Hard times in the land of plenty

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

“Let you”

Posted on June 4, 2023June 5, 2023 by Mike 7 Comments

“Let,” hell. Forget? Hell, NO. Not here, not for one second.

No Forgiveness For Pandemic Sins Until The Guilty Repent
The people who abused their power and imposed tyranny during the pandemic will do it again if we don’t hold them accountable.

Christianity Today published a curious piece by Paul Miller on Thursday calling for everyone to forgive each other for our supposed “pandemic sins.”

He doesn’t exactly say who sinned, just that “We got things wrong,” and “Some officials made mistakes in the early days.” Things happened. Mistakes were made. It’s time to move on. Miller’s argument is basically a warmed-over, lightly Christianized version of the essay Brown University economics professor Emily Oster wrote for The Atlantic last November, which argued for a “pandemic amnesty” on account of how “uncertain” and “complicated” things were in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic like Covid. The ruling class did its best, OK?

Oster’s piece elicited well-deserved scorn from many on the right, including our own Joy Pullmann, who noted that a genuine amnesty “requires an admission of guilt and a commitment to repairing the wrongs done.” The absence of such an admission and commitment to change, says Pullmann, is “an indication that you’re going to do it again,” and makes it impossible to rebuild trust.

Of course, the people responsible for shutting down the economy, closing schools and churches, destroying countless businesses, and condemning the elderly to die alone in their hospital rooms are not at all sorry about what they did. To this day, they don’t acknowledge any wrongdoing whatsoever. Certainly not Anthony Fauci, who in an April interview with The New York Times defiantly faulted ordinary Americans for failing to listen to him, the self-proclaimed embodiment of science.

The same people who needlessly imposed massive learning losses on schoolchildren, or barred families from burying their dead, then foisted an ineffective vaccine on the public and tried to shame or coerce everyone into taking it, regardless of their age or health status. Plenty of Americans, including those in the military and medical professions, were faced with the terrible choice of taking a shot they didn’t trust or losing their careers and livelihoods.

None of the people who did this are sorry about it. In fact, they’re proud of it — and they will absolutely do it again the next chance they get. Here’s the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mandy Cohen, jokingly relating how she and her fellow health officials came up with draconian mandates during Covid:

Which is where the “let you” line rears its ugly head, in a Tweet which I won’t bother embedding. To wit:

New CDC Director Mandy Cohen recalls how she and her colleagues came up with COVID mandates during her time as NC Health Director.

“She was like, are you gonna let them have professional football? And I was like, no. And she’s like, OK neither are we.”

Thereby perfectly encapsulating and exemplifying the set of the bureaucratic mind. Yes, this IS exactly how they think—worse, it’s who they are, way down deep inside. They cannot change, and they will not stop. They will never, EVER stop. They will have to BE stopped.

Notice the phrase “let them.” These people felt — and still feel — that the freedom to run your business, attend school, go to church, gather together with friends and family, all these things are entirely contingent on whether Mandy Cohen and her colleagues let you.

In this context, arguing for forgiveness or amnesty is really just calling for a total lack of accountability for the people who did real lasting harm to the entire country. Just as amnesty requires admission of wrongdoing, so too does forgiveness require repentance. It also requires justice and accountability. But none of the very powerful people who made cruel and ruinous decisions during the pandemic have asked for forgiveness or even acknowledged their devastating failures. None of them have been held accountable. There has been no justice.

Nor will there be, unless and until we rise up and see to its administration ourselves. Why should anyone expect otherwise? The lockdowns, the mask mandates and forced closings—the gratuitous destruction, ruin, and human misery inflicted by them—worked exactly as they were intended to, achieving every goal the petty dimestore dictators hoped they might. It was a trial run for more and worse yet to come, and it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the evil despots who imposed them on a submissive, sheep-like populace.

Yes, they will most certainly do it again, whenever it suits them to. Why on Earth wouldn’t they? This is who they are, it’s what they do. It’s going to be lather, rinse, repeat from here on in, until enough of us figure that out and decide at long last to put a fucking stop to it.

Update! Okay, THIS Tweet I simply can’t resist embedding, it’s just too damned good.

You told people they were bad Christians and risked going to Hell if they went to church, didn’t wear masks, or refused a dud vaccine.

Repent for what you did, acknowledge the damage you inflicted on the church, and seek forgiveness. Until then: shut up, you little snakes. https://t.co/7ltn6MdH6S

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav)

June 2, 2023

Oh, SNAP!

Why we can’t have nice things anymore

Posted on June 4, 2023June 4, 2023 by Mike 3 Comments

Enviro-nuts, that’s why.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE WHY WE CAN’T HAVE INFRASTRUCTURE
California’s high-speed electric train has burned through nearly $10 billion, far more than its original $9 billion bond, without building a single mile of track.

Where did that money go?

$1.3 billion was spent on environmental impact clearances.

After over a decade, Brian Kelly, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, cheerfully announced that, “we’re making true progress on nearing full environmental clearance for the entire Phase 1 high-speed rail project.” By the summer, the high-speed rail which hasn’t even begun construction might finally get its full environmental impact clearance. Perhaps.

California’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere, which began in 2009 and whose budget already tops $100 billion, financed by corrupt environmental cap-and-trade robbery that makes cryptocurrency seem legitimate by comparison, may seem like an outlier, but it’s not.

Every time presidents make a pitch for an infrastructure bill, they visit the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River for a photo op.

“Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama declared with his back to the bridge. “Help us rebuild America.

After Obama, Trump came to the bridge, and more recently Biden claimed that his infrastructure bill, which spent nearly three quarters of a billion on electric cars, and little on infrastructure, would finally fix the bridge. Over $10 million has been spent on environmental impact studies going back 18 years to explain why nothing much was being done about the bridge.

But why spend money on bridges when you can instead spend it on environmental reviews of hypothetical bridges? People can cross the former, but the politically connected get rich off the latter.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $5 million was needed to fund an environmental impact study to build a new bridge, another $5 million to consider building a bridge in Mission, Texas. The current status of that bridge is unclear. After wasting millions and years on environmental impact studies, projects often never move forward due to changing finances or circumstances.

The endless environmental studies drain massive amounts of taxpayer money. For example, the Yeager Airport in Central West Virginia needed a $5.6 million grant for its environmental impact study. And the sheer scale of taxpayer money stolen by the green industry is not being tracked.

Why, it’s almost as if the whole Green Weenie, EnviroTard, Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ thing was nothing but a scam right from the start or something. But no, that can’t be right, the very idea is just completely absurd.

Isn’t it?

