For The Times They Are Achanging

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We live in very weird times. People have forgotten what the real “march of communism” was like and therefore don’t realize how far we’ve come.

Yesterday one of my ducttape children was arguing with someone about his own age that communism was indeed collapsed/in a state of disintegration on twitter, while she believed that the future is a boot stepping on a human face forever and that the boot would have snazzy hammer and sickle ties.

I was too tired — curse jetlag — to jump in on that. I’m probably still too jetlagged, but since I come from an ancient time and bring you news of dinosaurs (no, really. I confirmed with brother while visiting that in the village we grew up in I’d be — likely — six feet underground, and he’d surely be. I don’t know why almost-63 doesn’t feel that old. Well, except that dad has lived more than 30 years as long and mom lived 30 years plus as long, and they are/were both still self-caring, autonomous and living independently.) I will say something about this.

People under 40 — and older people with bad memories — think that the night of communism is getting ready to fall. That it is invincible and impossible to avoid. That we’re all already doomed.

They are not only wrong. They’re hell to the wrong. Communism is already the defeated enemy. It might still do a lot of damage as it collapses, but it obviously can’t do the damage its followers believe it should do. Look, if communism were that surging force, we’d now be living under the Kamala regime, and it would stretch on forever. Well. Someone else would be living under the Kamala (high heel) boot. You and I and those like us would have been put in camps in 2020. IF NOT 2013.

The truth is that communists (no, are you going to argue this?) captured the highest reaches of US power — the presidency and most legislative offices) clearly and unequivocally in 2008. Obviously and via a color revolution in 2020. And yet we’re still here, still talking, still fighting. If that’s not proof of Red Impotence, I don’t know what is.

Let’s therefore talk about communism, what it was what it did and how it spread, and more importantly how it stayed “on.”

First of all communism is and has always been fiction. Fragile fiction that needs to be protected and have its vulnerabilities hidden.

Without removing literary merit from 1984, it is important to remember it works because the author does what Jerry Pournelle called “the fan dance” really fast and really well, so we never catch the world-building bareassed. But brethren and sistern, it is not only bare assed, it’s got a big booty and it cannot lie. A regime such as 1984 could only subsist if it had absolute and complete control over everything its people saw, did and lived.

Yes, Orwell does a good job of showing that, and I can even believe it was like that in the cities, down to large towns, and that the state had total control over a certain number of people. But it presupposes the whole world is a large city: I bet you in the country side, they might vaguely wave at big brother, but he’s not in fact part of their lives. And it presupposes that tech will never change (It changed and in a big way, long before 1984.) More importantly it presupposes that everyone is a sort of introverted, agreeable Englishman. Even Irish culture, by itself, would break the regime badly. Now introduce your average rural American…. (I have in fact a long-delayed in fulfilling promise to a friend/fan that I will write what happens to a 1984 type regime when a Heinlein character is loosed on it.)

Communism is a hot house plant because it originates from intellectual abstraction; because it doesn’t work mathematically; because, contrary to image, its biggest fans are always intellectuals of a certain type; because it can’t survive without leeching off functional systems, and because it can’t survive the free dissemination of information.

I trust I don’t need to explain why it’s an intellectual abstraction. Marx was not well informed or knowledgeable but he was an “intellectual” in the sense that he spoke a language that is spoken by academics. (Don’t argue the not well informed or knowledgeable: the man couldn’t understand the role of distribution in an economy. I won’t argue he was dumb, as facile verbal/written persuasion is a type of intelligence.)

It doesn’t work mathematically: It can’t. You can’t redistribute yourself into wealth. Yes, this dips into psychology and the fact that humans don’t work as much/as well as slaves, but that’s just one way to look at it. Communism, by its very own top-down structure makes it impossible for people to know how much they can produce, how much they have produced, what demand there is for what’s produced. Ultimately it makes it impossible to know the true price of ANYTHING. (Like the US health system, currently.) This makes it an immiserating and slowly collapsing system. Or if you prefer it in blunt terms, if you administer the Sahara on communist principles, you’ll find you run out of sand.

Its biggest fans were intellectuals, particularly intellectuals in the humanities. Why? Because it’s a just-so story, one that works beautifully if you stay inside your own head. As such, it’s well suited to college professors and such, who have no real world expertise and feel hard done by society, since they are so “smart” they should rule everything.

