Life in a once-great nation

When you’re right, you’re right

Posted on February 18, 2021February 18, 2021 by Mike

Russia Blasts Biden Regime For ‘Persecution’ Of Trump Supporters, Political Dissidents
Russia calls on the United States to observe the human rights of political opponents.

The irony, it burns.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement lambasting the United States government under Joe Biden for the “ongoing persecution campaign” taking place “against anybody at all who does not agree with the results of the latest presidential election.”

In the statement, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova delivered a scathing assessment of the human rights situation in the United States under President Joe Biden.

Zakharova described the ongoing crackdown against Trump loyalists in the United States:

“The FBI has reportedly opened more than 400 criminal cases and applied for more than 500 search warrants and subpoenas for suspects; it has also brought charges against and detained around 200 people. Only several dozen defendants have been released on bail or placed under house arrest. The others are being subjected to harsh pressure, with members of their family and social circle being coerced into giving a ‘convenient’ testimony. Moreover, people who have not even been officially charged are losing their jobs; they are being banned from social media and publicly ostracised.”

She also questioned the “objectivity of the law enforcement agencies” involved in this campaign, noting that they were acting under orders and “in line with the narrative of the current administration who declared the events of January 6, 2021 a riot and everybody who was near the US Congress on that day all but plunderers.”

She went on to correctly note that far from being violent rioters, most of the attendees of the January 6 rally were peaceful protesters.

“In fact, the majority of those people were ordinary citizens concerned about the situation in their own country,” she said. “These were 74 million voters who voted for their president and defended their views.”

Living in Biden’s shiny new Amerikan Gulag, you might devoutly wish to be able to dispute all that. But if you’re at all honest, you can’t. Bottom line:

As the human rights situation continues to deteriorate in the United States, it is becoming apparent to the world that Trump supporters are a repressed group in Biden’s America.

A-yup. Know the old saying “the truth hurts”? Well, when you’re trapped in a rapidly disintegrating banana republic, watching a formerly powerful and prosperous nation fall into decay in the iron-fisted grip of an illegitimate, repressive junta that is openly hostile to half its own population, it damned sure does at that.

Mythbuster

Posted on February 16, 2021February 16, 2021 by Mike

The Trumpian Heresy.

We all know, deep down, that our “Republic” is not a really functioning democracy. This is probably why our leaders, far more so than leaders of genuinely democratic countries such as Switzerland or Norway, feel the need to constantly emphasize the importance, as Nancy Pelosi put it pompously in a January 10 press release, of “protecting our Constitution and Democracy.” They do this to overcompensate for insecurities and doubts. It is part of our national Myth—our Civil Religion—that we are the ultimate democratic nation. This is the real reason why Donald Trump was impeached. He has committed heresy against the American Myth.

Myths, according to anthropologists, are fundamental in holding peoples together, in covering-up contradictions, creating a united group and legitimizing those in power. Thus, questioning them—even if they are empirically false—is generally Not Done. Doing so is, perhaps only unconsciously, regarded as a heretical attempt to destroy the society and all those invested in the status quo.

This was best articulated—though you have to read between the lines—by NBC political correspondent Kelly O’Donnell when she was interviewed on NBC News on the morning of February 11th. O’Donnell explained that Trump’s political career has been marked by:

…saying things that others would fear to say and recoil at saying; talking about rigged elections…The idea of saying that something is rigged for most politicians would be a step too far. For Donald Trump, as a candidate and president, he was certainly willing to blow past those lines of normalcy and sort of discretion and the frequency of repeating it really created a bond with his supporters. [My transcription].

Saying these things, according to O’Donnell, caused Trump’s supporters to question the sacred cow of whether American elections were genuinely fair, infuriating them, and leading to the “insurrection” that was indeed—according to O’Donnell—a “threat to democracy.”

So, even if there has been a rigged election—or even if you genuinely believe that an election has been rigged—you should surely have enough “discretion” to not go public about it.

Although Americans aren’t generally aware of it, international analyses have concluded that America is the one of the least democratic countries in the “democratic” category of countries. It is only just about possible to call it democratic at all. According to the Electoral Integrity Project’s analysis, the US came near the bottom of this second highest group for honest elections, tying with Mexico. This because a number of factors frowned on by international observers open it up to electoral fraud. These include: no voter ID, mail-in ballots, duplicate registration, election observers being prevented from observing, unreliable voting machines, the media calling results while some areas are still voting and so literally influencing the election, and voter fraud not being prosecuted often enough.

But of course voter fraud can’t be prosecuted. To admit that it happens would be to admit that a component of the American Civil Religion is nonsense.

There was way more than just that one component confirmed as denialist moonshine during Trump’s wearing term under Oval Office siege. Ultimately, though, the problem vexing our present-day Swamp “nobility” is the same one their Medieval forerunners—cited by the author in a most apt comparison—were eventually undone by: once the serfs have witnessed the slaughter of those Sacred Cows, there’s no way they can be made to unsee it.

Winter Wonderland

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Ironbear

My neighborhood looks like a Christmas card today:

I’ll bet we got every bit of the 5″ of snow they were predicting.

The birds didn’t even wait until I went back in the house to hit the birdseed after I refilled the feeders.

Ulric got over his distaste for all this white shit by this afternoon, and was running back and forth in it like he’d grown up a sled dog.

I swear! That BBQ grill cover just jumped into the shot from outta nowhere!

But remember, kids: Snowfalls are now a thing of the past.

The story so far

Posted on February 10, 2021February 10, 2021 by Mike

The Burning Platform’s Jim Quinn graciously e-mailed to inform me that he had put together a two-parter whose conclusion had been partially inspired by my own humble efforts. Part One opens with an excellent, if dismaying, sit-rep:

The takeover of the country by an amalgamation of bad characters representing fascist corporatism, collectivism, billionaire oligarchs, social media tyrants, pandemic peddlers, and Deep State snake oil surveillance state salesmen has marked a turning point for the country. Battle lines are being drawn, a propaganda war is already being waged, enemies are preparing for conflict, rage is rising, and the country is headed towards some level of dissolution.