(Via Brother Bob)

Diesel rules

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Mike

God help us all if all the truckers finally realize just how much power they have over this faltering NiNO (Nation in Name Only), and decide to start exercising it.

Honestly, I kind of look forward to it, in a way.

HIGHWAY TO HELL
Trucks run America. Heavy trucks move the stuff we buy and sell along the largest highway network in the world. They clean our streets, control our disasters, fight our fires, and rush to our rescue during emergencies.

In the medium-heavy (Class V-VIII) truck world, trucks fall into two categories: “On Highway,” the trucks you see pulling trailers across the country, and “Vocational”, the dump trucks, cement mixers, ambulances, fuel trucks and a dozen other variations that keep every town in this country operating. Most these are powered by diesel. Diesel engines are ideal for commercial purposes, being more reliable, more durable, and with better fuel economy than gasoline. Over 99% of all trucks working in America today have diesel engines. Without these, nothing moves. Not food, not goods, not our industry, and certainly not our economy.

California, as usual, is leading the “Green” charge. This month, the California Air Resources Board voted 14-0 to pass a law that will ban the sale of diesel trucks in California by 2036. The board warned citizens that “the time for putting public health second to the economy is over.” The new law also stipulates that all trucks operating in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (home of 50% of US foreign trade) must be zero emission by 2030.

“Putting public health second to the economy”—oh, how I love that line. Tell me, genius, how healthy you think we’re gonna be when the food stops coming in, medical supplies and prescription meds become unavailable at any price, and nobody can buy any of it anyway because they lost their jobs when the economy goes kerblooey? Stupid shitlib doesn’t seem to realize that the two are inextricably linked; when the one goes pear shaped, the other will be drastically impacted, and not for the better either. Every. Single. Time.

As the bumper sticker says: if you have it, a truck brought it. It’s as true now as it ever was, representing a hard, implacable reality in which residents of California will soon be getting an up close and personal schooling when your moronic PC folly kicks in fully and long-haul truckers begin to refuse to go to the Golden State, no matter how much they’re offered to do so.

America is a behemoth. The United States faces logistical challenges greater than that of any nation in history. The distance from Los Angeles to Washington DC is roughly the same distance as Madrid to Moscow. Despite some local attempts to regionalize food production, feeding Americans is still a national effort. The ability to transport food, medicine, and spare parts across the vast American continent can only be achieved by trucks. Highway trucks move 75% of the nation’s freight from city to city, and from region to region. Everything you buy, everything you eat, and every medicine you take has at least one truck involved in the transportation chain.

Truck manufacturers don’t have the technology to replace diesel engines with equally capable zero-emission engines, nor the production capacity to replace the soon to be illegal diesel engines. The United States also does not have the electrical infrastructure to support that many Lithium Ion Battery vehicles. For decades we have depended on these engines to sustain us, and they have not failed.

Which is probably what shitlibs hate the most about them: they simply work, far better than any other technology humanity has ever come up. There’s a reason, after all, that the world abandoned windmills, electric vehicles, and solar power a century or more ago: those outdated, primitive technologies are incapable of powering a First World economy.

Instead of making what works better, we are about to attempt to replace all of them with vehicles that are four times the cost, but only capable of doing a quarter of the work…at best. Large fleets are already slowing, and in some sectors companies are cancelling existing “green” orders in favor of procuring diesel engines while they still can. CEO’s are doing the math, and recognizing that virtue signaling is not worth bankruptcy. But the damage may already be done.

When we think of military vehicles, we imagine tanks and jets, but logistics is what wins wars. For every tank, there are a half dozen support vehicles. Fuel tankers, runway sweepers, water trucks, and wreckers are all bought commercially off the shelf from civilian truck manufacturers. Every vehicle the military buys needs to be capable of running JP8 fuel: a high sulfur fuel, which simplifies military supply requirements and enables military vehicles to run on even the dirtiest local fuel sources. Government mandated changes to emissions have created a technology gap between the civilian and military markets. Sensors in modern trucks can no longer survive with high amounts of sulfur in JP8, and so manufacturers have begun to stop making trucks capable of running on a JP8 engine.

Progressives don’t want solutions that avoid a collapse.

Annnnnd BINGO, we have ourselves a correct answer, folks!

The ongoing logistical nightmares caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 is just a prelude to the horrors of this potential future. Factories that can’t get enough components, hospitals that can’t get repair parts on time for life-saving equipment, crops dying in the field while the people starve…That’s where we’re heading.

Yep—because that’s where the idiot Left is pushing us, whether we will or no. When you get down to the nutcutting of almost every problem, impasse, or issue, no matter what it might involve on the surface, that’s what it always comes down to. What we have here is not a diesel problem, an economic problem, nor even a climatic one; we have a Leftist problem, plain and simple. Until we’ve dealt with that fundamental issue, unequivocally and forcefully, all the others and more will continue to plague us.

(Via WRSA)

Thou shalt not suffer a Leftist to live

Posted on May 15, 2023May 15, 2023 by Mike

Okay, so I finally finished reading the Frontpage mag article referenced earlier in my “Eyrie up” post, which was the subject of today’s Substack thangamabobber. It really does merit another mention and a further excerpt here on the CF main page, I think, which is a totally unprecedented occurrence around these h’yar parts.

Some amorphous “system” did not fail and could never rescue Neely. Neely’s family failed Neely, and then Neely failed himself. So many of his relatives have reported to the press that his mother’s murder, when he was only fourteen years old, devastated him. Where were they? Did they feed him, house him, teach him a narrative that enabled him to survive and thrive? If so, Neely listened to other narratives. Narratives that approved of dropping out of society and using an illegal drug that may have contributed to his violent behavior.

The “system,” and rotten old capitalist white supremacist Amerikkka, tried, again and again, to help Neely. Neely resisted help. “Mr. Neely was on what outreach workers refer to as the ‘Top 50’ list — a roster maintained by the city of the homeless people living on the street whom officials consider most urgently in need of assistance and treatment. He was taken to hospitals numerous times, both voluntarily and involuntarily.”

After one arrest for beating an elderly woman, Neely was treated with kid gloves. The Times reports, “He was to go from court to live at a treatment facility in the Bronx, and stay clean for 15 months. In return, his felony conviction would be reduced. He promised to take his medication and to avoid drugs, and not to leave the facility without permission. ‘This is a wonderful opportunity to turn things around, and we’re glad to give it to you,’ Mary Weisgerber, a prosecutor, said. ‘Thank you so much,’ Mr. Neely replied. But just 13 days later, he abandoned the facility. Judge Biben issued a warrant for his arrest.”

