Category: Big tsimmis

I can get worked up enough about this to blog about it, but not much more.

Better not to ask

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Especially when you’re pretty confident the answer is going to be unpleasant.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Leftwing Governor Tony Evers’ Lawless Mask Mandate
—Ace
Are we still a free people? There seems to be some contentious debate on the point.

Annnnd that’s all the springboard I needed to dive into something I’ve had sitting in an open tab ever since it first appeared weeks ago, patiently waiting for me to get around to it.

Are We Still Free?

Is there really even a reason to discuss the issue? Because it seems to me that if you feel the need to ask, you pretty much already know the answer. You’re just having trouble squaring up to the sad, sorry truth, that’s all. Understandable, since the admission brings up a lot of way tougher questions in its wake, involving weighty matters such as what the hell might be done about it. That opens the can of worms on truly uncomfortable topics like responsibility, honor, duty, posterity, self-respect, &c. Next comes all that “Give me liberty or give me death,” “I regret that I have but one life to” etc, and “a hill worth dying on” hooraw to be dealt with. Before you know it, you’ve left Uncomfortable in your dust, careening straight on into Downright Scaryville.

Nope, best to just leave all such things alone. They have a nasty habit of raising up and biting the almighty crap out of a fella otherwise.

After having lived together through the lost year of 2020-21, many of my long-held beliefs regarding this country have sadly slipped away.

Like many of us, when the lockdowns first began, I believed the directives were basically suggestions from the government that, for our own protection, we needed to close everything down for 15 days. Let’s face it, nearly everyone was scared out of their minds listening to the “experts” saying this would probably kill millions of Americans in 2020, and we complied out of duty and obligation to other citizens and our families. We were only doing what seemed prudent. We were sure we would come out the other side, begin our lives again, and if things were not in a completely normal state, then they’d only be somewhat modified.

But when the state governments began picking and choosing which businesses could reopen and which ones could not—coming up with crazy and specific lists of how businesses may reopen, and demanding everyone wear masks—I realized government “suggestions” actually had teeth and were not suggestions at all.

Apparently, emergency powers supersede all constitutional rights. I did not realize before the pandemic that this was the case. Although some governors, like Kristi Noem of South Dakota, put trust in her citizens after giving them the information they needed, refusing to lock down and cripple her state businesses and citizens, too many other Republican governors followed the herd. Unbeknownst to me, we actually live in large fiefdoms called states in which you may have either a freedom loving governor, a benevolent dictator, or a medieval king doling out crumbs to the masses and telling them to eat cake when they complain.

Pre-pandemic, I also believed that the American people would never put up with such an obvious political power ploy as mandating mask-wearing outside in beaches and parks. If you’ve ever seen the poor indoctrinated souls driving in their cars alone wearing a mask (or two!) or bicycling with their masks on, then you know my prior belief was quickly put to bed. 

I do so love the morons riding around alone in their cars all masked up; saw three of ’em yesterday, in fact, and I just laughed and laughed at them. Who knows, maybe those pathetic dullards believe their poor cars have the COVID. Hey, under regnant Safetyism, better safe than sorry, right?

Of course, sensible people understand just how silly the idea of contagious cars is. C’MON, MAN! Science!™ hath shewn that motorized vehicles infected with THEVIRUSTHEVIRUSTHEVIRUS!!! are incapable of transmitting it to humans. Your car is FAR more likely to kill you with all those toxic, Gaia-murdering emissions, you know.

As for losing one’s grip on those “long-held beliefs regarding this country” mentioned by Ms Kelly, that’s actually a good thing, however upsetting she may find it. When one’s beliefs are revealed to be falsehood, integrity demands that they be abandoned and truth embraced in their stead. Anything else is self-deception…and cowardice.

Unnerving sitrep

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The real. The bad. The scary.

What were once dark conjectures about the future are now facts about the present.

Where American society once had pride in being part of the Western Enlightenment, its younger members have been taught to seek “emancipation” from its influence.

Where truth was once immutable it is now ephemeral.

Where privacy was once sacred, it is now nearly extinct.

Where the Deep State used to lurk in the shadows, it now brazenly justifies its repression in congressional hearings.

Where the two-party system once debated how government should be run, the Uni-party government now agrees on the necessity of making itself ever more powerful.

Where academia once taught, it now indoctrinates; where it once sought to educate the mind it now seeks to radicalize the soul.

Where Big Tech promised to liberate information, it now censors, controls, and manipulates it.

At the center of the Crisis stands a Transnational Progressive elite that denies the will of the majority of the American people and foments racial division and social discord. It has created a systemic economic crisis that threatens to destroy the Middle and Working Classes and pursues a “globalist” foreign policy that has pushed the country into endless, no-win wars where no American interest is at stake.

It is the failure of the elites in all their manifestations in government, big corporations, Big Tech, and Big Media that has brought us to the precipice of an economic and social disaster… and worse, they seek to exploit the crisis they created in order to expand their already fearsome levels of repressive control over society.

The former institutions that we have depended on for years to hold back the tides of oppressive Big Government are reeling under attack from a Transnational Progressive movement that openly admits it desires to fundamentally transform not only our Constitutional Republic but also our culture, our economic system, our national sovereignty, our history, our religious values, our families and our national heritage based on civil rights and liberties.

Lots more to set your timbers a-shiver here, which you should nonetheless should read. The authors imbibe heavily from Strauss & Howe’s “Fourth Turning” flagon—a real high-octane snootful of an idea fully embraced by some highly esteemed blogosphere heavyweights as well, Bill Quick and the Burning Platform krewe among ’em. I haven’t paid much more than cursory attention to it myself for whatever reason, which should by no means be construed as my having rejected it, mind. It’s an intriguing concept, certainly, if not tremendously helpful as a guide to what might be done about the shit sandwich with which we’ve been presented. But what with the mad rush of one damned thing after another that seems to constitute life in Totleigh Towers Amerika v2.0 (ahem), the CF plate has had more on it than I can get around to chewing lately.

Creepy Nation

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The whole issue comes down to a question of trust, really. Do you trust the government? If so, after all we’ve seen over the past year—at all levels, local, state, and federal—may I ask WHY?!?

Let’s assume for a minute, that the vaccination campaign is led by people who genuinely want to end the current crisis and restore the country to “normal”. Let’s also assume, that they believe that mass vaccination is the best way to achieve that objective by preventing the spread of the virus and, thus, reducing the death toll. Is that sufficient justification for silencing vaccine critics and conducting a nation-wide brainwashing operation aimed at controlling public opinion?

No, it’s not. People need to hear both sides of the story, in fact, that’s the only way they can make an informed decision about how they wish to proceed. The media has no right to commandeer the airwaves and control whatever people hear and see. And they have no right to deliberately exclude the medical professionals and other experts whose views conflict with the official narrative. The only way that people can offer their informed consent for vaccination, is if they’re able to weigh the risks and benefits for themselves. But that’s only possible if they have access to many diverse sources of information which, at present, they don’t. Increasingly, the only message that most people hear is the one that is provided by the government in collaboration with industry honchos and other elites. Traditionally, this type of state media is called “propaganda” which is a term that certainly applies here.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this has affected the debate on vaccines, namely, there isn’t one. The skeptics have been dismissed as antivaxx loonies while an entirely new regime of experimental vaccines is being praised as a “miracle drug”. At the same time, the government –which has aligned itself with the industry it’s supposed to regulate– is doing everything in its power to pressure people into getting vaccinated. What we’re seeing is the most extravagant Madison Avenue “product launch” in America’s 245-year history, and it’s coming at us full-throttle from all sides. It’s virtually impossible to turn on the TV or radio without being deluged by one emotive vignette after the other all of which are aimed at promoting vaccination. How does this respect the right of the individual to make his own informed decision free from government coercion?

It doesn’t. This is flagrant indoctrination and yet no one talks about it. It’s shocking. Have you noticed how the critics of the mRNA vaccines have been prevented from expressing their views in the media? Have you noticed how the doctors, scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and public health experts have all been blocked from appearing on the cable news channels or excluded from the nation’s leading newspapers? Have you noticed how these critics been attacked on social media, censored on FaceBook and removed from Twitter? Have you noticed the lengths to which the media has gone to eliminate any challenge to the “official narrative” and to denounce, ridicule or blacklist anyone who dares to offer a conflicting opinion?

