Bah! – Page 25

No harm, no foul, please keep moving along, thank you for your compliance

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Mike

Divemedic says he, for one, is relieved at this most reassuring news.

The agency that is in charge of ensuring that our elections couldn’t be tampered with, the CISA, has declared that our election systems were, once again, completely secure. There were no shenanigans in this election. No siree, we are on the job, and can assure you that everything is in tip top shape over here. Everything is just as secure as it was in 2020, when it was revealed that the CISA was working with leftist lobbying groups and leftist corporations to lock down the most secure election ever. Ever.

If you don’t believe this, you are a threat to US security.

Think of that “threat” designation as the signal honor it so truly is, DM.

“This is the most important thread you can read following what happened last night”

Posted on November 9, 2022 by Mike

So sayeth the fine folks over at Not The Bee, and they might well be onto something.

Some post-election thoughts:

1- Everything I have been saying about democracy was vindicated last night. The fact that such a massive number of people voted for more of the same after two years of horrific mismanagement shows that it is unfit to choose its own leaders.

2- Public education and its consequences have been a disaster for the American people. Any Christians that still think sending their children to public schools is a morally neutral choice are choosing national suicide.

2a- The damage is probably already irreversible at this point. The D’s staved off what should have been a bloodbath through the youth vote. The boomers and Xers can no longer counterbalance the pozzed generations electorally.

3- With such an advanced level of moral degeneracy, the best thing for the world is that American global influence wane rapidly, and it probably will. Our unique flavor of degeneracy seems to be bound up with a commitment to incompetence, and our global hegemon cannot last long.

Ahh, the elusive silver lining shows up at last. But Jefferson’s fabled “reign of witches” will NOT just “pass over” on its own; it will have to be ushered out, and quite forcefully. In the contemporary context, Jefferson’s profound wisdom doesn’t meet the case, as the rest of the passage shows (emphasis mine):

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

What will it avail us to retain our principles, once all else is lost? Jefferson seems to have had the sequence exactly backwards this one time.

At this historic moment, it strikes me as surpassing strange that Jefferson, of all people, would counsel reliance on “luck” and “patience” instead of bold, vigorous action in defiance of corruption and raw tyranny. After all, this is the same man who also told us this:

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

One of these quotes is NOT like the other. Ah well; Thomas Jefferson, great as he inarguably was, was only human too. And no human can be right EVERY time.

SSDD

Posted on November 9, 2022November 9, 2022 by Mike

FLA aside, as of now it appears that the over-ballyhooed “Red Wave” has pretty much fizzled. No matter, really; after all, it’s not as if anything would’ve changed all that much anyway. In American “elections,” real, meaningful change is never on the ballot.

I fear that, having won a majority, congressional Republicans will comfortably settle into doing what they do best: keeping the chairs warm for the Democrats. Republicans have held majorities in both chambers simultaneously with the presidency from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2017 to 2019. This is a cumulative total of six years they’ve had free rein to enact their agenda. What do they have to show for it? Other than a couple tax cuts and trade deals, nothing.

Did they reform education or break the teachers’ unions? Nope. Bush gave us No Child Left Behind. Did they reduce the bureaucracy? Nope. They expanded and empowered it, with the grotesque Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and star chamber FISA courts (now weaponized by the FBI to target American citizens on behalf of the Democrats). Did they secure the border and begin seriously deporting illegals? Nope. When they do discuss immigration, they push “comprehensive” reform (i.e., amnesty) alongside their Democrat counterparts. The last Gang of Eight four Republican representatives were Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake. Need I say more?

When Donald Trump unexpectedly won in November 2016, along with a majority in both houses, Republican leadership had over two months to draft legislation (or, better yet, dust off legislation they should have already drafted) that they could have had on Trump’s desk on January 21^st. By February, they could have had the wheels in motion to secure the border, repeal ObamaCare, drain the bureaucracy, reform education, and forward a myriad of solutions that they’d been campaigning on for the entire Obama presidency. Instead, they had absolutely nothing ready to go.

Trump’s many accomplishments were achieved despite the Republican Congress. The wall construction, Middle East peace deals, deregulation, energy independence, destruction of ISIS, Operation Warp Speed, strangulation of surrender to Iran, and Paris nuttery were largely done via his constitutional authority as President. He also singlehandedly converted more minority voters than any other Republican in living memory.

But nothing enrages narcissists like exposing their utter uselessness. McConnell opposed Trump not because of policy or ideological differences, but because Trump publicly humiliated him by displaying his expendability on live TV for the nation to see. McConnell never forgave him for this slight. Trump has been out of office for nearly two years, but McConnell continues to nurse his grudge by pulling money from any Republican candidate deemed too “pro-Trump.”

Assuming they win, newly-minted senators Masters, Holduc, and Tshibaka will be in no mood to take marching orders from McConnell, nor likely will Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, or J.D. Vance. Facing original Tea Partiers Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, and other true conservatives like Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst, and Josh Hawley, the RINO clingers must realize that a steadily growing permanent class of younger senators are edging them out the door.

Bizarrely enough, it looks like Uncle Fester and/or his terrifying Quato-lump has in fact prevailed, 49.4 to 48.1 with 90% reporting, over Doc Oz in Pennsy. Take a moment to just let THAT sink in. Here, let’s have the Hodge Twins help us all out with choking it down.

Not looking good for the Senate. Oz getting beat by a dude that can’t even say a full sentence.

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) November 9, 2022

Bad, bad juju for sure. This is without doubt a defeat which is going to be impossible for Oz to ever live down, a full-bore scream-dream from which the poor guy will be jolting awake awash in flop-sweat for the rest of his haunted life. The bill for laundering his sheets is going to go through the roof.

But we have to be on them like white on rice. The Left is willing to lose a Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema in one election if it means possibly electing a True Believer the next time around. They play the long game well. We are gradually learning to do the same, but we need to keep up the pressure.

In the meantime, Joe Biden’s veto pen shouldn’t be an excuse for our new majority to do nothing. For the next two years, the Democrats should be up to their eyeballs in congressional subpoenas. Investigations should be launched against Alejandro Mayorkas, Anthony Fauci, Mark Zuckerberg, Merrick Garland, the Dobbs leaker, and everyone who had any operational-level decision-making with Russiagate, the Hunter laptop coverup, the COVID lockdowns, and the Mar-a-Lago raid. They should subpoena the release of all security video from January 6^th, so the American people can see for themselves what happened.

Republicans should withhold funding for the FBI, IRS, and DoJ until after they’ve removed political weaponization from their procedures and provided transparency to prove it. They should withhold Pentagon funding until it reprioritizes battlefield readiness over political witch hunts and pronoun lunacy.