Jordan Neely was living his life by a narrative that facilitated violence and human decay. Living on the street, begging and threatening those who didn’t give, taking drugs, hurting, rather than contributing to society, were all acceptable plot points in that narrative. Those who give money to homeless panhandlers subsidize this narrative. Leftists who denigrate America and despise those of us who “work hard and play by the rules” advance this narrative.

Neely was not the only New Yorker living with trauma. On January 15, 2022, Michelle Go, an Asian-American woman “who did everything right,” was pushed in front of a subway train by an assailant sharing significant demographic details with Neely. Martial Simon was a homeless black man and said to be mentally ill. The subway murder of a good woman, Michelle Go, received a fraction of the attention allotted to Neely.

In April, 2022, Frank James mounted a terror attack in a subway car. He shot ten people. James was also black. On April 11, 2023, a teenager was shot dead on the subway; authorities say his death is most likely related to gang violence in a largely black housing project. On or before December 10, 2022, a man was stabbed to death on the subway. On October 23, 2022, video was released showing a black man shoving a man onto a subway track.

The New York City subway system is a deadly place. Crimes are disproportionately committed by black men. Passengers take that information with them when they enter the subway. When Neely, as reports indicate, began shouting in an irrational and threatening manner, passengers went into “fight or flight” mode. The three men who restrained Neely worked to keep him immobilized until police arrived.

Yeah, well, the dead giveaway as to what’s really going on here is that, when I lived in NYC back in the 90s—during Rudy Giuliani’s miraculous, unlooked-for, and continually-maligned-by-shitlibs resuscitation of the beleagured city, thank goodness—the subway was no such thing at all. It has been made that way, so as to reinforce a narrative and bolster The Plan even now being implemented by the Evil Left.

In truth, America’s major cities don’t have to be dangerous, anarchic, eternally-blighted nightmares unfit for human habitation. NYC, Detroit, Chicago, SF: once garden spots, eminently desirable places to live and/or work which were the envy of the Western world, all of them have been made the way they now are—on purpose, by nefarious villeins who assuredly do NOT have anyone’s best interests in mind other than their own.

Ought to be some way of thanking the Left properly for that, I just can’t think of what it might be. Well, other than the one hinted at in my post title, I mean.

First thing we do, let’s ban All The Things

Posted on May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 by Mike

Why we can’t have nice things anymore.

‘The Wrong Side Of History’ Is The One With Air Conditioning, Dishwashers, And Gas Stoves
These campaigns unfurl the same way every time. Leftists float some outrageous invasion into personal freedom in the name of stopping climate change or enhancing safety. When conservatives react with indignation, the media gaslights the country, casting critics as a reactionary cabal itching to start a “culture war.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but you know, I still maintain that a Biden appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commissioner, Richard Trumka Jr., probably told Bloomberg News that gas stoves were a “hidden hazard” and “any option is on the table,” and then argued that the state could ban anything that “can’t be made safe” — which includes ladders, bikes, candy bars, cars, forks, desks, bathtubs, and televisions, and so on.

Oh, stop being such a hysteric; no one is going to take away your straws or light bulbs or combustible engines.

“No, Biden Is Not Trying to Ban Gas Stoves,” the New York Times assured its readers. The GOP “freak out” over the government “coming for your gas stoves” was “outright nonsense,” explained MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. Though, they all argue, gas stoves are basically mini Chernobyls that are killing your children as we speak — especially minority children. All the pseudoscience says so. And if you disagree, you might be one of those “Gas Stove Denialists.”

“Gas stoves became part of the culture war in less than a week,” added NPR. “How Gas Stoves Became the Latest Right-Wing Cause in the Culture Wars,” explained Time Magazine. The Washington Post claimed that the “GOP thrusts gas stoves, Biden’s green agenda into the culture wars.” The “culture war” can never be instigated by leftists suddenly shifting societal norms but only by social conservatives who pick needless fights over piddling, long-decided issues.

As Axios noted, gas stoves had become the “Right’s new fight,” which was somewhat confusing considering “the Right” didn’t bring up gas stoves in the first place. But the natural state of the world — the inevitable evolutionary finale of any policy debate — resides on the left. The speed of progress merely hinges on compelling the knuckle-draggers to see the light.

Ahh, but you didn’t really think they’d stop with just gas stoves, did you?

As Christian Britschgi in Reason points out, the Biden administration “has proposed tightening energy efficiency standards for 16 product categories, including many home appliances. The DOE has opened or finalized rules on microwave ovens, normal ovens, refrigerators, and laundry machines in just the last few months.” The Biden administration’s counterintuitive policy initiatives ensure that you’ll be compelled to buy crappier appliances at higher prices.

A-yup. All things, please note, that Whypeepuh dreamed up, engineered, and made a reality. Meanwhile, the Leftard Red Wreckers can do nothing, invent nothing, create nothing except chaos, destruction, and general human misery. And they’ll never, ever forgive us for that.

Shocking news

Posted on May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 by Mike

Saw this the other day and I’ve kinda held off on saying anything about it, just to see if maybe there was another shoe to be dropped. So far, there hasn’t been.

I have long said on this blog that a civil war is the last thing that we need. It is a last resort, because the person that you are, the life that you lead, is over. The cost is quite high, the outcome uncertain, and the pain will be nearly unbearable. Millions will likely die. We don’t take actions like that for light reasons, and we certainly don’t destroy a nation and our lives if there is a hope that we can accomplish our objective any other way.

Stop trying to be a Ray Epps. Put up, shut up, or go fuck yourself. Stop trying to urge others to do what you will not do. Frankly, I’m over it. Comments to this post will not be allowed.

This blog is closed until further notice.

And so it has been. Aesop mulls it over, at some length, and It. Is. Good.

We’ve been under attack for years. Like SAfrican farmers, the body count’s getting obvious to anyone looking, from anywhere.

Some people are going to decide they’ve had enough. The smart ones are going to do something about it, as they can, when they can, to whomever they can. They’re not going to advertise, or cock-a-doodle-doo.

They’re just going to do what they think needs to be done.

They’re going to Shoot. Shovel.* And Shut Up.

Eventually, that may become noticeable. Whether it does or doesn’t, everyone is going to have to decide to get in that game, or just watch.

That’s a you problem, not a me or an us problem.

Because if you do it, I don’t want to know. And if I do it, I’m not telling. Not you, not anybody, not ever.

Anybody who does is a pure Grade AAA Idiot.

But It’s. Going. To. Start. Happening.

Exactly, precisely so. To coin a phrase, the first rule of Revolt Club is, or surely ought to be, you never talk about Revolt Club. Plenty more at the link, of which you should read the all. If you can’t see how that relates to what Divemedic was on about, then you got some more thinking to do, I’m afraid.