Why? Why is the media preventing these experts from articulating their reservations to the American people directly?

This is very scary stuff. Agents of the state now identify critics of the Covid vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don’t agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe.

It’s way worse than that; if you give any serious thought at all to it, it’s nothing short of terrifying. Scary as it is, this one’s a must-read for sure.

The nice thing is that there are still those indomitable souls out there who hew to one of the most hallowed of American traditions: finding the workaround in defiance of overbearing authority. Aesop provides the skinny over at BCE’s place, with link.

FWIW, state of WY has a pdf where you can print all the official blank ‘Rona cards you want:

https://health.wyo.gov/2020-covid-19-shot-card-2b/

And a quick search on Google images reveals a treasure trove of lot numbers and actual stickers, stamps, and signatures, for the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines, for anyone who might want that sort of thing.

Just saying.

Thanks for that, my friend. A most helpful information dump, I’d say.

Days of future past

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Nightmares really DO come true.
Nearly a year ago, after COVID hit us hard, I spent my endless at-home time online, looking at whatever I could find on pandemics. I found one treatise on possible methods of dealing with a pandemic. One method was presented as a cautionary tale about how not to treat a pandemic — and naturally, it was a template for 2020’s treatment protocols minus (if I remember correctly) developing a vaccine. Although I believe that the article was 10 or 15 years old, I thought at the time that it had been looked at, and someone (Fauci, I’m guessing) said, “Oooh!  Let’s try all that!  What could go wrong?” Sadly, I didn’t save a copy, and I can’t find it now. I’m not making the same mistake again. Now that I have a platform to write about this pandemic, I am sharing what I read. A friend sent me a link to a 2010 document that the Rockefeller Foundation produced, called “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.” Take the time to look it over, please. It is based on a workshop on identifying “critical uncertainties” and exploring their potential effects on technology and international development. It specifically examines how mankind would adapt to unanticipated shocks over the next 15–20 years. The authors identify four possible reactions to an event. Two are most relevant: one is called “lockstep,” defined as “a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.” Another is “hack attack,” an “economically unstable and shock-prone world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous innovations emerge.” There are two more on page 16. For my purpose here, they are less relevant. Flip, if you would, please, to page 18. The lockstep scenario posits a pandemic. It is virulent and, in the model, kills mostly healthy adults, 8 million people globally in seven months. It describes society coming to a screeching halt, with industries like tourism, travel, local businesses, and offices all closed. In this scenario, the one country that fares best is China, which uses a seemingly admirable totalitarian approach, sealing its country, quarantining all citizens, and swiftly ending its pandemic. It then describes a world with national leaders imposing draconian rules and restrictions, from face masks to temperature checks. “Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified[.]…[L]eaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.”
Anybody who finds that at all surprising is either deep in denial or just an out and out knucklehead. It’s not a difficult or outlandish prediction to make, seeing as it how it’s perfectly in line with what we know about those “leaders” and their unslakable thirst for more power and control.
The scenario posits that at first, people willingly give up privacy and sovereignty to more paternalistic states, in exchange for greater safety. Independence of thought is stifled. In the narrative, it takes 13 years for citizens to weary of this control, which enables rampant cronyism and corruption.
It also provides space for tyranny’s consolidation, entrechment, and expansion, with the added bonus for the Power of a concomitant spread of intimidation and uncertain among an already-cowed populace, for whom the challenge of rising from their knees to do battle with their despotic masters will eventually become insuperable. From the start of the contrived Covid panic I maintained that no matter how threatening THEVIRUSTHEVIRUSTHEVIRUS!!!™ might or might not actually turn out to be, the disaster guaranteed to ensue should Americans docilely yield up their liberty and rights in response would be orders of magnitude worse. As Bill Barr said, there is no pandemic exception to the US Constitution. The past year’s wretched stream of encroachments and abuse provide a yardstick to gauge the depths of irrelevance into which that once-revered document has plummeted, tragic as that is. I repeat once more: if this way-oversold virus was really the extinction-level menace they told us it was, they wouldn’t have needed to repeatedly lie about the damned thing. There’s no way to conceal a disaster of such enormity; there would be no need to prompt or persuade. We’d all be surrounded by the reality of it, which would be inescapable and undeniable. The hospitals wouldn’t have been dangerously overtaxed; they’d have been wrecked, thenm abandoned—those that weren’t actually on fire, that is. I probably WOULD have had to don the humiliating Mask Of Submission—not so much to “do my part to fight this virus and BE SAAAAFE,” but to at least partially fend off the gruesome odor of decaying corpses stacked head-high in the street. We’d all be up to our eyeballs in 53-foot reefer trailers warehousing the overage of deaders; very few of us would have the slightest desire to socialize, closely congregate, or even risk venturing outside their own homes. HIDE such an event? It would be impossible to avoid it. But that’s exactly what they did do: they lied a year ago, they lied all summer long, and they’re still lying today. Full stop, end of story. It’s one reason why the only way they’ll ever get a single drop of their shady “vaccine” in me is to rassle my ass into stout full-body restraints beforehand. FREE ADVICE: better bring help. Admittedly I’m not as young and strong as once I was, but I’m still a reasonably feisty old sumbitch just the same. If it’s a fight you think you want, I promise I’ll do my utmost to give you one. MORE FREE ADVICE: it will NOT be fair. I don’t care how frightened you are, I don’t care how grave the goobermint tells us our situation is, I don’t care what scary numbers the CDC, Praetorian Media, ProPols, or anybody else gin up in order to stampede the herd: you must never, ever, EVER give up essential liberty to purchase temporary security. NEVER. Those who do…well, you know the rest of it. The dismaying spectacle of multitudinous “Americans” quietly allowing themselves to be frightened into lily-livered compliance with blatantly authoritarian edicts, all bereft of Constitutional authority, all based on fraudulent premises, pseudoscience, and naked propaganda, says one hell of a lot about their character, not a bit of it complimentary. Liberty is but a memory, the economy wrecked, uncountable millions of lives ruined—all of that and more a direct product of the shameful refusal to resist—to stand athwart tyranny and yell STOP! Is it too late for Americans to reclaim their rights, restore their dignity, and renew their sacred birthright? Only time will tell…and there’s precious little of it.

Gee, who coulda seen THIS coming?

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Who says there’s nothing funny about the Fauxvid19 Klown Kar Krash?

In the United Kingdom (U.K.) alone, mask waste is now exceeding five Eiffel Towers’ worth of rubbish every single year. And yet we have not heard a peep from the climate alarmists about how all that filthy plastic pollution is destroying the planet at a catastrophic rate.

Many people who wear a mask regularly are probably unaware of the fact that those disposable, made-in-China blue ones contain plastic materials that take 450 years to biodegrade. This means that for the next seven or eight generations, all those filthy masks will stew in the world’s water supplies and leach microplastics well into the future.

Since tens of millions of people wear these blue masks one after another, day after day – with no end in sight – there will effectively be untold billions of them littering the world’s oceans pretty much forever.

The environmental impact of this is virtually immeasurable. An analysis out of the U.K. determined that every single day in Great Britain alone, 66,000 tons of contaminated plastic waste is created from people wearing single-use masks.

Since many retail stores are still handing out single-use blue masks like candy on Halloween, people continue to take them, use them once, then throw them in the trash or on the ground on the way out to their car.

“How many will end up in oceans and landfills, contaminating water and food chains with micro-plastics?” Dr. Joondeph asks. “Will sea animals become entangled in elastic mask straps as they are with plastic six-pack rings?”

Another irony is the fact that fossil fuel-derived petroleum is required to make single-use blue masks. If the leftists pushing the man-made climate change conspiracy theory achieved their ultimate goal of completely transitioning to “renewable” energy, there would be no more raw material available to make these masks.