And Joe Biden should be impeached. Twice.

Uh huh. I say again, don’t let’s any of us be holding our breath etc etc. This next bit, however, is spot-on.

Our representatives need to be periodically reminded that their authority is temporary, conditional, and exists not by birthright, but as the privilege of a private citizen. We have the power to ensure that they earn, and continue to earn, what we’ve given them.

Indubitably so. Would that we might trouble ourselves to make use of it now and then.

Not on Our Side

Posted on November 8, 2022November 8, 2022 by Mike

Utterly, completely appalling. Also despicable.

Assaulting and choking innocent people for their “safety”. Never forget. pic.twitter.com/PssW2gN5X1

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) November 6, 2022

Although yes, this nauseating, enraging vid comes to us from the People’s Republic of Australia, anybody still expecting any significant number of American lawdoggies to jump in on the side of We The People when the shit truly hits the fan is STRONGLY advised to rethink that fanciful delusion.

The impossibility of reform

Posted on November 5, 2022November 5, 2022 by Mike

When you can’t reform it, you must either remove it, or continue enduring it until such time as your resolve hardens, your spine stiffens, and your self-respect is restored.

Break up the FBI
The Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,000-page report on Friday on the “politicization of the FBI and Justice Department.” While sometimes overwrought and sometimes overbroad in its claims, the report supports well its fundamental assertion that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the stewardship of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, is broken. The problem lies not with the majority of front-line agents who serve our country, but with the FBI’s politicized bureaucracy.”

Uh huh, I see. SO, get rid of Wray and Garland and all will be well then, right? Is that the basic premise here, or nah?

Garland and Wray have repeatedly stonewalled legitimate attempts at congressional oversight, sometimes (by this observer’s reckoning) almost criminally. In a Nov. 2 letter to Garland, ranking committee Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio listed an astonishing 32 outstanding requests for information (stemming from eight different inquiry letters from committee Republicans) that Garland or his agents have yet to fulfill. Likewise, Wray has failed to fulfill 38 informational demands from eight other letters.

Riiiight. And THEN what happened, eh?

Even accounting for a tendency for the minority party in Congress to make some demands for information seemingly more crafted for political “gotcha” theatre than for legitimate oversight, the recalcitrance of Garland and Wray on obviously substantive demands is an affront to the public. Instead of the transparency due in a government based on the citizenry’s consent, this behavior looks like the sort of cover-up common to authoritarian rule.

As well it might, seeing as how we assuredly do NOT have “a government based on the citizenry’s consent” anymore. For any who requires evidence in support of the proposition that we are currently under authoritarian rule, as the author of this piece seems to be waiting for: by your own standard, the first two ‘graphs ought to suffice, I should think.

For example, in light of a concerted Justice Department effort to target anti-abortion protesters, which has included dangerous use of heavily armed SWAT team raids of homes with children readying for school, Republicans have asked for department communications referring to this aggressive campaign. Garland has not complied.

“Asked for.” You gotta love that.

In general, citing numerous whistleblower reports, committee Republicans produce copious evidence of “political bias [against conservatives or Republicans] by the FBI’s senior leadership,” of a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” and of “rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.” The most familiar complaints are about the targeting of parents who dare speak up at school board meetings, the major transgressions involved in the part of the “Russia probe” that targeted former President Donald Trump (rather than just Russian election interference more generally, which was significant), and the outlandish cover-up of concerns about the laptop and international business dealings of presidential son Hunter Biden.

And THEN what happened? Anything? Anything at all? Anybody? Bueller…?

The FBI is an immensely valuable agency with thousands of good workers. Its centralized top ranks, though, have become corrupted by too much power with too little accountability. House Republicans are right to limit its abuses, and McCarthy makes sense in proposing to reduce its mission.

Stuff and nonsense, every last syllable of it. The FBI has been abusive, unaccountable, and entirely immune to oversight, reining in, and reform since its very inception, BY DESIGN. The Bureau has no Constitutional remit whatsoever, which is another confirmation of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. They would have abhorred the very idea of any such rogue, out-of-control federal agency. It’s a sad, sorry measure of how very far we’ve strayed from their original vision that it even exists at all, or ever did.

RINO is as RINO does

Posted on November 4, 2022November 4, 2022 by Mike

What a disappointment this Eyepatch McCain fellow has turned out to be.

Why would Rep. Crenshaw go on a podcast, Hold These Truths, with Nick Troiano for less than a week before the elections to make America First candidates look bad?

Troiano said that most of the Republican nominees for the House “aren’t accepting the results of the 2020 election.”

Troiano asked Crenshaw what that meant for the future and claimed, “this is a, you know, real threat to our ability to keep the republic.”

Crenshaw claimed that people who question election results are attention seekers.

Oh absolutely, Dan. Say, know where else Da Peepul are forbidden to “question elections”? Oh, bastions of liberty like Iran, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Somalia, garden spots like that. Jesse Kelly puts it quite well, I think.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

By the way, questioning your country’s election is pretty much the BEST barometer you can use to tell whether or not you live in a free country.

Know where they can’t question elections? Iran. pic.twitter.com/51CEkiKA1i

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) November 2, 2022

Remember, now, Crenshaw still misrepresents himself as a “conservative.” Asshole. “QUESTION” the election? Hell, I’ll just say it straight up: THE 2020 ELECTION WAS FRAUDULENT. And the day I let some professional politician tell me I’m not allowed to say so is…well, it won’t be a good day, let’s just leave it at that. There are two pertinent questions remaining before us, and Aesop ain’t a-skeered to axe ’em.

It seems to me that what folks ought to be pondering about now, are the answers to two related questions:

1) If the 2022 elections follow the same pattern that 2020 did, and you watch it stolen in broad daylight right before your eyes, and the other side gaslights you into thinking you should ignore your lying eyes. AGAIN;

OR

2) If there’s a Red Tsunami, but when the dust settles, and the media pants-wetting is over, nothing changes, because the Stupid Party is unalterably spring-loaded to feckless and studied incompetence, like always, rather than cutting out the civilizational rot with machetes, and burning it all with a flamethrower,

WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO?

As I said the other day, I’m more and more leaning towards the belief that the Donks will try to bolster confidence in the integrity of American “elections,” now at their lowest ebb in our history, by letting the GOPe win this one, although I will also certainly admit to the possibility that they’ve become so emboldened by win after win that they’ll cheat just as a matter of long-established habit, if nothing else.

As for Question 2, that one’s a lead-pipe cinch, unfortunately. Which leaves us all staring down the barrel of that last one, the only one that truly matters anymore.