I’ve contended for a long time here that when/if the Rebellion does get cranked up in earnest, Jurassic Media and TPTB will do their level best to keep it hushed up, for as long as they possibly can, after which point all bets are well and truly OFF. I do hope Divemedic will be back at some point; Our Side needs all the strong, uncompromising voices it can possibly get in this struggle, and DM was certainly one of those. But in any event, I wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors, whatever they may end up being.

Counteroffensives

Posted on May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by Mike

Molly and Mark Hemingway offer a counter-revolutionary counterproposal.

Unrigging Our Elections
Republicans need a serious counter-offensive if they want to stand a chance.

It might not matter whom Republicans run for president in 2024.

MIGHT not? You funny, girl. Git on witcha bad self.

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes. We catalogued this particularly complex problem in Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

In this world, concerns about candidate quality are irrelevant. If we don’t fix this complete capture of election infrastructure, it might be impossible for anyone with a sincere desire to prioritize the interests of voters over the ruling class to win a national election.

AGAIN, with that “might” bushwa. Mark and Molly go on to offer serious proposals for unfucking this seriously fucked-up mess, at least some of which might actually have merit. But honestly, I couldn’t get interested enough to finish reading ‘em. For my money, even Buck Throckmorton’s not-quite-despairing cynicism only barely begins to express it.

There is a vicious smear campaign going on by Democrats and their media allies against conservative Supreme Court justices, especially Clarence Thomas. The purpose of these attacks, of course, is to neutralize the authority of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and perhaps to even remove a member or two by impeachment. Others in conservative media have done a great job covering this coordinated media attack, so that is not what I am writing about today.

Beyond removing justices, the left has made it clear that if it has lost its iron-fisted control of the judiciary, then the judiciary’s role in governing the country is henceforth illegitimate.

Good. I agree. The judiciary’s role in governing our lives is illegitimate, and has been for a very long time.

A country that considers itself a “democracy” (or a “representative republic,” or whatever term indicates that the people elect their government) cannot have an unelected, unaccountable, and unreplaceable judiciary that has arrogated unto itself the power to govern, irrespective of laws and lawmakers.

Don’t misunderstand, wherever the right has gained control of the courts, we should use the courts to advance our agenda, just like the left did. There is nothing principled about judicial restraint if only one side employs it. But any control we currently have over a subset of the nation’s courts is itself fleeting, since the left conquers all unelected institutions.

Bottom line, for me at least: despite whatever fleeting and temporary inroads we might have made during Trump’s one and only term as PoTUS, the simple fact remains: Amerika v2.0 is clearly not a country that is capable of self-government. Not in any meaningful sense, it ain’t. As such, it is also no longer deserving of the opportunity.

There are many, many other issues more immediately in need of addressing before whatever emerges from the existential conflict against the Evil Left can renew any claim to be capable of self-government. Which doesn’t mean that any and all avenues such as those suggested by the esteemed Hemingways aren’t worth attempting, at least; they probably are. That said, though, I can’t say I expect much from ’em.

As I’ve so often said, I’d be happy indeed to be proven wrong about this. Alas for us all, I won’t be. In my view, any “counterrevolutionary” movement that preemptively rules out the very means by which America That Was itself was founded—ie, revolt by force of arms, violence, and bloodshed—is preemptively doomed to failure. Until sufficient numbers of us have confronted that fundamental truth and made their peace with it, all else is no more than futile head-shedding. The Left is now too firmly entrenched, the institutions it has co-opted too massive and powerful, for it to be otherwise. No amount of optimism and misplaced “hope” can overcome that.

Update! My longtime chum and compatriot Aesop spells it out frankly and explicitly, with nary a punch pulled, as is his usual wont.

You believe in individual responsibility? Great. Stop looking for Fearless Leader to hold your hand, wipe your butt, and tell you what to do, when, where, or to whom.

I’m not telling you to do or not do anything.

I’m telling you to figure it out for yourself. And do what seems best in your own mind. Nobody can hack that, nobody can read that, and nobody else can ever predict that. If in any one month 1000 Leftards randomly selected had themselves an accident, by the month after that, the species would be on the Endangered List.

And that could no more be stopped – by anyone – than you could command the waves to cease crashing ashore.

And the minute any thousand people on one side decide it’s time to dish out their own version of a cut apiece, the Death Of A Thousand Cuts stops from the other side. With all the suddenness of Moldylocks getting punched in the face, or Trayvon becoming a good little criminal, or a BLM rioter or two getting Rittenhoused.

Without any plan per se, no video, no trials, just a sudden surplus number of casualties of what has been, thus far, a largely casualty-free operation: the destruction of civil society.

When egregious civilizational destruction needs skin in the game, the lemon will rapidly become not worth the squeeze.

As an added bonus, the other side is suddenly 1000 Useful Idiots lighter on the scales.

Excellent advice, seems to me. His closing line is nothing short of priceless, IMNSHO. Bravo, my friend.

Civil war and/or secession

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Mike

Bearing in mind my longstanding dictum that there is simply no way of knowing how it will all shake out, that the one sure thing is that such things hardly ever go exactly like anyone thinks beforetimes that they will, Simplicius takes a stab at a little prognostication.

On Secession and Civil War
Will there be breakup by 2030?

I often mention my long-held forecast that I predict the United States will either devolve into civil war or secession by the year 2030. Hearing this, many have asked me to expound at length about my thoughts on this, why and how I see it unfolding. So I’ve decided to finally treat the topic in a more in depth manner than the usual comment reply allows.

Particularly in today’s cultural climate, when they conjure up ‘civil war’, many people are subconsciously referring to some sort of Rwandan Genocide-style conflict between the two opposing sides of Liberals and Conservatives, where the actual civilians have taken up arms and are battling it out in the streets. This notion of a ‘civil war’ is driven by endless memes posted by both sides which depict things like armed antifa leftists against conservative militiamen rifling it out in some dystopian suburban battlefield, perhaps akin to Seattle’s CHAZ ‘Autonomous Zone’.

The Rwandan-style one has the least chance of happening because it presupposes some sort of de-centralized, stochastic ‘free-for-all’ where people just happen to take up arms against the fellow man. Sure, there will be sporadic armed conflicts occurring regionally, owing to the growing racial and political divides in the country. But there exists no real formalized mechanism by which the two sides can even cohere into some semblance of organized, opposing armies with a central command, staff structures, etc. This is mostly a juvenile consideration, at least for any time in the semi-near future, of which we’re speaking. One could perhaps envision such a scenario much farther down the line than is possible to predict: some sort of weird, lawless, dystopian post-apocalyptic Mad-Max-style future in the year 2100, or something like that. But for our purposes, this is unrealistic and unworthy of serious deliberation.