“The same ‘follow the science’ crowd is also quite certain that man made global warming will destroy the planet, now in nine short years according to climate scientist John Kerry,” Dr. Joondeph says. “Yet they are ignorantly or willfully paying no attention to the real environmental impact of the mountains of trash created over dubious COVID rules and mandates, such as masking up the entire population indefinitely.”

“Was it ever about the environment? Or the virus? Or simply a power grab by the left?”

For those of us who know the Left well, the question answers itself. Which, unfortunately, still leaves a depressing number out there who will be scratching their heads in befuddlement forever at such an insuperable mystery. There’s only ever one question anyone needs to bother with: for the Left, when is it NOT a simple power grab? Although really, that’s another one that easily answers itself.

Do, or do not

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Can a post be both dead on the money and piercingly astute—yet totally, cluelessly oblivious and ambivalent simultaneously?

Over the past several years, as the woke cultural revolution intensified, conservative conversations focused on the Second Amendment as the final defense against the tyranny that may result as progressives march toward authoritarian-style government. In response, right-leaning and independent-minded citizens have shown up at protests to exercise those Second Amendment rights by posturing with firearms and assorted tactical equipment. Regardless of the prudence involved in such actions, we are now treading on new ground.

Following the November 3 election and subsequent January 6 protest at the Capitol, the current regime set out to eliminate political opposition by casting them as “white supremacists” and “domestic extremists.” They intend to use the legal authorities, tactics, and techniques that were previously employed against Al Qaeda and ISIS against those ordinary Americans who refuse to accept the ruling elite’s political ideology.

Simply put, the most deadly counterterrorism machine from the world’s most powerful country is coming for you. You, ordinary American, are the target.

Good on ya, son. I’m with you a hunnerd and ten percent so far.

Now is not the time for impotent tough talk and posturing with weapons at protests.

Uhhh, wait, whut?!?

The Second Amendment, and all of our rights, are critical to a free society, and we should seek to understand how best to exercise and defend them from authoritarian factions of the ruling elite.

By…preemptively vowing we’ll never exercise them? Are you seriously proposing that patriots should effectively disarm themselves by placing use of the 2A for the purpose it was explicitly and specifically intended off-limits and out of bounds? If you really, truly consider the 2A to be as “critical” as all that, there would be no lengths to which a patriot wouldn’t go to defend it—much less restore it. Which is where we all are now, frankly.

This is the time to get smart on how to counter this assault on liberty and avoid falling into the traps the ruling elite are setting for traditional America.

Fair enough, especially your point on the need to be extremely wary of the traps and other provocative skullduggery already deployed by The Enemy. Just the same, I question how effective any attempt to “counter this assault on liberty” is likely to prove if our very first step is to limit those attempts to strictly rhetorical, political, or nonviolent ones—particularly when The Enemy has repeatedly made plain that he recognizes no such restraints on his own actions.

But it ain’t too hard to make a pretty solid guess. When literal, intentional, and unrestrained “assault” is met with a reflexive demonstration that the response will be nothing of the sort, that display of weakness and lack of self-respect is the practical equivalent of assuring The Enemy that he has already won. However lofty or high-minded you think your intentions to be, by openly renouncing all notion of responding to authoritarian violence unhesitatingly and overwhelmingly—using any and every tool in the box—you have all but sworn fealty to your new masters and guaranteed your own subjugation.

No offense and all, but I’m afraid that just doesn’t work for me. This next part I’m okay with. Mostly.

The U.S. military uses a concept called “defense-in-depth” as its primary defensive strategy. Defense-in-depth is a layered, multi-domain approach that uses numerous defensive elements designed to delay and diffuse the advance of an attacker. Rather than relying on a single, strong defensive line, the defender wears down the enemy, causing casualties while deliberately yielding space. Once the enemy has lost momentum and is under stress, the defender mounts a decisive counterattack to destroy the enemy or drive them back to their original lines.

This strategy also works in the political world and is relevant to our current situation. An effective political defense-in-depth strategy should include all mechanisms of political action to wear down the attack on our republic, its culture, and the Constitution. The term political action isn’t just limited to casting a vote or sending money to a political party. Effective political actions include protests, general strikes, walk-outs, sick-outs, civil disobedience, lawfare, and nullification.

The Polish Solidarity movement used many of these same political actions to bring down a socialist government at the height of the Cold War without firing a shot, despite having to outmaneuver rigged elections and a Soviet-style corrupt bureaucracy.

Now might be a good time to remind everyone of my maxim that revolution and/or civil war are not events, but processes. Although the current conflict is rapidly escalating, we’re still in early innings here. Absent some totally unlooked-for, out-of-left-field igniting of the conflagration, the time is not yet ripe for violent resistance, or so it seems to me. But every passing day—and each successive outrage against America That Was—brings us closer.

Granted, the Solidarity example could well be the best one to follow at this stage of the game; as I’ve said, no nonviolent card should be left unplayed, for all sorts of perfectly good reasons. Regardless of whether the Solidarity gambit is or isn’t tried, though, I can’t quite see preemptively forswearing the 2A Solution doing any good. I really do hate to come off as if I’m ragging on a former Marine here. It’s a good article with plenty therein to make it worth a read (aside from the one thing I zeroed in on for this rant) and I do recommend it.

In the end, though, I can only see this thing the one way. And what it looks like to me is this:

The first three of the Four Boxes Of Liberty have failed us utterly; there is simply no longer any room left for productive discussion about that. To publicly vow that the Fourth Box will be forever left unopened, no matter what, is to foolishly hand The Enemy a tremendous advantage—one he will not hesitate to make fullest use of. The historical record provides more than adequate proof: an absolute, total commitment to victory at any cost will trump flinching, hesitation, and half-measures Every. Single. Time.

The secession dustup continues

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TL responds to Aesop, Aesop responds back, and Bracken wades in as well:

Aesop gets the better of the debate, for sure.
But I’m not so sure if after the “cleansing” we wind up with 50 states under the old Constitution.
Nobody can predict how CW2 might go, but extrapolating something like Weimar X Yugoslavia X Rwanda is the best I can do.
What emerges on the other side of that is probably not another George Washington uniting the country again.
A breakup seems likely, once the regional warlords have subdued their collections of states.
I could see New England and the Rust Belt under some socialist dictator, the SW as “New Aztlan” run by the last cartel boss standing, and so on.
I could even see West Coast governors inviting in ChiCom “peacekeepers” to restore order and get the grid running again. ChiCom peacekeepers who would never go home.
If anybody’s crystal ball is less cloudy than mine, your predictions are probably more likely to come to pass.

Helluva thing about those proverbial Interesting Times we’re cursed to live in: from within them, one’s vision tends to be cloudy, distorted, and confusing, reducing attempts at prediction to little more than guesswork.

For my own part (not that anybody asked, mind) I remain convinced that secession, most likely nullification as well, can only ever be an entertaining topic for speculative after-dinner debate over brandy and cigars, if even that much. As a practical, real-world eventuality it is chimerical, a phantasmagorical will o’ the wisp that only serves to distract from the real problem we face, the fundamental, rock-bottom issue that must sooner or later be decided. I’ve written numerous times over the years about this problem, which Aesop identifies thusly:

Nobody serious is seriously considering secession. It’s like talking about winning the next election. They’re considering insurgency, revolution, and overthrow. I don’t want a piece of what used to be known as the U.S. of A.

For about the tenth time I’ve said it and posted it here:

I am so enamored of the republic that was, that I’ll not willingly part with a square foot of it to the communists. I want the whole damned thing back. Whether any of them survive the transition is a matter to me ranging from complete indifference, to active revulsion at the thought.

That isn’t secession. It’s cleansing.

France didn’t secede from Nazi Germany. America didn’t secede from Britain. And no place is seceding from the U.S. They’ll either win their independence, again, or roll over, give it all up, and wind up in the gulags featured in every communist state since ever. There’s no third option. And there won’t be any safe space unless it’s called Everything, because the other side has proven beyond all doubt that the one thing of which they are wholly incapable is to leave everyone else alone. Couldn’t do it in Korea. Couldn’t do it in Vietnam. And only brinksmanship and the threat of global thermonuclear war stopped it in Germany. Communists, like muslims, are the world’s original pugnacious busybodies, and the only successful remedy is removal in toto.