Forget, HELL redux

Posted on November 3, 2022November 3, 2022 by Mike

SO much more to say about this shit-circus, even now. In fact, Our Side should commit ourselves, every man Jack of us, to holding their feet firmly to the fire until their soles are blackened and crisped, for reals.

There Can Be No ‘Amnesty’ On Lockdowns Without A Reckoning
Letting people off the hook isn’t amnesty. Amnesty requires an admission of guilt and a commitment to repairing the wrongs done.

Annnnd BINGO. In fact, as a CF Lifer who prefers to remain anonymous astutely pointed out to me in an email yesterday, the two words missing so far from this whole faux-debate are as follows: I’M, and SORRY. Certainly, I don’t recollect seeing them in Ms Oster’s now-notorious plea for “amnesty” in the Atlantic.

She concludes her article, “Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.”

Yet it’s simply not true there wasn’t enough information for leaders to make prudent decisions back in January to April 2020. Indeed, they were certain enough about their patently cruel policies that included leaving the elderly alone to die, requiring women to give birth utterly alone except for masked strangers, and forbidding families from holding funerals.

Oster is not actually advocating for amnesty, but for a complete lack of responsibility-taking and accountability. That will make our nation’s future worse, less able to address the problems lockdowns created. There is no such thing as “moving forward” from mass civil rights abuses until their root causes have been discerned and steps taken to provide recompense and prevent repeat abuse in the future.

We the people were never told by the Covid totalitarians that their predictions were “uncertain” and “complicated.” They were so certain of their false claims that they sent police to record the license plates of people who attended church on Easter, a constitutional and human right. They shut down schools while keeping abortion facilities and marijuana dispensaries open. They were so sure of their moral righteousness that they seemingly gleefully threatened people’s ability to feed their kids if they didn’t take experimental injections for a disease that may have posed little risk to them. The vaccine mandates led to dangerous employee shortages at hospitals, police departments, and now in the U.S. military.

None of this deliberately inflicted mass suffering was necessary, and that was all known early on. It wasn’t, as Oster claims, a matter of “deep uncertainty.” Among others, Dr. Scott Atlas very publicly presented strong evidence that mask mandates and shutdowns were poor policy choices throughout 2020. He was brutalized in the media and his own Ivy League university for pointing out this data. So were the eminent authors of the Great Barrington Declaration that made similar data-based arguments, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff.

All of whom paid a much higher price for their OUTRAGEOUS!!! truth-telling than Oster and ilk seem prepared to shoulder for their manipulative dishonesty. But hey, while we’re freely dishing out gifts of undeserved absolution to the obstinately unrepentant, here a few more possibilities shitlibs, DemonRats, GOPer swine, and fascist despots across the fruited plain would very much like us to consider.

Besides COVID, Here Are 43 Other Things Democrats Are Requesting Amnesty On
1. Slavery

2. Jim Crow laws

3. Grooming children

4. Ted Kennedy

5. U2

…9. The DMV

10. Kale

11. Dr. Fauci

…13. Comedienne Amy Schumer

14. The term “comedienne”

…17. Gluing themselves to things

…22. Jeffrey Epstein

23. Killing Jeffrey Epstein

24. Michael Moore

25. Not killing Michael Moore

…28. The KKK

29. Kale again

And so on and so forth from there. As is always the case with the Bee, it’s damned near impossible to tell if they’re doing satire here or simply reporting the news straight-up, dry, and as-is. Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, though, #25 is enough to condemn the Dems/shitlibs/whatevs to the furnaces of Perdition for all eternity, all by its lonesome.

Update! This one showed up in my latest “Libs of TikTok” email.

This video is in response to the @TheAtlantic article about “pandemic amnesty” and it’s a much watch. This man is so right on. pic.twitter.com/ZuuA9tIloD

— Just Mindy 🐊 (@just_mindy) October 31, 2022

If you ain’t subscribing to the LoTT email list yet, you damned well oughta be. Not entirely sure how I got on it; somebody musta signed me up for it without asking, I suppose, but I’m damned glad they did.

Forget, HELL!

Posted on November 1, 2022November 1, 2022 by Mike

Stupid, smarmy bint expects forgiveness absent any hint of contrition, repentance, and reform. Which is assuredly NOT the way it works.

This is the ultimate slap in the face by “nice Christians” who believe Jesus wouldn’t want us to keep the Nazis waiting at the train station.

Those of us who were right from the beginning about this “pandemic” and were called unloving Grandma killers by these willfully ignorant, tyrant enabling Sheeple, aren’t “gloating.”

We didn’t make “lucky” guesses.

We read the data.

We knew the entire history of virology and true “Science” was being discarded.

We saw the double standards and illogic of unbiblical “lockdown” measures.

We were shocked and dismayed by how “nice Christians” enabled such Tyranny.

And we witnessed the true nature of EVIL at work in every “recommendation” and “mandate.”

And you had the exact same data and opportunity.

You didn’t “make a mistake” and “did the best you could” because you “had no way of knowing.”

You CHOSE your path and its consequences.

Now that we’ve been proven right beyond all shadow of an “Expert” doubt, we are NOT going to “move forward” with those who demand forgiveness without showing a shred of repentance.

We are filled with Righteous Indignation.

You need to seek forgiveness, in sackcloth and ashes, from the God you have offended for the Evil you have enabled. For the elderly who were left to die alone. For the children who had their childhoods stolen. For your neighbors who had their lives and livelihoods destroyed so you could feel safe. For your fellow citizens who will NEVER be able to return to “normal” after what you’ve done. God’s Justice DEMANDS there be trials AND punishments. To demand “forgiveness” without accountability is NOT WWJD.

We cannot and WILL NOT “work with you.” To order us to AGAIN comply by granting you “amnesty” and an ease of conscience that is not ours to give, shows that you will only repeat your prior actions when TPTB unleash the next “crisis.” You called us “Grandma killers” then and “unloving and unforgiving” now. And all of history shows you will happily comply with Evil when this happens again.

Absolutely, positively correct, right down the line. To grant those I labelled way back when “CoVid panic-ninnies” an absolution they haven’t earned is to guarantee they’ll do this again, as many times as we agree to forgive and forget. As I constantly argued, again and again and again, back in 2020: you NEVER willingly surrender your freedom to snakes-in-the-grass like Prof Oster, because once you have, the only way you’ll ever get it back again, assuming you ever do, is at the point of the sword—or, more precisely, at the muzzle of the AR15. Which, fancy that, is just ANOTHER thing “people” like her want to take away from us.

Gee, wonder why that might be.

As an old bumper sticker popular many years ago amongst us unreconstructed Southrons had it: Forget, HELL!