Events since the inception of the release of the China virus from the Wuhan bio-weapon lab, have been accelerating towards an epic struggle between those constituting the true power in the country and those they consider deplorable and undeserving of respect or a voice in how the country is governed. The shadowy figures behind the curtain of Bernays’ invisible government have revealed themselves and no longer fear the plebs they rule over, as their sociopathic hubris has convinced themselves they are invincible.

They have been emboldened by the success they have achieved in engineering a takeover of the government through weaponizing a flu to coerce politicians into shutting down the nation; utilizing propaganda to induce the majority of Americans to cower in fear from a virus that is highly non-lethal (99.7% survival rate) to anyone under 80; destroying hundreds of thousands of small businesses while enriching mega-corporations; successfully rigging a presidential election through mail-in ballot fraud and vote machine machinations; provoking a fake race crisis using BLM and ANTIFA useful idiots; profiting to the tune of trillions from the Fed money printing operation; suppressing free speech and medical truths about the virus through social media censorship; setting up Trump supporters as dangerous insurrectionists with the Capital farce, subsequent white supremacist storyline, and militarization of Washington DC to complete the false narrative; and now having their empty vessel pretend president signing executive orders to pull the country hard left; with Supreme Court packing, DC and Puerto Rico statehood on the docket; and Domestic Terrorism legislation to make all Trump supporters enemies of the state.

The overlords think throwing $600 at the plebs every six months, while allowing them a pittance of unemployment crumbs, will keep them sedated as long as they have their iGadgets to keep them distracted. The unholy triumvirate of Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Gov are generating tens of billions by peddling a DNA altering experimental rushed vaccine, that isn’t really a vaccine and doesn’t really keep you from getting Covid or spreading it further. We also don’t know the long-term consequences of this “medicine”. And it seems the triumvirate is doing their best to cover up the adverse reactions being reported, miscarriages and numerous deaths of nursing home patients shortly after getting the jab.

The blizzard of lies about the effectiveness of face diapers and lockdowns from “medical experts”, “journalists”, corporate media propagandists, and government apparatchiks has been relentless. These fabricators bloviate about following the science while ignoring the facts proving masks and lockdowns DO NOT WORK and ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine DO WORK. The level of deceit and deception being applied by those in power is drastically increasing the anger and rage in the country towards authority.

The country is already at war, even though many don’t know it, and the Deep State/Oligarchs are clearly winning. This begs the question, how can you defeat an enemy who controls the presidency, congress, mainstream media, social media, major cities, major states, the military, FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the courts? The truth is they think they’ve already won the war and will dictate the terms we will be forced to live by.

But hubris, arrogance and pride are always the Achilles heel of sociopaths, believing they know what is best for humanity while inflicting their lunatic solutions upon their subjects. The feeling among millions of Americans is they have either been abandoned, stabbed in the back, or robbed. They aren’t exactly sure who to blame, who to trust, or who to fight, but they are trying to figure out the best course of action, given the current circumstances.

The building anger in the country is palpable. The question is how do you fight an enemy with overwhelming superiority in financial resources, police and military forces, corporate media outlets, social media platforms, the financial system, intel agencies, and all branches of the government? This question is what made me recall the WarGames final scene. The only winning move is not to play. Direct confrontation is destined for failure.

The only way to defeat this enemy is through guile, cunning, patience, and persistence. The same method of resistance will not work for all people. Everyone’s individual circumstances will dictate how they resist. There doesn’t need to be a central commander or massed forces. Differing versions of guerrilla warfare will suffice. The enemy is a bureaucratic behemoth, slow and unwieldy, led by arrogant mediocrities, unable to strategize their way out of a wet paper bag. They know only how to use force and threats to achieve their despicable ends.

A strong dose of 190-proof truth, injected straight into the main vein via needle-sharp analysis and pulse-quickening prose. In Part 2, Quinn examines a possible cure for what ails us, a prescription I wrote about a few weeks back my own self. Read both of Jim’s pieces, and ponder ’em well.

Mainstreaming mental illness

Posted on February 8, 2021February 8, 2021 by Mike

It’s a sickness.

Hypochondriacs used to understand that they were hypochondriacs. Most knew that their fear of germs, their obsessive hand-washing and (yes) their wearing of “masks” was prompted by an irrational fear and many sought therapy to deal with it. Very few expected others to accept it – as by pretending to also live in fear of germs, obsessively washing hands and performing other bizarre rituals to make the hypochondriacal feel better.

But the weaponization of hypochondria changed all that. Hypochondria is no longer ashamed of itself. It is militant, in the John Brown abolitionist sense just absent the underlying justification of opposition to slavery.

People like my friend’s daughter would have people like me – and people like you, if you are also not a hypochondriac – forced to pretend we share their sickness as by performing their rituals. And would have us handcuffed, jailed – and worse, inevitably – if we persist in our insistence on normality, rationality and proportionality.

These people are dangerous.

They are tearing apart friendships – and families, as in the “case” of my friend, whose daughter regards her as a reckless apostate and shuns her physical presence on the basis of a deranged fear of sickness her mother hasn’t got but just might have, ongoing.

Because you never know.

They have already torn apart the country, having poisoned friendships, family relationships – even what were in normal times the causal interactions we used to take for granted, such as saying hi! to the person behind the counter at the coffee shop – without a plexiglass barrier (and a facial barrier) in between.

It is truly sickening – just the right word.

And it is doubtful whether this sickness, having established itself, can be cured without accepting that we will be compelled to shun these weaponized hypochondriacs, as they shun us.

Hey, I’m good with that.

A peek behind the curtain

Posted on February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 by Mike

It’s all old news now, of course—a dead issue, completely moot. The only aspect of the stolen 2020 election that’s of even slight interest to me at this point is that there are still scattered pockets of True Believers remaining here and there, pitifully clinging to the fantasy that somehow, some way, the miracle of The Trump Plan will undo the fraudulent election, unseat the Usurper, and restore the White House to its rightful occupant. ANY DAY NOW.

