Hmmm… – Page 75

The Empire strikes back

Posted on September 10, 2020September 10, 2020 by Mike

Is there really anything left to conserve?

After 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed in self-defense two left-wing rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, credit card issuer Discover blocked its users’ ability to donate to his legal defense fund. Twitter suspended the accounts of journalists who wrote, “Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.” Facebook removed posts and videos—that is to say, evidence—that showed Rittenhouse in a positive light while threatening to delete the accounts of offenders sharing the verboten content.

“We’ve designated the shooting in Kenosha a mass murder and are removing posts in support of the shooter,” a Facebook spokesperson said. Along with the media, Silicon Valley proudly plays the part of judge, jury, and character assassin.

Throw a stone, and you’re sure to hit a major company that supports Antifa or Black Lives Matter. Throw a brick through Nike’s window, help yourself to some new shoes, and the multinational corporation will still pledge allegiance to your cause, a cause that receives sanction from much of the federal government as well. After all, that brick is great free advertising.

Based on a threat analysis conducted in August, three Department of Homeland Security draft reports concluded “white supremacist extremists [present] the most lethal threat” facing Americans headed into 2021. None of the drafts mentioned Antifa or Black Lives Matter as a domestic terrorism risk, but ranked “white supremacists” as a threat higher than foreign terrorist groups. The reason Antifa has not been designated a terrorist organization, as Trump said they would in late May, might be that DHS thinks straight, white males clinging to their Bibles and guns pose a more significant threat to our way of life.

A somber enough start, for sure, but we’re after bigger fish here.

To date, the ideological framework and power centers with which the elites justify their untouchable status, social functions, and influence remain fundamentally unchallenged. In the middle of an elite reaction, the Republican Party appears preoccupied with proving it isn’t racist.

“Conservatism” is not the tool we need when American society recently suffered a complete cultural revolution that created the consensus against which Trump crusaded to the White House, and which the ruling class is attempting to reassert. While socially conservative sentiments and aims are good, the only way to go back to what was, at this point, is to employ revolutionary tactics. Unless we find the will to disembowel the institutional entrails of the elites, their reactionary intrigue will only worsen. But this will be an impossible task if we view ourselves as the “conservative” force, as we should be working to overthrow rather than conserve the conditions that empower the ruling class to dispossess Americans of control over their national destiny.

If the aim is merely to survive this “revolution” and win elections, then we have only delayed the cycle a little while longer. To break the cycle, the engine of intrigue must be destroyed. We need the equivalent of the Hungarian “Stop Soros” laws. Entire federal agencies must be downsized and outright abolished. We must take to task corporations that have bankrolled mayhem and misinformed the public through censorship. If we do not do these things, elections will not matter in the end.

Given the cartoonish farce the Democrat-Riot Party has presented us, featuring Cadaver Joe being occasionally trotted out to flail and flub his way through another sparsely attended public appearance—hopefully without having shat his Depends before his wardens can hustle him back into lockdown in his secure, undisclosed basement—can we honestly tell ourselves that they matter all that much now?

So 13 percent of the population wants to start a “race war” against 70 percent of it?

Posted on September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 by Mike

I don’t think they’ve thought this thing all the way through.

Low intelligence, poor impulse control, defective future orientation, emotionalism, difficulty with abstractions. So say psychologists who study racial differences. The literature is voluminous, though suppressed. (The predictable assertion that these scientists, nearly all white, are racist is belied by their consistent finding that Ashkenazi Jews are at the top in intelligence, followed by East Asians, then whites. Racists do not establish the inferiority of their own race.)

These traits, plus poor understanding of the world beyond their visual field, and difficulty with abstract reasoning perfectly explain the senseless murders, the periodic yet unceasing riots and burning of cities, usually of their own neighborhoods and stores. Watts in 1965, much of the country in 1968, LA in1992, more recently Baltimore, Ferguson, Minneapolis. They explain the young black woman on network television sobbing that she is afraid to leave her house because the police might kill her, the black man roaring that he is tired, tired, tired of the police hunting down blacks to kill them. The absurdity of the first claim, the fact that blacks kill far more of each other than whites do, do not occur to an emotional, poorly informed and innumerate people.

Many students of black behavior have concluded that it is innate—genetic, as we say. This thought is of course verboten, an ender of careers, so many who know of it remain very quiet, as do the millions who have long suspected it. Liberals also seem to suspect it as otherwise they would say “Let’s study the matter carefully and find out.” Fairly obviously they fear what they might find, so instead they shy away from the questions in something resembling terror. In human affairs, questions avoided are questions likely to have the wrong answers.

If blacks as a race (there always being degrees and exceptions) cannot fit into a modern society, as seems to be the case, what now? It will be pointed out that blacks are decent people when not enraged or impulsive, that they are emotionally warmer than whites, immensely talented in music and acting, that they are human beings and should not be forced by circumstance to live in grim ghettos, that some are highly intelligent. All true. It can also be pointed out that many of my age grew up listening to the Platters, James Brown, the Supremes, to bebop and doowop and later Coltrane and Davis and so on at endless length, and that is somehow disagreeably ungrateful to think of their race as incompatible with mainline civilization. True…uncomfortably true.

But the killings, the crime, the arson never stop.

Whatever the answer might be, what we are doing now isn’t it.

Probably the single worst thing that could ever happen to them would be for them to get what they claim to want.

(Via WRSA)

Battlespace preparation

Posted on September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 by Mike

We didn’t so much finally find a hill to die on as that it punched us right in the face.

Let’s look at the scenarios the Washington Post article presented to understand that theirs was not so much a theoretical exercise as it was a roadmap for insurrection, a rally cry to the leftists burning down Seattle, Portland, Kenosha and any other city they can target before the election. First they gave us four possible scenarios A Biden Landslide, A narrow Biden win, but with electoral and popular vote victories, a narrow Trump win, but with a large popular vote loss and a period of uncertainty after the election.

Not once did they even play out the possibility of a Trump landslide, because then they would have to admit that riots in the street would also take place given that eventuality. It is more what they don’t say than what they do, that matters.