Believe it — *Forget THIS, motherfuckers*

Update! Billy Beck says it far better than I ever could.

This woman must think that she’s talking to a 1957 Cub Scout den that got in a fight when someone mis-counted the marbles, or something a lot like that. A person in that situation could afford the authority of using that royal “we” without having to explain it to the children. It becomes a mystery with nearly sinister undertones when this person is talking about the scope and scale of militant destruction put upon America in the past three years.

Let’s note how Dr. Oster confesses that the ones who were in the dark are the ones who said and did what they did. They commanded people’s lives into virtual cages with orders against doing the business to sustain them. They ordered administration of ostensible medicines (“vaccines”) to as many people as they possibly could, under the plain extortion of threatening all other aspects of life — jobs, educations, transport services, medical services, for instance — as penalty for refusal. Honest medical analyses of these drugs are now revealing effects catastrophic to and horribly conclusive of human lives around the world. They smashed the souls and intellects of an entire generation of children, including all imaginable and unimaginable implications ranging from toddlers to adolescents and beyond, with scientifically laughable nonsense applied to schools: the very sorts of schools that once taught me enough to know how plainly psychotic the whole thing was

Dr. Oster: “But the thing is: We didn’t know.”

That is, indeed, “the thing”. It’s the very thing that the commissars and research-fetishist should have been thinking, before they might have had to say it out-loud, after they’d done what they did, but if only they hadn’t done it.

It’s the thing that countless Americans were shouting as hard as they could into the gas-blast from “experts” and “authorities” who never stopped telling them how stupid and evil they were. They were viciously betrayed by the insidious promise of “public square” opportunity for “voice” in social media and then “cancelled” (a word of marvelous facility, now) for dissent, with monstrous digital precision, by faceless corporations selling “community”.

And now, these people — this heathen caste — are professorially instructed that “dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop”.

There’s a phrase fit to Balkanize, for you.

By an unexpected tum of our history, a bit of the truth, an insignificant part of the whole, was allowed out in the open. But those same hands which once screwed tight our handcuffs now hold out their palms in reconciliation: “No, don’t! Don’t dig up the past! Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye.”

But the proverb goes on to say: “Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.”

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — “The Gulag Archipelago”, vol. I, “Preface”, p. X)

At the lowest, most basic, level of principle, this caste of dissent is called upon to dismiss and dispose of the experienced reality which is the the material of morality itself. The harm that they’ve suffered, and the outrage of having it at the hands of obvious incompetents and malevolents, has shown them more than enough about how not to live as human beings instead of despised subjects. Wholesale demolition of society is what they’ve seen and lived on every quarter, and that’s what they’re being told to forgive and forget, on the now plainly hollowed pretext of “the good of society”. This goes beyond contradiction and hypocrisy to psychological assault, with the added insult that it comes from a self-preened “unapologetically data-driven” economist. Nobody who has had to hear — remotely — of a dear loved one’s death because their presence was forbidden by “data-driven authority” should have to think about something like this for one stolen heartbeat before dismissing it with contempt or hatred or whatever the current research says about the completely sensible and righteous human response.

People who are morals-driven, even at their most charitable, are simply not now disposed to stand for this.

How well or whether the Dr. Osters of America might conceive an understanding of that fact, and why it exists as a fact, would tell a lot about whether the almost maniacal demand for “unity” is as flatly cynical as it seems. There can be nothing like that between people who think that the agonies of the past three years are to be understood and condemned, and people who cannot and will not see that demand as a matter of moral principles: applied studies in how to live, versus how let it all go to massive deathly mayhem.

I must say, I do enjoy the bleating from the Osters of the world, all wailing so very piteously that we didn’t know, we didn’t know, how could we have KNOOOOWWWNNNN…

Well, speak for yourdamnedself, bitch; I KNEW, and I don’t think anybody out there considers me any kind of “expert” on anything at all. Go fuck yourself and your proposed “amnesty” right in the liver, with a rusty railroad spike, until it stops hurting so much.

Updated update! I second Francis’s reminder, wholeheartedly and with big clanging bells on.

But let’s not omit this, for without it the formula would be fatally unbalanced: We mustn’t forgive ourselves either. We gave in when we should have resisted with all our might. We accepted dictatorial impositions and abridgements of our God-given rights when we should have mustered our rage and employed the corpses of our would-be tyrants to decorate lampposts from coast to coast. We acted like pusillanimous cretins rather than the heirs of Patrick Henry, who’s undoubtedly spinning in his grave fast enough to power all of Virginia over this embarrassment.

The survivors of the Holocaust made a mantra out of the saying “Never again.” The great majority of us wouldn’t even speak our minds for fear of ostracism, demonization, and unemployment. And over what? A disease that’s proved less dangerous than ordinary influenza! A disease that has hardly any effect on the populations most oppressed and disadvantaged by the lockdowns – our minor children!

No. Do not forgive. To forgive would be to accept that our oppressors’ hypothetical “good intentions” should exonerate them for their totalitarian conduct. To forgive would be to “understand” cowardice instead of reproving it as it deserves.

To forgive would be to forget. The two are never separated by much.

Amen, brother. The panic-ninnies and ostracizers can burn for all me. This I vow: NEVER to forget. NEVER to forgive. Ms Oster can go look for her scapegrace absolution someplace else, she’ll find none here.

Shady strategery

Posted on October 29, 2022October 29, 2022 by Mike

Don’t get cocky, but not for the reasons Glenn seems to be thinking of.

If there is anything that we learned from the 2020 election, it was to prove that elections could be rigged. After all, they did it in the open, bragged about it, then Time Magazine even did an article admitting to their part in it. We know that they will do it again. We know that there has been shenanigans in elections for decades. The only question remains: Can and will they do it again?

The election next month will be the test. We are less than a week and a half from finding out if we still live in a Republic where the democratic process chooses our representatives, or if we are living in a country ruled by oligarch fascisti. All of the polls, all of the data, and even history are pointing to a major landslide to the right in this election.

History usually marks a loss for the sitting president‘s party.

Watch each of those races closely. If a pile of them go the other way, start looking for fuckery.

I have to say, I’ve slowly come around to a somewhat different conclusion on this. Seems to me that perhaps it’s more likely that the DemonRats might well content themselves with laying off said fuckery and allowing the GOPe to appear to prevail this time ’round, thus keeping their election-theft powder dry and ready for 2024. With the integrity of American “elections” shredded to hell and gone by hinky “elections” going all the way back to JFK at least, it’s in the Uniparty’s best interests to bolster the voting public’s fading faith in the whole miserable charade now and again, and I’m sure they know that quite well.

Could easily be all wet on this little speculative theory of mine, who the hell knows anymore.

