Irreconcilable differences

Just another fantastic piece by Tal Bachman.

The truth is, there’s nothing particularly “united” about the United States these days. Even basic perceptions now differ. After watching the same video of 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse, half the country thinks he committed pre-meditated murder, while the other half thinks he justifiably defended himself against weapon-wielding attackers. Same with the McCloskeys over in St. Louis: half the country saw them illegally threaten peaceful passersby; the other half saw them legally deter a mob of trespassers threatening their safety.

Half the country can’t glance at Trump without envisioning him in a Nazi uniform shouting from the Luitpoldarena podium in Nuremberg; the other half just sees a pragmatic, commonsense guy, albeit of eccentric appearance, who just wants to make America great—hell, even just functional—again after decades of mismanagement.

Half the country sees Joe Biden as a mentally sound, principled, independent man who’ll “calm everything down”; the other half sees him as the increasingly senile, corrupt, amoral puppet of cunning corporatistas and violent leftists. And we could spend another three hours thinking of examples just of the perceptual differences.

Sure, perceptual differences are one thing, but here’s the rub: objectively speaking, is one side right, and the other wrong? Does observable reality confirm the correctness of one side’s opinion, and refute the other’s? Because if it does, then any throat-clearing, mealymouthed tapdancing around to concede a “respect” for the side whose argument got demolished by objective reality, to grant that they “may have a point,” begins to look a whole lot less like politesse or civility and more like confusion at best, cowardice at worst.

As a result, we must say that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron revealed a dangerous naiveté during his Tuesday night convention speech when he concluded that “we all just want the same things in the end”. No, we don’t. Some of us want to live in safe, clean communities, populated by strong families, pursuing meaningful, shared, morally-grounded lives of noble purpose. And some of us—quite a lot of us, actually—don’t.

Those that don’t have been obsessively destroying lives, careers, educations, reputations, property, everything they could, for months now, under protection from Democrat politicians. And remember that this ongoing destruction is only the most recent manifestation of a multi-decade effort to sow dissension, and co-opt or destroy every institution of influence necessary for healthy civic order.

No country can remain intact and democratic with moral and perceptual divides this great, nor with this many citizens actively or passively trying to destroy it. A house this divided just can’t remain standing for much longer, at least in its current form.

So where does that leave us?

In one hell of a pickle, that’s where, with no way out that won’t be difficult, painful, and surpassingly bloody. Tal posits three possibilities, the last and least likely of which is what he calls “national divorce.” It will never happen, for reasons I’ve specified here before and won’t revisit now, but Tal nevertheless paints a most appealing picture of what it could look like.

In the newly-created People’s Republic of Leftistan, for example, citizens could live out their political fantasies without being hindered by the gap-toothed, cross-burning, Bible-thumping, flyover-country yokels they believe populated most of their previous country, or by their orange, evil, racist, Nazi Klansman Führer hero, Donald Trump.

They could ban electricity, cars, straws, diapers, soft drinks, meat-eating, Christianity, heterosexual marriage, the English language (“the language of the slave owners”)—anything they wanted.

They could expand upon their infanticide fetish by offering Sunday morning child sacrifice rituals in their town squares.

They could import all 652 million Latin Americans and all one billion sub-Saharan Africans, then give them all guaranteed-incomes for life.

They could legalize crack cocaine, human-animal marriage, and even cannibalism. Come to think of it, they could appoint super-Democrat, author, and real-life cannibal Reza Aslan as their official Cannibalism Czar. He could visit Leftistan’s elementary schools to tell the kids all about the wondrous multiculturalist bona fides he earned after snacking on human brains during his CNN special. They could do anything they wanted.

And here’s the thing: Why not?

Yes, in ceding territory for Leftistan, the United States would be giving up some great California beach front, the New Jersey Boardwalk, Manhattan, and a few other valuable patches of land; but then, they’d also be excising a malignant demographic cancer comprised of demented, destructive humans which no healthy nation can tolerate. Without them, the United States would actually have a chance at being united again.

Not only that, but shorn of its would-be destroyers, America would begin to thrive like never before, building great families, great communities, great schools, great parks, great recreational activities, great churches, and great businesses. For my money, getting a lunatic-free country for a few beaches would be a damn fine trade.

Now, I admit a national divorce would be sad for some. Breakups, even the necessary ones, usually are. No one wants a beautiful dream to die.

I only say that the beautiful dream of Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, and Mississippi one day seeing the world the same way as California, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, and then unifying to forge a brilliant national future, was never going to come true; and more importantly, that beautiful dream has transformed into a real-life nightmare. Without a hard demographic reset (like violent lunatics all moving—or being moved—to Leftistan), the nightmare will never, ever end. If Trump wins in November, the riots, the delegitimizing of the victory, the refusal to accept the results, the false accusations, the pernicious media confections…it will all continue. And if Biden wins, the managed deconstruction of the United States—largely halted the past four years—will resume. Again: As long as these people are around, the nightmare will never, ever end.

The good news is, it ends as soon as they’re gone. Then a new dream begins—and that dream is one that, maybe, really could come true.

Probably so. In fact, it WAS true—American’s assumed birthright, more or less, which began to crumble only when Americans began taking it for granted—for many, many years. But before it can be brought to life again, we’re going to have to get them gone from us. And we all know that, as a practical matter, there’s only one way to do it.

An aside: I only recently learned that this Tal Bachman fellow, who’s been doing most of the heavy lifting of keeping Steyn Online alive as far as I’m concerned, is actually Randy Bachman’s son, a chip off the ol’ rock-block with a couple-three hit ditties of his own under his belt. Which biographical curiosity, happily, provides me with all the excuse I’ll ever need to trot out a good ol’ Bachman-Turner song.




Not all THAT old, actually. But good just the same.

Hotting up

Wanna talk terrorist murder, shitlibs? Assassins? I don’t think you do. I really don’t.

On Saturday, hundreds of Trump supporters gathered in the outskirts of Portland in a “Cruise Rally” in pick-up trucks with a lot of Trump 2020 flags decked out all over the cars.

After their rally, they then decided to drive into Portland. They were set upon, in the words of the media, by “counter-protesters” otherwise known as radical leftists/Antifa folk.

Leftist tried to block some of the cars, other cars they threw things at, threatened or stole flags from. Some of the Trump supporters defended themselves with pepper spray or paintball guns. There were multiple fights between the two groups.

They cornered Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson and beat the heck out of him. He survived because the folks in the gas station saved him and pulled him inside. Then Antifa tried to besiege the station.