Yes, I saw the posters with all the marching workers. That’s part of communist disinformation and propaganda. It always was. It was maintained by claiming anyone who objected to communism was “rich” and an “exploiter.” The Kulaks were small, edge of starvation farmers, proclaimed Kulaks because they didn’t want to be expropriated. The fact is that communist regimes use a lot of propaganda about being “for the people” but always devolve into an elite living off the people.

It can’t survive without leeching off more functional economies, because no one — including the information functionaries — know what is produced, what is needed or what could be produced. It’s deaf and blind and it always leads to starvation.

The USSR survived as long as it did because we subsidized it directly (“to avoid war”. See wheat exports, etc.) and indirectly, by letting it swallow vast stretches of the world, including most of Africa. And even then its elites lived at lower-middle-class level for free countries.

Now, the USSR and the various other communist hell holes could survive that long because they were either small (population wise, and absent the lies) or because its people were used to a miserable level of life. Yes, I’m talking about Russia and China.

To swallow something like the US and last communism would need another entity at least as large and rich as the US to leach off of. When you find one, let me know.

The truth is that the long march was a dismal failure. Yes, they captured all important institutions. The reason McCarthy failed is that everything was already captured and the fully-controlled means of information turned on him and destroyed him.

However, the institutions it captured weren’t static, and the means of information weren’t going to be the same forever. This is btw, a big problem with communist thought. It is mired circa the early 20th century and it can’t process anything more recent.

So they took over the institutions and made them…. unusable, really, which damaged their prestige. They took over the media and made it unreliable, which facilitated the rise of the internet and free lance journalists. They took over book publishing and made it unsaleable, which resulted in indie publishing.

In fact the communist destruction of everything it touches brought about the development and purpose of technologies that makes it possible to bypass everything the long march took over, which in turn allows us to take back our government.

Look, if I can’t convince you any other way, believe me when I say: if they had the ability to do it, after the stolen election of 2020 we’d all have gone down for the count. They tried. G-d knows they tried. But their goons are fourth generation nepo babies, whose parents and grandparents were given power and enriched not because they were competent, but because they had the “right” (left) beliefs. This creates a degradation of intellect because they’ve never been required to use it. Regardless of natural ability, these people are too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole.

BUT beyond that, leftist intellectual constructs don’t work in the real world. Its need to control the flow of information and its inability to process anything that doesn’t accord with its theory mean that anything it touches stops functioning.

They could — it was their only competence — lie like pros and have a complete, hermetically sealed lie that by its very ubiquity succeeded in creating the illusion of working.

(When you see those “defectors” talking about how the Soviet plan is still working, that’s actually what’s going on, whether the speaker knows it or not. They’re retconning the past like a cat falling off furniture and giving the “I meant to do that” look. The Soviet Union couldn’t make a single five year plan work, but we’re supposed to believe their almost-100 years plan is working perfectly. Let alone that a lot of it was stuff that never touched the people. It was elite projection and propaganda 24/7.)

As I tell people, if Obama had been president in the 50s the left would by now have convinced everyone he was a great genius and that his time was one of great prosperity. Because it would be in every “news” program, every erudite dissection, every TV sitcom set in the time.

But life is better now, at least for free people. You have a reporting device in your pocket, that can communicate with the world. And I can write for tens of thousands of people on my very own sofa, petting my very own cat. (Yes, Indy is a pain. He keeps pulling my left hand off the keyboard, making typing a very difficult endeavor.)

The USSR was brought down by … fax machines.

Communism is an illusion that can’t be maintained in the face of the ubiquitous ability of any citizen to become a citizen-journalist.

Now, does it mean it can’t do damage? It can and it will. It has after all captured most of our institutions and made them unusable. That was always going to hurt, no matter whether it collapsed or not. Its collapse just allows us to — actually — build better. And different. And clean out the infection.

Is it gone? Oh, dear heaven no. This type of infection will take as long to clear as it afflicted us. Cultural change moves very slowly. Arguably at the rate of filling graves. And we’re living much longer than previous generations, so it’s even slower. But even in Europe, claiming to be a communist is no longer a positional good.