The crisis they see coming is the use of the Insurrection Act by Trump to “teach these anti-American terrorists a lesson.” Not to quell violent unrest by Biden voters that will not accept the outcome of the election, as played out when Hillary lost and continues to this day, but some invention of Donald Trump’s imagination, fear and hatred. (Notice that all of those playing out the Trump side were hostile anti-Trumpers.) The Washington Post is building into the narrative the purpose and excuse for their insurrection, nothing less. After the Donald Trump landslide and if it is not it will be a result of cheating and intimidation by Biden voters, they plan to take the streets, perhaps even drag Trump out of the White House, perhaps with Deep State cover from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every indication I’m seeing for a Trump victory is much greater than it was in 2016. The polls, even heavily weighted to the Democrats, are showing Trump much closer to Biden than he was to Hillary. He will probably still win, but not by the amount he would in a stand up election. The riots have influenced a lot of people who won’t claim support for Trump, but will nonetheless vote for him on election day.

The riots after election day, with cover from the media, will lead to insurrection and all of us will be on the front line in one way or another. You have trained, stock-piled and while it was hard to tell what for a lot of the time, this is what for. This is the hill to die on, not because of Trump himself, but because the communists want it bad enough to kill you in broad daylight for it. They will kill your whole family if they can, before they take power or after. It is only the preparedness and coolness of head that Kyle Rittenhouse showed that will bring us through it. Some of us won’t make it. But, what better reason to die than defending your families and your freedom? I can think of none.

All of them, from the rioters and looters to the MFM to the Democrat-Socialist-Riot Party itself, is telling us openly and in plain language what they intend to do. It’s time we started taking them at their word, and taking their words seriously. As for the WaPo “war game” article mentioned by TL, David Harsanyi examines it more closely.

In their “war game” scenarios, however, it’s the Democrats who refuse to accept the will of courts to adhere to the constitutionally prescribed system rather than hysteria, and it’s the Democrats who wishcast the wholly imaginary “popular vote” into existence.

One of the scenarios, we learn, “doesn’t look that different from 2016” — a contest in which, it must be pointed out, not one vote has been proven to be uncounted or altered. In that outcome, America is confronted with “a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat.” In the real world, incidentally, that scenario is called a “Trump victory.”

In the fictional war game, however, John Podesta, playing the role of Biden, contends that his party won’t let him concede the race and instead alleges “voter suppression” — the catchall go-to every time a Democrat loses — and persuades the Democratic governors of Trump-won states such as Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.

In the meantime, California, Oregon and Washington threaten to secede from the union if Trump takes office. The Democratic House unilaterally names Biden president. “At that point in the scenario,” the New York Times’ Ben Smith explains, “the nation stopped looking to the media for cues, and waited to see what the military would do.”

This scenario is what a real-life “coup” might resemble. It is, needless to say, utterly insane that Democrats would destroy the nation’s longstanding and peaceful transition because they refuse to accept the mandated process of electing the president. All of which is to say the proactive — and retroactive — delegitimization of the Trump presidency has been a successful four-year project.

Well, for them it has, I suppose. But for sensible, sane people, all they’ve really done is destroy their own credibility and harden his supporters’ hearts against them. It seems a Pyrrhic victory at best, one that might just turn around and bite them on the ass before long.

NEVER underestimate the enemy

Posted on September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 by Mike

It’s always and forever a mistake. If you don’t believe that, ask the Left; they’ve been doing it with Trump from the very beginning, to their eternal frustration and great cost.

Antifa tactical units are organized into standard ‘company structure’ of up to 20 individual soldiers under the immediate control of a comany commander. While there are ‘special units’, most notable the ‘reconnaissance & coordination’ teams of bicyclists, the base of the C&C structure for Antifa is the company.

Company commanders are ‘first lieutenants’ and may be idenfied in the field by their actions within the group, and frequently by possession of DX SDR units of some form. These ‘duplex (send/receive) software defined radio’ units will be small, and most probably attached to a smart phone. It is through the SDR’s that the encrypted commands are passed to operational units. On arrest, 1st Lieutenants have been observed disarding their identifying equipment as well as destroying their phones.First Lieutenants can also be identified as being the local hub for bicycle traffic. In observations of rioting/looting activity, particularly with long distance videos of qualtity, bicyclists can cleary be seen reporting to 1st Lieutenants & even seeking them out in the mob. For this activity, bicyclists have been noted to employ ‘proximate apps’ to locate their units & commanders.

The Anitfa field orgnaization has up to 4 companies reporting to a ‘captain (coordinator)’. Antifa Captians may be identified by common actions & equipment. Captains are ‘free floating’ within the mob movement, but will always be associated with increased bicycle traffic as well as ’emblems’ of authority/command. These emblems include sepcific types & shapes of video camera gear. Antifa soldiers are trained to center on the emblems of both 1st Lieutentant as well as Captains. Some of the Captains have been observed pulling their command together by holding up the long lens video camera overhead while running a pattern of flashes from the light bars. These are swept around the mob & new organization results.

Most of them may be doot-brained pussies just out LARPing as soldiers—disorganized, cowardly, and easily scattered at the slightest sign of opposition. But many of them are not, not at all. More of this truly must-read S2 material at the link, all of it interesting, indeed essential stuff. But the most fascinating part of all, for me at least, comes in at the end:

The structure of Antifa in the field most closely resembles the ‘color’ revolutions created by the CIA. The tactics employed so far in these Antifa field actions have very simiular targets & tactics as was observed as far back in time as the Viet Nam conflict, and in other arenas in which the CIA created wars and destabilized regimes.

While this is the end of this report on the Antifa C&C structure, it is worth noting that, in the observations taken from video footage, there is a suggestion of an ‘Unknown Actor’ (UA) within the activites involved in the looting. This UA is, like Antifa, organized, and can have many operatives within the mob at any given point. This UA does not appear to be engaging in escalation, rather appears to be most focused on ‘tagging’ the Antifa, with the presumed goal of identifying active members. These ‘tagging’ incidents have been observed employing very sophisticated UV light reflective paint ‘dots’ and ‘lines’ being placed on individual Antifa by UA agents using what appears to be a ‘nylon tipped marker’. Several of these markers with no product identifying marks have been recovered in debris following looting episodes. Also in one instance, a small bag of magnetic field reflective ‘dots’ of self-adhesive vinyl was also recovered. It is assumed that UA is using these as trace & track methods for their own purposes. The UA agents are exceptionally well trained and disciplined, exhibiting awareness of video activity sufficient to allow these agents to not yet be identified.