But as we reported earlier, the worst incident was when a man came up and apparently walking up to the Trump supporter and fired point blank, killing him.

Then they celebrated the death of the Trump supporter, cheering when one of their leaders announced he was dead, even burning an American flag in the celebration, after slandering the man calling him a “nazi” and saying “our community held its own. they “took out the trash.”

The rancid piece of subhuman debris who pulled the trigger appears to be a 48 year old snowboard instructor named Michael Reinoehl.

The Nationalist Review wrote in their in-depth report, “the 48-year-old ‘professional snowboarder’ was previously featured on a Bloomberg promo for the riots where he described himself as part of the rioter’s security apparatus. Reinoehl touted his military experience and described events that led up to him receiving a bullet grazing on his arm. In the video, a neck tattoo identical to the shooter’s own tattoo is seen on his neck.”

What goes around comes around, scum. But just get a load of Portland riot co-conspirator Ted Wheeler’s response to Trump repeatedly calling him out for the nefarious muttonhead he is:

WheelerLetter.jpg

Every last word of it a fucking lie, including “and” and “the.” Gerard headlines it thusly: When the militia gets around to hanging the Mayor of Portland, this will be Exhibit A at the drop. And well it might be. They can’t swing his ass quick enough to suit me. He damned sure ought to be sent to Hell with a crowd to keep him company, too.

Free Kyle!

A ZMan commenter puts us some knowledge.

Let someone at the Wisconsin Bar Association know what you think about Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley.

Make sure you say the words “overcharge” and “prosecutorial misconduct” and “disbar.” The second doesn’t really apply but it sounds good so get it in there a few times. Don’t cuss.

Wisconsin Bar Association:
(608) 257-3838
(800) 728-7788 (nationwide)

For those still on twitter, facebook, etc, please circulate widely, among both red and bluepilled.

Light ’em up. Also, FF helpfully provides a link to the site set up by attorney Lyn Wood to raise funds for Kyle’s defense. Y’know, since it’s illegal in Amerika v2.0 to defend oneself against murderous assault by hordes of evil, violent scum and all.

*spit*

Update! Okay, so apparently the above link is NOT the fundraiser set up by Wood. Or maybe it was originally, but now they have a new one, I dunno.


Y’know, I could almost force myself to sign up for Twitter just to post a heartfelt thank-you to the good Mr Wood for his efforts on the behalf of all that’s right and good.

All bets: off

More silly questions asked, and answered by moi.

Is There Any Limit To What We’ll Do To ‘Stop Coronavirus’?

Apparently not.

Americans have endured months of business closures, quarantines, mask-wearing, hand-wiping, travel restrictions, limited-attendance funerals and weddings, virtual graduations, closed schools, inaccessible medical screenings and surgeries, park closures, take-out-only food, drive-thru-only banks, coinless cash registers, and sports and concert cancellations — a seemingly endless list of life disturbances that extend far beyond mere inconvenience and cause deep economic, medical, psychological, and societal hardship.

Some churches were recently banned from singing hymns, and a California pastor has been threatened with jail time for opening the doors for worship. Water and power can be turned off to Los Angeles homes if they host a group that violates official limits. Gym owners were locked up for daring to reopen, even with responsible precautions. Ankle bracelets were placed on those who declined to sign legal documents requiring burdensome and intrusive health reporting to authorities. Is this the America we know and love?

You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking.

Until recently — March 2020, to be exact — we could rely on the Constitution and Bill of Rights to constrain government’s control of our lives,

Are you serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?

but with the arrival of one virus, our legal rights seem to have been deemed irrelevant, completely subordinated to the arbitrary whims of politicians. Apparently, they can do anything now, as long as they proclaim it in the name of “safety.”

Without fanfare, without any change to the Constitution, we seem to have unwittingly entered a new era of increasing government power.

“New”? Okay, stop it, you’re killing me here.

Since power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, this should trouble all of us. What might it portend for our future?

More of the same thing we’ve seen for the last, oh, sixty-seventy years, only worse. And faster.

Once a vaccine is recognized, will the government force us to take it?

Yes.

What if we refuse? Could we lose our health insurance?

Losing your health insurance will be the LEAST of your problems, serf.

What about religious objections?

Depends. For Muslims, no problem; you’re fine, carry on. For Christians…wait, you’re a Christian and haven’t been arrested and imprisoned already?

Could we be forced to choose between our jobs and the drug? It’s hard to imagine — until you consider that schools already require immunizations. Doctors are already communicating that the “social contract” matters more than the Constitution.

Why not? Almost everything else does too.

What if we test positive but, like the couple in Kentucky, refuse to bow to health officials and sign a document on the spot mandating we report to them? Do they have that authority?

Of course they don’t. Hasn’t stopped a one of them from wielding it anyway though, has it?

Can they put us under house arrest and shackle us with ankle bracelets until the time of their choosing? They will surely tell us it is for everyone’s safety. This opens the door to an array of other so-called unsafe behaviors to follow.

NOW you’re getting it, bright boy.

In days past, we would roll our eyes at such cynical paranoia, but are we still rolling them? Will the government that now advises us to carry cash and willingly give up our belongings to robbers look away as our other civil rights are trampled? Should we expect any protection from politicians that allow mobs to flout COVID-19 rules but will gleefully jail a pastor? It appears this is less about safety and more about control.

By George, I think he’s got it!

Surely the original shutdowns and other measures were of noble intent, but the law of unintended consequences can quickly show its dark side. Until now, we’ve endured all of this to protect not only ourselves but also others because Americans are a helpful bunch. When the storm comes, if you ask us, we’ll always pitch in to toss sandbags or pick up debris. We’ll bring meals. We’ll donate money. We’ll wear a mask, too; a flavor of patriotism infused the pandemic response for a while as Americans willingly sacrificed to serve the health and welfare of their communities.

But it’s time to ask, how far will this go?

As far as we allow it to, same as it ever was. Know what else is also the same as it ever was, though? The somewhat less than staggering COVID body count, that’s what.

The CDC silently updated their numbers this week to show that only 6% of all coronavirus deaths were related to the coronavirus alone.  The rest of the deaths pinned to the China coronavirus are attributed to individuals who had other serious issues going on. Also, most of the deaths are related to very old Americans.

Straight from the horse’s…uhh, mouth:

Comorbidities
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.

SO, just over 9k deaths that were actually, truly COVID deaths, then. The rest—that other niggling, paltry little ninety-four fucking percent—were basically old, sick folks who already had one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, a significant percentage of whom were probably not going to make it till Thanksgiving, whither corony-V or no.

