Read and Heed – Page 56

The fate of The City

Posted on August 16, 2020August 16, 2020 by Mike

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

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

Now it’s completely dead.

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

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

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

First, when has NYC been through worse?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this time is different.

One reason: Bandwidth.

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what is different.

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

(Via Insty)

Letter to America

Posted on August 8, 2020August 8, 2020 by Mike

From a good and decent man, a man of courage and integrity, who also happens to be one of Amerika v2.0’s first true martyrs.

We are witnessing a vicious assault by enemies of all that is good, and our president is having to act in ways unprecedented in decades, maybe centuries.

The biblical nature of good versus evil cannot be discounted as we examine what is happening on the streets of America.

It’s Marxism in the form of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement versus our very capable and very underappreciated law enforcement professionals, the vast majority of whom are fighting to provide us safe and secure homes, streets and communities.

We can no longer pretend that these dark forces are going to go away by mere prayer alone. Prayers matter, but action is required.

This action is needed at the local, state and federal levels. Action is also required in the economic, media, clerical and ecclesiastical realms.

Decide how you can act within your abilities. Stand up and state your beliefs. Be proud of who you are and what you stand for. And face, head-on, those community “leaders” who are willing to allow dark forces to go beyond peaceful protests and destroy and violate your safety and security.

Read all of it—and acknowledge, if you haven’t by now, that this is indeed war: REAL war, war to the knife, war for all the marbles.

If you haven’t noticed yet, our political life is rapidly descending into a series of charades with the potential for catastrophe. In case you think that a “charade” is just a parlor game, here is a dictionary definition: “an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance.” The peril created by false appearances in the current political climate is blindness in the face of the evil that threatens us.

…Republicans collude in these dangerous charades. Democrat leaders like Pelosi call Republicans Nazis, Russian agents, traitors. And Republicans respond: “Democrats are playing politics.” No they’re not. This is not the language of politics; it’s the language of war. It’s designed to destroy you. From the moment Trump emerged as victor in 2016, Democrats declared war on the president and therefore America, whose duly elected commander-in-chief he was. They also declared war on everyone associated with the White House and supporting its agendas. Republicans need to wake up. The most important decision they can make as we approach the November elections is to end the charade, accept that it is a war we are facing, and return the Democrats’ fire with fire.

Damned skippy, right down the line. Read all of this one too. It’s a short ‘un, but there’s some very sobering stuff tucked between my ellipses.

A paean to pubs

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

They matter far more than you might realize.

Due to the draconian responses to COVID-19, America has been seeing the temporary triumph of the new ax wielders. A whole network of institutions that are the bedrock of neighborhoods are under attack, including shops, bars, pubs, restaurants, concert halls, movie theaters and churches. Even some church choirs are silenced by a ‘no singing’ rule.

The smashers of neighborliness and camaraderie are, like Carrie Nation, doing so in the name of righteousness and the improvement of American’s physical health—a principle that seems fair enough.

But if the health of Americans was truly the issue, there would not be so much arbitrariness and inconsistent application of rules and regulations. The people who are under the laws of the new Prohibition can see the inconsistencies clearly. It seems odd to them that COVID-19 virus is apparently far more active in churches, small businesses, and eateries, than it is in densely packed crowds of protestors whose righteous ideology apparently immunizes them from the virus’s deleterious effects.

It even would be acceptable if it were a sensible means of protecting one’s and others’ health. Most reasonable people are open to sensible precautions. But even when the State has allowed the denizens of the cities and small towns it is “protecting” from the virus to gather, government officials continue to regulate venues in ways that have nothing to do with health but which make the public discourse and camaraderie of bars, cafes and eateries nearly impossible.