HMMMMM. Might these “unknown actors” actually be FBI or DHS, perhaps? Or dare we hope that this is some sort of militia/Threeper countersurveillance op, providing intel on where these twerps reside, their patterns of movement, contacts, etc for use when the time is ripe for action?

Years ago I attended Cousin Regbo’s change of command ceremony at NAS Norfolk, when he took over the Navy’s venerable Rampager squadron, VFA 83. One of many things I well remember from that most memorable of nights is a conversation at the O-Club after-party where the band played, between a crusty old Marine lifer and a gawky, still-soaking-wet butterbar. The Marine, gruffly chomping out sea-stories around a fat stogie to the enraptured (and endrunkened) audience at our table, was asked by this uncut youngster just what section it was he worked for.

“Little thing called Logistics, son,” he proudly purred, the sly grin of a hungry tiger beginning to widen as he anticipated dropping the hammer on another easy meal.

The LT, who seemed to be a fighter-jock hopeful himself, was not overly impressed by this admission, not in the least. He almost seemed to think that an apology might even be called for, for the old leatherneck having had the gall to tell tales of derring-do—doubtless all heavily embellished, if not outright fabrications conjured from behind the rear-area desk he must certainly have spent his entire career cowering behind.

LT Green’s evident skepticism led the Captain, clearly expecting such callow ignorance of all military history, to lean back and wax philosophical. “Wars, all wars, are won and lost not by you handsome flyboys streaking around way up above the battlefield in them fancy aeroplanes of yours, dropping bombs on real warfighters’ heads. They’ve always and forever been won by two things and two things alone: Intel, and Logistics.”

As our current conflict intensifies and escalates, it might come in useful for everyone to keep that old jarhead’s wisdom firmly in mind. One hopes that the LT, wherever he may be now, did.

Lots more needful things at Scout’s place from Bracken, too.

Reality check update! A former Marine confirms the lesson.

In all the training that I’ve been through (in) my life, I’ve never been in one where in the first five seconds of the scenario you’re blinded with a strobe light and sprayed with pepper spray…. That changes everything. They were throwing these rocks from 15 feet back in the crowd, you couldn’t see who the fuck through it, etc. things like that…It’s just a good talking point for guys that carry concealed, but you need to think through all these different scenarios.

It got way worse after that video ended, they chased us for 11 city blocks. They had a convoy of about 25 vehicles that cut us off at the next intersection, They had scouts on the corner with radios, they had a drone following us, they had a bull horn calling us Nazis, and the crowd was following a red strobe light that was up in the air on a stick, so they would announce Nazis and then people would follow the red strobe light, That video is just the beginning, I’ve got a fucking fractured hand from a baton, everyone of us has black and blue bruises up and down their legs and back, I had a guy spit in my face from 6 inches away, call me a pussy and a coward for not doing anything about it, and then tell me that he was going to find where I live, rape my mother, rape my children in front of me and then kill me.

I’ve never been more angry about something in my fucking life, the level of restraint that it took for us to not fight back in any capacity whether that was with a gun or fists is incredible. All of us have kids at home. The only thing going through all of our minds was we have to be able to justify deadly force if we’re going to go that route, there’s also hundreds of these people, we can’t see straight because of all the pepper spray, and it’s hard to PID exactly who is throwing these rocks and hitting us with batons, because they would hit you and fucking run and their buddy would run up and hit you. It was an incredibly stressful situation, they did a very good job tactically of taking away your situational awareness, and in my opinion complicating your legal defense when you split one of their faces open with a hollow point.

The certain fact that you WILL be arrested and prosecuted vigorously for daring to defend yourself during one of these gang attacks—while your attackers skate away scot free, to do it all again to somebody else the next night—might be the most offensive aspect of all.

But this guy’s story underscores Ol’ Remus’ oft-repeated rule: stay away from crowds. The miserable worms of PantiFa ain’t all punks and creampuffs. And even punks and creampuffs are perfectly capable of inflicting some serious damage if they can cut you out and then dogpile you. It’s awfully hard to exfil unscathed from a no-win tactical situation like that, no matter how tough or well-trained you might be.

Rises again

Posted on August 30, 2020August 30, 2020 by Mike

So in our latest Donnybrook installment, SteveF suggests putting out some CF merch, with kenny and Barry offering their dittos in support. He but little realized I was way ahead of him, long years ago. As I replied:

Actually, I did have, but it got to be too much to keep up with, honestly. Sales started off pretty brisk–they WERE nice shirts and stickers, if I do say so myself–but that meant I was always late getting orders packed and shipped and such-like folderol. So some years back I set up a CafePress store, uploaded the designs and all that, put up a sidebar link, and…didn’t sell a one, or not that I know of. Now I’ve completely forgotten the login and pass to the damned thing, and…well, heck, you’re right, I need to start all over again with the whole merch thing, don’t I?

I then threatened to dig up the old designs (I was rather proud of of ’em, actually) and post them here because hey, why the hell not. I still have a box of the actual shirts stored someplace or other, but the stickers I had made were snapped up pretty quick, I’m afraid; I gots no clue where the P-shop files for them might have wandered off to, alas. But here are the shirt designs:

My own personal fave, on a light beige/off-white shirt.

Why yes, that DOES look an awful lot like I might’ve appropriated the H-D bar and shield just a wee mite for the front of this one, don’t it?

The black one was front-only, nothing on back.

There were three, count ’em, 3 shirt designs, with a small image on front and a bigger one on back. I still have one of ’em myself, a faded, threadbare example fit only for working on motorcycles, painting living rooms, puppy-training, and whatnot.

Actually, looking at these things now, they seem to be reconstructions of the originals; the “Anger management” shirt is the one I still have, and the font above isn’t the same at all. If you’ll notice, too, the orange color on the front design is way different than the “Anger management” side. Also, I don’t remember the black one having any kind of slogan on it at all, just Angry Guy, the CF logo, and the “Harshing your etc” motto. But I could easily be all wet on that one. I need to scrounge up that box of shirts and check one of these days, I reckon. Pretty sure I know where it is. Pretty sure.

I liked the CafePress store, I must say. It made the whole enterprise one hell of a lot easier on me, plus I could offer things like coffee mugs and mouse pads—items I would never have been able to afford having printed up and then only selling a handful of them. Yeah, the price was/is a lot higher with CP, and the profit margin slimmer. Maybe that’s the reason I never sold a damned thing with it.