But does it get better still, you ask? Hey, these are goobermint “experts” we’re talking about here. Of COURSE it does.

Testing, testing, testing — that’s how Pelosi and the Democrats say we’ll defeat the coronavirus. Meanwhile, President Trump and his administration are conducting “operation warp speed” at breakneck pace to develop therapeutics, diagnostics, and a vaccine for the Wuhan flu. Unlike testing, treatments will actually do something for you when you come down sick with the disease. But now we’re learning the overwhelming majority of those who have tested positive for the coronavirus should really have been found negative after all. 

According to The New York Times, potentially 90 percent of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus present in their bodies that such individuals do not need to isolate nor are they candidates for contact tracing. Leading public health experts are now concerned that overtesting is responsible for misdiagnosing a huge number of people with harmless amounts of the virus in their systems.

Hm; might help to explain why the CDC’s “experts” are backpedaling with no little alacrity on their previous recommendation that every man, woman, child, and embryo be tested hourly, maybe.

Bottom line? If there was some kind of ongoing competition with an award for the biggest, most extravagant swindle in all of human history, with all this COVIDiocy we could call it a wrap and declare an all-time champeen with utmost confidence. Now let’s just see how many of those FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!!™ panic ninnies and dimestore dictators are willing to chow down on a heaping helping of crow and follow THAT science.

“Your Last Wake-Up Call, America”

Francis weighs in on Kenosha, American Hero Kyle Rittenhouse, and the general state of affairs using an all-too-lawerly Tweet lamenting “the weaponization of the prosecutorial process” as a dire threat to “the rule of law”—which, it ain’t that the guy is wrong about that, necessarily; it’s just that he’s way, WAY late to the party—as his jumping-off point.

“Threatens” the rule of law? THREATENS?

The rule of law died when prosecutors, mayors, and governors started siding with the rioters and against peaceable citizens going about their lawful business.

If you don’t get it even now – if you think, for whatever reason, that it could never encroach upon you and yours – you’re living in a dream.

The hell with the useless facial diapers, Gentle Reader. They’re about as relevant to your “protection” as a screen door in a submarine.

Meaningless aside: “useless as teats on a boar-hog” was the way my Grandma always put it—more colorful, certainly, and I always liked it. But Fran’s pharse works just as well. Onwards.

Go armed at all times. And – need I say it? – be ready to use your weapons, whatever they may be.

There is no law any longer in Kenosha, Seattle, Portland, and several other places; there is only power. Unless it’s opposed – not merely in word, but in forethought, preparation, and deed – from this moment forward, it will reach every smallest corner of these United States. If we want the law back, We the People must assert it and stand ready to defend it. In all candor, that responsibility has never belonged to anyone else.

Posilutely, absotively correct. Well, except that, at this late stage of the game, it isn’t so much the law we must defend—it’s our lives, our loved ones, our homes, our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our personal property. Once more: none of this has happened accidentally, or by coincidence. It all comes down to one simple thing, and it ain’t pretty. To wit:

Anyone could have seen this coming. The question that should be asked after an armed man shot two rioters on the streets of Kenosha is, what did you expect? Here’s the scenario: mobs of criminals are torching and looting the private businesses of Americans all over the country and local law enforcement won’t stop them. Not only will they not stop them but anyone who is arrested is released immediately to do it all over again the next night (see Portland). Did you expect that this could go on without more violence? How did you think it would end? Where was this going—social change to utopia? Cities are burning. New York City is now a place no retailer will go. How much more of this did you think people would take?

Here’s the bad news. Kyle Rittenhouse, whom we know nothing about, is only the beginning of what is to come. It’s going to get much worse, and people like me who are anti-war and want nothing but peace with my countrymen are about to become severely disappointed.

Any speculation on Rittenhouse’s motives is total stupidity in the fog of war when facts are indecipherable from lies. Don’t attempt it. Let us just look at the general climate in which this tragedy occurred. And I use the word “tragedy” somewhat reluctantly because all involved in this, especially the government officials who let it happen, deserve exactly what they got.

If you go out to protest in an environment where you know there is looting and mayhem, I don’t care what happens to you. Not even a little. Photographic evidence appears to point to self-defense. It’s too soon to tell but it appears from these photographs that at least one of the people who was shot was holding a gun.

A video shows the alleged shooter saying he was there to protect private property. There is no evidence that any press outlet can find to prove that he is a “white supremacist,” as is being alleged all over social media. He could just be a person concerned about escalating violence and no law enforcement stopping it who got fed up waiting for the adults in the room to do their jobs. He was arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide.

Maybe he will be acquitted in court. Who knows? That’s not important. What is important is that this is only the beginning of a scary and dark time in American history and I’m not the only one who sees it. Mobs are accosting diners and demanding they display the Communist fist. Do you think this is going to end the way the mobs want it to? How many of you would rather be dead than Red? Make a choice now because this is where we are in the timeline of human events. Your time to make a choice is running out. The mob is perfectly willing to do it for you.

This is one hell of a post by Megan Fox, powerful and unflinching, all of which you must read. As to the patently spurious charges against the heroic Rittenhouse, I’m with Ace:

Recidivist Criminal Who Chased Kyle Rittenhouse While Carrying (Illegally) A Pistol: My Only Regret Is Not Having Drawn My (Illegal) Gun Sooner So I Could Have Emptied the Mag Into Him
—Ace

The criminal armed with a gun announces that his intention was in fact to kill Kyle Rittenhouse.

Therefore: Kyle Rittenhouse’s shooting of him was justifiable self-defense, and it’s beyond any disputation.

Are we really going through with this farce of a political show trial?

Do citizens have to surround the courthouse and start lighting it up until they release him?

Is that the only thing our cowardly, terrorist-supporting Democrat politicians understand, now? The force and menace of a “mostly peaceful” mob?

Actually, I don’t think they really do understand at all. These fools have chosen to overinvest in blind faith that they and their semi-sub rosa minions—a pet army of halfwit primordial goons, pampered suburban brats, and sundry Commie useful idiots—possess an unchallengeable monopoly on force and menace. It is now imperative that they be taught otherwise, forcefully and without delay.

Surrounding the courthouse and lighting it up ought to be the very least of their concerns before Real Americans are done with them. They need to be made to fear for their own lives for a change, and to never forget the taste of it. Anything less, and…we lose.

The shot heard round the world

And now, it begins.