Amen. Broken-record time: Liberty and tyranny can NOT peaceably coexist. Ditto with free people and Communists. One of these things is not only not like the other; one of these things eternally seeks to strangle the other—to choke it out of existence, to eradicate it entirely. And that we simply cannot have. Which, all reverence for the First Amendment notwithstanding, means but one thing. Yet another of Mike’s Iron Laws, in the form of a Biblical rejiggering: Thou shalt not suffer a Communist to live. The tension between the absolutes represented by the idea of freedom of speech and thought and the necessity of seeing to it that our principles are not allowed to be used as the means of our own destruction is beyond ironic. But paradox is the way of things on this poor planet.

So be it, then. If it’s war to the knife they want, then it’s war to the knife they should damned well get. It’s impossible not to hear the creak and groan of A House Divided Against Itself, on its way to doing that thing such houses must inevitably do:

The Schumer-Pelosi gang looks exorbitantly proud of their legislative coup in the stim bill (and Mitch McConnell’s gang, too, which had to play along, or get tagged and cancelled as Dr. Seuss-like creatures of Grinchified parsimony). Obtuse, desperate, and stupid as these grandstanding politicians are, they all overlook the workings of entropy in these foolish expedients to keep the plates spinning in this performance-art economy. Namely: disorder. Everything is groaning and cracking out there.

One-time $1,400 handouts and even regular $300 unemployment subsidies won’t pay the mortgages or feed families very long, and every day there are fewer families bringing in anything close to that mythical $150,000. For many, it’s more like… nothing. The one-time bailouts of recklessly insolvent city and state governments and pension funds will only postpone their collapse. The varying guaranteed basic income schemes, enhanced child credits, advances on tax refunds, and other gimmicks would turn the former working class into sub-lumpenproles with nothing to occupy them but crime and vice. In fact, we already have a sizable underclass demonstrating exactly what you’ll get from enlarging the social group dependent on government support.

The only other question for now is when do the different population groups in this land explode in violence? The group loosely bundled as “Red” is angry enough with the ongoing insults of Wokery, failed rule-of-law, and abridgments of basic constitutional rights. The states where they dominate are likely to resist any more fiats by the federal government, like the imminent attempt to confiscate firearms. The “Blue” auxiliary armies are beyond their creators’ control. Antifa will be ready to rock-and-roll in the streets with good weather because so many young people have absolutely no prospects to thrive in the collapsing economy, and the streets have become their social space, with so little money for lattes and beers. And BLM need look no further than the Derek Chauvin trial in Minnesota, starting today, for an excuse to resume its characteristic activities.

Does anyone seriously believe that the husk of Joe Biden will remain in office more than another few weeks? It’s obvious that he doesn’t have the mental mojo to work an authentic press conference, and surely not the customary address to a joint session of Congress. Even the news media may seek to know who is actually in charge of the executive branch before much longer. Pay close attention to events unspooling. Get ready for trouble. It’s coming every which way, from money to public order to rollicking spring weather.

It is. So here we all are: the lines drawn, the final pleas for redress issued, the warning implicit with those pleas arrogantly, contemptuously spurned by those who would enslave all free Americans—ie, those who would have profited most by paying more careful attention. The stage is set. All that’s left now, for both sides, is the breathless pause before the curtain rises.

The play’s the thing. Although Hamlet meant something else entirely by them, his words fit this context well enough too.

VOTE SECEDE HARDERER!

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Fond as I am of at least some of those calling for it, secession is a non-starter. Big fat caveat: I’ve already declared myself all in for the nullification idea, and I still feel that way. But that doesn’t mean I have high hopes that it will work. Ultimately, the roadblock obstructing secession is simple: FederalGovCo absitively, posolutely WILL NOT let it happen without a fight. Ask somebody from the Confederate States of Americans how it worked out last time around. I see no reason to think that FederalGovCo’s position towards secession has mellowed; the roadblock still stands, as impassable as it ever was.

With nullification the same roadblock looms, but it is at least conceivable that a way could be found for the several states to pull it off without sparking a violent response. It’s a remote possibility to be sure, but a possibility nonetheless. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in it, but it does exist.

Secession, though? Not a chance.

Secede where? From whom?

You live in a purple state, in a purple country, and in which no legitimate election can ever be expected from now on. Times 50 states.

You want to oppose the illegitimate government, product of a wholly fraudulent election?

Bravo. So do I, and so do millions more.

But this isn’t 1861, and you have no safe space to retreat to where your values hold sway, nor where you are and will be in the majority, nor will such ever be left alone by the other side. They never have, they never will, and they don’t care about the inevitable consequence of that course of action.

Ask Georgians how that plan worked out for them in January.

Secession is a myth, based on a delusion. The idea is laughably ridiculous, doubly so given how it worked out the last time it was attempted.

Aesop is specifically flensing TL Davis’s mention of the secession fantasy in his most recent piece, but seems to me that maybe TL isn’t necessarily all that dreamy-eyed and damp about its chances for success himself. To wit:

The question of secession arises simply because there is no other resort. It is not something arrived at easily and it doesn’t solve all problems. There is still a virulent strain of communism running through all of our institutions that would have to be dealt with, many of which are easily corrected if the Constitution were adhered to, something each state can enforce individually, even without secession, but where is the will to do that?

People who will not carry their torches and pitchforks to their state capitols will not force those political bodies to defend their rights. Trust me, I am with the resistance. I will stand with any who stand with me. It is now, or never.

YMMV, as always, but that sounds less to me like 1) enthusiastic endorsement from a naive fever-dreamer of a course of action he is confident will resolve our conundrum satisfactorily, and more like B) a patriot casting desperately about for an option, ANY option, that might possibly lead to a relatively peaceful way out of this. Unfortunately for all red-blooded Americans, the questions TL poses next all have the same answer.

If it is to be a peaceful resistance, let me know which road to take that leads us toward faithful public servants. Which road leads to undeniable and unmodified rights? Which road leads to fiscally responsible government? Which road leads to quality education for our children? Which road leads to reliable power supply and energy independence? Which road leads to unencumbered commerce? Which road leads to more employment? Which road leads to prosperity? Which road leads to a secure border? Which road leads to a military focused on defense of the nation?

Difficult questions, although from this side of the Great Divide they’re more likely to be viewed as basic, elementary—the stuff of grade-school civics and history classes, I mean c’mon DUH. A huge complexifying factor in treating such questions as something other than idle woolgathering, with little real-world relevance, is that The Enemy has no desire whatsoever to travel those roads in the first place. To them, not one of the destinations suggested by TL is appealing. I doubt you’d even been able to get them into the car at all, without either some elaborate trickery or a physical struggle.

To boil it down, then, TL is seeking a route to peaceful coexistence, as a free and properly-governed people, with Communists. Alas, no such route exists, or ever really has. Due to the nature of both Communism and its adherents, no such route CAN exist. We’re stalled at a dead-end, and Aesop knows there’s only one way out.

This isn’t going to be won at ballot boxes, protests, strongly-worded letters, nor brilliant legal opinions.

No one you’re talking to in those forums cares.

Write that on your hand, lest ye forget.

This is going to be a cage match to the death, and it isn’t over until there’s only one side left standing. And that’s true whether you fight, or surrender. All giving up changes is how fast you get on the boxcars.

And if you choose to fight, it’s going to be fought house to house, floor to floor, and in some families, room to room. In every town and city in every state. Some will be easier than others, but no place is 100% anything. For now.

When that penny drops, and the range goes hot in both directions, you’ll be at the starting line.

The finish line is  a long, long way off, even at that point.

But at least people will be in the right event.

S’truth. And, as I keep saying, nobody has to like it. I most certainly don’t. Personally, I would much prefer to live out my remaining days in a nation NOT riven by strife, deprivation, and calamity—grubbing for meager sustenance to fend off starvation; constantly sidestepping a ruthlessly despotic government as best I can; completely surrounded by bleating nitwits accepting of their own subjugation, in blissful ignorance of their ignominy.