Update! And right on cue, if maybe a little earlier than is typical for them, the shitlibs start in with the usual howling about how “UNFAAAIIIR!!!” it all is.

What happened? Journalists and other Democrats have already started blaming voters for the party’s (likely) defeat in the midterm elections.

Seriously? Yes. As the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month, Democrats and their allies have a history of lashing out when American voters decline to validate their preferences at the ballot box. The election is in 12 days, but things aren’t looking great for Democrats. Polls suggest they are going to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate as well. That’s why the voter-blaming is already underway.

What are they saying? What they always say in these situations.

Follows, a representative sampling of the phony weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, of which my personal favorite has to be this one:

“It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse, and the reversal of everything from Social Security & Medicare to student loan relief [because] they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices.”
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid, MSNBC host

Actually, you shrieking bint, not a single one of those notional transgressions you’re sqwee-sqwee-sqwee-ing so hysterically about has the proverbial snowball’s chance of ever coming to pass. By the numbers:

“Literal fascism” is YOUR side’s thang, not ours
“Female serfdom” doesn’t exist in this country, and never has
“Climate collapse” is likewise total bullshit, whether you’re intelligent enough to know it or not
The chances of the GOPe ever laying a reform-directed finger on SSI, Medicare, and probably even the “student loan relief” swindle as well hovers exactly where it always has: somewhere between None Whatsoever and Don’t Make Me Laugh, You Bastard

As for the spurious notion that any sentient being believes “investigating Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices,” who the fucking fuck do you think you’re fooling with that transparently fatuous codswallop? The only thing a thorough, honest investigation of Hunter Biden is likely to bring down is Hunter Biden, as well as maybe the Big Guy and his ten percent along with him.

No, what even the GOPe knows for sure and certain—as most shitlibs do, I strongly suspect; they KNOW it, they just don’t LIKE it, that’s all—is that the one and only way to bring gas prices down over the long haul is simplicity itself: take the US domestic-energy industry off the strangulating leash you shitlib idiots have put around its neck and free them to do their fucking jobs—finding, drilling for, and processing the oil we have in plenty. Y’know, as Trump recently confirmed, to the enduring horror of every Swamp creature currently extant.

There are readily-comprehensible reasons why gas, oil, and diesel prices have soared to record-high levels under the maleficent regency of Pedo Joe Biden and his skulkabout minders. Putin, the Ukraine, and Cracky Hunter’s underpants are assuredly NOT among ’em.

Is Pedo Joe lying?

Posted on October 26, 2022October 26, 2022 by Mike

There are just three questions: 1) Is he a politician? 2) Is he a “liberal”? 3) Are his lips moving? Answer those three, and you’ll never be in doubt again.

Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Biden announced “new actions to lower the cost of everyday living for American families, to put more money in the pockets of middle-income and working-class Americans, to hold big corporations accountable.” Yes, that’s right: more soft Marxism is coming, complete with the politics of envy and bitter invective against the wealthy and successful without which the Democrats would have nothing whatsoever to offer.

Toward the end of his divisive and rambling incitement to class warfare, Biden served up one of the brazen, outright lies that have marred his entire career. The man deserves credit for audacity, for even in his dementia-ridden dotage he is unsurpassed in Washington (a city of politicians, which means a city of liars) in his ability to deliver an absolute falsehood not only with absolute conviction but also with passionate, self-righteous fervor.

“Some airlines,” Joe declared, “if you want six more inches between you and the seat in front, you pay more money. But you don’t know it until you purchase your ticket. Look, folks, these are junk fees. They’re unfair, and they hit marginalized Americans the hardest, especially low-income folks and people of color. They benefit big corporations, not consumers, not working families. And that changes now.”

If “fact-checkers” really actually checked facts instead of just running interference for the far Left, they would give that statement all the Pinocchios they have, for there is simply no truth in it whatsoever.

Biden, contrary to his carefully nurtured Lunchbucket Joe image, has been a member of the Beltway elite for over five decades, and so he likely hasn’t flown commercial in ages. And characteristically, his statement is not entirely clear. He is clearly saying that the airlines are racist and take money illegitimately from their non-white customers, which is viciously false and irresponsible enough in itself, but it’s not clear how exactly he is saying they do it. Is he saying that it’s wrong and racist for airlines to charge more for seats that offer more legroom? Or does he mean that the airlines are tacking charges for more legroom onto the price for a ticket that the customer has already agreed to pay, without the customer’s knowledge?

None of the above. No, what’s really going on here is that Gropey is laying the groundwork for eventual FederalGovCo control of the airline industry entire, that’s all. Spencer reels off a good ‘un to kick off the next ‘graph:

Either way, Biden’s claim here is rancid hogwash of the most fetid variety.

Heh. Well said, Robert. I love it.

Update! This story reminded me of something from the Aulden Thymes I’d all but forgotten: any of y’all rogues, rapscallions, and reprobates out there old enough to remember a budget airline called People Express, perchance?

People Express Airlines, stylized as PEOPLExpress, was an American low-cost airline that operated from 1981 to 1987, when it was merged into Continental Airlines. The airline’s headquarters was in the North Terminal (later Terminal C) of Newark International Airport (EWR) in Newark, New Jersey.

People Express was about as no-frills as no-frills can get, and I availed myself of their services quite a few times back in my callow youth. A nonstop, direct-flight ticket from CLT to Newark could be had for a footling 29 smackeroos, which was a real bargain even back then—inexpensive enough to make jet-setting it up to NYC for a day just to see a rock ‘n’ roll show perfectly feasible, if that was your thing. Which, it absotively, posilutely was mine.

Free advice, and worth every penny

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Mike

Meh, who gives a shit what they think? About this, or anything else?

At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn’t going to save democracy — if such a thing exists.

If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don’t vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to “save democracy,” writes The Washington Post’s Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our “fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy.”

The day I seek out the likes of Max fucking Boot (!) for his thoughts on how “our Sacred Democracy” might be “saved” is the day I…well, okay, that day ain’t never, EVER gonna come.

Chilling stuff. But it doesn’t end there. You will remember that by failing to “reform” the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus or debate, we are also killing democracy. This has been the position not only of left-wing pundits and the New York Times editorial board, but also senators tasked with defending their institution. I wonder if they will support this democracy-saving fix next session, as well?

Then again, if we don’t nationalize the economy to avert a climate crisis, we are also killing democracy. “We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species,” Jamie Raskin explains. And if we don’t empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily keep gas prices low to help Democrats win in 2022, we are killing democracy. “We find ourselves in a situation, where keeping gas prices low is key to preserving and strengthening the future of our democracy,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says.