In fact, the only place “communist” is still a badge of honor is in Academia. And “Democratic socialist” only flies because in Europe for a century Democratic Socialist was the right. That whole edifice collapses once they process that “democratic socialism” is slow suicide, versus the communist shot to the head. How will they process it? Well, first we stop propping up their socialist regimes. Trump is making a good start. Yes, it’s going to hurt and make them hate us. However, news flash, they have always hated us. They just used to keep quiet about it. (TRUST me, traveling in Europe as a young woman who spoke multiple languages, I heard the whispers. The fact that I was technically one of them helped in hearing things, too.)

Someone, and I can’t remember who, said that most of the casualties occur during the mop up after the war.

So I’m not telling you everything is roses. Honestly, I’ve been surprised it’s been as bloodless as it’s been so far. (Knocks on head.)

But in the end we win, they lose, because there is no other outcome possible. They were never going to win. They could just project that they were and maintain the illusion for a while because they had captured the mass industrial communication complex.

Which is now largely irrelevant.

Be not stupid, but be not afraid. We’re winning.

And as always, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

116 thoughts on “For The Times They Are Achanging”

  1. That particular heresy will always be among us, under different names and with different faces.

    They had in Jerusalem in the book of Acts (and were collecting money for the saints in Jerusalem for the rest of the epistles).

    They had it in the Plymouth colonies, and almost starved before they restructured things.

    It was popular before the Civil War. The Fruitlands, which was started by Louisa May Alcott’s father was a spectacular failure (worse than most of the other utopian societies). They founded it with great hopes in May, and in December were lucky to escape with their lives (and I mean that literally).

    I expect that once this current brand has gone under, it will gain a new face and try again. Maybe in another hundred years. Probably start small this time, rather than immediately try to take over countries.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. I expect future colonies will try to be based off communism under collectivism, communes, whatever label they slap on it. There will be tragic results. There will also be some who escape and succeed. But they’ll have to escape.

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          1. Plymouth was later enough that there was somewhere for word to spread re the shenanigans, so they got the intervention and subsequent government sent by the crown, and so survived the initial epidemic of TehStoopids.

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              1. Rush Limbaugh told that story around Thanksgiving every year that I heard him on the radio. AM talk just ain’t the same after he passed.

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      2. Marxism works at what it was intended to.
        Which is completely separate from what it claims to do.

        Marx didn’t bring his gospel of materialism and class warfare to the lower classes. He brought it to the upper classes who were worried about losing their status. Exactly the people who wind up on top under communism, oppressing everyone else.
        We have every reason to believe this was intentional.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. It has always been my position that if the early saints of the church couldn’t get Communism to work (C.F. Acts particularly Aninias and Sapphira, as well as letters of Paul particularly 2 Thessalonians CH 3) ain’t nobody going to make it work this side of Heaven.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. My grandmother was the last living survivor of a “communal” pioneer village called the United Order, from the age of 7 to before her early 20’s. She would tell me how wonderful the love was, it was very religious, but came apart when they not longer had to sacrifice to survive in the desert. It was purely volunteer and only survived for a length as it enabled European immigrants who came with almost nothing to help quickly establish a settlement in the desert. In very important ways it was the opposite of communism and still only survived a few years. Look up Orderville on your google and maps.

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        1. Saw a recent comment on the early Church that it, too, was a voluntary program. Annie’s and Sapphira got in trouble because they lied to the apostles -they tried to have their money and get praise for sharing it. If they had said, “Here’s half the money from the field,” they would have been ok.

          But even there, they really did run out of, “other people’s money.” Hence Paul’s church fundraising letters.

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          1. Lying to the Apostles was a bad idea. Lying to the Author Himself was fatal. And yes, they needn’t have offered anything, it was all voluntary. Jesus had long ago warned about having trumpets go before you in your tithing, like some of the Pharisees are alleged to have done. This is more like the practice of Korban (sp?) where wealth would be loaned to the Temple so that it could not be called on to care for parents thus violating “Honor Your Mother and Father” of the 10 commandments. Jesus was VERY hard on this practice.