Amid violent Black Lives Matter riots and arson in Kenosha, Wisc., on Tuesday night, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse opened fire at looters in two separate instances, killing two people and injuring a third. Police arrested Rittenhouse on Wednesday after cops apparently congratulated him on Tuesday night. Early reports suggest Rittenhouse shot one man in the head while the victim was looting a car shop, but his second shooting appeared to involve self-defense after looters threw a Molotov cocktail at him.

And tackling, beating, and kicking him brutally, too.

Rittenhouse came from Antioch, Ill., which is only 15 miles away from Kenosha, the Associated Press reported. Authorities arrested him on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide.

He oughta get some kind of medal, if you ask me.

Shaffer later explained that in the minutes before the shooting, rioters used drones and bats to destroy vehicles, and lit multiple cars on fire. Ironically, one of the rioters operated the shop and he tried to stop his Black Lives Matter allies from destroying his property.

Shaffer also noted that “the alleged shooter was defending the property.”

This context does not excuse what appears to have been a vigilante assassination.

Like hell it doesn’t. With the rioters enjoying the full endorsement and support of Democrat-Socialist officialdom nationwide, and the police kept on a tight leash by those same criminal authorities, ordinary citizens have stepped up to do what they must.

However, the second shooting appears to have involved self-defense. Townhall’s Julio Rosas reported seeing a Black Lives Matter mob chasing Rittenhouse. After Rittenhouse tripped and fell, the rioters shouted, “Get his *ss!” Then the man appears to have shot one of the rioters in self-defense.

The violent riots and arson in Kenosha are terrifying, and it makes sense that citizens would arm themselves to curb the destruction. That does not justify Rittenhouse’s first shooting, however. Police arguably should have arrested the man right after the shootings.

Instead, they reportedly allowed him to go home. That does not suggest inherent racism, as some on the Left have claimed. The cops may have a bias in favor of a vigilante trying to stop the rioting over the rioters themselves. Even so, they should have arrested Rittenhouse after the shootings.

O’Neill blandly says that as if these were ordinary times. But they are no such thing. We are at war, with a violent Left-wing revolutionary enemy actively seeking to overthrow and destroy this nation. We sat idly back as they assaulted, beat, stabbed, shot, and ran over numerous innocent people with impunity, going at least as far back as the shooting of Steve Scalise and others by a deranged Bernie Sanders employee.

Quite simply, the ordinary rules and standards no longer apply.

And honestly, much as I do hate to see it come to this, in my estimation young Rittenhouse is skating mighty close to being a real American hero. He courageously put himself in harm’s way to protect others; he didn’t flinch or hesitate when it came time to living up to his commitment. He buckled down and did what he had to do. And a couple of shitbag Marxist goblins ended up getting themselves killed.

Well, so fucking what? THEY called this tune, in spite of constant serious and sober warnings about where it would lead. So far we’ve resisted the invitation, but now the ball has started in earnest, and we’re all going to have to get off our chairs and onto the dance floor.

As I keep saying, nobody on our side wanted this. But we’re stuck with it anyway, like it or not, and frankly I’m glad to see one of ours shooting back at long, long last. All in all, I’m with Ace:

I think legally he’s guilty, but I don’t think the law is in effect any longer. The government is refusing to enforce it against insurrectionists, effectively making them State Sanctioned Terrorists, and citizens are forced to defend themselves and their own property.

I’ve been saying it for years: If the government will not protect the citizenry, then the citizenry will turn to vigilantism.

And citizens do not have the long hours of training that cops do.

You have to give them some leeway. If the state is effectively making terrorism and arson legal, then I say, shooting rioters without normal legal justification is now legal too.

He has been arrested. I say: Jury nullification. We’ll start giving the state convictions they moment they start enforcing the laws, and not a moment before.

Play Thunderdome games, win Thunderdome prizes.

Update: JEM sends me to Shipwreckedcrew at Red State, who has video before the first shot — antifa/BLM droogs were chasing this guy down. He turned and fired on them.

Self defense. Fuck you, assholes. Play human-hunting games, win Most Dangerous Game prizes.

See the video here, from 3:59:00 to 3:59:45. You can clearly see a group of bipedal wolves chasing this guy down.

Then he decides his life is in danger, turns, and kills an animal.

Precisely so. One of O’Neill’s commenters spells it out nicely:

There is a fundamental human right to protect one’s self, one’s family, and one’s property.
In a free democratic society the people make a pact with the government they create; that individuals will restrain their own right to self-defense where feasible, in return for the government promising to seek justice on their behalf.

When the government turns a blind eye to a citizen’s peril, that citizen can justly retake their original human right to defend themselves. This is the entire argument behind Blacks having an inherent right to protect themselves from violent racists if the government refuses to do so on their behalf…

Annnnd bingo. Governments all across the country have reneged on that societal contract; they reject the Constitution’s call to “ensure domestic tranquility,” refusing to duly enforce the law for purely political reasons. They have informed ordinary citizens, in no uncertain terms, that they are well and truly on their own.

Real Americans’ patience, while very deep and strong, is not without limit. It has been stretched far beyond any reasonable bounds by both the rioters and the government officials who brazenly cheer them on. Those officials had better recognize that they can be brought to heel relatively easily, their transgressions and abuses harshly punished. They are by no means beyond the reach of an angry and aroused citizenry bent on righteous vengeance. Justice a la Rittenhouse can also be visited upon them, and the more they go on as they have been, the sooner they might just wind up facing the music themselves.

Update! Bill has a couple of photos which clearly indicate self-defense.

Answers itself

Ask a silly question.

COVID-19: The epidemic is ending, why do government restrictions remain?

Easy-peasy: because governments like them. To ask the question, truly, is to answer it. Robert knows this quite well already, of course.

This essay is going to include a number of graphs [data source], showing the daily numbers related to the Wuhan virus since the beginning of the epidemic. All show that the epidemic is truly tapering off or ending, regardless of where you live. All also strongly suggest that the lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates, and the many other odious rules that were imposed initially for just a few weeks to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed but have remained in force now for many months should immediately be cancelled or removed.

And yet, these restrictions remain, in one form or another, with some rules (such as the mandate to wear masks) being expanded, sometimes to the point of idiocy. That they remain proves again that those lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates and other rules had little to do with the disease. Instead their goal was to impose new authoritarian rules on the citizenry, meant to establish new precedents of power and control for the petty dictators who wish to rule us like servants.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! Ladies and gennlemens, we have ourselves a winner!