If I can find that ol’ box of shirts, assuming they haven’t gone all moldy and mildewy or been gnawed by vermin over lo, these many years, maybe we could have some sort of CF contest with those as the prizes or something. Might be just the thing to help celebrate the imminent 19th (!!!) birthday (9/14/01, if I recall correctly) of this here den of internet iniquity, no?

Oh yeah, here’s the image for the sidebar link to Ye Olde CF Mercantile Shoppe, just for grins ‘n’ giggles:

Yes, I actually did have honest-to-goodness shopping cart software set up and functional, while it lasted. The CF Shop was the first online store I ever built—OSCommerce, I believe, is what I used for running the backend of the thing. In fact, I was happy enough with OSCommerce that I used it several times afterwards for other commercial sites I worked on as well. Kind of a steep learning curve initially, or seemed so to my dumb ass, anyway. But not too bad, and once you got it all sussed out it was easy-peasy.

All in all the OSC software worked great: almost astoundingly customizable and tweakable; completely reliable; and readily adaptable to most any kind of online store you might wish to use it for, from music or audiobook downloads to (probably) amateur Pr0n (I’m guessing). Plus, it was also, y’know, free. Lots of useful plugins available for it too, most of those also free. If you’re thinking of setting up an e-commerce site, you could do a lot worse than OSC. I endorse the heck out of it.

Update! DANG, those images are big! Need to get into P-shop and shrink ’em down a bit. Sorry for all that bandwidth wastage, peeps.

Never let a good crisis go to waste

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 by Mike

Beats the hell out of the usual tack of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Conservatives are missing a vital opportunity to remake American education. For the first time in our history, millions of schoolchildren will not have a public school to attend in the fall. Warranted or not, coronavirus fears present conservatives with an opportunity to offer an alternative to traditional public-school education, but they have yet to propose one.

Conservatives have spent decades trying to support alternatives to public school with some success. According to the National Center of Education Statistics, the number of children enrolled in either private schools, charter schools or home-schooling increased to 10.5 million in 2016, up from 7.7 million in 1999. The number, while increasing substantially, still pales in comparison to the 47.3 million children who attend public schools.

As devastating as the coronavirus has been to the wealth and wellbeing of Americans, it has offered a valuable opportunity for conservatives to move a number of children out of the public school system permanently.

Republican governors and mayors could have enacted substantial reforms by offering financial incentives to parents to home-school their children during the pandemic. Taking funds from states’ or cities’ education budgets, and redirecting them to parents, could have been a positive change that voters might accept, especially given that most want schools to remain closed, according to a poll by the Washington Post. Sending direct funds to families also would help alleviate some of their financial pressures, especially when many must choose between going to work and sending their children to school.

The coronavirus pandemic may have destroyed many things, but the opportunity to rebuild and create a more conservative future is out there. Simply reopening the public schools isn’t the answer.

The accompanying opportunity to discredit, dismantle, and destroy the teachers unions, which are nothing more than an auxiliary fund-raising arm of the DNC by now, shouldn’t be ignored either.

Asking the tough questions

Posted on August 14, 2020August 14, 2020 by Mike

Ones with scary answers, too.

Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America?

Offhand, I’d say the answer depends on which military we’re talking about here. Is it the higher-ranking officers put in place by the Obama junta after Jugears McNoChest had spent purging the military of nearly all its actual military types and replaced them with PC dweebs, FOBbits, REMFs, and Blue Falcons uninterested in, y’know, winning wars—preferring instead to humiliate its enlisted ranks by forcing them to march on parade in stripper-pumps? Or would it be the crusty old lifer Senior Chiefs, Gunnies, and Command Sar-Majors, who must be scratching their heads in puzzlement by now over the atrocity that’s been wrought on what was once, long ago, the most effective, well-trained, and just plain dangerous military in existence?

Because one of those things is NOT like the other.

Between the perma-coup against the American people, the mainstream media’s myriad and shameless lies, and the Democrats’ election fraud agenda (including the Golden Ticket to anarchy that is mail-in voting), it is absolutely clear that the Democrats will not accept Donald Trump’s impending victory. It is also clear that their plan is to sow chaos when they lose, with outright ballot box-stuffing, riots, and endless counts and recounts, so that they can obscure Trump’s win enough to create a patina of fake doubt about the result. Then they will rush into some Hawaiian courtroom and get some Hawaiian judge to announce that the Delaware Basement Crustacean won the election. The idea is to then have a deus ex militaria where somehow the establishment gets reestablished forever at gunpoint. And the liberal elite is said establishment.

Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars.

Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours. A general who said “all lives matter” or refused to buy the ridiculous but fashionable notion that America’s greatest strategic threat is the weather a century hence or uttered some other heresy would not be a general much longer – and certainly not cash in on a sweet post-retirement gig at Boeing.

But most Americans don’t see that. Because America remembers the military of 30 years ago that could actually win a war in a reasonable period of time (as we did in Desert Storm), today’s generals benefit from residual respect for yesterday’s Cold War military. Americans are unaware of the devastated culture cultivated by our military senior leadership. Here’s the ruinous legacy of today’s generals: Afghanistan is a disaster and still not won, ships colliding and catching fire due to gross failures of leadership, boats of sailors on tape whimpering as they surrender to the Iranian Navy, senior officers leaking to the media, colonels, generals and admirals getting court-martialed, massive prosecutorial misconduct by JAGs, woke West Point (which recently graduated an open communist), and troops kneeling before rioters. It’s a military that puts Diversity Day before D-Day.

We know we cannot trust this generation of generals to stand up for freedom, but I’d like to think that a good portion of the troops would refuse to enter civilian politics in favor of the anti-American left. Yet, I would have also liked to think that we’d never see law enforcement officers eagerly obeying the fascist decrees of liberal poohbahs. The sight of overeager Barney Fifes hassling citizens about piehole thongs made it clear that for some people oaths come behind the giddy joy of power and keeping their pensions.

And yet here we all are, alas. The really scary part comes at the very end:

Sadly, we cannot rely on the generals to not make the error. Let’s just hope that the danger is mooted because Trump’s margin of victory is so great that the Democrats cannot cheat.

It won’t be, I assure you; mail-in voting will see to that all by itself, plus whatever other fraudulent skullduggery the megalomaniacal Democrat-Socialist flim-flam men can dream up too. Not a single peep from any of you people claiming that “they can’t” do this or that “they wouldn’t dare” do that, either. They’ll be “finding” and counting “votes” behind closed doors for however long they need to—even into early January if necessary—until they have enough to “prove” they won.

