted away.

      Like

  24. Out of ammo?

    Impossible.

    Poo Flinging Howler Monkeys are -never- out of ammo. Alas, -someone- always feeds the dang things.

    (grin)

    Like

  29. Out of Ammo? Time for Weapons of Mass Distraction, including Riot Inflamers.

    《They are preparing photocomplaint rays, gargantugripe bombs, and the ever-deadly superplasmicauteroreverberatingmegamoleculozapperdingledangledonglehyperintensifiednewandimprovedtimewarping complaint field generators. (The last device is the most feared, and hardest to pronounce, on the entire known Net. Its power is so great that grown men have been known to pull out their own livers rather than be subjected to its awesome force.)》

    Like

            1. Foogas is a Vietnam War vintage defensive method. Basicly, explody thing under highly inflammable thing, command detonated or set as bobby trap.

              Cross the concept of “directional mine” with “flamethrower” and you get the idea.

              Like

              1. IIRC, it’s literally borrowed from the French, and usually spelled fougasse. Pronounced like you spelled it.

                Like

  30. Out of ammo? Wait! There must be more suffering! Sing my new song!!

    I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I won’t care if you’re out of tune; but it might help someone. It’s not dedicated to anyone… yet…

    The Belter’s Lament
    (Roughly set to the tune of “Shenandoah“, 4/4 time)

    Verse 1: Elias, The Lucky Miner
    Out in the Belt where the cold stars burn,
    Elias carved his way through the stone.
    He struck a rich vein where the comets turn,
    And filled up his hold with more wealth than he’d known.
    He flew back to Earth with his fortune in tow,
    Married sweet Mara, their love all aglow.
    With children and laughter, a home soft and warm,
    He left the black void for a life safe from harm.

    Refrain:
    Oh, the Belt calls with a siren’s wail,
    Through the silence where dreams rise and fall.
    Some find their peace, some lose their trail,
    In the Belter’s lament, hear the stars call.

    Verse 2: Torin, The Fallen Dreamer
    Torin left a job on a gray Europa plain,
    A desk and a pension, a life safe and sure.
    He chased the Belt’s promise of fortune and fame,
    But the rocks gave him nothing, his hopes turned to burrs.
    His house was foreclosed, his wife turned away,
    His lungs choked with dust from the grind day by day.
    Now broken and weary, he drifts through the void,
    A man with no home, by his dreams all destroyed.

    Refrain

    Verse 3: Cassian, The Greedy Seeker
    Cassian hit the motherlode, platinum and gold,
    His name rang in stations, his wealth overflowed.
    But the hunger for more burned his heart fierce and cold,
    He’d drill one more rock, one more tale to be told.
    No riches could sate him, no sum was enough,
    He shunned friend and kin for the next shining bluff.
    Now alone in the dark with his glittering hoard,
    He was king of the Belt, but his soul was ignored.

    Refrain

    Music:

    Like

  31. I read a Playboy article (yes, really) that described comedienne(?) and actress Sandra Bernhard as, “a woman of unconventional beauty.”. I thought that was an awfully polite way of saying she has a face made for radio.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE BEING MEAN. BESIDES, HE HAD IT COMING:  Out of Ammo. Yes, I do realize it

  33. The left is made up of peer pressure people and bullies. Peer pressure people honestly think that one should be doing or liking what the majority like and have little to no ability to develop their own taste or preference. The number of times my useful idiot friends have objected to something I’ve said based on that’s not what the majority think is more than once.

    Bullies, I was bullied as a child, and I’ve looked into the psychology of bullies as an adult. They seem to be insecure people who have to prove their power to themselves by forcing people to do things they don’t want to do, if they even suspect you did something they asked because you wanted to, or didn’t have an opinion to not do it, they will up the ante until they believe you were forced against your will by their ‘power’ to do something you didn’t want to. Forcing someone to say an ugly thing is beautiful or sophisticated or above your comprehension is often this type of bullying.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Amusing to show up back in the old home town, wearing US Army Class A uniform and crossed rifles.

      Several folks thought they knew me, then realized they did not. (grin)

      Like

  34. One thing you wouldn’t realize, Sarah, is that the body acceptance movement has made it to the strip clubs and titty bars. Yes, the left has even destroyed adult entertainment.

    Used to be, all the girls were at least cute in some way. And usually of a healthy size. That is, not obese. Believe it or not, that is no longer the case, at least in some venues. We’re talking a large majority of them being BIG girls. At the same time, prices have gone up. A lot.

    If we were buying by the pound, it would be a good deal.

    Like

      1. That’s Personal, on-board prepping for when the Commissars come.

        One site suggests most folks can last about 3 weeks before starvation gets you. Depending on a lot of factors, each pound of fat might give you about two more days.

        Like

        1. Used to be a plump farming/ranch woman was desired. Meant fed well and could withstand hard lean times and keep family fed. Genetics does play a part. Skinny is not in my family genes. Even the healthiest of us, decent weight, is considered obese, with a few exceptions and they are tiny, tiny, short and still “overweight”.

          Yes, I am overweight. Yes, I need to lose weight. Critical I lose weight given recent medical issues. No (known) heart attack (yet). My heart is not as healthy as it should be. I am working on it. I have always been working on it. Down 15+#’s from heaviest.

          Liked by 1 person

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