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        2. Orderville! How did I not know that was the story behind it? I once lived not very far away and have been to/through it many times. Got pulled over for speeding there once. (I mean, Orderville…I should’ve seen that coming.) :)

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  2. One problem with their “Long March” (and yes I think they’re failing) is that there’s “No End Point”.

    There’s nothing in their “mind-set” that tells them “OK, we’ve won so let’s stop here”.

    They are “Revolutionaries” who are part of the “Establishment” but still see “more to destroy”.

    That’s maybe why they started this “Trans Nonsense”.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. It’s a variant on the International Communist playbook they’ve been working with since the start.

      Elite: “Arise you workers you have nothing to lose but your chains”

      Workers “Bugger off you insane sods we’re busy rising into the middle and upper classes”

      Elites take 2 “Arise you oppressed people of excess melanin, Fight your oppressors!”

      Melanistic folk ” Eh what? you think we’re the same as group X and want us to associate with them? Take a long walk off a short pier”

      Elites take 3 “Arise you sexually repressed Gays and Lesbians, Come out of the closet and fight!”

      Gays and Lesbians: ” Sorry we did that 20 years ago and now we’re working with the workers to gain class mobility, perhaps next Tuesday?”

      Elites Take 4 “Arise you sexually confused we will support your predilections and provide you with plastic surgery and hormone therapy”

      Each time the Elites attempt to gather a group to rise up, so they can have a set of shock troops to deploy against “the man”. Each time the group progresses far enough that they realize their goal is not that of the Elites, and go on to pursue their own goal.

      Their cunning plan (like Baldrick) is to start a class war/a race war/a sexual preference war. This has been their end goal for the last century or so. If the the class in question believes it is sufficiently aggrieved (See Workers/Army in Imperial Russia c 1917) they’ll boog but shortly thereafter all hell breaks loose as the clueless elite lose control and some shrewd SOB shows up (Lenin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, etc. ad nauseum) and takes over turning it effectively into a monarchy/dictatorship until the society collapses from the utter inefficiencies of the communist model (mean 75 years from the start with maybe a 10 year Standard Deviation).

      The groups keep getting smaller and smaller. Soon the Elites will be trying to get double jointed, left handed, red heads with boot fetishes to revolt.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. One notes North Korea simply turned into an absolute monarchy complete with a dynasty.

        One wonders if it’s hitting the classic problem: lack of competent dynasts.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Sadly, my take away from that was pondering the existence of ” double jointed, left handed, red heads with boot fetishes”

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        1. Here the elites (Bluegoisie as I saw as a term) have made a horrid mistake. They see Islam’s beliefs and requirements and think, “No one would actually believe that, their leaders like us are just trolling their followers along as cannon fodder”. Except the Mullahs etc really believe what they preach (at least in large part). In this case the useful idiots are the Bluegoisie that think they can control this demon they have summoned. I suspect that soon they will find otherwise in places such as NYC and Dearbornistan, hopefully the country will suffer only minimally from the messes the Democrat Politicians are making in those areas.

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  3. One cherished memento I inherited from my father was an author autographed edition of Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie. That got me started on following his many works, as well as the scripts he wrote for Hollywood adaptations. At any rate, when you mentioned you’d like to work out what a Heinlein character would undo in 1984, I could only think how much mor fun to have Philip do it instead.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide are both very good, probably among the prototypical “end of the world,” SF novels.

      But I’m thinking Wylie also wrote a novel about the entire population of the U.S. being wiped out by, “sodium nuclear bombs,” aside from a dozen or so people in an eccentric millionaire’s underground stronghold. Thinking the name was, “Triumph.” I picked it up because of When Worlds Collide but put it back after glancing through it.

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      1. He wrote volumes of stuff, two nuclear war ones if I remember correctly. Some were appreciated more than others. His diatribes in politics and social discourse make Greg Gutfeld look like a wuss.

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        1. My grammar school library had both When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide. I read them both when I was in fourth grade. They may have been my intro to SF.

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  4. The dream of Communism requires desolation, starvation, tyranny, and defeated people to rise up against everyone, except the members of government that run the show. The ignorance required for it to rear its ugly head involves public schools, naive young minds, and a media that is afraid of those in charge. It’s a pestilence on humanity, and like the worst of viruses, destroys without remorse.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Pingback: Hoyt: Ain’t What The Young Folks Think – Western Rifle Shooters Association

  7. Naomi Wolf, among others, is suggesting your globalist Marxist/progressive “elites,” have allied with “radical Islamists,” – more precisely, they believe they have hired the Islamists as mercenary barbarians to wipe out opposition.