We must allow the president to unilaterally create trillion-dollar spending bills and break existing private sector contracts by fiat. For democracy. We must pack the court to “save democracy.” We must create a Ministry of Truth to help with “strengthening democratic institutions.” We must vote for a Pennsylvania candidate who can’t cobble two consecutive coherent sentences together because the “fate of our democracy” is at stake, says our former president.

If you don’t support a partisan congressional investigation that’s circumvented basic due process norms, you probably hate democracy. If you aren’t self-flagellating and holding yourself accountable for the actions of Jan. 6 rioters, you are also bolstering the coming autocracy.

It’s an amusing enough column, and Harsanyi has always been a fine writer. In the end, though, it’s all just dog-bites-man stuff, offering nothing whatsoever new or earth-shattering. Personally, I find it grating at best to be lectured on “saving democracy” by practicing fascists. Not one of the above-mentioned sources will ever say anything of genuine interest or merit as far as I’m concerned, to judge by their record to date. Every man Jack of them can go straight to Hell for all me and remain there for the duration. And they can take their disingenuous “concern” for Our Sacred Democracy™ with ’em when they go, too.

Hey, creature, leave those kids alone!

Posted on October 25, 2022October 25, 2022 by Mike

Ripping the glitter-bedecked, 5XL schmatta off “Drag Queen Story Hour” to reveal the hideous Marxist depravity underneath.

Drag Queen Story Hour—in which performers in drag read books to kids in libraries, schools, and bookstores—has become a cultural flashpoint. The political Right has denounced these performances as sexual transgressions against children, while the political Left has defended them as an expression of LGBTQ pride. The intellectual debate has even spilled into real-world conflict: right-wing militants affiliated with the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters have staged protests against drag events for children, while their counterparts in the left-wing Antifa movement have responded with offers to serve as a protection force for the drag queens.

Families with children find themselves caught in the middle. Drag Queen Story Hour pitches itself as a family-friendly event to promote reading, tolerance, and inclusion. “In spaces like this,” the organization’s website reads, “kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.”

This is what the pedophile freaks consider “authentic”:

Authentic my ass — *As “real” as it gets*

But many parents, even if reluctant to say it publicly, have an instinctual distrust of adult men in women’s clothing dancing and exploring sexual themes with their children.

*shudder* Fascist weirdos.

These concerns are justified. But to mount an effective opposition, one must first understand the sexual politics behind the glitter, sequins, and heels. This requires a working knowledge of an extensive history, from the origin of the first “queen of drag” in the late nineteenth century to the development of academic queer theory, which provides the intellectual foundation for the modern drag-for-kids movement.

The drag queen might appear as a comic figure, but he carries an utterly serious message: the deconstruction of sex, the reconstruction of child sexuality, and the subversion of middle-class family life. The ideology that drives this movement was born in the sex dungeons of San Francisco and incubated in the academy.

Incorrect. In reality, it was born in London, in 1848.

It is now being transmitted, with official state support, in a number of public libraries and schools across the United States. By excavating the foundations of this ideology and sifting through the literature of its activists, parents and citizens can finally understand the new sexual politics and formulate a strategy for resisting it.

I formulated a perfectly workable strategy for resisting it within moments of first hearing of it, as I’m sure millions of other fathers did: club said Drag Queens like baby seals every time they try to put on another of their filthy little Groomer-fests in rural America. After no more than about three such examples being made of their sinister fellows, the survivors will get the message expressed in my post title well enough, trust me.

Start with queer theory, the academic discipline born in 1984 with the publication of Gayle S. Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” Beginning in the late 1970s, Rubin, a lesbian writer and activist, had immersed herself in the subcultures of leather, bondage, orgies, fisting, and sado-masochism in San Francisco, migrating through an ephemeral network of BDSM (bondage, domination, sadomasochism) clubs, literary societies, and New Age spiritualist gatherings.

And hey, what fair-minded dad wouldn’t want such a sordid, doomed future for his own precious toddler?

In “Thinking Sex,” Rubin sought to reconcile her experiences in the sexual underworld with the broader forces of American society.

As with Leftism more generally, it can’t be done, it’s a logical impossibility. You cannot “reconcile” traditional American society with forces which are explicitly, openly hostile to it, and wish to see it undermined, discredited, destroyed, and replaced with their own vision of a proto-Marxist hellscape.

“Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value,” Rubin wrote. “Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid. Clamouring below are unmarried monogamous heterosexuals in couples, followed by most other heterosexuals…Stable, long-term lesbian and gay male couples are verging on respectability, but bar dykes and promiscuous gay men are hovering just above the groups at the very bottom of the pyramid. The most despised sexual castes currently include transsexuals, transvestites, fetishists, sadomasochists, sex workers such as prostitutes and porn models, and the lowliest of all, those whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries.”

And there’s nothing wrong with such a hierarchy, really. As a born outlaw who’s lived my entire life well outside the margins of traditionalist norms my own self, I’ve always understood a basic concept these dilettantes seem unable to grasp: any self-styled rebel requires something to rebel against. Absent a clearly-defined and established hierarchy and the standards it imposes, whither rebellion?

Rubin’s project—and, by extension, that of queer theory—was to interrogate, deconstruct, and subvert this sexual hierarchy and usher in a world beyond limits, much like the one she had experienced in San Francisco. The key mechanism for achieving this turn was the thesis of social construction. “The new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given sex a history and created a constructivist alternative to” the view that sex is a natural and pre-political phenomenon, Rubin wrote. “Underlying this body of work is an assumption that sexuality is constituted in society and history, not biologically ordained. This does not mean the biological capacities are not prerequisites for human sexuality. It does mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely biological terms.”

Well, DUH. Who the hell ever said it was, moron? Human sexuality is a complex bouillabaisse which involves emotional, psychological, and even spiritual elements, not merely the physical/biological. Only over-analytical, self-obsessed nitwits could ever think otherwise. IE, shitlibs. And if you know your shitlibs at all well, then you could see this next part coming from a mile away.

In other words, traditional conceptions of sex, regarding it as a natural behavior that reflects an unchanging order, are pure mythology, designed to rationalize and justify systems of oppression. For Rubin and later queer theorists, sex and gender were infinitely malleable. There was nothing permanent about human sexuality, which was, after all, “political.” Through a revolution of values, they believed, the sexual hierarchy could be torn down and rebuilt in their image.

My God, the wretched killjoys have even politicized sex. Is it really any wonder they’re so miserable?

Where does this process end?