I had hoped to die gently in my sleep, my loved ones close at hand to see me on my way. But NOOOOOO. LIKE it? RUFKM?!? Man, I am too old for this shit.

Trust me, I absolutely HATE that this conflict has been forced upon on us. But forced upon us it has been. We all knew this day would come. Now that it has, facts must be squarely and honestly faced. There are tough choices to be made. What do I truly, deeply believe in? Am I willing to fight for my beliefs—to die in defense of them, if I must? What is my duty—to myself, to my family, to my neighbor, to my country? What does duty, what does honor, require of me? When should I act, how will I know the time is right to act, and what actions should I take?

War is coming. It won’t be pretty, or easy, or brief. Victory for Truth, Justice, and the American Way is by no means assured. It is entirely possible (if not damned likely) that it will not end well, for anybody.

Gird your loins.

Is NOTHING sacred?

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Last night’s blasphemy was the persecution of Pooh. Tonight another outrage has been committed, this time against Sinatra’s hallowed old standard.

With apologies to John Kander and Fred Erb, the composer and lyricist respectively of Sinatra’s classic, New York, New York. It is time to update that tune:

Start spreading the news, they’re leaving en masse
Don’t want to live in it: New York, New York
This U Haul Truck rental, is pricey as hell
But it will get me out of it: New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city without a mask,
Go out on the town and not have to ask.
The big city blues, are melting away
I’ll make a brand new start, away from New York
Can’t stand the crime and fear, I want anywhere but here
Good bye to you, New York, New York

Okay, okay, I admit that’s pretty funny, actually. The mirth heightens still further, blossoming uproariously with the report that follows:

Yes kids, the Big Apple is rotten to the core and folks are abandoning it–at least those with the case to bail out. But this phenomena is not confined to New York City, which has been brutalized by the inept, murderous rule of Governor Cuomo Bin Lyin and Mayor Bill “the Commie” DeBlasio. Other major cities, such as San Francisco, are also seeing residents flee liked panicked passengers on the Titanic frantic to grab the nearest lifeboat.

San Francisco saw an exodus of residents during the coronavirus pandemic, with the net number of exits increasing 649% in 2020, according to a new report published by the California Policy Lab….Cori Sarno Villacres talks on Oct. 21, 2020, about how she and her family didn’t feel comfortable or safe in California — even feeling bullied for their political preferences. They left their life in Sacramento last April to start anew in Idaho.

As a rule, my own inclination is to view that with an extremely jaundiced eye—if only thanks to the “fundamental transformation” I’ve personally seen wrought on my own hometown by the Snowbird influx. But Johnson says there’s reason for optimism:

Will the arrival of northerners from deep blue cities be accompanied by the same stupid political crap that ruined New York City and San Francisco. Possible but I doubt it.

What I am seeing in Florida reminds me of the flood of migrants from the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states when they were under the Communist thumb. Those migrants wanted to eschew the politics that were practiced in their former authoritarian homes. I took a pistol class with a couple recently arrived from San Francisco. I asked the demur 70 year old Grandmother why she and her husband left San Francisco. He reply was swift and succinct (and I’m quoting verbatim): “IT’S A SHIT-HOLE.

She went on to comment that she and her husband were taking the pistol class before purchasing a firearm to defend their new home. She loved the freedom of Florida.

Bad politics and bad policies have consequences. People in the United States still have the freedom of movement and are voting now with their feet. America is being realigned and I suspect the Democrat failure in the major cities will become more evident, not less. And the success of sane leaders like Ron DeSantis will remind voters why it is vital to cast a ballot for someone dedicated to upholding the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, I dunno, Larry; we’ll find out whether the refugees fleeing the urban shitlib shitrapies have learned anything soon enough, I guess. Whatever the case may be on that, nice work on the New York, New York revamp there, buddy.

Nothing new under the sun

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Give ’em an inch, and next thing you know you’ve been purged.

Dr. Seuss has been cancelled. Some of his work has been deemed racist, and we can’t have that. On Tuesday, the entity that oversees the estate of Theodor Seuss Geisel announced it would no longer publish six of Geisel’s books because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

There’s not much point in quibbling over whether these and other such illustrations in the condemned Dr. Seuss books are in fact racist or bigoted, or whether Geisel held racist or xenophobic views. By all accounts he was a liberal-minded and tolerant man who hated Nazis and, as a political cartoonist, mocked the antisemitism that was all-too-common in America during World War II.

But context and nuance don’t factor into the inexorable logic of the woke left, which flattens and refashions the past into a weapon for the culture wars of the present. What’s important to understand is that this isn’t simply about banning six Dr. Seuss books. All of Geisel’s work is, in the judgment of left-wing academia, an exercise in “White supremacy, paternalism, conformity, and assimilation.” It might be easy for conservatives to laugh that off as nonsense, but they shouldn’t, because this isn’t really even about Geisel.

That’s always the way of it. Though it might appear otherwise at first, they’re always aiming at bigger targets, working a broader, more comprehensive plan.

To grasp how a man known as much for his messages of tolerance as for his artistic genius could be canceled for racism, you have to understand what’s actually happening here. The left’s war on the past, on long-dead authors like Geisel, isn’t really about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about who gets to rule, and under what terms.

There’s a predictable pattern to what we’re seeing now. It’s predictable because it has happened before in much the same way it’s happening now. During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, the Chinese Communist Party, at the direction of Mao Zedong, called for the destruction of the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. All of these stood in the way of Mao’s socialist ideology, so they had to be destroyed.

Children and students were encouraged by the communist government to inform on their parents and elders, to shame and condemn them in public. The guilty were forced to recant in “struggle sessions,” during which they were mocked and humiliated, sometimes tortured, sometimes murdered. Before it was over, millions were dead.

We’re obviously not there yet, but the woke revolutionaries who now run our elite institutions and exert outsized influence in the corridors of power are following this same pattern.

Granted, we aren’t there…yet. But we’re a hell of a lot closer than we ought to be, and drawing closer every day.

The people behind the statue-toppling, the digital book burnings, and the street violence won’t stop until all three of these things—history, ideas, and dissidents—have been destroyed. These are all impediments to their cultural revolution, and they mean to eliminate them.

So forget about Dr. Seuss. Forget about the statues and the books. Those things are just the beginning. It could easily get much worse. The woke revolutionaries of the left can’t be bargained with or appeased. They believe this is a zero-sum game, that one side will win and one side will lose. And they’re right.

Indeed they are. All liberty-minded Americans need to figure that out, with a quickness. Because there are a thousand ways this truly existential struggle might be lost, and only way to win it. This New Zealander gets off on the right foot with that, but quickly wanders WAY off course.

Though I’m a New Zealander, I know America and its people well. I’ve travelled to every state in the Lower 48 and have addressed more than 500 audiences across this amazing nation. My message has always been the same: The United States is heading toward a brutally tyrannical socialist revolution—and if America goes down, every free country follows.

Well, now it’s here, people, unfolding before our very eyes.

So, what can be done? Can the Republic be saved? Honestly, I don’t know.

However, I can suggest some steps that would at least give this country a fighting chance.

1. Face Reality
Millions of Americans are still in complete denial. Many think the military is secretly in control—that it’s only a matter of time until justice is done and President Donald Trump is restored. There’s a “secret plan”—just “have faith.” The truth is that Trump was outmaneuvered by an alliance of communists, globalists, and even traitors in his own party. The “deep state” is now almost fully in control.
Trump isn’t coming back into office any time before 2024—if we still have meaningful elections by then.

We’re undergoing a Marxist-Leninist revolution driven by China—right now, in real time.

The military can’t save us, nor can Trump. On the contrary, it’s up to patriots to protect Trump and the Armed Services from unrelenting Democrat/communist attacks.

When enough Americans face the unpleasant truth, then, and only then, can we talk about hope.

No argument here. And now we go a-wandering off into the weeds, wherein Mr Loudon decides to completely turn his back on Step One for some strange reason.

2. Stop All Violent Rhetoric
Violence will not save America. The harsh reality is that President Barack Obama had eight years to replace patriotic generals with left-leaning political appointees. He did a great job. If violence breaks out (God forbid) the military will stand with the government, not the insurgents.