    And of course, said “elites,” are firmly convinced that can control/dispose of their mercenaries whenever they need to. Uh huh. Like that ever worked before…

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      1. That movie is seriously underrated as far as subverting Hollywood’s tropes. I bet even with the recent pullback in wokeyness it could still not be made today.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. You’d think the Islamic Republic of Iran would be enough of a warning on the dangers of allying with radical Islamists against an established regime … but lefties don’t know or care anything about history, even when it’s in living memory.

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      2. “It can’t happen to us!” is, sadly, part of human nature.

        I think Pythagoras said, “Understand, if something can happen to any man, it han happen to you.” So that blind spot has been around a long time.

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      3. Diring the Shah era, Iran had a rather active Communist movement.

        The Mullahs essentially wiped it out.

        The Communists here who seek to make use of Islam as a hammer to smash “The West” had best realize Islam is far better at deception and corruption than any Communist that ever lived.

        Far and away.

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    4. That is what I fear will play out in the place where Great Britain used to be. Stephen Green has a story at PJM on the UK left telling RoP “protesters” “dude we’re on the same side” to which their reply was “no, we are not.”

      There’s really not many un-oversanguinated future paths there that I can see.

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      2. That’s what happens when you don’t read the other side’s/your anticipated ally’s writings, or take seriously his beliefs. You will be surprised when he does what he always says he will do.

        Patton should not be the only one who reads the enemy’s book.

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        1. Personally, I read it right after 9/11 and have been sounding the alarm ever since.

          Fortunately, Islamists share one weakness with Leftists: they assume that their potential victims have no memory of what they said with the masks off.

          Liked by 3 people

        2. Yeah. Like when Muslims claim, “Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Koran!”. What they omit is that he was trying to figure out what made the opposition tick in the run-up to the war against the Barbary Corsairs. ” . . . to the shores of Tripoli . . .”

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    5. In Nazi Germany, the first thing the fascists did when they took control was get rid of their fellow revolutionaries–the communists. The commies in the USSR did the same to the mensheviks. Likewise during the Spanish Civil War, the communists on the Republican side were busy undermining and trying to wipe out those who actually favored a republic. That was more important to them than winning.

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    6. Ah does elite happen to be classic arabic for “useful idiot” ? In tradition once one pays the Dane Geld one can never get rid if the Dane. Similarly once one pays the Jizyah one (and their descendants) are forever dhimmi. But the elites believe communism will work so they can believe ten impossible things before breakfast.

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  8. “But brethren and sistern, it is not only bare assed, it’s got a big booty and it cannot lie.”

    LOL! Even in an essay about communism, you’re good for a laugh with your unique style. The USSR was an interesting case because the Russians were losing WWI badly, and Germany would only accept their surrender if Russia gave up all of Poland and the Ukraine as well as the Baltic states. Even the provisional government that overthrew the Tsar couldn’t stand for that. So the communists took over and agreed to the Germans’ insane terms. It was only because the allies won the war that the USSR was able to reclaim most of what had been the Russian Empire. There’s a reason why the USSR celebrated “The October Revolution” because most people don’t know there was a “February Revolution” first that failed to exit the war with some kind of dignity.

    I have a hard time refuting your thesis, seeing as how China was a lost cause until GHW Bush and Bill Clinton bailed it out. Some of us saw how insane that was, but our voices were tiny against the useful idiot CEOs who were enticed by an illusionary billion person new market. The one counter-example that comes to mind is Venezuela which was indeed prosperous by all conventional measures, but I don’t really know enough about that country’s history to understand what happened.

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    2. The answer for Venezuela was Oil. They have large proven reserves. But that only goes so far when you have economic illiterates in charge. Now into the second generation of Thugocracy the only people getting fed regularly are the military and street gangs, and their ability to keep the lights on is second only to Cuba’s in the region.

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      1. It’s worth noting that nearby Bolivia, which was all in for Chavez socialism, has thrown the socialists out in the election that just concluded.