For example, recently the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board updated their COVID guidelines to define the acceptable purchase of alcohol at a restaurant or bar. If you want a drink, you have to purchase a meal, defined as “food prepared on the premises, sufficient to constitute breakfast, lunch or dinner.” Just to be absolutely clear, “a snack, such as pretzels, popcorn, chips, or similar food, does not meet the definition of a meal.” Also, no drinking after eating your meal! “Additional drinks may be purchased while the customer is consuming the meal, but no further drinks may be purchased after the meal is finished.”

Not only is the customer told when, where and how to eat and drink, but more arbitrary regulations ensure no friendly give and take is allowed. Customers who formerly enjoyed shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow discussions have been replaced with expressionless, masked and muffled anonymous clients who sit at tables six feet apart from one another, only daring to lower their masks to eat, not to talk. Meanwhile, the familiar senior citizen coffee klatsches at McDonald’s have been abruptly disbanded and sausage biscuits are now impersonally dispensed from the takeout window.

What do all of the minute regulations have to do with public health? Not very much.

One cannot help but wonder if in addition to suppressing free discourse, something else is at work; namely H.L. Mencken’s view of puritanism, which he called “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

People who knew who you are and with whom you amiably rubbed elbows at the bar or in the pew, are now excised from your life. At the local café, it’s been your neighbor you’ve been talking with. It’s your neighbor whose business you’ve been supporting. The camaraderie, humor and mutuality of belonging to the human race is there at the local tavern. The mutuality of the faith community that recites creeds, sings hymns and prays together is found when meeting in person, not in cyberspace. ‘Tavern’ and ‘tabernacle’ spring from the same Latin root, taberna.

Just as bad, the demise of the familiar pub, the neighborhood restaurant and cafes; and the shutting down of church fellowships seems to have left protest marches as the only viable outlets for free speech.

Something is profoundly wrong with a society when the only acceptable and freely chosen social gatherings are protest marches rather than humble camaraderie as the unifying emotion. Something’s desperately amiss when the chief form of socialization is angry protest. It’s on the local level that true diversity exists, not on the macro stage with blaring megaphones drowning out all other voices.

Those whom you would rule, you first make afraid: dehumanize them, demoralize them, isolate them, confine them, terrorize them. Anybody out there seriously think the Left doesn’t understand all that, better than anybody ever has?

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.

It’s come to this

Posted on July 25, 2020July 25, 2020 by Mike

Ace sums up the current contretemps before providing us with the Feel Good Video of the Week.

Police won’t protect us. It’s time to admit our only defense is self-defense, and the only help we can expect is self-help.

And to mutually vow to each other that we will never, ever convict someone for resorting to self-help, if we’re on someone’s jury.

Either the state will enforce the law and protect us, or we’ll protect ourselves, and protect those who protect themselves. Period.

The officials sworn to protect the civil peace have instead decided to protect the bandits and looters and arsonists. Instead of prosecuting them for their crimes, they nullify the law and let them out the next morning.

We can nullify the law too, guys.

You’re not the only ones who can set aside the law and free people for what might, in other times, be considered crimes of violence.

If you won’t prosecute looters, arsonists, and insurrectionists, we will not convict those who use violence to stop looters, arsonists, and insurrectionists, or use violence (as here) just to fucking get home without being illegally held-up by bandits blocking the road like old-time highwaymen and road-thieves.

The state has decided we will be ruled by the mob.

But we never agreed to that. The Constitution says that we will rule ourselves, through our elected officials. Not to the violent insurrectionists and anarchists the police and government have turned the streets over to.

Read it all, then watch the vid. You’ll feel a whole lot better.

The sad fact is, if Real Americans had taken to dealing out some righteous street justice to PantiFa and all the other ingredients of the noisome, toxic Leftist bouillabaise right from jump, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

Of groupthink, and drooling beasts

Posted on July 22, 2020July 22, 2020 by Mike

We are currently being ruled by an unholy coalition-dictatorship of the two of them.

Having lived through the Russian Revolution, Ayn Rand knew well the nature of the mob—a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who’s had some disease that’s eaten his brain out…closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own.