So all the stories about recounts, expert testimony confirming election fraud, more court cases and lawsuits, etc etc are no longer on my radar these days. Even so, though, I did check out the final installment (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) of Patrick Byrne’s first-hand recounting of the infamous White House meetings in mid-December with Trump, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, and others, and was kinda surprised to find myself completely spellbound. The series is a copiously detailed, no-punches-pulled account describing, according to its title anyway: How DJT Lost The White House.

Naturally, being one person’s view of a quite intricate sequence of events whose cast of characters is a long ‘un, it may well be open to honest dispute. Could be Byrne is too biased for his telling of the tale to be trusted overmuch. I can’t say, and I doubt there’s anybody out there who can. Questions of reliability or veracity aside, though, it makes for absolutely compelling reading. Each of the three parts is also quite long, which turns out to be no bad thing and shouldn’t deter anybody. If nothing else, the intimate glimpses into personalities, deportment, and the general Oval Office atmosphere as these historic, nation-shattering events took place make it worth a look. Exhibit A:

We launched for Camp 3. And sure enough, when we got there, as Mike Flynn stood talking to his former colleague, Sidney and I had a 20 foot line of site down into the empty Oval Office…… After a few minutes, through a private door on the far side, Donald Trump walked into the Oval Office. He was dressed in a sharply creased blue suit and tie, still, at 7:30 PM. He came through and glanced out the doorway to where Sidney Powell and I were already walking towards him, greeting him like he should be expecting us. President Trump’s eyebrows knitted in puzzlement but his face showed he recognized us, and after a moment he beckoned us in. Within seconds General Flynn, Sydney Powell, and I were all sitting in the Oval Office with President Donald J. Trump, with the door shut behind us.

So that happened. Really.

The President sat across the Resolute desk and made small chat with Mike, asked him how he’d been. It had been almost four years since they had seen each other (when Flynn had left the White House, weeks into Trump’s first term). He asked after Sidney as well. I gave and received no more than a nod, letting Mike and Sidney take the lead. As I have noted publicly, the first thing I noticed about him was how measured, gracious, and even soft-spoken Trump seemed to be, so unlike the character that has beamed at us for years through the media.

Eventually he glanced at me again, raised an eyebrow, and gave a small chuckle. Apparently he knew about me, as I thought my be the case. He said something quietly, civil and kind. I said, “Thank you Mr. President…” He cocked his head quizzically and said something softly about knowing that I had not voted for him, and had said a number of critical things of him. I let him know the truth, that I had said some harsh things before the 2016 election, but while he was President my estimation of him had grown, and that in any case none of it was relevant, that I was there because I was confident the election had been hacked. I told him, “We think there is a much shorter route through all of this than your team is pursuing,” I closed saying, “But Sir, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I feel I must mention something. As you may know, I have been swimming around the outside of your administration for a couple months now, and I must tell you, I do not think you are being well-served by many people in the White House. I can bring in young staffers who will tell you that some of your senior leadership don’t want you to win. They want you to concede.”

The President raised his eyebrows at my frankness. Then, like a man who knew the answer, he asked quietly, “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I hear people are getting signals that if they’re good boys and get you out the door, there will be jobs waiting for them. But if they don’t, they won’t be getting offers from the right law firms, they won’t be getting invitations from the right country clubs, they won’t be getting invited to the socialite parties on Manhattan…” Trump grimaced, and we moved on.

Sidney and Mike began walking the President through things from our perspective. In brief: there was a quick way to resolve this national crisis because he had power to act in ways he was not understanding. Under an Executive Order that he had signed in 2018, and another Executive Order that President Obama had signed in 2015, he could “find” that there was adequate evidence of foreign interference with the election, and while doing so would give him authority to do a number of big things, all he had to do was one small thing: direct a federal force (we suggested US Marshall Service + National Guard) to go to the six counties in question (the Problematic 6), and re-count (on livestream TV) the paper ballots that were held as fail-safe back-up. It would only take a few days. Even more conclusive would be if they imaged the hard-drives and those images could be examined forensically (which would make the project last no more than a week, as we had already cracked the Antrim County machines and knew precisely what to do going forward). In either case, if there was no mischief found, then President Trump would concede the election. But if (as we suspected) evidence of hundreds of thousands of improper votes was found in each of the six counties in question, then he would have a wide variety of options. He might have those six states re-counted. Or he might have 50 states recounted on livestream TV by federal forces, and America would finally have its answer to, “How much election fraud does our nation suffer?” Or he might skip that and have the National Guard re-run the elections in those six states. We pointed out that, it being December 18, if he signed the paperwork we had brought with us, we could have the first stage (recounting the Problematic 6 counties) finished before Christmas. And even if the result was hinky enough it demanded a rerun of the election in those states, it could be done before January 20, so that the January 20 Constitutional deadline would not be disrupted. The more time that he let slide by, the more compressed things would become. If he waited to see what the January 6 outcome was, however, and then decided to follow a plan such as ours, it would engender accusations of “sore-loserism”, so he had to act quickly. The alternative was an election that 47% of Americans doubted, which would not go down peacefully.

“You know Pat,” he said to me (the only people who call me “Pat” are either friends from childhood, or men from a background like my own family’s), “you know…” He caught my eye and gave a little snort of humor. “You know, I could leave here and my life would be really …. fine. I could be with my family, my friends, I could be playing golf …” We looked at each other and shared a moment as may occur only with CEO’s and other “leaders”: people think our lives are glamorous, but in many ways they are unpleasant.

Fascinating stuff, no? The drama continues from there, with no letup in the tension or anticipation despite the fact that the reader already knows how the story ends. It’s a real page-turner, this one; once I started, there was no stopping until the end. I haven’t read the first two parts yet, but I’m looking forward to them. Trust me, folks, this is one seriously good read that you really don’t want to miss.

A practical solution?

Posted on February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by Mike

Could be, could be.