There is a third option some people refer to when invoking civil war: that of ‘people vs. the government’. I’ll treat this one briefly on its own, because there are a few important considerations here.

Firstly, this idea has gained traction as numerous American politicians have wielded this cudgel as a threat against upstart Americans who might like their chances in an uprising. Biden himself has remarked on at least two or three different occasions that ‘Americans need F-15s not AR15s to fight against the government’, implying that U.S. citizens can never defeat the government unless they’re armed with high level strategic weaponry, as opposed to mere small arms.

In short, the government and its ‘mighty military force’ wouldn’t last in a true prolonged conflict against the population of the U.S. Of course, it all depends how many people would be on the revolting side in this hypothetical scenario. But let’s not forget that the U.S. has an estimated 400 million guns, and 393 million of those are in civilian hands. There are reportedly something like 70-100+ million gun owners. The U.S. military has about 800k total ground troops. Even with all the planes and tanks in the world, can 800,000 go against 100,000,000? You could argue they couldn’t even defeat the Vietcong’s less than 1 million, much less 100m. Not to mention that most Americans are far heavier armed than the typical Vietcong and their bolt-action rifles.

But like I said, those are just slightly absurd hypotheticals to put some things in perspective; in reality, this is not the type of scenario I expect to occur. It’s simply a quick two cents thrown into the debate to refute the typical leftist canard that the U.S. military is invincible, when in fact they entirely rely on the civilian sector to even function.

Lots, lots more to this one—which, despite my opening admonishment regarding the ultimate futility of assuming that we can make any predictions here with any realistic expectation of accuracy, I nonetheless consider to be well worth a read. One more thing I feel I ought to address:

Professor Barbara Walter explains she’s studied civil wars for thirty years and has spent the last few of them working for a CIA taskforce which uses such metrics to prognosticate ‘where the next civil war will occur’ in the globe.

Professor Walter explains, when turned against the U.S. itself, these same proprietary calculations reveal that the U.S. is at the edge of what the CIA would deem the cusp of the “RISK” to “HIGH RISK” categories. Normally, a country at ‘high risk’ would be placed on a special CIA watchlist, as upheaval there would be considered imminent.

Walter, the Post said, concludes that the US has passed through stages of “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” and may now be in “open conflict”, beginning with the Capitol riot.

Citing analytics used by the Center for Systemic Peace, Walter also says the US has become an “anocracy” – “somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state”.

Walter’s second point is indisputably true. The first, though? Meh, not so much; the notion that we may be in a state of “open conflict” is seriously undercut by A) the simple fact that what she blithely refers to as a “riot” was no such thing; and B) excepting the ever-escalating incidents of mostly black-on-black violence in the nation’s urban jungles, all most Normals need to do to disprove the idea that we’ve arrived at “open conflict” is to just take a look around. Any conflict we might be in is certainly not “open,” and for the vast majority of us, there sure doesn’t seem to be very much of it to be seen.

That said, Simplicius sounds a cautionary note here:

These findings, however, are already more than a year old, and the country has likely slipped even further into the danger zone.

Fair enough, no argument. Even so, the danger zone isn’t quite the actual thing; they’re very different animules—as I suspect we’ll soon be finding out, to our great chagrin and injury.

As I said, there’s much more to this deep-dive examination of every facet of this issue, so do read it all.

(Via WRSA)

The “climate change crisis” is STILL the bunk

Posted on April 30, 2023April 30, 2023 by Mike

And it always will be.

1540 Experts Agree There Is No Climate Emergency
There is no climate emergency. As I have been saying for years, the climate change agenda to end fossil fuels is merely a fraudulent cause intended to gain power. The Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. “The climate view of CLINTEL can be easily summarized as: There is no climate emergency.” Over 1540 experts respected in their independent fields have joined CLINTEL to spread the message that there is no scientific data to indicate that climate change is political propaganda.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. In particular, scientists should emphasize that their modeling output is not the result of magic: computer models are human-made. What comes out is fully dependent on what theoreticians and programmers have put in: hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. Unfortunately, in mainstream climate science most of this input is undeclared.

To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models. In future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.”

We MUST question why governments across the world are fighting tooth and nail to eliminate fossil fuels and our way of life as we know it. Why are we following the World Economic Forum’s 2030 agenda to save a planet that does not need saving? Why are we allowing our elected officials to spend endless funds on an imaginary cause? Everything has a cycle, including the weather. So while the climate may be changing, there is absolutely nothing humans can do to alter the course of nature, and those stating otherwise are lying.

1540 experts, pshaw. In Amerika v2.0, they’re the wrong experts according to TPTB, so you should just ignore ‘em. Alternatively, you could take Bayou Pete’s advice:

So, when you hear politicians and pressure groups demanding that we sacrifice this, or that, or the other, in the name of “climate change”…remember that they’re all lying through their teeth.

Yup, that’s about the size of it—whether the lies issue from the yaps of “elected” officials, bureaucrats, “experts,” or the gooberment’s bought-and-paid-for “scientists,” we’d all do well to consider the source before swallowing a single word of the snake-oil they’re peddling. Need more proof? Howzabout this, then, in commemoration of *gag puke* Earth Day:

Bald Hedgehogs and Witch Executions: Remembering Earth Day’s List of Promised Calamities
Hello everyone! Allow me to wish you a joyous Happy Earth Day!

This means, of course — because this is an environmentalist national holiday, after all – that there is nothing at all happy or joyous about today because we need to focus solely on doom and the promise of our demise. Hey, don’t scream at me; this is the consensus of the scientific community.

Welllllll — in actuality, it is really more the consensus of the media covering the scientific community — but this is serious stuff! So long as you don’t analyze their claims, that is. This is because in the mad rush to report on anything and everything that can be connected to planetary calamity, they do not exactly do the research.

Why is so much of the “settled science” data so contradictory? I may be more open to these claims on which scientists are all on the same page if they did not keep offering up pages of conflicting promises.

Let’s start with those sharks I mentioned earlier. Recall how they will be attacking us more frequently? We are also told they will be attacking us less, as a result of global warming. Or, climate change. This only sends us down a long and winding path of unsettled certainty with global alterations. Basically, we see that when science reaches a fork in the road the answer is “Take it.”

Let us look at the effects on our beaches. AGW will make the oceans saltier; also, it will lead to the oceans becoming lower in sodium at the same time. The change in climate is promised to make ocean waves much bigger. It is also having a negative impact by making the waves…uh, well much smaller. Also, global warming is going to have a diminishing effect on coral reefs. The good news is something will help the reefs grow; global warming.