The drooling beast is on the prowl against any independent thought or truth regarding the coronavirus outbreak, the George Floyd riots, and, for that matter, anything else. Hype and hoax, readily recognizable to the intellectually honest, fuel the mob think.

The death toll from Covid-19 will be a small fraction of what was initially projected, depending on which outlandish projection (they ranged from 2.2 million to 100 million in the US) is used as the denominator. The beast, of course, never acknowledges its own fallibility or incompetence.

“Systemic racism” has become the endlessly repeated epithet, but nobody can point to a single institutional system in the US that practices it. The statistics don’t even bear out that police forces are systemically racist, although some police, white and black, individually are. In the US, the last systemically racist institution to fold up that tent was the Democratic party, and it routinely wins 90 plus percent of the black vote. The beast, of course, never acknowledges its own hypocritical inconsistency.

While Covid-19 and systemic racism have been hyped and hoaxed, the same mob has consistently ignored or downplayed Covid-19 totalitarianism’s and the riots’ destruction of the economy. A disease that will kill less than one tenth of one percent (less than .001) of the US population is worse than the Black Plague (which wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe’s population), but a catastrophe already worse, by the unemployment numbers, than the Great Depression is merely a temporary economic squall.

If you have either not contracted or survived the coronavirus and thought you were out of the woods, think again. We are entering a forest so dark and deep many of us won’t make it to the other side.

So while people lockdown, work or not work from home, social distance, face mask, and compulsively sanitize, cowering before the small risk of a germ (how do they even get up in the morning?), they’re blissfully unaware that the world is bankrupt. A tsunami the likes of which none of us have ever seen has already made landfall and will permanently deprive millions, perhaps billions, of their livelihoods and millions, perhaps billions, of their lives. The coronavirus cowards are running from an ant into the arms, claws, and fangs of a very hungry beast.

Robert closes on a more hopeful note, but I can’t honestly say I share his optimism.

Via WRSA, who titles his excerpt from it the “Quote of the next decade.” A lot longer than just that, I’d say.

T’was ever thus

Posted on July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 by Mike

Tweaking the Ol’ Grey Whore.

Four years after it abandoned its traditional standards of fairness to try to defeat Donald Trump, the paper is now fixated on rewriting the story of America. The drive-by attack on the Rushmore presidents was part of its cancel-culture agenda.

Yet the Times has never applied to its own history the standards it uses to demonize others. If it did, reporters there would learn that the Ochs-Sulzberger family that has owned and run the paper for 125 years has a “complicated legacy” of its own.

That legacy includes Confederates in the closet — men and at least one woman who supported the South and slavery during the Civil War. In fact, Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs contributed money to the very Stone Mountain project and other Confederate memorials the Times now finds so objectionable.

To be clear, I detest the Times’ determination to judge and revise history using criteria conceived 20 minutes ago. The paper’s Marxist-inspired activism and race-based fetish have taken it so far off course that it no longer functions as an actual newspaper.

Having spent my formative journalistic years at the Gray Lady, I came away with immense respect for the editors’ commitment to fair and impartial news coverage. That commitment started with Ochs, who, from the day he took control of the Times in 1896, insisted on a strict separation of news and opinion, a tradition that lasted more than a century. It was those traditions — fairness and safeguards against reporters’ bias — that gave the paper its credibility and made it the flagship of American journalism.

But those days are gone, with the standards eroded slowly at first and then abolished under current Executive Editor Dean Baquet. Every story these days is an editorial as the paper demands that every institution and individual conform to the Times’ views, or be denounced as racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and misogynistic. Because of the Times’ exceptional influence, its demagoguery is playing a major role in shredding the fabric of our country.

At the very least, the paper ought to be honorable enough to apply its freshly minted standards to its own past. If it did, I believe the owners, editors, reporters and stockholders would be shocked by what they discover.