Embracing Mao’s sentiment that “[p]olitical power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” the left trades in violence, violence done to political opponents and to our culture, history, heroes, Constitution and just liberties. Now having seized power in government’s executive and legislative branches via the violence of electoral theft, the left aims to use that power to become autocratic. As to how we should respond, remember:

Only power negates power.

The left has been able to steal a national election (and some down-ballot seats, no doubt) via massive vote fraud in, largely, a handful of big Democrat-run cities. Yet despite all the electoral theft, President Trump still won half the states, some by wide margins. It is these states where power should be exercised.

The power I reference is what Thomas Jefferson called the “rightful remedy” for all federal usurpation of states’ domain: nullification. This is the process whereby authorities simply ignore federal dictates, whether handed down by Congress, a bureaucracy or the courts.

There’s nothing unprecedented about nullification. Leftists engage in it continually. For example, their localities often ignore federal drug or immigration laws, and more than a score of states nullified the REAL ID Act of 2005.

Only, leftists don’t call it “nullification” — they just do it. In contrast, conservatives busy themselves conserving the status quo even though it’s leftist-born and generally abide by even unconstitutional federal laws, mandates and court rulings because “this is the way things are done.”

This said, we have seen some pushback, with county sheriffs in recent times refusing to enforce irrational China virus restrictions and some opposition to anti-Second Amendment proposals. But this effort must become widespread and organized — “Nullification!” must become a rallying cry.

In reality, nullification (which I’ve been advocating for years) should have been pursued long ago; the federal government has, after all, been trampling states’ powers for at least the better part of a century, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But that being water under the bridge, we now require a ton of cure.

The cure of nullification is the obvious next step for anyone serious about combating the burgeoning leftist tyranny. We’ve no other recourse. “As Jefferson warned, if the federal government is allowed to hold a monopoly on determining the extent of its own powers, we have no right to be surprised when it keeps discovering new ones,” wrote author Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Under this scenario, the federal government “will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power,” he continued.

That is reality. So is this: Reasoned argumentation only works with those who’ll yield to reason (the left won’t). Constitutional constraints only matter to those who respect laws and national contracts (the left doesn’t). Appealing to courts only bears fruit when judges have a sense of justice and duty and the guts to act rightly even when pariah status results (most don’t). Making this more tragically comical still is that when we seek redress for federal tyranny, we expect relief from the federal government’s own judicial branch!

Leftists are the “other.” They also have wholly trampled the Constitution, the “contract” Americans have with one another. And when a party consistently violates a contract to benefit itself at the expense of other contractees, and courts provide no remedy because they’re complicit in the con, the contract is voided.

That it is; in truth, the contract was rendered null and void long years ago. Henceforth, Real Americans must use that perfectly valid premise as their starting point, and proceed according to its guidance. Certainly, the odds of nullification being sufficient to win the day aren’t great. But what the hell, you gotta start someplace. It’s worth a shot, I think.

Ol’ Remus: now more than ever

Posted on February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 by Mike

I sure do miss that guy.

Making predictions is like dressing in a clown costume and handing meringue pies to passers by. We all do it even though the future is not merely unknown but unknowable. Ask the dinosaurs of 66 million and 33 years ago—Alvarez’s date was published in 1980—how the beach party scheduled for the next day at Chicxulub worked out. Oh that’s right, you can’t, they were all flash-barbequed. So much for simple continuity, much less long term extrapolation. That said, we can predict with sufficient confidence that a truck falling off a cliff will hit bottom, and pretty much when and where. If it doesn’t, we have bigger problems than a predictive miss.

Predictions, if they’re to be understood at all, are to be understood backwards. They comment on the present without directly, you know, commenting on the present. The commenting part is not optional. It is in fact inescapable. Most science fiction is also commentary, the time displacement or alternate reality being bedazzlement to reorient the reader. It’s calculated to evade his prepositioned defenses long enough for The Message to get through intact. Movies are less subtle, we willingly check our disbelief at the door, and it remains suspended unless something blatant disquiets it.

Plain ol’ predictions are more simple minded, more the “trouble with a T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for POOL” school of commentary, an exercise in connecting dots most of which don’t actually exist. Finally, predictions are like subatomic particles, each one has its anti-particle, both spring from the same source, both are equally valid—and equally not valid. Pollyannas and noble thinkers hew to the one, the pragmatists and battle scarred the other. With all this in mind, or not, we begin.

Constitutional fundamentalism will dominate the 21st century like the New Deal and the New Left dominated the 20th. The one party two-party system is already understood to be profoundly incestuous and irredeemably corrupt. Worse, DC’s actions say it believes the populace to be its enemy. The populace finds less reason to doubt them every day, so DC’s blatant disregard for natural rights and Constitutional guarantees is being challenged as never before, and mere accommodation at the margins is laughably insufficient for the growing ranks of the newly converted.

The movement grossly underestimates itself. To their credit, DC knows better. The ruling class understands this administration may be the last of the wooly mammoths. They’re not looking to defeat constitutionalism, they’re looking to survive it and dominate it. Look for the patricians to decorate the lampposts with their own cadets in a dramatic lunge for absolution and acceptance.

The next Great Depression is happening now. As in the ‘thirties, everything is getting better with the single exception of everything. The stock market as a price discovery mechanism is defunct, Detroit and three dozen or so smaller municipal bankruptcies have shown Munis are no longer credible, and the Federal Reserve has gone about as far into the marshlands as it can and found—more marshland. Now the final notice is in the mail.

Look for rising interest rates to tank the economy, and suddenly so. It’s the same leverage used for the bogus rampup, except working in reverse with a gravity assist. Look for a 25 to 35 per cent drop in real GDP from here, an unexampled calamity. Also expect dollar emergencies to come closer together until they drag it into outright repudiation. DC’s clout and credibility rest squarely on the dollar. Where it goes, they go. All else is blather. Even telephone tappers don’t work for nothing.