Part of the reason we’ll be heating up is due to an increase in clouds which will have heat-trapping effects. Another reason we’ll be heating up is there will be fewer clouds, no longer trapping heat but we will roast in the sunlight. UNLESS – that increase in clouds will reflect that sunlight and shade the planet. OR, we’ll see a decrease in clouds altogether…which means they will NOT be trapping the heat…nor will they reflect the sun, which is either bad or good, depending. Truthfully, when it comes to discussing climate change, just avoid any mention of clouds at all; you will just make the doomsday prophets cranky.

Obviously, as we heat up it means there will be less snow, but that means fewer avalanches. Except, we are also promised mountain regions will also experience more avalanches. Not sure how the math works out on that one. Probably best to just hope for the best.

No no no NO; yer doin’ it wrong, see. You should all be scared to death, or at least out of your wits. Because after all, fearful, witless sheep are much easier to herd, corral, and above all, shear.

Many, many supporting links salted throughout that last excerpt, of which you should read the all, including as it does a huge selection of doomsday predictions which failed to pan out that I hadn’t heard of before.

Sudan Virus

Posted on April 28, 2023April 28, 2023 by Mike

Ready for the next Plandemic? ‘Cause from the looks of things, you damned well better be.

There’s enough evidence to show that the ‘Vid was a test of some kind, as was the response to the ‘Vid and the Vaxx and well, everything else. Be it an intelligence test (most failed) or a compliance test (most, unfortunately passed), Leviathan and ALL the Powers That Be have made no bones about wanting to reduce OUR carbon so to speak. In that, they’re going to be using the most underhanded back room dealing and evil shit that they can, because, despite the current ‘sheep like’ slumber in which the majority of folks operate in, their biggest problem is that eventually -someone, somewhere- suddenly ‘pumps the brakes’ and says “No More.”

Which has, for the most part happened. No one is getting a booster, hell people are shying away from -any- DotGov sponsored Medical ‘stuff’… the trust bond is irreparably damaged… probably never will be restored, unless we get to hang Fauci and all of his psychopathic friends from streetlights… which I’m saying won’t happen, leastways yet. It’ll be a long cold day in Hell with snowcones being served by Stalin himself before I believe anything the DotGov has for me medically speaking… Literally fuck them untrustworthy motherfuckers.

So, they’ve got to keep the ball rolling.

Hence, ‘The Sudan Gambit’ as I’m calling it. As of the 25th of this month, after a micro-civil war kicked loose in the Sudan, the WHO (World Health Organization, a wholly owned subsidiary of ‘Doctor Evil INC’) announced that the Level Four Biolab that they had operating in Khartoum was overrun and currently ‘inaccessible’…fears that elements and samples of live Cholera, Malaria, Measles, Dengue Fever as well as the Sudan Virus and maybe even Marburg are possibly ‘compromised’ by these actions.

Then, a reader helped put the pieces together. Great Analyst.

As mentioned above, one of the bugs being ‘played with’ (besides all the other “death on a stick” bugs) is this Sudan Virus. Seems it’s a lesser potent variant of Marburg, which, in turn is another variant of Ebola. It’s also called the Sudan Ebolavirus. So, bad juju to say the least. Now, to keep the ball rolling, for the first time ever, Marburg had shown up on both coasts of Africa at the same time (Equatorial Guinea on Feb 13th and Tanzania March 21st). Now, Marburg is bad… to say the least. ALL Filoviridae viruses, essentially ALL hemorrhagic viruses? Bad-Bad to the Bone Bad.

To say the very least, yeah. One of the most chilling, hair-raising books I ever did read is a surprisingly thin little tome called The Hot Zone, available for free at my go-to source for such things (no longer there, looks like, except for a “summary and study guide”), a real-life chronicle of a near-outbreak of Ebola from a research facility outside DC. Basically a marginally-less-lethal little brother to the Ebola virus, Marburg is well-covered in the book, and it is indeed some extremely scary stuff.

If FederalGovCo can reduce the overwhelming majority of Americans In Name Only to quivering catatonia over the Shanghai Sniffles—which they did, and were—one can’t even begin to imagine how badly the pathetic, over-biddable, panic-prone AINO herd would react to something as legitimately scarifying as a genetically enhanced and tuned-up version of Marburg on the loose amongst the gen-pop. Alas, I’ll make no bet against the likelihood of finding out sometime all too soon. As Big Country goes on to say:

Best Shoot yourself if you don’t catch it, meaning figure out you’ve been exposed to it… early… as IF you actually contract it? Extremely bad things happen. Best hope is to figure out you –might– have been exposed, start prophylaxes (taking preventatives) and pray to the Deity of Your Choice that you -do not- get the bug. Getting the bug is bad.

It surely is. And as with Ebola, those “prophylaxes” are mighty thin on the ground, and there IS no known cure and/or vaccine for it at all. More yet at the BCE link, of which you should read the all, assuming you have the intestinal fortitude for it.

If there is one thing, and one thing only, that we all should have learned by now, it is that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FederalGovCo won’t do, no low too low for them to stoop to in their ongoing war against Real Americans and America That Was. We can but hope to God that they aren’t already well on their way to unleashing this Marburg plague on us. Because make no mistake: if they can, they most surely will.

OH NOOOOES!

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

Looking for something else to worry about? Look no further, then.

Oh Dear, There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Ocean
That can’t be good.

I’d think not, no. Perfect hed/sub-hed combo though, I gotta admit. The bullet-point summary of the article’s main analytical thrust oughta suffice to keep you awake nights, or at least motivate you to click on through and read the whole thing.

The floor of the ocean off the coast of the Pacific Northwest has sprung a leak.

The spring, known as Pythia’s Oasis, is likely venting water from beneath local tectonic plates through a fault called the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

This liquid is likely acting as a lubricant between the two plates colliding at the fault, and losing too much of it could increase the likelihood of a damaging earthquake.

“Damaging earthquake,” you say? And just how damaging might we be talking about here?

“The megathrust fault zone is like an air hockey table,” Solomon said in a news release. “If the fluid pressure is high, it’s like the air is turned on, meaning there’s less friction and the two plates can slip. If the fluid pressure is lower, the two plates will lock – that’s when stress can build up.”

And therein lies the issue. If stress starts to build up, it eventually has to go somewhere. When the stress is too much and the system has to jerk into a new position, the jerk triggers an earthquake. Most likely, a big one. Scientists believe a release of stress in the Cascadia Subduction Zone could trigger a magnitude-9 earthquake that would affect many of those living in the Northwestern U.S.