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  9. I agree with you to a point. But let’s not forget that our nation’s largest city is about to elect, in a probable runaway, an out-and-proud democratic socialist who has already stated he plans to defund the police, institute some very communistic-y policies in city government…and oh yeah, globalize the Intifada, because 24.2 years after 9/11/01, he’s a Muslim radical democratic communist.

    We may be winning, but it’s not over. It’s never over. As Ronaldus Magnus reminded us, one generation away.

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      1. Chuckle Chuckle

        I was rereading a John Ringo (unpublished) novel where NYC gets flooded out and thought It couldn’t happen to a better city (unless it happened to Chicago). [Very Big Twisted Grin]

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        1. And John had the mandatory “the wrong people predicted the catastrophe so we’re staying and having a party to show them!” with predictable results.

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          1. Nope, the one I’m talking about is a later book in that series. It’s “The Kraken”. IE The first book about The Storm.

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          1. The first two books in the series have been published by Baen and there’s more to come.

            Oh, the series is John Ringo’s take on superheroes.

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            1. Just burnishing my dingbat credentials here…I looked up the title on Kindle. Went “hmm, should I?”

              Noticed it was published by Baen, decided not to give Amazon a cut. Discovered I had already bought it in the monthly release group. 🤷‍♀️🙄

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            2. There is also the TransDimensional Hunter series. 4th and final book to be published in February. Then there’s Summer’s End and Sometimes In The Fall by John Van Stry. He said there will be a 3rd book Real Soon Now.

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      2. I recently saw a number someplace (can’t remember where) that about 39% of the population of the 5 Boroughs of NYC were not born in the United States. Many first generation immigrants are indeed hard working, but in the bubble of NYC they can’t really learn about the real America, and a lot of them came from various degrees of socialist countries.

        Some of us in the exurbs (outer ring of counties past the inner suburbs) joke about mining the bridges and tunnels as in Escape From NY, but it’s been too late for a couple decades now to really keep the city people out. The most recent wave that came out here during Covid ended up doubling the housing prices, which they can afford because they kept their NYC jobs at NYC salaries.

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        1. Indeed Vermont had a HUGE influx of New Yorkers deciding to make their vacation homes permanent when COVID hit. Vermont was pretty left due to a large influx of Hippy types in the ’70s and 80s (note Bernie Saunders). Although having both a sales (6%) and graduated income tax (8%+ top rate) it is cheap compared to NYC.

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      3. c) Como is running a spoiler 3rd party campaign. I would bet that a lot of voters would plug their nose and vote the Republican candidate if Como wasn’t in the race. People are still pissed at him for what he did in Covid. As it looks from way outside, a lot of the dissatisfaction of the governmental response is getting pulled over to the true “outsider”. The Trump effect but attached to a person that hates America instead of loving it.

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    2. Something over on Insty pointed to an X assessment that rings true to me – Zohran the Magnificent is an avatar for NYC young downwardly mobile professionals and their anxieties. Communism is what all their profs taught was immaculate, and it’s only been a couple years since they graduated but they are not yet seeing the rewards of their faith in the Religion of Envy, so it must need more cowbell.

      The thing is, if they just moved almost any instance of elsewhere, they’d likely be upwardly mobile, but they’ve bought into the Big Apple mythos and are stuck in their broom closet walk-up apartments.

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    3. And if Zohran the Great is elected, the importance to any communist regime of their border police to keep people in will become apparent as those with money leave.

      There’s a reason no commie country has ever had easy and free outmigration.

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    4. point: The NYC DonkPartei -Machine- is about to elect that Madman.

      With some small but significant help from The Stupid Party.

      Ordinary voting folks in NYC have very little say anymore. And to the degree that they do, well the voting fingers are wabbling back to the fire.

      As I was told long ago, some folks best use in life is as bad examples for the enlightenment of wiser others.

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  10. I’ve noticed that communism enshrines every one of the capital sins, namely, pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Particularly, for TPTB.

    They are their own worst enemies.

    But because they wholeheartedly support evil in all its flavors they overlook rank stupidity like “Trans Rabbis for Mamdani” since “tolerance ” requires they disregard the pet evils their fellow hand-basket riders are enthusiastic about.

