Two via WRSA that start off sounding gloomy and pessimistic, but end in optimism. First off, a powerful reminder that I haven’t been checking in at Didactic Mind anything like often enough.

There’s also words, which after seeing that I’m rather short of myself.

We often find ourselves marvelling at the sheer stupidity of Western leaders – it is almost as if God designed some sort of highly sophisticated sorting machine for Western leaders that is precisely calibrated to return the most blindly unqualified moronic blithering idiot imaginable, 99% of the time. The other 1% is when we get EXTRAORDINARILY lucky and end up with a Coolidge, a Thatcher, a Reagan, or a Trump.

Sadly, the West these days is not fortunate, not at all. And this week, in particular, has shown us just how stupid and degenerate Western leaders have become.

Yesterday, the completely unqualified and frankly IMBECILIC Foreign Minister of Krautland, one Annalena Baerbock, whose background and education is in something useless in the humanities, straight-up said what the rest of us have long suspected – that she doesn’t care what her own voters think, and will continue to push for Ukraine’s interests over those of the German people. Never mind that this is the Foreign Minister of the most powerful country in Europe, in both economic and political terms – she is far too dense to think in such ways – what matters to this particularly stupid cow are the sacred borders of Banderastan, not the collapsing economy and hopes of her own people.

Then, last night, Americans watched aghast as their shambolic, (barely) reanimated corpse-walker of a President uttered a series of Angry Old Man noises on his way to calling 75 million people a threat to domestic security, and arguing that Republicans who vote for Trump are a menace to democracy. We know full well, of course, that he isn’t the one writing his own speeches – he is a meat-puppet, drugged to the gills with the REALLY STRONG SHIT and wheeled onto stage whenever the true controlling powers behind him want a few soundbites for the camera. But his views reflect those of a substantial minority of Americans-in-name-only who believe that they, not the great unwashed masses of Flyover Country, should be in charge.

Today, we received news that the G7 countries want to impose a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, and that the Europeans want to impose a price cap on Russian pipeline gas. The Russians responded by shutting down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely, due to what they call “technical issues” with the remaining turbines.

The Russians clearly understand that they hold the winning hand here. They are led by calm, rational, educated, skilled, experienced, capable people. The Europeans and Americans are led by people who are their exact opposites.

This will only end one way – with the economic collapse of Europe and the likely freezing and starvation of millions, followed shortly afterwards by civil unrest and violence on a scale that Europeans thought they left behind in the calamitous 14th Century.

Things are going to get really bad, really fast, unless the Europeans wake up and realise that the extremely high standard of living that they have achieved for the past 50 years, was only possible through cheap energy and the lack of any need to spend money on real military capabilities. Those days are definitively OVER, and days of extreme hardship and discomfort are coming.

Yet even in the midst of this madness, there is hope.

And know what? There is, there really, truly is. Follows, the optimistic stuff, then lots more smoking-hot ass, legs, face, and party-size fun bags. Next up, NC Scout puts us some dearly-bought knowledge, gained in the harshest of schools.

There’s few pleasures in life like having a conversation with an old friend. An intellectual equal, an open mind, and a counterpoise juxtaposed to any position I might hold. At least in some respects. Not a mental clone, and a radically different life philosophy than the one I live, replete with a well aged Che Guevara-turned-Guy Fawkes face inked on his upper arm. A free thinker and a beer drinker, an American original, and very much a product of a harsh upbringing. In another life he could have been leading any guerrilla force with a natural charisma and matching high intelligence; an insurgency’s wet dream and a security force nightmare. A person who recognizes the false charms of the Left, dangling Liberation in place of Liberty and begging you not to realize words have meaning. He’s an example of life on the eastern side of Appalachians.

It was a discussion on what freedom in America really even means anymore and what it will take to remain that way. Because it is a realization that we are indeed not free, that the world in which we reside has visibly chosen a path for us not to live but to die upon having no further utility to the machine. They don’t want you armed, they don’t want you thinking, and most importantly they do not want you on what they claim is theirs, as inheritors of the Earth. It begets a wonderful flow of questions, uncomfortable answers, and certainly interesting observations. When authority fails, that authority resorts to force.

A Guerrilla Movement must be reflective of the underlying culture which it seeks to preserve. I reflected upon my respect for the Afghan. In twenty years’ time, and perhaps forty, counting our exploitation of the Soviet misgivings, the West could never understand the Afghan puzzle. How can a people exist as a throwback to another time, absent the comfort we all come to know? Comfort to the Afghan serves two purposes; one, an outward showing of wealth, the other, a precursor to death. To the Afghan comfort leads to complacency, and at least in my experience, they sought simplicity. For all their failings as judged upon Western scales, they endure. Every aesthetic tells a generations-old story of what brought them to the present, and that story will carry their sons and grandsons forward generations more.

The people of a place, and thus the culture therein, creates the ecology of the Guerrilla. There are those pockets of cultural resistance in America, having borne the brunt of relentless attacks on its history and cultural significance. I frequently encounter these in my travels, training them to fight. One such is the Appalachian mountain region. Years ago in a conversation Dan Morgan made the observation, as an outsider, that the southern region of Appalachia was as clannish and buttoned up as any he’d ever encountered, paralleling his experience in Afghanistan, taking the better part of a decade to begin to build that fragile trust among the local populace. I chuckled, being intimately familiar with the anatomy of local politics. Those of the unelected kind. Those that are outwardly hostile to any unfamiliar face. These are protective measures to ensure the survival of culture. If you know, you know, or so its said, and if you’re fortunate enough to have been raised in such a culture you instantly understand.

It’s that same way in the Blue Ridge too; years back, my brother lived there, driving a big truck delivering prefab log-home kits to be constructed for inbound yuppie-Yankee types. On a regular basis, the reclusive ridge-runners native to the area, after waiting patiently for the new house to be about halfway finished, would descend from the hills and piney woods to set the new construction ablaze, burning the whole thing to ashes and costing somebody one hell of a lot of money, time, and wasted effort. The idea was to discourage the yups from moving in and ruining their home with the traffic jams, rising cost of living, and overcrowding they reliably bring with them everywhere they go.

Scout waxes optimistic about the ability of those mountain folk to not merely survive but to thrive, against all odds and in the face of great adversity brought on by a now openly hostile central government. Personally, I found this bit quite heartening as well.

To those brave left wingers cheering on airstrikes on civilians…

Many of us are trained in airfield seizure. (We train others, too…imagine that)

Best of luck. You’re going to need it. https://t.co/N8WdgPx4PC

— Brushbeater Actual (@Brushbeater) August 31, 2022

Somebody maybe ought to remind Pedo Joe at this point of his ignominious beating of feet from Afghanistan—his almighty F15s and thoroughly modern military driven off in humiliating defeat after twenty years of bootless tail-chasing, by a rabble of cave-dwelling, mule-jockeying primitives armed with little more than AKs and sheer will. Then again, I very much doubt he remembers what he had for breakfast this morning.

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