Doubt it. In fact, it’s unlikely that they’d care at all. Like all other liberal media outlets, the NYT has an agenda to advance, a program to push. As long as they go on working diligently for the side of the “righteous,” all prior sins can be overlooked… and will be.

Frankly, anybody, be they liberal or American, who is the least bit shocked to see the Whore so overtly and shamelessly hiking its skirt and flashing some Lefty leg at this late stage of the game is nothing but a blind damned fool anyway. That said, this is a fine piece just the same, as well as being unusually lengthy and in-depth for the Post—a solid thumb in the eyeball for an insufferable passel of pompous, supercilious assholes who richly deserve it.

It ain’t over till the fat transgender nonbinary wymrynzzz screams

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

It’s always hard to excerpt one of John Wilder’s pieces. There’s just too much rich, thoughtful stuff in ’em to trim it down without losing the thread. But there are times when you just gotta buckle down and do it.

Can you imagine if the Right was united? I can.

The corollary is obvious: quit fighting each other in the right. Stop. People don’t believe in your exact brand?

You can’t stand Libertarians? You can’t stand Lutherans? Baptists? Catholics? Vox Day? That atheist friend that doesn’t mind Christianity but still believes in freedom? The idea to fix our situation isn’t exactly yours?

Too bad.

We are in the same foxhole. Stop (metaphorically) shooting each other. Now. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. And if you’re fighting us, you’re against us.

How do you know if you’re with us?

We like building statues, not tearing them down.

We like building civilization, not tearing it apart.

We like the reason of facts and truth, not the politically correct statement of the moment.

We like justice based on law, not the social justice of the mob or judges that twist “shall not” into “sometimes.”

We like a culture of honor, not a culture of victimhood due to the self-imposed prison.

And that is the difference. The Left is bitter. The Left is seething. The Left is angry.

Why? Because, just like the foal with the cattle guard, they’ve made themselves prisoners. They’ve forgotten that becoming a prisoner might not be a choice for a horse, but it is for a person. But for the Left, that prison mentality is preferred.

The prison mentality is the chosen mentality of the Left. They see themselves as weak. Since they see themselves as weak, there is no choice but to hate themselves for that weakness. But outwardly, the Left rationalizes that weakness as being, somehow, good. They have to, because that’s all that stands between them and the unending self-hate. The Left raises an “anything goes” sexuality and sensuality to the highest plane because they are rooted in the Material, and cannot understand the Spiritual, the Transcendent.

The Right rejects that. All of it.

The Right is not evil. We hold the light of Freedom, of civilization, of the future of mankind in our hands. Why? Because they could never build it. The Left seeks to delegitimize our moral achievement, because they feel small and envious next to those that compete and create.

Remember, the Soviets never looked stronger than they did immediately before they collapsed.

I don’t think we will win.

I know we will win.

Not if we don’t recognize that we are indeed going to have to fight them, we won’t. And it looks more every day as if that’s going to mean actual, literal fighting, with more than just words, boycotts, and votes. But as pessimistic as I can be at times, actually I’m mostly inclined to agree with John’s take, providing the Sleeping Giant hasn’t been too slow to awaken this time. His post is certainly stirring, and heartening. A bit more:

I feel sorry for those who stand against the Right when we find our backs are to the wall. We have created the most powerful and free and prosperous culture in history. The Right doesn’t know its own strength. But it will learn, and the Left is afraid.

We will win. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next year. Maybe not even in the next decade. And the future won’t look like the past – that past is what led us to this crisis. We have the opportunity to remake our civilization, to remake America and to make it better.

And we will make it better.

And we will win.

We always have.

Oh, I can’t say I feel at all sorry for them, myself. I want them to reap exactly what they’ve sown, to get what they truly deserve, to be punished for their innumerable crimes, to pay in full measure for what they’ve done to this nation and the world. And like Wilder, I have to believe that, be it soon or late, they will. To think otherwise is to sink into a slough of despond that is bottomless.