A: as with all other liberal “processes,” it NEVER ends. It grinds on and on and on forever, the demands escalating from the unusual, to the weird, to the off-putting, to the outrageous, to the downright bizarre, to the unthinkable and beyond. As I’ve said before, it’s only a matter of time before they’re raising immortal hell for their God-given right to marry farm animals, just you mark my words. Hey, like abortion, it’s in the Constitution, don’tchaknow.

Democracy dies in darkness dishonesty

Posted on October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 by Mike

Fixed it for ya, WaPo. No need to thank me, I’m happy to help.

As anyone with a passing familiarity with American history and demographics knows, blacks are found most commonly in Southern states as that is where most African slaves lived. While many of their descendants moved North, most did not. Even still, the blackest state in the Union, Mississippi, is “only” 37.9% black. So even though Mississippi has a ton of blacks, they have also had a Republican governor for 26 of the last 30 years. MS voted for Trump by a margin of 16% in 2020 and for Orange Man with an even larger margin in 2016. Mississippi last voted for a Democrat for President when Carter barely beat Ford in the state in 1976 but the election prior Nixon beat McGovern in the state by a whopping 78% to 19%.

You see, two things can be true at the same time. Republicans can hold political power in a state AND that state can have a large black population. Even the state with the highest black percentage of the population is barely over 1/3 black. You would think Milbank would use his tribe’s vaunted high verbal IQ to figure this out, but of course he already knows this is the case and is simply lying for political reasons.

You can have high violent crime in a state run by Republicans without making the leap to say that those Republican voters are the ones committing the majority of violent crime.

7 of the states listed on the top murder rates on the right are among the dozen states in America with the highest percentage of blacks. Curious! What about the states not on the list of blackest states? Well New Mexico has it’s own demographic issues. As of the 2020 census New Mexico reported a population nearly 50% mestizo and climbing fast, and adding in illegal aliens the population became majority mestizo many years ago with the largest percentage being of Mexican ancestry. As for Missouri and Kentucky, their homicides are overwhelmingly concentrated in two cities, St Louis (43% black) and Louisville (35% black) respectively.

Also, and again previously proven, blacks are responsible not just for a disproportionate percentage of murders in America but are actually responsible for an absolute and growing majority of homicides, breaking the 60% rate last year among known murderers (see: A New Record!) while the real rate is closer to 75-80% (see: It Isn’t Really 13/50).

Is Dana Milbank lying?

Dunno. Are his lips moving?

Milbank, for the legions of you who have far more important things to do than to bother overmuch about his stupid ass, is a smarmy shitlib chowderhead (BIRM) who has enjoyed a long, cozy sinecure at the execrable WaPo perpetrating serial outrages against actual journalism. Sido crunches the numbers to perform a most righteous, surgically-precise old-school fisking of the witless assclown, and it’s a joy to behold.

Tried posting this in Arthur’s comment section, but Blawgsplat ain’t having any of that, so I’ll just put it here: via the esteemed Divemedic, the elephant in the room vis a vis any discussion of crime, criminals, criminality, and urban dysfunction.

The nigger in the woodpile... — *Yo, wuzzup?*

What can one say but, Heh.

If it ain’t good, then what good is it?

Posted on October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by Mike

Dennis Prager has really pressed one my buttons with this one.

The Left — meaning progressives, not necessarily liberals — loathes the fact that conservativism preserves the past. That is why “change” is one of the most cherished words in the Left’s vocabulary. There is nothing more threatening or, perhaps more important, boring, to a leftist than preserving the past. “New” and “change” provide leftists meaning and excitement.

As one involved in the music world (I periodically conduct orchestras), I have always been struck by how important it is to orchestra CEOs, music professors and especially music critics that as much “new” music be played as possible. If a conductor prefers to program the classics, he is deemed a reactionary, while conductors who regularly program new music are heroes in the music world.

Music critics rarely discuss the question that preoccupies conservatives: Is this new piece of music good, let alone nearly as good as the classics? What matters to music critics is that the music is new — and, these days, that it was composed by a nonwhite person, ideally a woman.

Conservatives ask whether new music is good enough to warrant being played. They are preoccupied with excellence, not with newness or “change.”

This difference between conservatives and leftists/progressives applies to virtually every realm of life.

It explains the decision of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of English to remove a large mural of Shakespeare and replace it with a mural of a gay female poet of color. No one in his or her right mind thinks that this poet is the equal of Shakespeare. But the members of the Penn English Department are not concerned with literary excellence. Shakespeare’s picture wasn’t replaced because his writing was surpassed. He was replaced because he was male, white and straight. And most of all, he was replaced because he was old. He is an “old (or dead) white European male,” in the words of the Left.

Change and newness are so vital to leftists that a progressive who cared first and foremost about excellence would cease to be a progressive.

Early this past summer, I sat down and composed a lengthy e-mail diatribe for the local classical-music radio station on this very topic, although I never did bother to hit “Send.” Said station, WDAV, is attached to Davidson College, and the hosting staff is shot through with kneejerk Progtards who are not at all shy about making their political leanings perfectly clear on-air.

The hell of it is, DAV is hands-down the best classical station I’ve ever listened to, among all the stations in all the cities I’ve lived in over the years. They don’t play nearly as much of the wretchedly tedious “new classical” dreck the stations in NYC, ATL, and New Orleans muck up their airwaves with. As far as their programming selection goes, DAV is, umm, sweet music to my ears.

Yeah, I know. Sorry, couldn’t help myself there. Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful, aiiight?

Anyhoo, I listen to DAV pretty much all day and night, and enjoy it tremendously, the exception being the ever-winsome Rachel Stewart’s Sunday morning show, “Biscuits and Bach.” It’s devoted exclusively to the Baroque composers, see, and Baroque aggravates me like bamboo shoots under the fingernails. Verily, I do despise that shit. Well, Scarlatti I like a lot; same-same for the great composers for guitar at the fag-end of the era like Giuliani, Boccherini, and Paganini*.

Bach, Handel, all the rest, though? Humbug, I say!

Over just this past year or thereabouts, as if to intentionally annoy me further still beyond the occasional not-so-sly digs at Trump from the aforementioned hosts, the station has put several new programs into the regular rotation, all of them exercises in drooling PC.

One in particular focuses on “marginalized composers,” mainly females, who have been unfairly short-shrifted because you fiendish classical fans are so goddamned MISOGYNIST you refuse to listen to the flavor-of-the-month LGBTQZRWNmXXX Composers of Color, damn your eyes, despite their all CLEARLY being the equals of Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin rolled together into one awesome wad of talent and inspiration.

Another gruesome offering, airing a couple afternoons a week at 2, I think it is, lionizes unknown Neegrow composers as the put-upon musical saints they all are, unjustly oppressed by De White Man because RACISM!!!, you rotten BASTARDS.