Doubt me? Don’t. See Al Franken, election of, just for one example. Small potatoes though it may seem now, remember ye well that the election of “Senator” Franken ended up being decisive in snaking Obamacare through the Senate and driving a stake through the heart of American health care forever.

Even if Trump should somehow pull off a true miracle and win so overwhelmingly that his victory is impossible for the Left bunco artists to deny or subvert, the rioting will intensify by orders of magnitude until we’re all so fed up we just start gunning Libtards down on sight. No matter how the Last American Election shakes out, things are looking to get mighty sporty indeed in its aftermath.

The truly dismaying thing to me is that I can remember a time when to so much as pose such a question would seem utterly preposterous on the face of it, dismissible with a snort and an airy wave of the hand. Not now, though. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Just stay home!

Posted on August 5, 2020August 5, 2020 by Mike

Shhhhhh.

If you are, like me, stuck in a state where coronavirus restrictions have turned your life upside down, bankrupted your business, and traumatized your kids, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you might be considering a big relocation. There are plenty of states that are retaining liberty in spite of the Chinese flu virus that has a 99% recovery rate. If you are considering fleeing your state for a new one, then look into the following five states that scored the highest in a data-collection study by the financial site WalletHub, showing which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions. (Please note that coronavirus restrictions change daily. It is possible that by the time this is published one or more of these guidelines will have changed so verify before you pick up and move.)

After the list, she appends a “Whither Texas” update at the bottom that is, frankly, quite depressing.

Sadly, shockingly, Texas does not make the list of places I would move anymore. The left has taken over the major cities in Texas. Invaders from California, bringing their politics with them, have made Texas a place that needs major rehab. Coronavirus restrictions are also quite stringent and Texas ranked as the 46th-worst state for restrictions on freedom in the WalletHub study. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? We should all consider that winning a presidency without Texas is going to be damn near impossible. So for that reason alone, it might be a place to move if your goal is moving to politically strategic places. But don’t expect an abundance of freedom in Texas. Those days are over.

It would seem so, alas. Progtard locusts have the most amazing ability to destroy our liberty, independence, and dignity no matter where the swarm ends up.

Brother, can you spare a…

Posted on July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 by Mike

At first glance, this seemed kinda absurd to me. Then I gave it further thought, and…I dunno, it still seems kinda absurd to me.

Pearl Jam, the Eagles, Guns N’ Roses, and Green Day are among the bands who have received loans from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, Rolling Stone reports.

According to data from the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department, the money will go to supporting and retaining the artists’ crews and staff; Rolling Stone notes that the Eagles’ loan is listed under their touring company and will help save 50 jobs. Larger loans—between $350,000 and $1 million—were taken out by the Eagles, Pearl Jam, and Disturbed. Out of 660,000 recipients, Rolling Stone reports that over 40 musicians and bands received loans for over $150,000, including Weezer, Imagine Dragons, Chainsmokers, Nickelback, and Jason Isbell.

Various major and independent labels also received PPP loans, including Sub Pop Records, Third Man Records, and Knitting Factory Records, who each received a minimum of $350,000.

Not one of the above-named bands are outfits I would think of as needing any federal aid to scrape by; I’d far rather see that dough put into the hands of the struggling, lower-tier road warriors out there who are certainly worse off than they are, and if I was still working the road myself I’d likely resent this, at least somewhat.

On the other hand, though, as the article notes, the assistance is earmarked for their crews and support staff, which makes it seem a bit more reasonable. Although it’s also true that even those guys typically haul down bucketfuls more cash than your average bar band does.

There’s this, too: the fact that no bands, great or small, have been allowed to ply their trade and earn their living during this summer’s touring season is entirely on the goobermint. Also, although people don’t realize it, even the big-name acts earn most of their dough not from record sales, but from touring and merch sales. So why the hell shouldn’t they insist on compensation from the very assholes who shut them all down on a pretext?

What the hell, why not?

Posted on July 5, 2020July 5, 2020 by Mike

Sure, he’s kind of a nut. But he’s an all-American nut just the same.

Grammy-winner rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West took to Twitter on Independence Day to announce that he is “running for president of the United States.”

“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States!” tweeted West on Saturday. While the rapper did (not) elaborate on when he would try to run for president, he did include the hashtag #2020VISION in his tweet.

West has teased his intention to run for U.S. President for years.

In 2019, the rapper stated, “there will be a time when I will be the president of the US, and I will remember… any founder that didn’t have the capacity to understand culturally what we were doing.” The “Jesus Is King” rapper made headlines in 2018 after delivering an impassioned 10-minute speech from the Oval Office as he sat across from President Trump.

“Let’s stop worrying about the future. All we really have is today,” he said, before adding: “Trump is on his hero’s journey right now, and he might not have expected to have a crazy motherfucker like Kanye West.”

Before you dismiss this as just another slice of cray-cray and/or self-aggrandizing silliness, remember that he and Trump get along famously. Consider that for a minute, then note Glenn’s suggestion that there might indeed be a method to the apparent madness here: “HE’LL STRIP BLACK VOTES FROM BIDEN IF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS, AND HE KNOWS THAT.”

I like it. I like it a lot.

Independence Day, or something like it

Posted on July 4, 2020July 5, 2020 by Mike

This is gonna be a long ‘un for sure, with some twists and turns y’all might find surprising. I’ll probably still only manage to get around to a fraction of all the things I want to say even so, and I’m thinking I’ll just go ahead and dump half of it below the fold under the “More” link.

First off, a real gem from the inimitable John Wilder.

Boston, Massachusetts: 122 killed, 211 wounded in a daybreak raid by troops sent to confiscate privately owned weapons and ammunition. “Patriots” claim government troops fired first.

It has been reported that at dawn a group of self-styled “Patriots” engaged a heavily armed troops sent to confiscate guns and ammunition. These “Patriots” though initially outnumbered, stood by the side of the road, fully armed with modern assault weapons at the ready. The “Patriot” leader at the site, John Parker, claims to have been only standing there with the other “Patriots”. It has reported that Parker said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

According to Parker, the soldiers ordered the “Patriots” to disperse, and he ordered his men to “disburse and go home,” but “the soldiers were yelling,” and there was confusion. There was a shot, fired, but both the “Patriots” and the spokesman for the troops claim the other side fired the first shot. Badly outnumbered at first, the “Patriots” were reinforced by the local members of their radical libertarian movement as the firefight wore on. House-to-house fighting was reported.