Sounds familiar

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Mike

A chilling echo of an abhorrent past, even as it repeats itself.

After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son. Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped. Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The harmless-looking retired cadre, now an amiable old man who pinched my cheeks, had been the village party secretary who forced my father to perform manual labour — running after cows with a basket to pick up the droppings — because, as the son of a landlord, he could not be trusted with an education. The local businessman, now on his second wife and third Audi, had belonged to a gang of high school children who beat him for being descended from counter-revolutionaries.

Some of my father’s tormentors were blood relatives, who were especially keen to display their revolutionary credentials through violence, a situation that was sadly not uncommon: it was rumoured that Bo Xilai, who nearly supplanted Xi Jinping before being imprisoned, had broken his own father’s ribs as a Red Guard. Only the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 saved my father, who took the university entrance examinations a few years later, and never looked back.

Since the beginning of — shall we call it our 2020 cultural moment? — much ink has been spilled on whether there are similarities between the current protests-cum-riots and China’s Cultural Revolution. Even though some of its cheerleaders openly make the comparison, most commentators dismiss the idea, including UnHerd‘s Daniel Kalder.

To my father, and indeed to many of his contemporaries, the answer is clear. They had lived through it, and although they cannot put their finger on the why, they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago. But with their accented English and unfashionable politics (few, for some reason, are especially well-disposed toward the western Left), they have been largely excluded from the conversation. Or they could be biased, as western Marxist academics used to say of the testimonies of eastern European refugees who had been in Communist prisons.

The parallels are indeed nothing short of chilling, and unless you’re a serious student of this sort of thing there might be even more of them than you previously thought. Admittedly, though, there was one aspect of Red China’s horrifying and brutal societal purge that even as rock-ribbed an anti-Communist as myself can’t find a whole lot to argue with:

In America, students aren’t beating their teachers to death yet, as they did in 1960s China.

Well, hey, let’s not just abandon all hope for that quite yet. Hell, if Real Americans had been beating them to death since they went Red en masse back in the 60s, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

Tailgunner Joe, though you may loathe his methods, was perfectly correct, one of many discrete pieces of evidence that add up to only one conclusion: no free society can coexist with Communism, nor even tolerate its propagation if it intends to retain its freedom. That may appear to contradict the traditionally-professed American values of free speech and a broad tolerance for dissent, sure enough. But at some point a firm line must be drawn and enforced, lest the Constitution be converted into a suicide pact for real. That line sits well to the right of Red.

(Via Insty)

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.

Another case of a gun stopping a crime without a shot being fired

Posted on July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 by Mike

Wonder if the fools will learn anything from this experience?

Shit, who am I kidding.

The aforementioned McCloskeys, of course, are the St Louis attorneys who brandished some hardware at a mob of “peaceful protesters” who had broken down a gate to their neighborhood clearly marked with “No trespassing” and “Private property” signs. It was later learned that the two are self-declared BLM supporters and Mark 1-Mod 0 libtards, more or less, so the fact that they even had any guns at all is an indicator of your typical shitlib hypocrisy. Also obvious from the next pic is why liberals should never be allowed to play with guns:

Pathetic. Pretty much everything about this picture, from a proper gun-handling point of view, is back-asswards and wrong. As for whether they shouldn’t oughta be defending their property against a gang of marauding thugs with firearms, well, I just gotta wonder how quickly the gendarmerie would have had a conservative and/or less well-connected couple booked and in the slammer, their property confiscated, and what their prospects might be for ever getting their freedom or their stuff back.

Hey, your rules, libtards, not ours. If the McCloskeys wind up finding themselves forced to live by ’em against all odds…well, my inclination is to say that one might be amazed how little I care about their plight.

On the other hand, though, maybe they DID learn something at that.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey said they grabbed their guns and stood in front of their house, on their own property, to back-off screaming Black Lives Matter protesters, and told KSDK TV they thought they’d have to make a deadly last stand to protect themselves. See Mark McCloskey’s video below.