Beware anyone inciting violence online, at a public gathering, or in a private meeting. Distance yourself fast. They will be at best hopelessly naive, at worst government provocateurs.

The left is praying for “right wing” violence. It will give them an excuse for a massive crackdown on patriotic Americans.

Uh huh. As if that wasn’t happening already.

Having said that, the Second Amendment must be preserved all costs.

For what, pray tell?

An armed populace is at least some check on tyranny,

How so, since you already ruled out even “violent rhetoric”? Having foresworn violence altogether, what’s that “armed populace” supposed to do—wave their guns menacingly at their oppressors? Read the Second Amendment to them in a commanding voice? How much of a “check on tyranny” do you really think that amounts to?

even if useless in the face of biological warfare or nuclear attack. Americans should keep their guns and work every day to ensure they never have to use them against their own people.

Sorry if I’m bursting any bubbles here (non-violently!!), but the only sure-fire way of ensuring that is by A) maintaining an absolute, one-hundred-percent-unwavering commitment to liberty and Constitutional principle, and B) abolishing any possibility of doubt in anyone’s mind about the willingness to use those guns for their intended purpose, if regretfully, should ever-creeping tyranny make it necessary. For anyone unclear on what that “intended purpose” might be, do feel free to explore America history circa 1775-79, when it was explicitly and comprehensively spelled out—in writing—by the Founding Fathers.

Follows, some piffle about election reform, boycotts, and other things, which I won’t bother with right now beyond commending Step 1 above to the author’s closer attention. Some of his suggestions actually could be worthwhile; some of them are almost certainly wastes of time and effort. I still do like the nullification idea myself, although the odds of it proving sufficient to avert bloody conflict and restore some semblance of proper governance do seem kinda long. As far as I can determine, historical precedent so far supports “you can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out” as immutable Truth, an Iron Law.

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m bashing Loudon, really I don’t. The man is certainly no dummy, and his heart is in the right place. That said, though, we’re brought right back around to the most essential component, the foundation on which the house of liberty stands: the willingness, the resolve, the steel to at least credibly proclaim that the unalienable right to resist tyranny by any and all effective means—emphatically including those codified in the 2A—will NEVER be off the table. Without that all else is moot; the foundation must crumble, and the house of liberty fall.

Talking turkey

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Bless our esteemed chum Aesop’s coal-black heart, sez I. That boy still hasn’t learned to pull any punches, and seems commendably disinterested in trying to learn how.

I’ve posted links to military manuals any half-dozen times for a reason, dammit, and it isn’t nostalgia.

Most of you (95%, by all polling data, though the blog stats here may skew a wee bit higher) never got any closer to a military formation than lining up outside for phys ed classes in school. And that was great in a free country but not so much for a burgeoning banana republic, with all the trimmings, which is what we are, right this minute.

So let’s talk turkey:

There are three undeniable truths operating right now in America.

I. Elections are pointless, worthless, and futile.
If you didn’t get that memo despite what happened in November, and again in GA in January, sorry to break it to you, but it’s nevertheless gospel truth.

Anyone yakking about “We’ll get ’em next time!”, “Vote Harder!”, or any variation on “MOAR Elections!” is an unredeemed delusional jackass suffering a psychotic break from reality. They should be placed in a room in a quiet glen, featuring soft music, soft lighting, soft food, and soft walls. They’re fucking nuts. Don’t waste any further breath on them until they wake up, if ever.

TINVOWOOT: There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This.

Learn it, Live it, Love it.

Should you still pull a lever ever again? Hell yes. Enjoy whatever simulacrum of freedom you can, and maximize the time and minimize the gradient of the decline, if such be within your power. Primary out RINOs. Use it as a weed-out for whom to ever listen to, and whom to discount, forever. And a platform to shitpost, meme, rabblerouse, and generally send raspberries at TPTB, while you can. But minimize the time, energy, and funds you spend waste on electoral activities going forward, knowing the entire process is as fake as TV News and pro wrestling.

The other two are just as undeniable as the first, and Aesop lays ’em down just as straightforwardly, unabashedly, and plainspokenly as he did Numero Uno, with nary a flinch to be discerned throughout. After that, a compendium of recommended next steps, the aggregate of which definitely meets all qualifications for what military types of yore used to refer to as a Real No-Shitter. It ought to be required reading for anyone given to A) hopeful and/or naive overconfidence; B) obstreperous blowhardery; or C) half-baked or downright ign’ernt online strategerizing. The kind of unsupported assumptions, egotism, and lack of either practicality or any acquaintance with harsh reality that occlude the vision of people like this has landed way more functional, stable societies than this one deep in the soup, way more than just once.

Mega-megadittoes

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Bill says it’s the finest Rush memorial he’s seen yet, and he ain’t wrong about that.

If you’re a showman – and Rush was that above all else – they say that it’s best to go out on top. And he did, just at the moment when it became apparent that the approach to politics that he championed his whole life won’t be enough to save us; that superior arguments won’t win the day and that we’re not going to vote our way out of this. That he left the stage at precisely the right point so it could honestly be said that he never became irrelevant is perhaps the one small consolation that can be found within this. The future will always be able to look back on him and say: “He was a man of his time”. Yes, his time has passed, as it does for all men. But if we are to look back now and evaluate what he meant, it can only fairly be in the context of those times.

A common sentiment heard from callers in the early days of Rush’s show was that before they found him, they had no idea that anyone out there thought the same way they did. This shows how powerful the left’s stranglehold on public discourse was back then, and the importance of his having singlehandedly broken it. Causing one’s enemy to feel isolated, alone, and out-of-step with the society around them is a powerful weapon of demoralization, and breaking through that to offer a sense of community, even if only through the airwaves, is massively empowering. Beyond this, Rush brought a sense of fun to being on the right, perhaps for the first time ever. He mocked liberals at a time when it was assumed by all that this was a tool to which liberals alone had exclusive rights. He laughed at them, and his audience laughed along with him. This is a deeply underestimated strategy – people like to laugh; they like to have fun. It is something that the left has forgotten in the age of the dour, hectoring SJW. It is something that, other than at the height of the Meme Era that surrounded Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, the modern right forgets all too often as well. But it should never be overlooked, and very much of Rush’s success and his political and cultural impact relied on the fact that he didn’t. Perhaps most importantly, he never backed down from his beliefs; he never seemed ashamed of them or felt the need to qualify them with endless disclaimers explaining how he was really a good person despite them. Simply being confident and proud in those beliefs inspired millions of others to do the same.

Of course, he couldn’t ever have gone with us as far as it now seems that we’ll need to go. But this was not a symptom of any lack of courage; it was only a reflection of the hold that the America in which he was born had on him, and of how far we have fallen from it in just one lifetime. To the end, Rush was a genuine “Shining City on a Hill” believer; the kind that not only thought that America was unreservedly good at its core, but that its empire was the only thing keeping the world from falling into tyranny and chaos. That’s a belief that most of us on this end of the right, if we ever held it at all, gave up on around 2006, but that seemed manifestly true for someone who grew up in a stable, prosperous America in the years directly following World War II, and whose only frame of reference was the comparison to Nazism or Communism. Even his support for the disastrous wars of the Bush era, which continued long after it was obvious that they had been a terrible mistake (this was the only point at which I found his show unlistenable, and had to take some time away from it) were based in an unshakable faith that the American way of life was the best in the world, and that everyone would want to live that way if they were only given a chance to. There is a temptation for a man of today’s Dissident Right to sneer at this, and in a 21st century context, it might be justified, but it also must be remembered that the America that Rush had in mind was eternally a vision of the 1954 of his youth; a better place that you and I have never had the privilege to see. Had we seen it for ourselves, we might find it just as hard to let go of as he did.

Rush could understand that his country wasn’t what it used to be, but couldn’t allow himself to believe that it would never again be what it had once been. That’s a dream that can only die hard; one that anyone would hold onto for as long as they could. It only really became undeniable that it was gone for good in the very closing moments of his life, and it is perhaps for the best that he essentially died with it. In a way, I wish he hadn’t been here to see the past few months, and in a way, I’m happy he won’t be here to see what comes next. It would break his heart. It breaks mine. I would love to have personally seen the Shining City that he saw, and would love to believe that it can be restored someday. But just as he was a man of a time that I never could live in, I must be a man of a time that he cannot live in, and I must face its realities.