It’s said every agency wants to be a police force, and every police force wants to be an army. This is a spectacularly bad idea. In the beginning the municipal police were manned with casual labor in the lower reaches, little more than bailiffs with street duty. Professional law enforcement meant the sheriff—originally: the shire reeve—one of two ancient offices inherited from England, the other being the coroner. There were no police when the Constitution was ratified. Over time they’ve come close to the internal standing army art the founders feared and warned against, and with creeping federal captivity, an army of national occupation.

The schisms within the police over this, and between the populace and the police, are deepening proportionally. In DC’s mind the necessity for an open transformation is getting urgent. Look for a Night of the Long Knives during some crisis or another in the coming years, to purge rogue elements and promote efficiency, natch. Then look for trouble when the people understand the thin blue line has melded with the thick blue line and “protect and defend” means protecting and defending DC—from the people.

There’s every reason to believe the 21st century will be as eventful as the 20th. It’s foolish to expect good outcomes, much less depend on them. Even this little distance in time shows the last century was about Great Leaders building make believe worlds and forcing everybody to live in them until they either died from the consequences or the regime did. It’s no coincidence modern states use prodigious resources to count heads and keep tabs, or that survivalists think a lot about escape and evasion.

In the west the first years of the 21st century have been about disengagement. Much of “collapse” doomers point to is disengagement without sanctioned reengagement elsewhere. The slo-mo dissolution of the EU and back-to-the-land survival communities are examples from the macro and micro ends of the scale. But a trend does not a future make. The future is made the same way a glacier is made, one snowflake at a time. From there on, where it goes is up to the glacier.

Aside from being a true visionary, Remus also had a beautiful way with the language, didn’t he? Since I couldn’t find any way to excerpt it without blunting the overall impact, I just lifted the thing wholesale from WRSA, for which I extend my humblest apologies. In a way, I’m happy that Ol’ Remus didn’t live to witness the current flea circus. On the other hand, though, we could surely use a man of his extraordinary gifts along about now, even moreso in the dark, dark days to come.

Murder, Inc

Posted on February 2, 2021February 2, 2021 by Mike

UNEXPECTED!™

The Capitol police officer who shot a woman attempting to breach the speaker’s lobby during the Capitol Hill riot is reportedly not likely to face charges after a preliminary decision by investigators in the case.

The Deep State murderer, whose identity is and will forever remain a closely-guarded secret, will almost certainly get some kind of medal for his “bravery.”

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran and Qanon supporter, was climbing through a window that had been shattered by protesters when she was killed.

The Justice Department civil rights investigation into the shooting was a routine procedure following the use of deadly force by a police officer in Washington D.C.

The investigators have made an initial determination not to file charges. Justice Department officials need to make a final determination, the Journal said.

During the breach of the Capitol, hundreds of rioters forced their way into the building and congressional offices.

Babbitt and others reached the door to the speaker’s lobby and bashed the windows with sticks and helmets attempting to reach the members of Congress inside.

Dozens of rioters were ready to storm into the lobby and wreak havoc.

“That’s where he drew the line in the sand,” a fellow Capitol Police officer told the paper about the shooting.

Such courageous, valiant warriors, with their lines in the sand and all! Here’s a disturbing photo of the violent, bloodthirsty horde of Trumpsurrectionists caught in the act of blaspheming the Citadel Of Democracy:

Ooops, my bad! That’s a photo of an ACTUAL violent mob invading the Capitol, as they did two Senate office buildings and the USSC as well—IN 2018, hoping to derail the Kavanaugh confirmation circus. Around three hundred shitlib loons ended up being detained briefly that day; strangely enough, not one of them was killed. Surber notes a few other then-and-now divergences:

“The vast majority of the arrests, 293, were a result of protests in the Hart Senate Office Building, where protesters crowded in the atrium. Loud chants could be heard throughout the building, which is structured so the hallways of each floor open up and look out onto the first floor.

“Those arrested in Hart were charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, according to Capitol Police. Another nine people were arrested on the fourth floor of Dirksen Senate Office Building and charged with unlawful demonstrations.”

CNN also called the crowd protesters.

On Wednesday, CNN called pro-Trump protesters who stormed the Capitol “rioters.”

NPR called them “far-right insurrectionists.”

In 2018, NPR called the anti-Kavanaugh crowd “demonstrators” and titled its coverage of the storming: ” ‘We Believe Survivors’: Demonstrators Throng Capitol Hill To Protest Kavanaugh”

CNN gushed in 2018, “Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski were arrested in Kavanaugh protests.”

The story included a tweet from Ratajkowski, who tweeted, “Today I was arrested protesting the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. Men who hurt women can no longer be placed in positions of power.”

Benny Johnson tweeted back, “You’re joking, right? Arrested?

“I watched the cops walk up to you and ask politely if you wanted to be arrested. You & Amy Schumer said ‘yes.’ Then you both just sat comfortably on the floor until the cops gave you special wristbands & politely escorted you out

“I have video.”

Just another reminder for the serf-class concerning which end of the stick they really hold, here in the shitpit that is Amerika v2.0.

What they voted for

Posted on January 31, 2021January 31, 2021 by Mike

Good. And. Hard.

Don’t know if it’s for real or not. But I desperately hope that it is.

Next, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh:

Heh. That delicate, far-off sound you’re straining to hear is the world’s smallest violin as it plays Hearts And Flowers, expressing my sympathy level for all China Joe-voting idiots suddenly waxing all stunned and dismayed at getting PRECISELY what they voted for. Enjoy your palatial new Tent Homes in a Fauciville near you, assholes.

Speaking of Faucivilles: some of y’all may already know that I’ve spent almost my entire adult life supplementing my perennially pitiful income as a professional writer. The overwhelming majority of my work over lo, these many years has been political essays, with the occasional history- or music-related article, celebrity interview, or random humor piece sprinkled in here and there just to stave off the monotony. I even tried my hand at an autobiographical novel a few years back, at the insistence of several good friends and relatives. I managed to get a bit under three chapters into the thing before having to admit I was in way over my head and giving it up as a bad job.