Sources to this blog have indicated that the “Patriots” had been tipped off to the troop movements and were aware the gun confiscation was coming. The troops were forced to withdraw under fire, although rescue from a larger detachment of troops from Boston was required for their safe evacuation.

A local lawyer, John Adams, viewed the battlefield the next day, “The die was cast. The Rubicon crossed.” Pressed by this blog for an explanation of these cryptic comments, he referred us to our previous post (American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?).

The events listed above happened 245 years ago, except John Adams being snarky to me, yet somehow the concepts behind them are fresh in American life in 2020. The battles of Lexington and Concord, though small by today’s standards, produced the “shot heard ‘round the world” as the American Dream and American Identity were formed.

Why yes, you WILL want to read the rest, why do you ask? John’s closing question is piercing; its pertinence is everlasting, and will never fade.

Next, via Ed Driscoll, a 4th of July speech from the greatest President America ever had, or ever will have.

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought.

A wonderful, insightful speech that, to those among us of a certain raddled decrepitude, probably sounds at least somewhat familiar. But then, we old fogies came up in a time when Civics was still a class taught in the schools.

As beautiful, as uplifting as Coolidge’s speech most certainly is, however, it is also profoundly depressing—downright heartbreaking, in fact, when you contemplate how very much we’ve either allowed to be stolen from us or just flat given away with nary a thought.

Continue reading “Independence Day, or something like it” →

It’s always darkest just before the dawn

Posted on July 2, 2020July 2, 2020 by Mike

And right now, it’s pretty danged dark out there.

Let me tell you why I believe the polls… Because in 2016, the polls were accurate. No, not the state polls. The state polls were way off. The average of the national polls, however, was almost exactly correct.

President Trump lost the national popular vote in 2016 by 2.1 points — and just barely beat Hillary Clinton.

The average of the national polls in 2016 had Trump behind Hillary by 3.2 points.

So, as you can see, the average of the 2016 national polls was only off by 1.1 points. That’s what you call some damn fine polling, and right now, those very same damn fine polls have Trump losing to Joe Biden by 9.2 points.

And these polls were all taken before the president stupidly tweeted out video of an idiot yelling “White Power!”

Donald Trump is not only losing this election, if the election were held today, his loss would possibly be catastrophic, would be remembered as one of the most humiliating in history. He’s not only facing a landslide rejection of epic proportions, he’s losing to a 77-year-old imbecile and racist who’s hiding out in his basement.

How is this possible?

How is it even remotely possible Joe Biden is kicking Trump’s butt?

Don’t know how much of what Nolte writes here I actually agree with; Nolte was originally a NeverTrumpTard who eventually came around, and for all I know he might be eagerly reverting to type. But the dismayingly-successful COVIDIOT gambit, followed by the sacking and burning of pretty much every city in America with no response from Trump besides unfulfilled Twitter threats, has undoubtedly shaken his support more than anything the Marxist-traitor Left has been able to come up with so far. And, well, here we all are.

Despite their roots in reality, there is no doubt that these crises — and the White House and Senate’s attempts to tackle them — would be reported differently if Hillary Clinton were president.

The Federalist’s exclusive Friday Oval Office interview revealed a president and West Wing that are happy and optimistic, while realistic about the political danger they face — a stark contrast, publisher Ben Domenech notes in Monday’s Transom newsletter, with his “interviews in the dark days of George W. Bush’s second term.”

“The president clearly believes he is down, and that he has been prevented from using ammunition curtailed by the continued challenge of the virus and without Joe Biden doing things like walking outside and talking for more than 30 minutes,” Domenech writes. “But the president clearly is not of the opinion that Biden’s lead is insurmountable.”

And it isn’t. But a corporate media that have struggled for years to achieve their openly stated goal of defeating the president finally have a working plan. The president and his Republican allies had better get ahead of it, or Democrats will win the Senate –and Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.

And that there is the problem, really: despite his own natural inclinations, Trump appears now to have shifted—been maneuvered, more accurately, with an unwitting assist of every panic-ninny currently berating sensible people for refusing to don the Mask Of Submission—from the offensive to the defensive. That’s a defeat in and of itself, and I’m unsure how it might be reversed. But it must be, that’s all there is to it. Charles Hurt warns that complacency is the real enemy:

Mr. Trump’s fourth year in office has been an unusual one, to say the least. But even that gives his supporters unwarranted reason to be complacent. They see a president in a time of national threat trying to unify the country while his enemies in Washington and in Congress only work to weaponize every tragedy for their own personal political advantage. With dishonest, evil vermin like this against him, how could Mr. Trump NOT win?

To be clear, any such complacency among Trump supporters is badly misplaced. The only difference between 2016 and 2020 is that this time, Democrats, the political media and the so-called “Deep State” now know that Donald Trump can win. This time, there is nothing they will not do to destroy him.

Something decides every election. oftentimes, it’s the economy, Stupid. Other times it is security. It can even be personality that determines the outcome of an election.

The 2020 election is shaping up to be the “Make it stop!” election. Ardent Trump supporters love Mr. Trump and will walk through fire over broken glass to vote for him. Rabid anti-Trumpers despise the president and will loot and riot through tear gas to vote against him.

This election will be determined by an altogether different group of voters. These voters don’t particularly like Mr. Trump, but they also aren’t crazy haters. Many of them voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and are open to doing so again.

Today, they see rioters in the streets, smashing store fronts, torching police cars and toppling statues. They are appalled, and they just want it to stop.

Mr. Trump claims to be the “law and order” guy, but the mayhem continues under his administration. Mr. Biden is desperate to curry favor with the peaceful protesters so he cowardly declines to forcefully condemn the lawlessness and rioters.

The average voter is watching it all and just wants it all to stop. If a vote for Mr. Biden would make it stop, that’s what he will do. Same with Mr. Trump.

It’s kinda tough for Trump to run on “law and order” when he’s the guy ultimately responsible for seeing to it that law and order is maintained…and anyone can see that he has failed to do so. To wit:

Trump’s campaign has suggested that riots and more disorder will happen if Biden is elected. The problem with this argument is that disorder is already happening now under President Trump.