A guaranteed stinkeroo of a task for sure, as unpleasant as the realities of this time and place most definitely are. All in all, I’d say Rush got out when the gettin’ was still good, and was lucky he did too.

Yet another alarm klaxon, klaxoning

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An intriguing look at the Texas disaster, from the inside.

How would your family, and a hundred thousand other families, like to be stuck in your cars for days at minus 16 degrees?

The death toll would be huge.  It almost happened in New England in 1989.

And in Texas this week.

I was part of the 1989 Freeze and have some hopefully interesting insights.

In 1989, the weather just before Christmas was terrible.  Cold temperature records were set from Texas to New England.

That year, I was responsible for a midcontinent gas gathering system that normally produced about 500 million cubic feet (MMCFD) of natural gas a day.  That could supply up to 2 million New England homes.  During the 1989 Freeze, we produced 30 MMCFD, roughly a 95% decline.  Similar results were happening throughout the Oil Patch.  Supply cratered.

Meanwhile, demand for natural gas was exploding, almost literally (more on that below).  While the midcontinent temperatures were low enough to freeze gas wells, New England had dangerous arctic temperatures of minus 16 degrees.  This created huge natural gas demand for home heating in a major New England town.

The city ultimately weathered that crisis through luck.

Now that we’ve established this guy’s credentials, on to the juicy stuff.

Your city gas company takes gas from high-pressure interstate and intrastate gas pipelines. The gas then moves to customers through its lower-pressured gas distribution pipes. The gas pressure decrease as it as moves to the customers. Normally the utilities’ inlet gas pressure is more than enough for them to supply gas safely.

With 1989 gas production down dramatically and demand exploding, the high-pressure gas system could not supply enough gas to meet demand. This resulted in decreasing line pressures in the high-pressure supply system, lowering the gas utilities’ inlet gas pressure.

The utility’s inlet pressures were so low, and dropping, that soon the distribution system pressures would be below atmospheric pressure. Air could then flow into the gas pipelines. Typically, back-flow valves stop that. Since many of the furnaces were old and converted from prior fuels (oil, coal), proper valving was a big problem.

Oxygen in natural pipelines is incredibly dangerous. Whole city blocks could be destroyed in an air/gas explosion.

To maintain safe gas pressures, the operators wanted to shed load with localized gas shutoffs. Since all non-critical gas loads had already been shutoff, only critical loads were left. This included houses and hospitals. To save the gas grid, the operators had to cutoff gas to a very large number of customers.

Whose gas to shut off?

Scary stuff, this is, and absolutely essential reading. Don’t worry, though; now that Pretend pResident Bai-Ding has given complete access to all aspects of the decrepit and barely-functional US power infrastructure to his CCP handlers and officially made it a wholly-owned subsidiary of ChiCom Inc just like he personally is, I’ll sure our new overlords will be able staighten out this mess for us straightaway.

Good. And. HARD

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Like so many things these days, it’s much, much worse than anybody thought.

NEW YORK – A new report from the NYC Hospitality Alliance shows the extreme financial problems restaurants in New York City are facing, as 92% of the city’s restaurants could not afford to pay their rent in December.

92%?!? HO. LEE. KERRAP. Stick a fork in New York, New York, people, because it is DONE. Ain’t gonna be no reviving the City That Never Sleeps after this self-inflicted catastrophe; it ain’t just sleeping, it’s comatose.

The number has steadily worsened throughout the pandemic, from 80% of restaurants in June 2020 not being able to pay rent.

As every good NYC Leftard knows, the only way to recover from socialist tyranny is with more socialist tyranny. Yep, THAT ought to do it, you betcher. Then, when that fails—UNEXPECTEDLY!!™—you can flee the nest you fouled for greener, freer climes and immediately resume voting for the exact same stupid shit that doomed your previous home.

Idiots.

Cometh, the Mark-1 Mod-0 horsepuckey everybody seems to enjoy spewing nowadays:

“We’re nearly a year into the public health and economic crisis that has decimated New York City’s restaurants, bars, and nightlife venues,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance.

92% ain’t hardly “decimated,” bubba. The situation demands stronger words to describe it, something more along the lines of denuded, depopulated, or demolished. Less alliterative but more accurate, maybe—since this was done intentionally, as a ploy to ensure Trump got the bum’s rush—would be exterminated.

“While the reopening of highly regulated indoor dining is welcome news, we need to safely increase occupancy to 50% as soon as possible, and we urgently need robust and comprehensive financial relief from the federal government. We will continue to work with Senator and Majority Leader Schumer to ensure that the $25 billion restaurant industry recovery fund is passed as part of the Biden administration’s emergency relief plan, and advocate for the enactment of the RESTAURANTS Act to save as many local eating and drinking spots and jobs as possible.”

We don’t have a “health crisis,” and we never did. Your city’s economy was destroyed by two things: (1) the self-serving lies of power-hungry despots; and (2) your panicky willingness to not only put up with it, but cheer it on and beg for more; call it Sheepleism, to coin a new term. Mencken’s Prophecy is in full effect, and New Yorkers are getting exactly what they voted for—no more, no less.

Such a shame; NYC was unique and wonderful not all that long ago, and a hell of a lot of fun. Those days are over now, more’s the pity. Expect it to resemble a more dangerous and unpleasant version of Thunderdome before too very long, then collapse into a certain Kurt Russell classic after that.

(Via Bill)

It’s complicated

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Wilder does an in-depth examination of the Trouble with Texas, contending that it ain’t all about the windmills.

When we lived in Houston, I was shocked at the really poor design of the homes – sure they were fine for 95°F (2°C) and 95% humidity, but the house we lived in (and many I had seen when we were looking for a home to buy) had bare copper pipe running on the outside of the house.  The spigots outside were so poorly insulated that just walking by them with a decently cold beer would cause them to freeze and split.

And that’s just one problem.

As I’ve said before of John, it’s hard to excerpt his stuff. He deftly covers a lot of ground and is a damned good writer to boot, which makes it kinda tricky to limit yourself to mere snippets in a fashion that gets the point across. So go read the rest. Yes, there’s a bikini involved, should anybody require another reason.

Which isn’t to suggest that the Green Energy con isn’t playing a significant role in this (ahem!) Man-Caused Disaster, mind. Buck Throckmorton reminds us that things are tough all over.

Of course, once you get north of Texas, it’s even colder. Much of the central plains is dealing with temperatures below zero. They are rationing power too.

A snapshot of Midwest electricity production on February 17 shows that 55% is coming from coal while less than 3% is coming from “clean” wind and solar. The sun isn’t shining and the windmills aren’t turning. Yet our current ruling class is promising to take that coal down to 0% and replace it with wind and solar. Our country would be a frozen killing field if that plan were in place now.

Considering the Left’s professed predilection for massive population reduction in relief of poor overtaxed Gaia, plus their lunatic insistence on the installment of Communist tyranny worldwide, it’s easy to see that a frozen killing field IS the plan. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn.

We are ruled by a deluded class of fools who are no longer satisfied to use the climate hoax to limit our liberty and economic freedom. They are now freezing ordinary Americans to death. We need better leaders.

Better? Hell, I’d gladly settle for “not evil” at this point. Frighteningly enough, we haven’t even gotten to the REALLY bad news yet.

Texas’s Power Grid Disaster Is Only The Beginning
The mess with the Texas power grid is only the beginning. In the years to come, American infrastructure will fail more and more often, as America becomes less capable of maintaining the core elements of a First World country.

Why would America become less First World? That’s a simple question to answer: Because America is making itself less First World.

Texas’s struggles are only a standout example of a problem that has been building up for years. Last summer, California suffered rolling blackouts because electrical providers were unprepared for a surge in demand during a heat wave. But the problem is greater than that. America’s electrical reliability has been declining, almost everywhere, for decades. The United States of America now trails competing nations, often dramatically.