Oh, and then there was my stint writing porn “letters to the editor” for various Bob Guccione periodicals, about which the less said etc. Who knows, though; I might just decide to do a tell-all about that someday too. Turns out there’s a lot to tell, surprisingly enough. I got that gig via the influence and connections of my dear departed brother Chris Pfouts, another pro scribe who also happened to be one of the best damned writers I’ve even been fortunate enough to know personally.

On my arduous journey through the killing thickets of writerdom I’ve commited one (count ’em, 1) act of true, honest tp goodness journalism—available for perusal using the Leatherballs menu link above;the Myrtle Beach Goodbye piece, should you be at all interested—back when I was working for Outlaw Biker. Now I’ve decided to embark on a second foray into the treacherous toils of Real Journalism, chronicling the incredible blossoming of one of those Fauciville tent-cities becoming increasingly familiar in decrepit urban shitholes all across the “nation.”

It started at the triangle-shaped island where Church Street splits off from southbound North Tryon, which suddenly became host to a small encampment of around fifteen or twenty tents just a few months back. From there the disgusting, garbage-strewn atrocities have multiplied, now engulfing very nearly every last square inch of available ground on the northern quadrant of downtown Charlotte.

Having worked for many years in the downtown CLT area, the sight of homeless sidewalk-dwellers is nothing new to me. But I have never, ever seen anything remotely like this. And it’s by no means the filthy stewbums, crackheads, and mentally-disturbed wretches, mostly Negroes, that we’ve all become familiar with. I know of at least one young-ish white woman with two small children in tow out there too, her overall appearance disheveled but not downright grungy…yet. I’m seeing a rapidly increasing number of others who are similarly outside the bounds of familiar stereotype, looking more like shell-shocked recent arrivals rather than the irretrievably dysfunctional habitues of the shelters and street grates.

What I’m NOT seeing is any local media coverage of this mind-boggling surge of homelessness, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. “Growing armies of the homeless” media pity-parties, after all, only come along to monopolize tee-wee “news” broadcasts and newspapers when there’s a Republican in the White House. They’re like those old “Grim milestone” body count tallies that were ubiquitous back when “journalists” had Dubya the Genocidal Chimperor’s neck to hang ’em around; maybe you noticed how, despite launching deadly military adventures of every stripe so long as there was no perceivable US interest at stake, the Ogabe junta nonetheless found itself unburdened by the kind of saturation coverage used to hound and hinder his hapless predecessor. Probably just coincidence, I’m sure.

If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself, I suppose. So first chance I get over the next cpl-three days, I’ma go take a few photos of the wreckage. From a distance, that is; I don’t plan on interviewing any of the residents, since what folks used to quaintly call “hobo jungles” are known for being veritable petri dishes for the cultivation of exotic, fatal diseases, as well as the random knifings, rapes, beatings, and sundry mayhem common therein—none of which I have any desire to be subjected to. I’ll get the pics and write a little something up for posting in another day or two.

First gradually, then all at once

Posted on January 27, 2021January 27, 2021 by Mike

Off to the races.

If you think we’re headed into a transhuman nirvana of continuous tech-assisted orgasm, social equity, and guaranteed basic income, you are going to be disappointed. Our actual destination is a neo-medieval time-out from all the techno-dazzle of recent decades. It’s not as bad as you might think. The human project will continue at a lower pitch, probably for a good long while, but minus most of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to, and with very different social arrangements. You can waste your energy hand-wringing and wailing over all this, or summon the fortitude to go where history is taking us and make something of it.

The old economy is wrecked. Many Americans already know this because they’ve lost their businesses and their livelihoods. What used to be there isn’t coming back. But there will always be ways to make yourself useful providing things and services that other people need, just not within the crumbling armature of the economy we’re leaving behind. There will be a lot of debris left in the way to overcome, especially the crap we’ve smeared all over the landscape.

One business you can begin to organize right now is a salvage industry, sorting out the reusable components of all that crap — the steel I-beams, the aluminum trusses and sashes, plate glass, concrete blocks, copper and PVC pipe, and dimensional lumber. A lot of this stuff we just won’t be making anymore, certainly not at the former scale. Think of all the shopping malls to be disassembled.

Growing food and getting it to markets is the most critical activity. Poor Bill Gates, addled by his fortune, has bought up something like a quarter-million acres of farmland. His grandiosity prompts him to believe he can organize farming on the super-giant scale — Walmart for corn and turnips. Nothing could be further from the real coming trend: a reduction of scale and scope of farming and of the distribution supply lines that serve it. Poor Bill doesn’t seem to realize that the oil-and-gas-based “inputs” (fertilizers, pesticides) won’t be there for him, nor will the million-dollar diesel-powered combines. Nor the trucking industry. He could do more good for mankind getting into the mule business. (He won’t. Lacks razzle-dazzle.)

Ahh, but mightn’t there be a bright side to all this misery nonetheless? A-yup, there just might.

For those perhaps not paying attention, Covid-19 has destroyed what remains of education, especially the public school system. It was already moribund, waiting to crash, reduced to a pension racket for teachers. Going forward, the money won’t be there to operate these giant centralized schools and their yellow buses (while paying out pensions). The virus has kick-started exactly the kind of home-schooling pod system (several families combining) that can be reorganized into small-scale schooling for people who want it. People who don’t want it can move into their future without knowing how to read or do arithmetic. We’ll finally get a good test of the noble savage hypothesis. As for the colleges and universities, their business models are toast. They’ll be downscaling and shuttering as far ahead as the eye can see. Whatever remains will be more like finishing schools for neo-medieval ladies and gentlemen — and, by the way, the distinction between men and women will be reestablished. Why? Because reality insists on it. There will be plenty of work for former professors of Intersectionality in the sorghum fields.

Hard work too, back-breaking work, from cain’t see to cain’t see, as real farmers used to say. I do so look forward to said professors collapsing en masse, great windrows of them, out in those killing fields: doughy bodies atremble, pasty faces empurpled, fragile psyches undone by the awful sight of actual dirt under their fingernails.