Admittedly, Trump has had a difficult fight from the beginning. He has been hamstrung by investigations, a hostile deep state resistance from career civil servants, and a nakedly partisan propaganda campaign by the media. Nevertheless, he has a job to do. He’s not merely citizen Trump. He’s not just an observer. It’s his FBI. It’s his government to run. It’s his military to command. If he can’t run it, he needs to fire people until he can get the right people where they belong.

It’s not entirely clear whether Trump’s reluctance to use force is a cynical calculation that this chaos works to his advantage, or a vague instinct that anything he does will boomerang. It does not matter; there is a job to do regardless of electoral consequences.

As it stands, the country and the president are diminished in the face of extended disorder. A strong and swift response, while controversial, would restore the sense that the nation is not up for grabs. It would also do much to restore Trump’s prestige. Impotent tweeting and inaction encourages more assaults, demands, and brinksmanship.

Voters need to understand that ejecting Trump will not lead to a restoration of order. But Trump needs to understand that inaction will not bring it about, either.

Here’s hoping it does. But there IS at least a feeble ray of hope amidst all this gloomy darkness.

President Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following some of son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner’s political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts, three people with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking tell Axios.

Behind the scenes: One person who spoke with the president interpreted his thinking this way: “No more of Jared’s woke s***.” Another said Trump has indicated that following Kushner’s advice has harmed him politically.

…Several conservative allies of the president have reached out to him and advised him to reduce Kushner’s influence over his re-election campaign.

For God’s sake listen to ’em, Mr Preznit, sir. They have a much better idea of where your best interests lie than any damned liberal ever will, however highly your liberal daughter might think of him.

‘Trump has a Jared problem,’ is how one conservative activist who works with the White House on immigration puts it. ‘Jared is a total fuck-up. Everything he touches turns to lead.’ Others groan about ‘four more years of Jared’ should the President be re-elected in November.

And if Trump does, we all do. Dump him. An hour ago wouldn’t be too soon.

Various sources in, or connected to, the administration are stunned by the amount of power Kushner wields. He is a 39-year-old rich kid who had no experience in government before 2016, yet he is in charge of Middle East diplomacy, police reform, a major immigration reform package, criminal justice reform, PPE procurement during COVID-19 and construction of the border wall.

Kushner’s inexperience might be excusable if he were particularly brilliant. People who have sat in meetings with him, however, describe him as ‘slow’, ‘a moron’ and ‘not really that bright’. He struggles to master detail. One official suggests he doesn’t have the acuity to master one, let alone all, of the tasks the President gives him. For instance, he was in charge of producing the 600-plus-page immigration reform package, but conservatives were horrified at how little he knew about the issue he was leading on. He didn’t even seem to know what was in his own proposal; others had to step in when he was unable to answer the more technical questions.

One conservative source who attended a briefing on the plan led by Kushner told The Spectator he was shocked that Kushner seemed to have no sense of how to answer basic questions about chain migration and the diversity visa lottery. ‘He presents as someone very knowledgeable and in the know until he faces questions,’ the source said. ‘He goes off the record or on deep background so people don’t realize he’s a fucking idiot.’

Some assign sinister motives to Kushner’s missteps. His negative influence on the administration, it’s whispered, goes beyond incompetence and veers toward deliberate sabotage. Several individuals close to the administration claim Kushner’s history as a rather progressive Democrat makes him far more ideological than he lets on, and this causes him to subvert Trump’s populist agenda. ‘The depths and lengths Jared is going to to stab Trump in the back [are] quite profound,’ one source claimed. ‘Trump’s been burned by Jared so many times,’ said another.

Naturally. What we’re all pleased to misnomer “liberalism” isn’t a set of political opinions, nor a mere ideology. It is a religion, and its faithful acolytes will always and forever put advancing the agenda way before friendship, family ties, decency, and common sense six days a week, and twice on Sunday. If Trump doesn’t realize this by now, he’d better wake the fuck up, and fast. He has no more than three and half months to turn this out-of-control bus around, before we all wind up bleeding in a ditch on the Left side of the road, dazed and wondering how the hell we got there.

People get ready

Posted on June 28, 2020June 28, 2020 by Mike

A preview of coming attractions for a movie we never want to see. But it looks more and more as if we just might.

As we’d reminded you back on June 14th in this ANP story titled “Imagine America In 2021 If Domestic Terror-Supporters Win In November: A Look Back At Where America Was Headed Under Obama Tells Us Where We’ll Go If Democrats Win The Election”, while Barack Obama was still President, official US government documents labeled just about any Republican or Conservative across the country as a potential terrorist in the government’s eyes.

As we’d reported within that story, back on August 26th of 2013, Michael Snyder had published an extremely important story titled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered “Potential Terrorists” In Official Government Documents” within which he warned that America was in deep trouble if we kept going the direction we were headed in.

With official US government documents back then labeling people as being potential terrorists just for being a conservative, a libertarian, a Christian or a gun owner, or anyone who was opposed to abortion, globalism, Communism, illegal immigration, the United Nations or a ‘New World Order’, just imagine if these Marxist devils get back into power in January of 2021!

Going so far under Obama that they were attempting to label ANYONE OPPOSED TO the democrat agenda, including those opposed to the mass murdering of babies, as a potential terrorist, we should think about that very, very deeply as we continue this rush towards November.

With terrorists letting Americans know that terror attacks upon our country are ahead, with even President Trump recently calling out their ‘treason, sedition and insurrection’, the remarks made by BLM’s own leaders hint that this will never end peacefully in the weeks and months ahead.

So we come down to this very real possibility. With democrats quite literally pushing their communist revolution ahead of the 2020 election, and those same democrats demonizing 10’s of millions of law-abiding Americans citizens for having conservative values, even putting us on terrorist watchlists, as has happened in one commie revolution after another, there is inevitably a ‘purge’.

And with the website Deagel giving us a hint of what that purge might look like, with their forecast of an America with less than 100 million people living here by 2025, a drop of over 227 million in less than 4 years, we pray that Civil War will be avoided in America but Communist revolutions throughout history have proven to us that there are things much worse.

Indeed there are, and it isn’t as if there hasn’t already been numerous real-world demonstrations of what those things will surely end up being. As CA suggests in the title of his post linking to this sobering Malcolm Pollack piece, the stakes are the highest imaginable.