Zimmerman has put together a nice collection of facts and figures—ie, actual science—that solidly confirms what I said from the very beginning about all this: the phony Covid Clampdown was never really about any stupid virus in the first place. Read it all.

Welcome to socialism

I only wish I could say he was wrong about this. But I can’t. Because he isn’t.

In mid-March of 2020, the United States of America became a socialist country, despite President Trump’s promise in his State of the Union address one year prior.  To those who lost their non-essential jobs, those who met empty shelves, those who discovered that their “free” education was too costly, those driven insane by incessant fear-mongering, and those faced with capricious and nonsensical restrictions — welcome to socialism.  Deceived by the arrogance of science and appeal to authority, or perhaps with false science to mask nefarious motives, public health and safety were used as a contrivance to replace liberty, freedom, and democracy with the Game of Socialism, in which (elected) tyrants play with our lives.  Do health and safety trump liberty and freedom, and must we sacrifice one for the other?

The Constitution of the United States provides for no limitation of our liberty, freedom, or democracy in an emergency.  Is this because our Founding Fathers had never heard of the Black Death (1347, multiple) or the Great Plague of Marseille (1720) or the Yellow Fever from the Caribbean (1793) or smallpox (vaccine 1770)?  Why, then, did they limit powers in the face of such great calamities?

Absent such powers, the federal government cannot take advantage of panic, real or contrived, to tyrannize the states or the people, and with the 9th and 14th Amendments, neither can the states (or cities) tyrannize their people.  The protections of our Constitution have been eroded over the last century by a crisis culture that has people abandoning liberty for (illusory) safety, as notes Robert Higgs,

But if the dominant ideology does not give strong support to the Normal Constitution, it will eventually be overwhelmed by the Crisis Constitution.  Step by step, a ratcheting loss of rights will attend each episode of national emergency.  And we may as well admit that such emergencies are inevitable.

I ran across a great Eisenhower quote the other day, which will be going into the Notable Quotes sidebar-section forthwith: “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” It speaks to the very heart of my long-held contention that this awful predicament is not due to the fact that the Constitution has somehow failed to protect US; it’s WE who have failed to protect the Constitution. In our weakness, our timidity, our complacency, we allowed it to be first ignored, then flung down and danced upon—to the point that we recently witnessed one of the most abominable Congresscreatures in American history openly mocking both it and us as she grossly defied its strictures, derisively shrieking like a rabid howler monkey: “Are you serious? Are you serious?!?

The above-excerpted piece is kind of a long ‘un, at least by AmThink’s usual standards; they tend to run shorter pieces than most other aggregator/portal sites do, in the main. But it’s deserving of a perusal nonetheless, link-rich and bang-on.

Inexpertise

Expert me no more experts.

Joe Biden climbed out of his basement last week. Twice! Once to deliver a brief but well-received address at the Democratic National Convention, and once to give a socially distanced interview to ABC News with his wing-woman Kamala Harris. The big news out of the interview is that Biden said he would shut America down again if scientists told him to.

If this is true, then I have a question. Why are we even bothering to consider Biden? Why not just elect Dr. Anthony Fauci, or Dr. Deborah Birx if we want to smash glass ceilings in the process?

Very early on we all made a decision as a society to hand our freedom to a small group of people because they have lab coats with fancy logos. It’s shocking. It is something that America needs to come to terms with because what we did can never happen again.

The misery, joblessness, loss of life, addiction, destruction of businesses, suicides — they all happened. It wasn’t people wanting manicures and brunch, it was peoples’ lives being destroyed. Did we have to do it? Maybe. Maybe we did have to do it, maybe that heavy human toll had to be accepted to stop the spread.

But we didn’t even have a conversation about it. We just pretended the downsides didn’t exist. When President Trump or anyone else said, “Wait, this is gonna hurt people too,” they were called grandma killers.

Biden just told us that as president of the United States he will do whatever the science bureaucracy tells him to do. Then why have a president? What good is he? Literally anyone could do that. If the new rule is that nobody gets to go outside or go to church unless Dr. Fauci says so, then why have a president? Why have a Constitution? Let’s just have a medical board that sends out decrees. Also one for the environment and racism. It’ll be easy, we just do whatever they say while we watch Netflix and order stuff from Amazon while having Zoom drinks.

Sadly, Amerikans have now proved that they much prefer freedom FROM choice over freedom OF choice.

“When are Local and State Governments Illegitimate?”

Oh, right about, umm, NOW, in my estimation. Have been since March, in fact.

Should we shrug off crises in blue cities as the fault of voters? The “They’ve made their bed, let them lie in it” trope misses a key point. Did voters in any of these cities really bargain for what they’re getting now? Yes, most claim to be progressives, but did they expect their votes to result in the sacking of their communities? The menacing of their neighbors and themselves? Did they really desire or expect a leftist dystopia?

In our federal system, it falls first upon the states and localities to uphold the mandate of the Constitution’s preamble. But when states and localities fail — by cowardice or design — to fulfill their basic duties, then isn’t it incumbent upon the national government to act?

Day in and day out, we’re told by the MSM not to believe our lying eyes. The leftist-provoked mobs running wild in blue cities are merely protesters, registering grievances and questing for justice in an endemically racist America — an America unjust beyond race, anyway, and from its inception. The cancers growing in blue cities are meant to metastasize across the nation, have no doubt.

To excise these cancers, to reestablish justice and restore domestic tranquility, the national government must act. Leaders in afflicted blue cities, bolstered by their states’ governors, are in rebellion and are trampling the constitutionally guaranteed rights of their citizens, while gestating wider rebellion. If the national government doesn’t act, then it rests upon the citizens to exercise “their right, [snip] their duty, to throw off such [state and local] Government[s], and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Don’t know as I’d be holding my breath waiting for that, bub. Any appeal to the Constitution seems futile at best anyway, especially when you’re pleading with people who hold the Constitution and every ideal it represents in utmost doot-brained contempt in the first place.

Not that I’m saying there’s no recourse, or no solution, mind you; I assure you, there is.

Spicy time countdown

This has been my own thought for a fair bit now.

Regardless of who is elected, it’ll be civil war
I’m not going to say that what we’ve been experiencing over the last three months have been the first salvos of a civil war, but it sure looks like it. While hard-line socialists in the Democratic Party are working within the political infrastructure and behaving as though they are conducting the business of governance according to the rule of law and constitutionally established procedures, they are in fact in the process of fomenting civil war – or at least, they have made it apparent that they are willing to go that far if they are not able to gain ascendency via political means.