    Evil will oft evil mar, to coin a phrase.

    They can’t help but destroy themselves. Destruction is all they know.

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  11. I read 1984 for the first time in ninth grade English class, circa 1967. I remember expressing my skepticism that people would allow such a society to be established. I didn’t think it would work, but I also didn’t think most people (the proletariat) were as passive as Orwell believed. One of my classmates thought I just didn’t understand the book well enough.

    I was a recent transplant to the suburbs from a much smaller city in a rural part of the State. I couldn’t imagine the adults I had known putting up with the sorts of restrictions the citizens of Airstrip One were saddled with. I mostly knew the sort of honest hard working folks sometimes described as “salt of the earth”. The man who ran the Sunday School program at church had fought at Bastogne with the 101st. Another family friend, who had a couple of daughters about my age, described himself as having been a lance corporal doing the job of a lieutenant on Iwo Jima.

    In the intervening years I’ve learned a bit more about what leads people to try totalitarian systems, but I’ve also learned a bit about the economics of why those systems do not work without the external subsidies Sarah refers to. Unfortunately there seems to always be someone ready to try one more time to see if “this time” they can get it right.

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    1. “I’m sooo much smarter than everybody that has ever tried (and failed, and failed, and FAILED!) to implement Real Socialism before!”

      My expectation that this batch of ‘intellectual’ wankers will learn from Yet Another ‘socialist’ debacle what they failed to learn from the ones we’ve all seen over the last hundred years is…low.
      ———————————
      There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

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    2. Looking at the soft anarcho-tyrany of Britain right now, one wonders if the rolling disaster there is an example of what would have happened had Orwell and Huxley co-authored a novel.

      Liked by 3 people

          1. I know reality and government don’t have to be believable. We are watching that in real time, darn it.

            I hope reality reasserts itself. Soonest.

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  12. One of the things that struck me when reading MiG Pilot (Viktor Belenko) was that highly trained military personnel needed to get regularly pulled out of duty to help with the harvest.

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    1. In “Red Storm Rising”, one of the hints that the Soviets are about to invade is that they start shooting unit commanders for falsifying records. The commanders have tasks that their men need to complete every month, but the men are also ordered to assist with the Fall harvest. The Politburo leadership notes that there simply isn’t enough time in the day to do both, so the records claiming that the regular tasks were done must have been falsified.

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  13. ON THE OTHER HAND!

    I’d love to be a short-term recipient of the largess of idiots…

    It would need to be short tern so I didn’t start to feel guilty.

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  14. “The reason McCarthy failed is that everything was already captured and the fully-controlled means of information turned on him and destroyed him.”

    That and all the elites and smarty pants types were already commie scum. I believe, but cannot prove, that there were both more than were reported, and less than one might fear. The former because duh. The latter because there were many that were foolish and naïve. They went along with it for various reasons, among them youth and innocence corrupted, expecting others to do the thinking while they did their own thing, and following a fad (another symptom of, but not limited to, youth).

    It’s easy to see the rotting edifice and think of it as a single piece. What would have changed had there been more than a handful of brave men willing to face the truth then? What would have changed had Forrestal, McCarthy, Goldwater et. al. had a crack crew of indefatigable hard boiled boys willing to carry the charge forward? Ones wise to the ways of the commie scum, and well prepared for the inevitable?

    A plot hook, free to the alt-historian types. It would not do to paint the enemy as merely stupid or dupes. They had will, talent, and skill nonetheless. But they used it for evil ends. It would be churlish to deny the men of the past their heroism, for the risk was real. What good we see today is built on the sacrifices made by those that did what was needed. Even when it cost them their lives.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Yeah. I do not want to write it either. My writing ability is too flawed to do it justice. And there’s other stories what need scribbling first. Speaking of….

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    2. To be fair, McCarthy was not unflawed. A more genial crusader with a personality more along the lines of the current Senator Kennedy from Louisiana would have been a better casting choice, and in the end McCarty’s facility at making personal enemies and lust for the limelight both contributed to the successful efforts to discredit him. But that does nothing to say he was wrong.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. Communism elevated the deadly sin of Envy to a central virtue just as economies became sophisticated and productiveenough to hide the most obvious lies. Jordan Peterson has a half-hour video in which he disects the most obvious unsupported lies: https://youtu.be/V22yIwLbBsg?si=RXzmy1FhAhLjhn2a .