Magnitude-9? Oof. Well, hey, at least it’s the Pacific Northwest, anyway, meaning Portland and Seattle. So if it rids us of those two pestilential liberal shitholes, it might turn out to be worth it at that; I’m perfectly willing to lose them, plus a whole slew of others like ’em, for the advancement of The Greater Good. T’is an ill wind indeed that blows NO man any good, right?

Update! Via VP Stephen.

Portland’s first Shake Shack hasn’t even opened yet, and it’s already been smashed up
Crime is so rampant in the city that on Monday REI announced it was closing its only Portland location after almost two decades in the Rose City.

What is to be Portland’s first Shake Shack was hit by vandals before it even opened.

According to KGW8, someone broke a window in the brand-new restaurant but did not appear to get inside.

Yup, looking more and more as if a thorough, vigorous shaking might be just the thing for these vicious lackwits.

Take a look around

Posted on April 16, 2023April 16, 2023 by Mike

Seeing through the scam.

The collapse of Western Society is well under way, believe it or don’t, that isn’t going to change the facts nor the outcome.

It’s already baked into the cake and in the oven as we sit here dawdling.

I suppose you can call it Planned Demolition because it sure as hell isn’t an accident.

They are killing the Dollar, our economy with it and the Way of Life as we have known it in order to usher in their nightmare version of Total Control as they deem themselves above and beyond all of us “Useless Eaters”.

TPTB have been waging Unrestricted 5G Warfare against humanity in general but Western Societies in particular FOR GENERATIONS now.

It just got ramped up to Full Throttle here in the last few years.

Economic Collapse is coming, the signs of late have been everywhere.

The planned collapse of the Silicone Valley Bank and the resulting mad dash of bank runs in the time frame since should be a monster red flag if you are paying attention.

Remember, there have been HUNDREDS of “mysterious” fires and explosions at Food Warehouses, Gas Plants and Chemical plants in the last couple of years.

Not to mention Inflation running anywhere from 10 to 40% on every day items we all need just to survive.

The planned destruction of the food production is especially in your face in places like The Netherlands, where they are literally trying to force the generational farmers off their land using the bullshit scam Climate Change as an excuse.

Then we have the planned attack with the Kung Flu which was the excuse used to launch the real attack on humanity which was The Jab.

Literal millions of people lined up with their sleeves rolled up for that and the desired effect is slowly rolling across the headlines every damned day.

“Died Suddenly”.

How many times have you seen that over the last year?

I can guarantee you are going to see it until you are sick of it because that is the desired outcome of that little project and it is working as planned.

So far, the whole damned thing seems to be working quite well for them. Which is the usual way of such things—until one day, all of a sudden-like…it isn’t. And then, that’s when the REAL trouble starts, and the REAL mess lands squarely atop all our heads.

What to do, what to do

Posted on April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 by Mike

Seeing through the fakery, dealing with the aftereffects.

A Means of Control
I read an article in Forbes the other day about the collapse of the dollar. I’m not linking it, because it was ridiculous. The reason Forbes said that the dollar would not collapse, was because it’s based on the economic output of the United States, a country that has the largest economy in the world of $23 trillion. The stability of the dollar, it said, was why it was the world reserve currency and that alone kept it from collapsing. This article was written March 29, 2023, about two weeks ago. The only thing that could possibly cause a collapse, it said, was something dramatic like a world war. Ha ha.

I don’t know if that was just financial propaganda to prevent panic selling or what, but if it was meant as a serious article, it ignored the realities of the world that currently exists. Our $23 trillion economy, our GDP, is dwarfed by the $32 trillion we’re in debt. The dollar is no longer the world reserve currency and more countries are dumping the dollar every day. China is cashing in it’s notes as fast as it can.

The other leg of the financial stool supporting the dollar is its use as an intermediary between nations to purchase oil, the petrodollar, which has recently been nixed by the cooperation of Russia and China to purchase Russian oil with Chinese Yuan. Saudi Arabia, our closest ally in the Middle East, at least as far as oil goes, just made a deal to sell oil using the Yuan.

The only thing supporting the dollar is printing. The Fed no longer has to buy bonds to create money, it just keystrokes in a few more billion to the nations banks.

Buying metals is a good way to avoid this obvious catastrophe in the making, but as we have seen before, they can just make owning precious metals illegal. Then, only the well-connected and criminal politicians will own these metals. Hiding your stores will be a felony so when you go to use it, you can be identified and imprisoned.

As you can see, we’re in a vice and the people who have concocted it are intent on using it to squeeze any financial, medical or nutritional freedom out of your lives.

What to do?

Clearly, this is the separation I spoke of at the beginning. It’s now incumbent upon all of us who wish to remain unvaxxed, free to spend and free to eat what we want to start separating from the federal power in Washington. Local, local, local has been stressed many times and it’s for just this situation that it was preached.

TL goes on from there to offer several practical suggestions for how one might go about insulating and isolating oneself from the machinations and manipulations of an evil, tyrannical central government in a disintegrating nation, all of which seem to me to be soild, worthwhile policies to follow at any time, all the more so in these End ones.

Update! Dave Renegade is also readying himself for life apres le deluge.

I am living my life according to my belief that the economy has collapsed and the government is planning to start WWIII. That means the US dollar is worthless and I am buying supplies and other items necessary for this future.

I visit the local feed store in Murphy, NC on a regular basis. I have noticed a large increase in feed supplies (they are storing feed in the parking lot) over what has been stored in previous years. I also noticed that the volume of customers has increased to the point that parking is now like bumper cars. People park as they want regardless of whether they are blocking other cars/trucks in place. It was so bad yesterday, a small truck from Florida parked in back of my truck as he bought 14 trees. I bought 5 fruit trees and I estimate that they will sell 200 trees in less than two days.

I went to a nursery to look for more pecan trees. Any tree over 4 feet was over $100. The nursery’s parking lot was the busiest that I have ever seen.

I have bought a complete set of replacement fluids and filters for my tractor. I went to the Kubota dealership to do the same for my excavator. Imagine my surprise when this large dealership had to order hydraulic filters to complete my order.

Baby chicks are selling out at farm stores faster than Joe Biden can eat an ice cream cone.

I saw a message today that based on economic conditions, everyone should start acting like a “prepper”. The message should have said: Everyone who is over 50 should start acting as our grandparents. The rest can act as their great grandparents acted.

As reality is sinking in, I am glad to see that people are acting responsibly instead of cowering in fear. I do not know when we will stand up to the evil that has usurped our government but we can use this time wisely.

It looks more and more as if we may not really have to do much in the way of standing up to ‘em after all; as the impending collapse of TWAWKI (The World As We Knew It)™ continues apace, could be we can all just sit back pointing and laughing as it all comes crashing down around the ears of those who brought it about.