What causes this? One popular answer is simply aging infrastructure. America was one of the first countries to build a modern power grid, so infrastructure in many areas is very old and now fails with increasing frequency.

Of course, that naturally raises the question. If infrastructure is aging, why isn’t it being updated or replaced?

That is a political question, with many answers.

Follows, a look at a few of ’em, one of which manages to be a real jawdropper yet wholly unsurprising at the same time.

Another red flag for America’s infrastructure future is the Washington, D.C. Metro. The Metro has been known for years as one of the world’s worst, plagued with delays, safety issues, cost overruns, and poor maintenance.

How did the Metro get so horrid? In large part, because of wretched hiring. A 2012 report in The Washington Times revealed that Metro hiring was starkly racialized, with applicants clearly being hired or rejected based on skin color rather than demonstrated job aptitude:

Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers … It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said. … Dozens said white workers, especially women, were openly subject to racist and sexist remarks without repercussion — behavior that drove many targets to seek transfers or leave the agency. All said they have been inexplicably passed over hundreds of times for promotions to positions such as station manager while others with less seniority passed them by.

Why do Metro’s particular failures matter? Because its rotten ethos is spreading across the country. While Metro is an outlier case, where a major public agency became a racial racket, countless agencies are adopting “diversity” guidelines that encourage choosing employees and contractors based on skin color rather than competence alone. When ability and effectiveness ceases to be the sole consideration for jobs, effectiveness suffers. That may not matter much for writers at The New York Times, where the only victims of affirmative action (besides whose passed over for jobs) are the paper’s readers. But for the basic buildings blocks of civilized life, the consequences can be severe.

In Steyn’s famous formulation, decline is a choice. But choice might not be the whole story. Ultimately, it will be the Great Dumbing-Down that dooms us.

Recent studies have reported a worrisome decline in IQ scores in Western nations over the last decades, a reversal of the once-hopeful Flynn Effect (named after the late philosopher and psychologist James R. Flynn) which posited a growth in cognitive abilities for much of the 20th Century. Now the Flynn Effect seems to have reversed, leading to predictions of a general dumbing down of selective populations. Other studies report that IQ erosion is not confined to this century but that IQ has dropped by an average of 14.1 percent over the last century. As Evan Horowitz writes for NBC News, “A range of studies using a variety of well-established IQ tests and metrics have found declining scores across Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, France and Australia.”

One recalls MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, who referred to “the stupidity of the American voter” as helping him to pass the controversial law. One wonders if Gruber ever heard of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s test results purporting to show that “the rot starts at the top.” This would implicate Gruber and his cohort in the experience of what Piaget calls horizontal décalage, which stymies the application of cognitive functions and logical operations to extended tasks. In other words, Gruber et al. are also stupid, gradually destroying the very society that enabled them to flourish. But the rot can also start at the bottom, as a combination of generalized mental vacancy and low-to-no-information voters furthers cultural and social degeneration. As Morris Berman remarks in The Twilight of American Culture, “A society cannot function if nearly everyone in it is stupid.”

And, well, here we all are.

Why should we be surprised that an American president should pronounce “corpsman” as “corpseman”? Or that a Canadian prime minister says “peoplekind” in lieu of “mankind”? Or that a Washington, D.C., mayor and his staff should have objected to a perfectly good word like “niggardly”? Or that a Methodist pastor and Congressman should follow the exclamation “Amen” with “a-woman,” when an ordained minister should surely know that “Amen” is an acronym for the Hebrew אֵל מֶלֶךְ נֶאֱמָן (El melech neeman: “Lord and faithful King”)—or, as some scholars think, a calque for the Aramaic “so be it”? One can multiply these gaffes, misnomers, and malapropisms indefinitely among those who should know better—and that is merely scratching the surface. The dumbing down phenomenon is virtually encyclopedic in heft and extent.

And so it goes. A London community activist, asked about removing a Churchill statue during the summer of BLM love, admits she hasn’t “personally met” Winston Churchill. A swarm of Twitter users condemns Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Tom Brady as “racist” for defeating half-black Kansas City Chiefs’ QB Patrick Mahomes on Super Bowl LV during Black History Month—the fact that the great majority of Brady’s teammates are black and are clearly Brady enthusiasts seems to have escaped their attention. Major economic and energy policies seem planned not by cerebral giants but by weed-addled pubescents. Bill Gates, for example, wants to pepper the sky with aerosols to reflect sunlight out of the atmosphere and initiate global cooling—the risks are incommensurable and likely irreversible. Gates has what we might call “sector-intelligence” and might do well on segments of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, but I wouldn’t bet on his g score. The travesty of intelligence, prudence, and wisdom is beyond calculation, and it is only getting worse as IQ continues to slip down the great chain of thinking. This is the world that the classic film Idiocracy extravagantly punctures.

Why this should be is anybody’s guess. No one really knows. Various theories have been proposed to account for accelerating neural descent, ranging from the Dewey-inspired “progressive education” agenda working its leveling passage from the turn of the 20th century to the decrepit public schools and failed universities of the present day; to the softening effect of prolonged affluence and ease on a culture; to the debilitating influence of “smart” technology that performs our cognitive functions for us; to the assumption that women of higher intelligence are having fewer children, implying that women of lower intelligence are driving population growth; to the effects of increased media exposure and the consequent lessening of reading; to the emergence of the vices of envy and resentment owing to radical egalitarianism and the rancor of the under-performing against the skilled, hard-working, and successful, a dynamic cogently analyzed by Dinesh D’Souza in Stealing America; or to the merely inescapable fact of decay: as Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” One thinks, too, of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ remark in his Journal: “From much, much more; from little, not much; and from nothing, nothing.” Whatever the cause or causes may be, intellectual deterioration seems to be the case.

The decline of intelligence—moral rectitude and creative exuberance are collateral casualties—is now in full throttle. The exceptions to the debacle—monks, nomads, people of integrity, people capable of common sense, the classically educated—represent the only viable hope for a new “ideational” age to arise out of the rubble of a “sensate” disaster. It may take another century to bring about what Sorokin called “the turn,” the slow ascent up the IQ ladder, which is cold comfort indeed. But I suspect it’s the only real comfort we have.

Cold being the operative word in all this.

Update! On the other hand, when you do the math you realize it kind of IS the unreliable renewables that are the biggest problem.

One decade ago, almost to the day, Feb. 2, 2011, extreme put a strain on the electric grid. The electric grid was unable to meet demand, and many experienced rolling blackouts for “up to an hour.” Yes, fossil fuel plants also struggled in the cold, but this isn’t about spin or protecting industry or pushing an agenda, it’s about facts.

Fast forward one decade and two weeks, and Texas again faced with extreme cold and a straining electric grid, but it’s not the same electricity mix. Texas for the past ten years had made concerted efforts to go green.

In 2011 about 6 percent of the electricity mix was generated from wind power. Today it’s 25 percent. Simultaneously, Texas has increased its overall electricity consumption by 20 percent as the state is attracting people from everywhere and the population is booming. Furthermore, three coal plants were taken offline. Indeed, the same type of storm of 2011 did not play out in the same circumstances in 2021. Did fossil fuels struggle? Absolutely, but their percentage of the grid dropped significantly.

Energy isn’t sexy. It’s math, physics, and numbers. But it’s also life. We’re told to stop the “existential threat” of climate change we must “go green,” and switch to green energy. I do this for a living and I’ve never seen one confirmed death from “climate change,” but today I can show you several Texan deaths clearly attributable to the cold, and no NBC news spin or AOC twitter stupidity will comfort their families. They are dead from a combination of factors: billionaires don’t like coal, politicians invent mandates, and utility commissioners rest on their reports as well as a severe winter storm.

Fossil fuels aren’t perfect, but renewables aren’t either. They have severe shortcomings, and the results can sometimes be deadly. We can learn what happened in Texas if we have a serious and necessary conversation about renewable energy. But will we?

After much careful, sober deliberation I decided to consult the online Magic 8 Ball for an answer to this momentous question, which responded with Outlook not so good. Going by the evidence to date, I’d say that thing’s predictive abilities are uncanny.

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