One of their prerequisites for standing down appears to be the removal of President Donald Trump, whether this is achieved via the general election in November or by some other means. It is clear – and should be clear to historians in the future – that the impeachment proceedings that took place in 2019 and early 2020 were nothing more than an attempted coup against our president.

Failing that, elected officials in Washington (both Republican and Democrat), their supporters, powerful Democrat donors and far left activists in the streets and corridors of power orchestrated violent demonstrations on the pretext of widespread racism on the part of police agencies across the country. Elected officials in Democrat-controlled enclaves have allowed these to persist in order to serve their greater agenda.

And make no mistake: The two-party system in America has been an illusion and a deception for quite some time. Most Republican elected officials who support the president are only supporting him because of his popularity amongst Republicans and swing voters. Nearly all of them hold allegiance to the Washington establishment and have been vehemently opposed to Trump’s housekeeping efforts from the start.

And although we know that political rhetoric has had a tendency to get nasty and hyperbolic during election cycles since our nation’s earliest days, the magnitude of the lies and the level of projection being proffered by everyone from Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have truly pushed the boundaries of the surreal. I mean, when Bill Clinton has the nerve to criticize President Trump’s behavior in the Oval Office as he did this week at the Democratic National Convention, it becomes clear that these people have no sense of shame, and have cast both decency and reality to the wind.

It is entirely possible that if President Trump secures reelection, the left will escalate and extend the scope of the violence, touching off a full-blown, costly civil war. I believe it is equally possible that if Joe Biden wins the election, heretofore law-abiding Americans will determine that enough is enough, rise up and take decisive action against leftist dissidents, with the same unfortunate result.

Should this occur, it will be a civil war such as we’ve seen in many other nations over the years, rather than what transpired during the Civil War: Potential enemies will be present in our cities and towns, in our neighborhoods and occasionally in our own homes. Lines between enemy combatants will be blurred, as will those between police, the military and the militias that will inevitably rise up. BLM and Antifa thugs will continue to ply their trade until they are beaten back, or they prevail.

It should be clear by now to all but the intellectually indolent or deficient that those on the left thrive on the suffering of the citizenry at large. In fact, it was the deep suffering generated by the Obama administration that led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Now, like spoiled but very dangerous children, the left intends to prolong the pain of civil unrest until we get rid of him.

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but people who thrive on the suffering of others are inherently evil. Prudent individuals do not concern themselves with decorum or even fairness when dealing with evil people.

Nope, nor should they. Instead, they fix the evil people’s breathing problem—the problem being, they still ARE breathing.

In fairness, though, we should probably grant that not all of them are in fact evil; some of them are just stupid. Either way, we’ve conceded the Left’s presumed “right” to rule over and control us for much too long now. It’s long past time we rescinded that misguided concession, by whatever means we must.

War to the knife, knife to the hilt: I don’t see any way it can possibly be averted now, and that’s a terrible, terrible tragedy. But our differences are irreconcilable; we have here a chasm that cannot be bridged in any honorable fashion. There is no resolution in which any semblance of liberty can be preserved. The Left has made it clear that they will not relent until every last Real American submits and is brought fully and firmly to heel. That is, quite simply, unacceptable. So if war it must be, then let’s win the thing, by God.

(Via WRSA)

Bane on the ballot

And he has a “D” after his name.

In Christopher Nolan’s 2012 film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” Bane the mercenary revolutionary emerges from the shadows after Gotham City has been at peace for eight years with a clear agenda: Destroy Gotham. He cannot abide seeing Gotham thrive.

A master of psychology and deception, Bane does not just ride into town with an army of evil henchmen. He does do that, and he even robs Gotham’s Wall Street, but mere financial gain is not his motive. He wants to turn Gotham inside out so that it devours itself, discrediting everything Gotham once stood for in the process.

Bane cloaks himself in the enticing language of social justice: “We come here not as conquerors but as liberators, to return control of this city to the people.”

He says this after commandeering a football stadium full of terrified citizens he is “liberating” from their freedom, after he has already murdered the mayor: one noble-sounding sentence in a paragraph of threats. He intends to liberate nothing, and destroy everything. He knows the language of social justice will fool enough gullible people long enough to keep them from stopping him.

Social justice language is powerful because it tugs at our human desire for fairness. It’s also a terrible lie. Selina Kyle—Catwoman—is initially won over by Bane’s tricks. At a lavish Wayne Manor party at the beginning of the film, Kyle tells billionaire Bruce Wayne whose side she is on. “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,” she says seductively. “You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Kyle could have been a speechwriter for the Democratic Party. So could Bane. They both sound like a pastiche of Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and socialist Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary battle but has won the ideological war for the party’s soul.

Shhhyeah, right. Like that coven of Commie bloodsuckers has a soul.

COVID is O-V-E-R

But the lockdowns, masks, and sundry Soviet-style repression will be forever.

If you’re hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary. And, if you’re living in the United States, like I am, you probably think my declaration that this pandemic is “over” to be somewhere between wishful thinking and incredibly premature, and I hear you, too, although forgive me if I’m not sure you’re the one thinking clearly, given some of the things I’ve recently read. I promise to support my assertion with data, and the wisdom of people far more expert than me who are having a harder time being heard in the present climate of…bats#@t crazy.

Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.

You may not be one of them. In fact, I’m guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven’t been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have?

I can’t see how it’s possible NOT to at this late stage, myself. Yet somehow, here we all are. Don’t miss a word of this excellent post, people; Handley has done yeoman’s work to compile a remarkable and copious shit-ton of data, stats, charts, graphs, and expert analysis—y’know, actual science—that all adds up to one irrefutable conclusion: we’ve been had.

Tyrants on notice update! A shot across the bow.

A veteran and business owner living in Shasta County, California is completely fed up with the authoritarian Covid lockdown orders so he gave a stern warning to the Board of Supervisors.

Carlos Zapata warned the masked officials in the Board of Supervisors chamber that a revolution is brewing.

“At first we sat as concerned citizens….as we realized that [Covid] is not as quite as dangerous as we thought it would be, I was absolutely appalled at the cowardice — and you guys are sitting here with your masks on — I don’t blame you for wearing masks because I would be hiding my face if I was you for what you’re doing,” Zapata said.

He continued, “I’m a business owner and I’m telling you, our families are starving — you guys can sit here with your jobs — you’re gonna sit here and get paid to fall asleep in your chair like that gentleman’s doing behind his mask right there.”

Zapata then put the officials on notice.