    And, of course, our own grand hostess also dismantles some of them in v3 of No Man’s Land .

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Thank you, njc, for the link. I like a lot of what Jordan Peterson has to share. This one is QUITE worthwhile, and I am hoping my wife will enjoy it. She has been hammering me over not knowing more about Charlie Kirk sooner, so I was shocked to discover she didn’t even know who Jordan Peterson is. I hope to rectify that lack.

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  16. Mrs. Hoyt is someone right. To the extent Communism exists as a force in society it is as a luxury good for apex useless aristos.

    My fear is of the managerial State. Rule by the Expert Class

    They’re not done with us yet, and they’re even more of a moral vacuum than the pinkos.

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  17. The aphorism you were searching for is that more people are killed during the pursuit than during the battle. Most of the killing happens after one side breaks and runs.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Pingback: Quote Of The Day – Splendid Isolation

  19. “But in the end we win, they lose, because there is no other outcome possible.”

    This is a theme in my upcoming book. If Heaven is where one goes after shuffling off this mortal coil, and Hell is full of losers too ashamed of themselves to show their faces in Heaven, then can the demons ever get a win? No. There’s no way. It’s impossible.

    I didn’t plan for this to be a theme. It just kind of grew out of the setup and became obvious.

    So, whenever things are looking a little grim, I take comfort from this. As Bob says, “Try not to be an a-hole, and it’ll probably be okay.”

    And as Alice says “I love how you slid ‘probably’ in there, old man.”

    Liked by 2 people

  20. ”In fact, the only place “communist” is still a badge of honor is in Academia.”

    Well, and in Hollywood – all the best thinkers there know they are supposed to be on the side of the Great Arrow. The only badge that gets anyone, talent or trades, consistently not hired is if they come out on the side of freedom.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Does anyone have a link to Jerry Pournelle writing about “fan dance” worldbuilding or storytelling? I hadn’t heard that one before.

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  23. Marxism is a religion, very Jim Jones-ish. Not sure how you deprogram the believers.

    It’s a testament to the bullheadedness of the human mind that despite failing everywhere it has been the shiny new thing of the hoi polloi for 150 years.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Not really anymore, if ever with the hoi polloi. Their “shininess” was crafted by mass media and academia, and is fading fast as both lose their luster in the US.
      The way to deprogram is…. free speech and idiots getting made fun of.

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    2. It’s a testament to the bullheadedness of the human mind that despite failing everywhere it has been the shiny new thing of the hoi polloi for 150 years.

      It’s been the Shiny Thing for those who fancy themselves the management for the hoi polloi.

      Most of the 1900s was burnt up with trying desperately to find the Working Man who’d actually follow his lovely designated “and then rise up and create paradise” part of the Plan.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. It’s more a testament to ‘intellectual’ self-deception. Marxism lays out such neatly predictable step-by-step procedures for controlling the Great Unwashed Masses. Just do A, B, C and D and get X, Y and Z results.

      When the Unwashed fail to follow The Plan, it’s all their fault. Has to be. The Plan is Perfect!
      ———————————
      When reality fails to conform to your theories, it’s not the universe that’s wrong.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. It’s a testament to the human desire to stay a child, whose Needs are served by others’ Ability. It’s the promise that Economic Perpetual Motion really works, that everybody can live at ease off of everyone else’s taxes.

      It’s an easy sell. Anyone who really wants to believe it, can. All you have to do is not look at, and not think about, all that that ugly old Reality.

      Conservatives suffer from this too, but it’s the “woke” worldview that most depends on not thinking certain thoughts.

      As the MSM-generated Potemkin Consensus begins to crumble and Reality forces into their minds emotionally forbidden thoughts, more and more Lefties teeter on the edge of Cognitive Dissonance. They move closer and closer to their own individual breaking points, and (for instance) murdering articulate conservatives feels, to their crumbling psyches, like self-defense.

      Things are looking up, but it’ll be the Lord’s miracle if the Left doesn’t ruin as much of the Good Stuff as possible in its death throes.

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