The Beast at Tanagra

Posted on January 26, 2021January 26, 2021 by Mike

Sokath, his eyes open.

I sure wish I had not learned so much over the last five years. In retrospect, five short years ago seems almost like Mayberry. Here are some important things that I didn’t know five years ago or now.

There actually is a Deep State, and those who constitute it really do not honor the election results or the will of the people.

There really appear to be lawless elements within the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who are not accountable for their crimes and are thus above the law.

The fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, really is unaccountable to the “unwashed masses.”

Many of our top military command, along with many in the military-industrial complex, don’t always hate wars. There’s a lot of money and many promotions to be made during a time of war. The last four years saw no new wars and even troops coming home. For some, that is bad for business.

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are no longer works of fiction, but prophecies.

It’s a fairly long list, each item true and accurate, undeniably important too, but…DUDE. You honestly didn’t know all this until five years ago? That must have been one hellaciously tremendous rock you were hiding under all those years, eh?

The good old days of just five short years ago sure do make us nostalgic for Mayberry. Trouble is, we now must decide, how are we to respond with what we now know?

True also. The serious suckage comes in with the grim realization that, after the dismal failure of the soap, ballot, and jury boxes, there’s really only one response with even a ghost of a chance of succeeding. Tragically, that response does NOT involve “voting harder” at them—which actually amounts to re-resorting to Box #2 knowing full well that it already failed us once. For more on that, please refer to Einstein’s (perhaps erroneously attributed) definition of insanity.

For any non-ST/TNG people out there who found them puzzling, the explanation for my title and opening line is here.

Poor optics make for clear vision

Posted on January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Mike

When they decide to rule us from behind walls, razor-wire, and entire divisions of soldiers with shoot-to-kill ROEs, you know for sure that “of, by, and for the People” is dead as a dodo, and “the consent of the governed” is no longer of any concern.

The handfuls of ordinary people who arrived, as Americans always do, to attend the inauguration of a new president were confronted with heavy weapons and barbed wire.

D.C. had become a Baghdad and Berlin of checkpoints, choking off access to much of the city, closing roads, bridges, and metro stations. Soldiers could be seen on every corner, and the 25,000 troops were bolstered by 4,000 Marshalls, and a motley crew of local forces, including 200 members of the NYPD, 40 members of the Chicago police, New Jersey and Maryland state troopers, Miami-Dade cops, and other law enforcement officers who were needed back home.

24 people were shot in Chicago this weekend and murders are already up 125% this year in New York City. Those officers could have done more good at home, but Democrats don’t care about murder victims in urban areas, instead redeploying officers to D.C. in a show of force.

Biden took office in a city under military occupation whose businesses were closed and boarded up. The D.C. government had tried to force hotels to shut down. The hotels didn’t close, but there were hardly any people. Instead the hotels were filled with soldiers tramping through their lobbies. Any tourists that did come found nothing to see except barricades and barbed wire.

Sometimes what you don’t see is more important than what you do see.

Popular leaders, elected or unelected, might have troops in their cities, but they also have adoring crowds to cheer them on. Biden’s only cheers were coming from employees of huge corporations whose jobs depend on praising him as the greatest thing since SuperPACs.

Biden couldn’t manage the cheering crowds that greeted even the most mediocre presidents on their arrival. The band might as well have struck up a rousing chorus of, “Hail to the Thief.”

Jokes like that are all but illegal these days even though they were ubiquitous during the Bush and Trump administrations. But jokes only need to be banned when they’re too close to the truth. The hysterical fascist theater with troops in the streets and fawning praise on the lips of the press are all efforts to overcompensate for the hollow man taking a false oath on a bible.

This isn’t the pageantry of Stalin or Hitler. It’s the weary theater of Brezhnev, a senescent leader of a decaying regime being propped up by desperate threats of force by the nomenklatura. Even though the media has told us more about Biden’s dogs than it has about any of the Americans killed by Islamic terrorists enabled by the open borders that Biden just reinstated, no one cares.

Biden isn’t a charismatic leader. He isn’t moving the cause forward. He’s a placeholder for a ruling class that wants homes in Dupont Circle that it buys by selling out America to China, by ruining our economy with environmental consulting gigs and racial contract quotas, and for all the manifold ways which the swamp is coming back as Biden’s wetlands restoration project.

“Hail to the Thief” is as much their anthem as it is Biden’s. They fought to keep hold of D.C., the center of their power base not because they care about its history or that of this country, but because it’s where they network, collaborate, and do their dirty little deals at our expense.

The troops in the street are their warning to the rest of the country about who is really in charge.

Precisely so. But I don’t think of Bai-Ding as a placeholder. In my mind, he’s more like Charlie McCarthy; if you want to know who really runs things, you need to look for the guy whose knee he’s propped on—the guy with his hand up the back of Charlie’s shirt, making his mouth and eyeballs move. Look closely enough and sometimes you can even catch the ventriloquist’s lips moving.

But I still do hope that the fortification and militarization of Mordor OTP will be a permanent thing, eventually adopted by every large shitlib city. Let the orcs be forever walled off from the knaves they so cruelly exploit and abuse. Let the knaves be stripped of any lingering illusion concerning the true nature of their masters. Let the Ruling Orc-class be inconvenienced, discomfited, and frustrated to the greatest degree possible, their daily round blighted by the dispiriting pall of the very Shadow they conjured over the rest of us. Let us see the way of things clearly, at long, long last.

Mistakes were made

Posted on January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Mike

Derbyshire’s verdict on Trump’s presidency: Epic. FAIL.

What’s the verdict on that Presidency? My view: it has to be failure.

It’s not that Trump did nothing in those four years. He accomplished a great deal. The evangelist group Liberty Counsel has published a list covering fourteen pages. It’s naturally tilted towards evangelistic concerns, and is too heavy on neoconnery for my taste—”Restoring American Leadership Abroad,” etc.—but there are some real useful actions in there.

The problem with those fourteen pages of Trump’s accomplishments is that hardly any of them had permanence. All the ones you’d stand up and cheer for were Executive Orders, that can be—and are being—revoked with a sweep of the pen by the new Chief Executive.