“Right now we’re being peaceful and you better be happy we’re good citizens, that we’re peaceful citizens but it’s not gonna be peaceful much longer — and this isn’t a threat — I’m not a criminal, I’ve never been a criminal but I’m telling you real good citizens are going to turn into real concerned and revolutionary citizens real soon. And nobody else is gonna say that. I’m probably the only person that has the balls to say what I’m saying right now.”

“We’re building and we’re organizing and we’ll work with law enforcement or without law enforcement but you won’t stop us when the time comes because our families are starving!” he said.

“This is a warning for what’s coming because it’s not going to be peaceful for much longer! It’s gonna get real!” Zapata said adding he went to war for this country and he’s ready to fight for this country even if it’s against its own citizens.

Well, the usual swearing-in oath taken by military personnel, police, and elected officials DOES mention defending the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” after all. There’s a reason for that.

The fate of The City

She’s DEAD, Jim. This time for real.

I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.

Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. I could start any type of business. I could meet people. I had family, friends, opportunities. No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.

Now it’s completely dead.

“But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time.

“But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

People say, “NYC has been through worse,” or “NYC has always come back.” 
No and no.

First, when has NYC been through worse?

Even in the 1970s, and through the ’80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, even when it was the crime capital of the U.S. or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning, it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity). It was culturally on top of its game — home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing. And it was probably the food capital of the U.S. 

Altucher breaks things down into categories to explain in detail why he deems NYC well and truly doomed, but this next but for me is the important:

NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were becoming paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.

This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS.

Perzackly. As I said early on, the “unprecedented” thing about the COVIDIOT panic was never the virus itself; it’s turned out to be fairly ordinary as these things go—just a bad flu, not the planet-depopulating scourge it’s been sold as. The only thing truly unprecedented was the hysterical reaction to it; the speedy exploitation of a cringing, fearful populace by a whole damnable horde of wanna-be tyrants both high and low; and the pathetically submissive obedience in response to that exploitation by subjects of a country once proud to misnomer itself as “land of the free, home of the brave.”

Altucher goes on from there to present an intriguing take on why this time might be different:

I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.

And in 2008/2009, there was much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.

But… this time is different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, I hope you’re right.

I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.

But this time is different.

One reason: Bandwidth.

In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high-quality video.

There’s a before and after. BEFORE: No remote work. AFTER: Everyone can work remotely.

The difference: bandwidth got faster. And that’s basically it. People have left New York City and have moved completely into virtual worlds. The Time-Life Building doesn’t need to fill up again. Wall Street can now stretch across every street instead of just being one building in Manhattan.

We are officially AB: After Bandwidth. And for the entire history of NYC (the world) until now, we were BB: Before Bandwidth.

Remote learning, remote meetings, remote offices, remote performance, remote everything.

That’s what is different.

Very interesting indeed. This James Altucher fella seems to be a pretty smart and perceptive guy, and you should definitely read it all. Even for those of you who give not one damp fart about the fate of what was once indisputably the world’s greatest metropolis (and I myself don’t care nearly as much as I once would have, I admit), it seems obvious to me that most if not all of this grim prognostication could probably be applied to any other American city as well—most certainly the Democrat-Socialist misgoverned ones, at least. As enjoyable as the schadenfraude no doubt is for a great many of us out here in the hinterlands now, that is NOT gonna be a good thing long-term…for anybody.

(Via Insty)

Oh, what a difference a commie can make

My kneejerk response to the collapse of New York City at the hands of Hizzoner Bill DeBalledZero goes something like, “Too fucking bad, assholes. You elected the bastard, now you can stew in it. Enjoy the socialist hellhole of your votes’ devising, and don’t you even DREAM of moving here.”

On the other hand, some of the most wonderful, memorable times of my life were spent in NYC. Heck, I even married a born-and-raised Manhattan girl and remain close to her mom now that she’s gone, along with several good friends I made over decades of living and playing music there. I still have a certain fondness for the place, even now.

But frankly, I can’t say I care anymore if I ever go back there.

The New York Times reports that national retailers and restaurant chains such as J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Le Pain Quotidien, and Subway are permanently closing locations in New York City in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a “mass exodus” of residents and businesses.

Business leaders warn that the city is facing a crisis of “historic proportions,” according to the Times.

Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, which owns the popular Bryant Park Grill & Cafe, told the New York Times he would never open another restaurant in the city. “There’s no reason to do business in New York,” Weinstein said.

With tourists staying clear of the city and surrounding office towers mostly empty, the restaurant has been forced to close its 1,000-seat dining room and move service to the patio. As a result, Weinstein says the restaurant brings in only about $12,000 a day—an 85 percent drop in revenue.

Here’s a real grabber for ya:

The flagship Victoria’s Secret store at Herald Square in Manhattan has been closed for months and has not paid its $937,000 monthly rent in the meantime. “It will be years before retail has even a chance of returning to New York City in its pre-COVID form,” the retailer’s parent company recently told its landlord.

Dear God, how many lacy underthings must they have been selling to be able to meet close to a million bucks a fucking month in rent before this mess started? David Marcus, for his part, explains the rapidly-dissipating appeal of the New York Groove:

Why I Won’t Leave New York City, But Probably Should
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why people are leaving and I don’t really blame them. Living in New York City is an expensive transaction, not just in terms of money but in terms of lifestyle. We often pay more money to rent a small apartment than most Americans pay for the mortgage on their house. The city is not easy to get around, and we all navigate the panoply of cultures and tongues, our Lingua Franca a kind of unwritten “rules of the city.”

But then there is the other side of the transaction, the wonderful restaurants, bustling bars and jazz clubs, the Cyclone at Coney Island, the rushing mass of pedestrian frenzy assuring us that yes, this is the center of the world, the current Rome. Today, for now at least, all of that is gone. All of the bad things are still bad, worse actually with the crime wave and all, but the good things are all still locked down, which means we are too, locked in those little apartments.

And it gets worse. Schools are only partially opening, leading parents to look for pods in some vain hope that their kids can be educated. Empty apartments sit unrented, sparsely populated subway cars have an air of fear not felt by most for a very long time. But for all this, for all of these overwhelming reasons to get the hell out and find a picket fence in Jersey, I just can’t do it. New York is stuck with me. For better or worse.

There are some things I know about New York City. I know that as the Great Depression dragged along, Gotham was home to the birth of Method Acting and changed theater and film forever. I know that while World War II ravaged nations, New York stole the title of center of the visual art world from Paris. I know that in the drugged out riotous 1970s and 1980s, the city built Disco and pop art and hip-hop. I know that in the shadow of a skyline with teeth knocked out, white belt Williamsburg hipstered in an Electroclash revolution.