American reality, then and now

Posted on April 9, 2023April 9, 2023 by Mike

Rogert Kimball notes some crucial distinctions, none of which we dare call “progress.”

On Good Friday, I chanced across a photograph of the lower Manhattan skyline at night from Good Friday in April 1956. Three skyscrapers, dominating the space, feature certain windows illuminated to form gigantic crosses to commemorate that most solemn of Christian holidays. The year 1956 was not that long ago. But how much has changed in those 60-odd years! Can you imagine such a public display of Christian affirmation in New York today? Nor can I.

As it happens, the picture is one I received the other day in one of the eleventy million damnable-nuisance emails I get daily from Twatter.

New York City, Good Friday in April 1956. Left to right: 60 Wall Tower, 20 Exchange Place (formerly known as City Bank Farmers Trust Co.), and 40 Wall Street. (Photo by Ed Peters/NY Daily News Archives). pic.twitter.com/Rk40iSYKyr

— olasem (@olasempruch)

April 7, 2023

Quite telling, no? Back to Kimball.

That was then. Now things are different.

I thought about that disjunction between then and now when reading through Washington’s Farewell Address this weekend. Washington had intended to withdraw from politics when his first term ended in 1792. He asked James Madison to draft a valedictory statement but, when the time came, bickering among some of his Cabinet, especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, convinced him to run again. He set the original document aside.

Follows, a deep dive into the history and meaning of Washington’s justly-renowned Farewell Address, delivered in 1796 after much revising. Then:

It pains me to say it, but I suspect the Farewell Address retains but a rhetorical claim on America circa 2023.

As does the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Thomas Paine pamphlets, the Federalist Papers, et al.

Then, in 1796, Washington’s exhortations and admonitions had purchase in the political, economic, and moral reality of America. Now, they mostly echo like antique sentimentalities, more or less like the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Who still takes that seriously?

Among the younger generations, who even knows what the Pledge of Allegiance is, or for that matter ever even heard of the long-since-abandoned thing?

Even the tone of the document seems chiseled from another world.

Because it in fact was—from another and a very different country, at the very least. Certainly, the words came from a radically different kind of leader than the sad, sorry excuses for such we’re currently burdened with. Onwards.

One important theme of the address is the importance of the union of the states to the preservation of peace and prosperity. Devotion to the union, Washington says near the beginning of the address, is “the palladium of your political safety and prosperity.” What a splendid deployment of the word “palladium,” a “safeguard” or “protection,” from Παλλάδιον, a statue of Pallas Athena that guarded Troy!

The substance of the address seems even more distant. Consider Washington’s strictures against the formation of factions, which echo and expand upon the arguments of Madison and Hamilton in the Federalist. The deployment of factions, Washington writes, puts “in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party.”

Washington was warning about a possible future prospect that has become our daily reality.

Indeed, Washington’s admonitions could be torn from today’s political headlines. “The alternate domination of one faction over another,” he writes, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

Are we there yet?

Alas, I think we all know the answer to that well enough.

Much as I might like to, I can’t excerpt anymore of it without doing fatal violence to the whole concept of Fair Use. But Kimball goes on at length from there in like vein, of which you should read the all.

And THEN what?

Posted on April 5, 2023April 5, 2023 by Mike

VDH, bless his poor old heart, recites a long litany of stuff we knew already.

Indict One—And All?
Were the opposition to match tit-for-tat these Democratic means, then the republic would not survive.

Ummm, Victor ol’ buddy ol’ pal, hate to have to be the one to break this to ya and all, but…IT DIDN’T.

It is the revolutionary Left that attacks institutions deemed unhelpful for its current political agenda—one that rarely warrants 50 percent public approval—whether that effort is defined by threats of ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding two more states, packing the court, or radically changing balloting laws and customs to turn elections into a 70 percent no-show of voters on Election Day.

And so on and so forth, etc etc fucking etc. We know what they’ve done, we know why they did it, we know what they’re liable to do next, we know what they hope to accomplish by it; in sum, we know all anyone should ever need to know about them. Happily, Bayou Peter understands the pointless futility of these endless recapitulations—that the only pertinent question at this late date is what, if anything, is to be done about it.

It’s a persuasive argument. If conservative and middle America were to say “So far and no further”, the progressive left would erupt in demonstrations, violence and anarchy, seeking to impose their will by intimidation. Sadly, a great many Americans would be cowed by such uprisings, and prefer to back down rather than risk what might come from such confrontations.

Of course, the only way forward – the only way to stop such progressive machinations – is to accept that risk, and stop them in their tracks. That means accepting the necessity to answer in kind: to meet provocation with resistance, to answer violence with violence. There’s no other way to do it. Gandhi’s non-violent solution worked in India, in a colonial situation, but he wasn’t facing an opponent that welcomed violence and embraced it as a political and social strategy. We are.

Christians, in particular, are going to have to harden their hearts in this regard. It’s very easy to say that we should turn the other cheek, as Christ commanded: but in this case, if we do that, they’ll rip it off, along with the first cheek we turned. The progressive left knows no other approach except intimidation and dominance. Anything less is seen as weakness. That’s why they’ve made so much progress, and they have every intention of continuing their progress until all resistance is at an end.

It’s time to stop them…if necessary, by using their own tactics against them. To begin with, that can be to use the same legal tactics against them that they’ve used against us. If they take that to the next level, well, we can do that too—and we must, or be steamrollered by those with everything at stake and absolutely no inhibitions of conscience.

Precisely, indubitably so. I’ll say this much: if stooping to adopting their own tactics is the absolute worst thing we have to do to end this, we can count ourselves fortunate indeed. Evergreen rerun:

That one ain’t ever getting old. Would that there might come a day when we can all look fondly back on it as no longer immediately relevant, just another well-written and skillfully-acted scene from a fine old movie—as a piece of classic cinema, not an imperative, a most urgent call to arms.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp on Thrilla in ManilaMany years ago, watching a documentary on the grea…
Barry on The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine thingsThe land that used to be private out there was own…
Barry on Thrilla in ManilaIt’s rare that men choose a sport best suited to t…
SteveF on Blah-blah from the Heart of DarknessAs the saying goes, whatever they accuse you of is…
Barry on Institutional terrorismI see it now…

Category: Hard times in the land of plenty

“Let you”

Why we can’t have nice things anymore

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Thou shalt not suffer a Leftist to live

First thing we do, let’s ban All The Things

Shocking news

Counteroffensives

Civil war and/or secession

The “climate change crisis” is STILL the bunk

Sudan Virus

OH NOOOOES!

Take a look around

What to do, what to do

American reality, then and now

And THEN what?

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