Biden, of course, has the advantage here that nothing he does will be contested by the Kritarchs of our woke federal judiciary. Trump had only to pick up his pen in the Oval Office for some swivel-eyed federal judge in Hawaii or somewhere to pick up his pen and declare Trump’s action unconstitutional just by virtue of it’s being … Trump’s.

That doesn’t let Trump altogether off the hook, though. To make changes you need laws, supplemented by the firm exercise of lawful federal powers.

In those areas Trump was hopeless. His party controlled Congress for two years, but the only law anyone remembers getting passed was a mild tax cut.

I give Trump a pass on that; his own party proved to be a real viper’s nest of slithering, double-dealing belly-crawlers, which could maybe cramp a guy’s style just a wee mite.

As well as just not getting much done in any permanent way, Trump failed to tackle the Swamp in any way that seriously inconvenienced them.

If we are ever again to have Trumpism in the White House, it will need a cadre of Trumpists who know their way around, who are adept at the necessary political games. The last four years were an ideal opportunity to train up that cadre: to bring Trumpists in to the federal government at high levels so they could develop their skills.

But Trump didn’t attempt anything like that. The people he brought in were Swamp critters like Kirstjen Nielsen and—God help us!—John Bolton. He supplemented their advice with soft murmurings from his daughter and son-in-law and their friends, metropolitan liberals all.

Now THAT, I cannot dispute. It’s beyond comprehension: after having made much throughout the campaign of his intention to hire only “the best people” to work in his government, he then…did nothing of the sort. The complete opposite, in fact. Again and again, Trump put Obama stay-behinds, Deep State saboteurs, and out-and-out diehard enemies on his team. Even worse, after having been flamboyantly betrayed by them, he left this wrecking crew in place to double down on the damage.

Think of it: he waited until his last few days in office to finally fire skulkabout CIA head Gina Haspel on his way out the White House door. Nefarious Swamp Thing Chris Wray—who flouted ethics, propriety, and even the law to brazenly defy an explicit directive to declassify documents that would almost certainly have been of tremendous help months ago, when Trump ordered it—remains in his well-feathered nest atop the FBI, and will be carrying the torch of systemic corruption and malfeasance to light the way for Pretend pResident Bai-Ding. Instead of getting his incompetent ass 86’d for cause months and months ago as he should have, “Doctor” FrankenFauci is headed for a cozy new sinecure with his WHO co-conspirators. The blithering boob didn’t get the boot; he got a promotion.

There’s a disgustingly long list of traitors, weasels, and snakes-in-the-grass who will still be in Mordor on the Potomac, depositing those obscenely-bloated FederalGovCo paychecks long after Trump himself has been deposited into a Federal penitentiary for the duration. He could have legitimately shown every last one of the conniving assholes the door. He had the authority; he had the right; he had not A reason, but reasonS, plural. A whacking great boatload of ’em. Hell, he said he would do it, explicitly and repeatedly. Promised he would.

Yet, inexplicably, he stayed his hand. Why?

We aren’t talking about mere mistakes here; they were far more than just questionable decisions. Not just a minor misstep here and there, the harsh lesson absorbed, leaving Trump a wiser, better leader for the education. They were grotesque demonstrations of seriously poor judgment bordering on pathologically self-destructive acts, a pattern of foolish consistency entirely outside the reach of logical explication.

Unfortunately, these aren’t the kind of mistakes that one can easily avoid paying a price for having made. They’re extremely costly. Whatever the reason for it, Trump has put himself and his family on the hook for a YUUUGE bill. And the collection agency is widely known for being absolutely ruthless, uncompromising, and impatient.

Pretend pResident Biden’s “inauguration” speech: a review

Posted on January 22, 2021January 22, 2021 by Mike

The greatest orator since…Ogabe?

While he was delivering his address, I was so focused on the question of the day—would he get through it without zoning out?—that I barely noticed how vapid and mendacious the speech itself was.

But it was both of those things, in spades—vapid and mendacious.

It was ironic to find oneself listening to such a piece of drivel after four years during which the media told us, repeatedly, that Donald Trump spoke at the level of a middle schooler—and spoke too roughly and bluntly, in a style that was scandalously “unpresidential.”

After the speech, Biden and Harris drove out to Arlington National Cemetery. Why wait till the last minute? I wondered whether she was bringing along a shovel.

But back to the speech. Reportedly composed in part by Jon Meacham, that slick operator, it was delivered by a wraithlike figure who may or may not have been fully aware of what he was saying as he read the words off his teleprompter. All in all, a dispiriting and rather creepy experience. But the media, after four years of depicting Trump as a semi-literate Satan, felt obliged to celebrate Biden as a silver-tongued saint.

Chris Wallace of Fox News called it “the best inaugural address I ever heard.” George Stephanopoulos of ABC said it was “powerful.” On CNN, Van Jones proclaimed that “there was not one part of that that wasn’t just medicine in the wound…Joe Biden is going to train us to see the world differently.”

Ridiculous, all of it, needless to say, although that last bit from Jones brushed up against a certain unsettling truth. First, note that Jones’ vision was right out of scripture: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelations 21:1). And don’t forget St. Paul: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). All of which fits neatly into the new practice of treating Biden as quasi-divine.

No, Biden can’t train us to see the world anew. But with enough power, he and his party, which now controls both houses of Congress, may well be able to compel a great many of us to pretend, at least, out of a sense of self-preservation, to see the world through a new set of eyes—in short, to parrot obediently the brave new gospel of critical race theory, white supremacy, gender fluidity, and so on. Lies, all of them, but refuse to subscribe to them and you’ll risk being branded an enemy of the truth.

The addle-pated Rapist In Thief won’t be “training” me to do a goddamned thing, neither jack nor shit, no matter how unctuously he urges his Brave New World on me. He is not my President, and his “America” is not my country. They can both burn in Hell for a thousand years for all me, and their miscellaneous and sundry brigades of orcs right along with ’em.

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