When they kick in the gate, when the first thing they do is destroy private property and they storm in angry and shouting and threatening. This isn’t a protest. It’s a revolution. It’s just an attempt to inflict terror.

McCloskey said “the only thing that stopped them was my rifle.” McCloskey’s wife had a pistol. He said she doesn’t know much about guns but knows a lot about feeling scared:

Well, you know, we were always obviously upset. My wife doesn’t know anything about guns, but she knows about being scared. And she grabbed a pistol and I had a rifle, and I was very, very careful I didn’t point the rifle at anybody. The only thing that stopped the crowd from approaching the house was when I had that rifle and I was holding there. The only thing that stemmed the tide. I can’t blame my wife for being terrified and for doing what she could to protect what she thought was her life, it was it was, you know, a horrible, horrible event.

Bold mine, and perhaps indicative of a lightbulb coming on somewhere. And hey, you gotta give ’em at least some props for at least having the stones to go out and make a stand all by their lonesomes against a rampaging, thuggish mob that hugely outnumbered them, rather than cowering indoors praying feverishly that the cops would show up in time to save their asses.

However the education of these two privileged libs may or may not progress from here, the first takeaway for all of us, as confirmed by the despicable city attorney’s statement, is this: your government, on every level, is NOT your friend. The second? As the PJM article concludes, this sort of thing is one of the primary reasons we have a 2A in the first place.

There are other edifying developments here as well:

Following the incident people began calling for the McCloskeys to be doxed – resulting in at least one publication removing their address from a 2018 article detailing the extensive renovations they performed on the 1912 mansion.

One of those calling for doxing the McCloskeys, ‘anti-racism executive coach’ Kyle Dennis, restricted his Twitter account after he himself was doxed.

This piece of subhuman garbage called for his fellow Leftwit assholes to “sue them, ruin their businesses, call their kids, call their families” and the like, in a perfectly typical display of shitlib “tolerance” and “compassion.” Hopefully he’ll suffer all those things and much worse himself now that he’s been given a taste of his own rancid medicine.

One of CA’s readers offers a useful AAR, concluding thusly:

Consider the sharply changing trajectory of these riot mob groups if every time they went after someone in a residence, they had to face not only the home owner, but his/her neighbors as well? What if they realized that they now had such on at least one flank, and reinforcements were probably going to start pinching off their avenue for withdrawl? Once they sense that and panic, that will be some security footage to see as they bolt for the gaps. In such circumstance, I would hope that the residents keep their heads and let them flee unmolested. There is a lesson to even the most obtuse when they realize that the only thing between them and a chalk outline is the good order, discipline and decency of the Average American. It will be a glorious day when some unnamed suburbanite “fixes bayonets” in a possible dystopian future and performs in a way suitable to his forebears.

Lest any of you still have any doubt—which I can’t even BEGIN to imagine at this point—we are indeed at war against Enemies, Domestic—a war which has been slowly, incrementally ramping up from cold to lukewarm to toasty, and will almost certainly wind up going full-on scalding-hot sooner than we might wish. Gird your loins.

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?

It’s clobberin’ time

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Mike

Tucker rings the tocsin.

During Thursday’s airing of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host, a supporter of Trump, said that it may be “tough” for Trump to win reelection if he does not adequately respond to civil unrest in the country.

“Not many people are saying it out loud on the Right. But the fact is that President Trump could well lose this election. In fact, unless fundamental facts change soon, it could be tough for him to be reelected,” Carlson said in his opening monologue. He said if former Vice President Joe Biden wins in November, the White House will be controlled by “radicals” who will “remake the country.”

“We’re fully aware that virtually nobody watching this show tonight wants to hear that, but it’s true, and key people around the president know that it’s true. They’ve seen the numbers,” he added. All the while, the chyron banner that appeared on the bottom of screen blared in all capital letters: “President Trump may lose this election.”