Then there’s Concierto, a show which I hesitate to lump in with the others, because it’s actually quite damned good and I like it a lot.

Concierto is a weekly program of classical music presented in Spanish and in English. The program features music by Latin American and Spanish composers and musicians. With Concierto, WDAV extends a welcoming hand to the fastest growing ethnic group in the Carolinas, while also seeking to introduce new listeners to the pleasures of classical music.

Concierto es un programa seminal de música clásica presentada en español e ingles. El programa cuenta la música clásica por compositores y músicos latinoamericanos y españoles. Con Concierto, WDAV extiende una mano de bienvenida al grupo étnico que está creciendo más rápido en las Carolinas, y a la misma vez también buscando a introducir nuevos oyentes a los placeres de la música clásica.

Spanish translation included above because of course it was.

These shows, plus a couple others I’ve labored mightily to put out of my mind, undermine their own raison d’etre by confirming that skin color, sex, and/or political opinion make seriously piss-poor criteria for judging compositional ability. Trust me, if these over-entitled hacks have indeed been “marginalized,” then they all came by it honest, and richly deserve to be. I endure these shows by the skin of my gritted teeth, and can say with no little authority that the “music” these talentless tyros are putting out is truly the pits: screechy, skrawky, aimlessly atonal clappa-trappa devoid of any semblance of melody, coherence, or worth. It is literally excruciating to listen to. Which, believe me, you shouldn’t. Nobody should.

But hey, it’s New, it’s Nonwhite, it’s Transgressive—for your standard-issue liberal dumbass, it checks all the necessary boxes, so what’s not to like? What it assuredly is NOT, is good. Not by any standard for “good” I can recognize or endorse, it ain’t.

So much for the outdated stereotype of classical-music mavens as stuffy, rigid, ultra-conservative old gits who poot dust and cobwebs; wear monocles, cummerbunds, and spats, even at home; and lounge about in their fancy-schmancy home “libraries” or Gentlemens Clubs gassing on about the lamentable state of the Modern World, to the eternal irritation of their long-suffering manservants. It just ain’t so anymore, if it ever even was. Nowadays, classical music-lovers are all yuppie-puppy standard-issue shitlibs: affluent, self-absorbed, smug, and entirely insufferable. Nice thing is, it makes all that beseeching and imploring for donations during the annual Fall Fundraiser so easy to ignore without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt over it.

*A bit late for Baroque on a couple of those, I know. In Scarlatti’s case, he’s generally considered to be the “bridge” between the Baroque and Classical periods, much the way Beethoven is thought of as being the same between Classical and Romantic. So there.

Forbid it, Almighty God!

Posted on October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by Mike

Ask a silly question.

But Will Elections Change Anything?

If they could, they’d be illegal.

It’s coming up in a fortnight. For many people, all their hopes rest on the outcome. I get it because these seem like very dark times. We cannot live without hope. But we also need realism. The problems are deep, pervasive, scandalously entrenched.

Many people won financially and in terms of power from lockdowns and have no intention either to apologize or give up their gains. What’s more, for that to have happened to this great country – and many great counties – indicates something far more pernicious than a policy error or an ideological mistake.

The fix is going to require vast change. Tragically, the elected politicians may be the least likely to push for such a change. This is due to what we call the “Deep State” but there ought to be another name. It is rather obvious now that we are dealing with a beast that includes media, technology, nonprofits, and multinational and international government agencies and all the groups they represent.

That said, let’s deal here with the most obvious problem: the administrative state.

The plot of every episode of Yes, Minister – a British sitcom that aired in the early 1980s – is pretty much the same. The appointed Minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs waltzes in with a grand and idealistic statement left over from his political campaigns. The permanent secretary who serves him responds affirmatively and then cautions that there might be other considerations to take into account.

The rest follows like clockwork. The other considerations unfold as inevitable or manufactured behind the scenes. For reasons mostly having to do with career concerns – staying out of trouble, advancing through the ranks or avoiding fall down them, pleasing some special interest, obeying the Prime Minister whom we never see, or coming across well in the media – he backs down and reverses his view. It ends as it begins: the permanent secretary gets his way.

The lesson one gains from this hilarious series is that the elected politicians are outnumbered and outwitted on all sides, only pretending to be in charge when in fact the actual affairs of state are managed by experienced professionals with permanent positions. They all know each other. They have mastered the game. They have all the institutional knowledge.

The politicians, on the other hand, are skilled at what they actually do, which is win elections and advance their careers. Their supposed principles are just the veneer put on to please the public.

What makes the series especially painful is that viewers can’t help but put themselves in the position of the Minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs. How would we have done things differently? And if we had, would we have survived? Those are hard questions because the answer is not obvious at all. It seems like the fix is in.

Now, to be sure, in this series all of the players have elements of charm. We laugh at the bureaucracy and their ways. We are delighted by the oddly emerging lack of scruples by the politician. In the end, however, the system seems to work more or less. Maybe this is just how things are supposed to be. It was ever thus and must always be.

Anyone can be forgiven for believing that just a few years ago. But then the last three years happened. The rule by the administrative bureaucracy in every country became highly personal when our churches were closed, the businesses were shut down, we could not travel, we could not go to gyms or theaters, and then they came after every arm insisting that we accept a shot we did not want and most people did not need.

The laughter of the sort Yes, Minister inspired is over. There is far more at stake. But just as the stakes are high, so too the problem of implementing a solution – representative democracy as a means to reobtain liberty itself – is also exceedingly difficult.

Not difficult, utterly impossible. Can there ever be a wrong or inappropriate time to remind ourselves once more of the deathless words of Patrick Henry? I think not.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free– if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable–and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Indeed. American liberty was won at the muzzle of the gun and the point of the sword. T’was ever thus; I can recall offhand not a single instance when corrupt and fraudulent “elections” such as ours have ever been sufficient to the task. The miserable curs of Our Side’s chattering class who preemptively abjure any resort to the very dear coin with which our Founding Fathers bought freedom for their posterity disgrace themselves by their pusillanimous break with true American history. They insult the bloody sacrifice made by our Founders even as they cheapen the very idea of liberty itself with their puling, girlish squee, squee, squee-ing. When Henry asks of them “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” they can but answer in the affirmative, if they have a shred of integrity left about them.

Not that I’m recommending anybody should rush to this last, most desperate resort, mind. But those who would rule it out forever—as if reclaiming our unique American heritage of freedom and individual self-determination could ever be accomplished as cheaply, easily, and painlessly as merely casting a ballot in yet another sham “election”—have effectively demonstrated for all to see just how little they really value those priceless things, whether they know it or not.

(Via WRSA)

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