Do not mistake this for a childlike nostalgia for the bad old days. Nobody who was an adult back then wants that. It is rather a matter of being resigned to see this thing of ours through. So no, I will not be on the midnight train to Georgia, or Florida, or the Oranges. I have to stay in the husked out shell of greatness that even Bill de Blasio can’t blunder into oblivion because I have a chance to help bring it back. And I trust my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who stay to be just as committed to that.

Even in the best of times one has to be a little crazy to want to live in New York City. These days, one has to be a stark, raving mad lunatic. But that is kind of the point of New York City. After all, even raving mad lunatics need someplace to live. And in the Big Apple those kinds of people have a really successful track record.

Marcus expects NYC to make a comeback once the DeBalledZero lockdown is lifted and life gets “back to normal,” but he’s missing something: the lockdowns aren’t GOING to be lifted, in NYC or anywhere else, without massive, serious, overwhelming pushback all across the nation. Actually, my money is on the opposite: anybody out there seriously think there’s going to be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade this year? Will the Power allow a Thanksgiving holiday gathering of any kind? Will people be social distancing around their T-day feast, chatting gaily through their masks, scrubbing surfaces and utensils down every five minutes with bleach to stave off the Great Plague?

Will there be a huge, beautiful Christmas tree brightening up the Rockefeller Center ice rink in 2020? Those famous midtown store-window displays to attract the gaze of celebratory shoppers who just aren’t around anymore this year? Anybody out there planning on letting their kid sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s? Will old Kris Kringle be able to hear and understand as the kids recite their wish-list through the mandatory proper face-covering? Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve? Christmas Day services? Carollers strolling the neigborhood, their voices muffled and unclear because of those same masks?

I seriously, seriously hope none of you have made plans to attend the Times Square ball-drop on New Years Eve this year, I really do.

You say that Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years Eve displays, parades, and festivities all being wiped from the calendar by our esteemed rulers seems a bit of a stretch, do you? Well, they damned sure cancelled Independence Day fireworks all across the nation this summer, now didn’t they? Didja ever imagine you’d see such a thing as that?

Even after a mass rebellion that at the moment looks like a no-show, alas, recreating New York as anything other than the miserable, oppressive, and life-threatening ghetto it’s been “fundamentally transformed” into will be a Herculean task—one which will be vehemently opposed by at least half of the lunatics who live there, just as the Giuliani Renaissance was back in my own New York days. I’ll be rooting for it; New York was a unique and wondrous place, the greatest city on earth, for a long time. But I can’t say I’ll be counting on it.

But maybe there’s a small, fragile seed of hope taking root in Wisconsin:

On Sunday, Wisconsinites protested a new state-wide mask mandate by Gov. Tony Evers at a “We Will Not Comply” freedom rally held in the rural town of Mosinee. It was also a protest against the recent Marathon County online reporting tool for violations of the mask mandate.

Marathon County Health representative Judy Burrows said the online complaint form and tracking process will help officials identify businesses or organizations with multiple reports. “Our primary intention is to educate on the need and benefit to wearing a face covering to prevent the spread of COVID,” Burrows said.  

The event was organized by Get Involved Wisconsin, a grassroots organization that was also responsible for an April rally held at the same location to protest Evers’s stay-at-home orders.

The rally this past weekend drew national speakers such as Dr. Simone Gold and local physicians, including cardiac surgeon Fernando Riveron. Both doctors asserted medical experts are being silenced by corporate media and big tech companies about the true risks of coronavirus and weighing those against other medical concerns.

Doesn’t seem like much, I admit. But from tiny acorns, mighty oaks sometimes grow, right?

Update! Did someone say rebellion?

It appears that government-imposed restrictions on travel, business, and social contact don’t become more palatable with age. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to simmer, the one competency that officials have consistently displayed is in tightening the screws, using the licenses and permissions they require as enforcement tools. For people tired of being bossed around, the obvious response is to carry on without the government’s imprimatur—and they’re doing so in droves. It’s an attitude likely to live on long after the crisis has passed.

“Our businesses are doomed,” Chris Polone, co-owner of a Fort Worth bar that was one of more than 800 such establishments to open in defiance of Texas closure orders, said at the end of July. “We have nothing to lose. We can either fight this thing, Or we can starve ourselves out.”

As apocalyptic as that sounds, it’s a reasonable statement when the review site Yelp reports that 55 percent of all businesses shut during the pandemic are believed to have closed their doors forever. For many entrepreneurs, breaking the rules may be the only way to survive.

Bold above mine, and absolutely critical; as in just about every conflict, numbers matter. Any nascent citizen uprising can only come to grief unless it occurs en masse. As long as only a sad handful of Americans are willing to risk getting up to stand on their feet again, they will all continue to live on their knees. Doesn’t have to be universal; doesn’t even have to be a majority of the populace, even. But it absolutely has to be more than a handful, and when you’re trying to face down governments that have far eclipsed their rightful boundaries, the more the merrier.

At least some encouraging news regarding the overdue groundswell of grassroots defiance in this article, though—very little of which will be reported by Old Media media, assuming any at all is. Bottom line:

Officials in Los Angeles have run into so much push-back that now they’re threatening to cut water and power to businesses and homes that don’t comply with lockdown orders. Depriving people of electricity and running water seems an unlikely means for improving public health, but officialdom is always more interested in compelling submission than in achieving reasonable outcomes.

But submission is harder to come by when the stakes are so high. The government is actually ordering people to refrain from earning their keep, and instead to humbly submit to bankruptcy and beggary. To some, submitting to the rules can look foolish and suicidal—like baring your throat to a predator.

And once you’ve battled government officials threatening your ability to make a living during hard times, why would you assume, after the crisis passes, that they’ve suddenly become wiser and better disposed to your wellbeing? People who have questioned officials’ judgment and defied their orders are unlikely to lose that habit after the pandemic passes. Sure, they’ll probably continue to apply for licenses to operate just to make life easy. But they’ll remember that officials tried to strip them of the “privilege” of putting food on the table and they’ll realize just how dangerous it is to rely on such permission.

Viewed from the historical perspective, would-be despots always end up sowing the seeds for the own destruction. They may reign for a while, even a very long while, yes. But sooner or later, their subjects get a belly full of it and take them out, one way or another. We Will Not Comply indeed, you commie motherfuckers.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

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Correspondence

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Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

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Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

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