Carlson asserted that social cohesion in the country is eroding after nationwide protests have occurred following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“An awful lot of people voted for Donald Trump precisely to avoid a moment like the one we’re now in,” Carlson said, stating that Trump’s instincts were on the side of order, tradition, and stability, but Carlson later remarked that during the rioting, Trump “said little” and “did less.”

Doc Zero sees it too:

Trump's big political problem right now is that he talks about "law and order," often with all-caps tweets, but he isn't delivering any. He's running like a challenger, not an incumbent. Even people who agree with him aren't excited by this "hapless but loud bystander" routine.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) June 26, 2020

Bonchie, too, is shaken:

Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves last night and delivered a message some don’t want to fathom. Namely, that Trump could actually lose the 2020 election. Later, he would make his case by laying out the current chaos engulfing the nation, the shifting public sentiment against the President, and by playing audio of a woman having her car attacked by rioters. She was told by the 911 dispatcher to “call city all” and that she was in the middle of a “sanctioned event.” Eventually, the mayor of her city would apologize, not to the terrorized woman, but to the rioters.

It was a powerful reminder that people are being abandoned across the country, whether it’s business owners in the “CHOP” or residents in Democrat cities in red states. Governments are failing their people out of a fear of retribution, or in some cases, direct support of anarchy. But perhaps more troubling, and something Carlson brought up, is that so many voters seem to agree with or sympathize with the chaos.

There’s simply no “seem” to it. Not when they’re in your face, burning your city, and beating you about the head and neck with skateboards, there isn’t. Then again, anybody who, after having Proggy throw a brick at his head and cave his skull in with it, nonetheless still refuses to face up to what Proggy is deserves what he’s surely going to get. Because Proggy doesn’t stop. He never stops. He doubles down.

Like the “security moms” of the Bush era, many voters put Trump in office, not because they are enamored with his personality, but because they saw him as strong. He’s not currently living up to that image. To many on the right, that’s not a bad thing. They want to see people in these Democrat run cities reap the consequences of their voting patterns, with the assumption that they won’t like it and will turn back.

But what if there is no backlash coming? Carlson points that possibility out by noting that GOP leaders in Congress, in all their fecklessness, have said little about the current chaos except that it’ll blow back on Democrats. Everyone keeps thinking we’ll reach the end of the track on crazy train, but the truth is, the train never gets there. People just end up giving ground and becoming more and more conditioned to the current reality. The only real way to not let this become the new normal is to stop it.

That means Trump has to retake the initiative. The case for Trump was never to sit back and watch the country devolve into chaos. Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz could have done that with a lot less consternation about their tweeting. Trump was not elected for his awesome personality or ability to bring the country together. People know that, and I don’t think anyone is pretending that’s who he is. He was elected precisely to avoid moments like we are currently in. It’s not a coincidence that his failure to take action over the last month has led to his worst approval ratings in recent memory. Meanwhile, Trump was tweeting about Carly Fiorina yesterday, someone most swing voters don’t even know exists.

The Left has continually wailed about Trump being a dictator since 2016, then wilfully acted in such a fashion as to require dictatorial measures to reign in their madhouse excess lest it destroy the nation. Well, so be it, then. They’re going to wail and call him “Hitler” no matter what he does. So give them something to wail about for real. Crush them. Crush them utterly.

The choice

Posted on June 26, 2020June 27, 2020 by Mike

To stand—or to take a knee, forever.

Life will never return to the ‘normal’ that existed as we welcomed in the New Year on January 1, 2020. Never. Is this difficult? Absolutely. But because of the virus or the economy or the intolerance, events have brought us truly to a point of massive change, one way or another. Will 2020 be the year the silent majority is no longer silent, but now emerges with a roar? Will it be the year when we finally wake up and realize that enough is enough? Or will it be the year that we watch the final death throes of life as we knew it? Life that will become one big autonomous zone of freedom where you have to be searched, follow all rules, give up any means of self defense, submit all possessions for the good of all, and face violent, physical consequences to the point of death if you do not comply. Sounds like the summer of love, doesn’t it? What do you choose? Regardless of what we choose, it is probably too late. Events have been set in motion by a well organized group that has been planning, training and implementing their destruction of our country from within. They are embedded deep within our governmental structure and have been for decades. Will the roar of the silent majority sound like more than a meow even if it is expressed at all?