It surprises me that anyone on the Right (or for that matter, anyone of middle years or older who grew up in the former United States, and feels that he or she has had a pretty good life) would have any hesitation at all about supporting Donald Trump — not only in the upcoming election, but also in the day-to-day grind of this terrible culture war. (I should make an exception for accelerationists, but I am not an accelerationist.)

Is Mr. Trump deeply flawed? Of course. Is he petulant, unstatesmanlike, vain, unlettered, and at times childish and vulgar? Yes, all of those things. But listen to how he speaks of America, of its goodness, of its greatness, and of its greatness still to be. Look at the way he honors our Founders, our traditions, our veterans, and the ordinary people who build and sustain American life. Say what you want about the man, his eye is on what’s good in America — all the things that over the centuries have made people from all over the world yearn to come here, all the things that I, as a boy, was taught that we must give thanks for to our forefathers, cherish for ourselves and our families, and preserve for generations yet unborn. He understands that we are links in a great chain — with a debt to our ancestors, and a duty to our children. Break that chain, sever that link to past and future, and men will be, as Edmund Burke said, little more than “the flies of a summer”.

For all his flaws, Donald Trump understands all of this: if not intellectually, then in his heart. And he is, in this moment, all we have. He is Gandalf against the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. As Lincoln once said of Grant: “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

Remember always: we are in an existential conflict with a fearsome global Enemy. This foe has limitless financial resources, and it has already conquered, in a long march spanning half a century or more, all the great strategic strongholds of our civilization — education, popular media, corporate boardrooms, the upper echelons of the military, the political leadership of almost all of our major cities, and the malleable minds of scores of millions of voters, in particular women and coastal city-dwelllers. As we can see all around us every day, they have fought us almost to a standstill even without controlling the White House and the Senate. Can you imagine what would happen if they were to consolidate their power by seizing those last defenses?

Perhaps you imagine that much of their current anger is due to their loss to Mr. Trump in 2016, and that a victory this November would settle them back down; that if they can reclaim the presidency they will be placated and magnanimous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Seething with four years of pent-up resentment, if they retake the commanding heights of political power they will, in their exultation and their fury, burn us all to ashes, and grind the remaining embers of the traditional American nation into powder.

Y’all already well know of my dejected acceptance of the essential truth expressed by the TINVOWOOT formulation, indeed, there is no voting our way out of this. I’ve also been disappointed in Trump’s seeming near-paralysis of late, and have said so here. Even so, those things don’t make supporting him a mug’s game, nor lessen the importance of doing so.

As the horrific death throes of America That Was—struck down at last by the toxic combination of Enemies, Domestic and the nerveless ennui of beleaguered Normals—advance towards their last stages, the truly Woke among us must nonetheless resist despair, resolving to whatever action we can to forestall the final victory of our Marxist tormentors and opressors for as long as possible. The prospect of defeat looms ever larger, but defeat is even yet not a certainty. As long as the slightest hope remains, we must do all that lies within our power to do.

As the man says, Trump is all we have standing between us and the coming of Mordor On The Potomac’s Great Darkness, at least for the moment. No, he is not any kind of Savior; he is not a Man On A White Horse, riding in to smite our foes and singlehandedly turn the tide at the last moment. He is a tool, ready to hand and still of use in stalling the onslaught of the orcs until we can marshall our forces and perhaps contrive a way to turn the dismal tide ourselves. Since we’re into the LOTR analogies here, Gandalf’s wise words seem appropriate:

Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not…It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time. So let’s just buckle down and win the damned thing, shall we?

Discourse On Voluntary Servitude

Posted on June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 by Mike

That’s the best-known work of French judge and philosopher Étienne de la Boétie, a passionate and uncompromising advocate for human liberty and against tyranny. As y’all reprobates and nogoodniks may or may not have noticed, I have been stealthily expanding the “Notable quotes” section with some more good stuff lately, and ran across a memorable one from de la Boétie via a WRSA link to yet another excellent Robert Gore piece, which I will get to excerpting anon in its own post. But seeing the one I plonked into the sidebar mentioned in a comment at SLL inspired me to revisit some of de la Boétie’s work myself, which I admit to having all but forgotten about after his having been glancingly mentioned back in my college French class back in the Pleistocene or thereabouts.

So without further ado, enjoy (if that’s the right word; it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading, actually) these bits from his seminal Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, also known as “The Against-One.” It’s somewhat lengthy, but quite rewarding; you should bookmark it and read it all when you get the time. Written in around 1548 when de la Boétie was only 18 years of age (!), the central thrust is that tyrants hold power only because and for as long as the people concede it to them. Its relevance to current-day America’s self-inflicted contretemps is self-evident.

To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger; the intelligent do not refuse to undergo suffering. It is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights; they stop at merely longing for them, and lose through timidity the valor roused by the effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part of their nature. A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented. Yet one element appears to be lacking. I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost all evils follow thereafter, and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude. Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would receive it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.

Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?

It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born…Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection. It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude.

By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes.

Like I said, uncomfortable reading—not least for how thoroughly it reinforces the truth behind the hoary old saw which claims that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite how desperately the Left would like to believe otherwise, some verities really ARE eternal.

CF asks the tough questions!

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Mike

Lots of outrage out there over the “exposure” of this supposed “scam.”

An alleged nonprofit aimed at providing financial aid to looters and rioters who were arrested in the Minneapolis riots is facing widespread criticism after revealing that it has spent only a fraction of its donations and pocketed the rest, as reported by Fox News.

The group is called the Minnesota Freedom Fund, and although it has received approximately $35 million in donations, has only spent about $200,000 on actual bail for incarcerated suspects. That amounts to only 0.57 percent of its earnings actually being spent on what the group said they would spend it on.

Not that I’m saying it ISN’T a scam, mind; for all I know it is. But my question, which I have yet to see mentioned anywhere else, is this: given the near-unanimous support for the rioters from Democrat-Socialist governors and mayors, as well as the usual “space to destroy” stand-down orders, exactly how many rioters have the cops actually been allowed to arrest? 30? 40? 50?

Any at all?

Seems to me that might matter just a wee bit when totting it all up, no?

Moreover: how high was the bail, on average? On what specific charges? How many offenders had no bail set at all, to be released on their own recognizance?

Maybe we all ought to be worrying less about the possible fleecing of some deserving suckers, and more about the privileged treatment of violent hard-Left shocktroops by a corrupt system wholly complicit in their revolutionary terrorism.

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