Folks, it’s time. Time to choose which side you’re going to be on. Actively choose. If the rioters come to your town, your neighborhood, your door, what are you going to do? If you are not allowed to speak, work, shop, vote, etc. What are you going to do? There are some locations that are starting to reimpose restrictions because of the virus. It will be the death of the economy, the country and the world if there is another massive shutdown. Impossible. I don’t know if we will make it to the election. Even if we do, regardless of the outcome, regardless of who wins, I think there are those that are highly organized that are bound and determined to burn down the country and leave it in the ashes. Those that cry the loudest about oppression and the unfairness of it all, will be some of the most brutal dictators in history if they are allowed to gain the power to control our country and the world.

It’s time to choose. When The Man comes around to your location, to collect your food, your guns, your fealty…..what are you going to do?

We as a people, our side if you want to call it that, has been accepting of too much for too long. When they decided it was okay to kill babies and it became law, even though we thought it was murder, we honored others right to choose. When they implemented searches in airports before boarding a plane “for our safety” we accepted it. Even when it grew to the point of groping genitals and strip searches. Even when they insisted on physically groping the elderly in wheelchairs and nuns. But not women in burkas, we can’t have that now can we?

We accepted, we respected, the rights of others. But what happens when you appease and appease and appease. What happens to a dog that has no structure, no boundaries, no limitations? It becomes more and more aggressive in it’s demands to be fed, it’s demands for freedom, to wantonly destroy or pursue anything that comes within it’s realm. Then when that is not enough, it invades any territory it comes upon and makes it’s demands known. You will do as I want or I will hurt you. I will kill you.

When you find yourself with a rabid dog on your hands, there’s only one thing to do, albeit reluctantly. You don’t want to do it. You hate to have to, you truly do. But in the end, it’s either you or the dog. However many good years you may have had together, however much you may love him, however heartbreaking it all is, it all doesn’t matter. He has become a serious threat to you and yours, and as unpleasant as it is, that threat must be ended.

You can’t reason with a mad dog. You can’t coexist with him, neither can you cure him or adjust your own lifestyle to accomodate his affliction.

You must put the damned dog down.

And…well, here we all are.

(Via WRSA)

A beautiful past, but no future

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Mike

Gerard reminds us of all we’ve lost.

We told our children that any child could grow up to be President. And then we made it come true.

We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.

We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.

Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes and hues and scents.

We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.

We did Levis.

We saved Europe twice and liberated it once.

We invented Jazz.

We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg address.

We went to the moon to see how far we could hit a golf ball.

We lifted a telescope into orbit that could see to the edge of the universe.

We let the People arm themselves at will. Just to make sure.

We electrified the guitar.

We invented a music so compelling that it rocked the world.

We ran our farms so well we fed the globe.

We made the automobile and the airplane.

We let you get rich. Really, really rich.

We had poor people who, even at their most wretched, were richer than any other poor people on the face of the planet.
We were the noblest nation the world had ever known.

We had so much freedom that many of us voted to just throw it all away.

Even towards the end, as we dissolved into the petty bickering and idle entertainments that come with having far too much leisure and money, many among us were still striving to make it higher, finer, brighter, better, and more beautiful.

Even towards the end, the best of us declined to give up and pressed on. “Where to? What next?”

I left out several of ’em, just to give you a reason to click on over for the rest. Gerard links to what you might think of as a followup to this one, too. Taken together, the two posts make for some mighty depressing reading.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.