Category: Where Do We Go from Here?

Ramblings about the future of America, the West, and the world in general. References to Oswald Spengler optional.

Notes on the passing scene

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Diplomad weighs in.

Big waves of either color have proven rare events in our history. We have a very large, complicated, and diverse country, its politics, as a consequence, vary considerably from one region to another. What’s important in Arizona, does not necessarily register as an issue in New York, for example. Our wise founding fathers saw this, even in 1789, and created the electoral college, three co-equal branches of government, and a federal system with considerable power left to the individual states and the people; they were willing to live with a certain amount of national political deadlock or, let’s say, ambiguity for the sake of restraining the central government’s power. It’s a good system. It’s system of checks-and-balances generally has worked well for us for nearly two and a half centuries.

Today, however, we have serious trouble in America. We see that young people, ages 18-29, can be and are bought and swayed by the ludicrous promises and policies of the increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party–since its founding an odd mix of thugs and so-called intellectuals. This party, the world’s oldest, promises, and ensures, no consequences for bizarre and destructive personal behavior. Our cities are a horrific mess. Our educational institutions have become a nightmare under Democratic rule. They produce credentialed, smug, lazy, ahistorical, illiterate and silly brutes with strong self-esteem, an overwhelmingly sense of entitlement, and disconnected from the real economy. These stupid brutes basically add nothing to our material, spiritual, and intellectual wealth. They are ripe for manipulation and exploitation by the lords of the new left, and its billionaire allies in the mass media, high tech, and Pharma industries. They are the lemmings of the woke movement.

Appeals to patriotism, historical practice, and just common sense, make increasingly less headway with this mass of stupid voters. These electors now respond more to emotional appeals, often relying on fake science–e.g., men can become women, men can get pregnant, global climate “crisis,” the COVID “crisis”–promoted by cynical social media “influencers” and politicos, among others. They deny the existence of a crime wave–you are racist if you point it out–and any inflation concerns are dealt with by government subsidies, e.g., COVID payments of various types, student debt “forgiveness,” etc. They hate children and want to see them tortured or dead. They spout off a distorted version of history, which demands that America and the West atone for sins with reparations and open borders. They hate our country and the Western civilization from which it springs.

All that, of course, is quite apart from the corruption of the electoral process itself. Stealing elections is a well-honed art by the Democrats. In the last few election cycles, the Dems have become evermore cynical, and less and less worried about keeping what they do out of view.  They have no shame in using the bureaucracy and law enforcement to harass and intimidate the political opposition. They are aided in this by, as mentioned, a complaint and actively complicit media complex and the high lords of high tech. Dem officials in government have no hesitation in using the bureaucracy to torment and silence opponents.

I have to laugh/cry when I see conservatives arguing among themselves over we should run Trump or DeSantis in 2024. The Dems are quite happy to see and foster this silly debate. They run a mummy for President, a human vegetable for the Senate, and a DEAD guy for a State assembly seat, and they WIN! Their candidate for governor in Arizona just happens to be the person in charge of ensuring electoral integrity in Arizona. Yet, despite all this, we get labelled election deniers, get censored, thrown off media platforms, and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists if we express doubts about our election system. It simply doesn’t matter how good your candidates are if the system is rigged to ensure they lose.

In any nation whose “election” system is as demonstrably, flagrantly corrupt as ours has become, questioning said “elections” is much more than merely reasonable; in truth, it’s every patriotic American’s sacred duty.

Shine on, Sunshine State

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Adoptive Floridian Josh Hammer says it’s the new capital of Red State America. We can only hope he’s right about that.

In the Sunshine State Tuesday evening, Governor Ron DeSantis cruised to a second term with an astounding near-20-point margin of victory over former Gov. Charlie Crist, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio routed Democratic challenger Rep. Val Demings by more than 16 points. Both DeSantis and Rubio won the state’s most populous county, 70-plus percent Hispanic Miami-Dade County—DeSantis by double digits. Both Republican standard-bearers also won majority-Hispanic Osceola County, in the Orlando area, and DeSantis also flipped Palm Beach County from blue to red.

All other Florida Republicans running statewide also won, and Republicans also secured supermajority status in both the state senate and the state house. U.S. congressional races in Florida that were labeled before the election as toss-ups, such as the 13th and 27th congressional districts, uniformly broke for Republicans—and often not in particularly close fashion. Some other states, such as Texas and Iowa, also had good election nights for Republicans; but in no state did the GOP perform better, up and down the ballot, than in Florida.

All of this is simply astonishing from Florida, the one-time paradigmatic “swing” state that famously decided the 2000 presidential election by a paltry 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. Indeed, just four years ago, DeSantis eked out his first statewide victory over Democrat Andrew Gillum by a margin of 0.4 percent. And DeSantis’ victory over Gillum was not even the closest statewide race in Florida that cycle; Rick Scott won his U.S. Senate race over Bill Nelson that same year by a microscopic 0.12 percent margin.

Yet, just four years later, Florida is no longer a purple state. It is a red state—in fact, a dark red state. Consider, as but one more data point, that DeSantis won reelection by a larger statewide margin than did Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who won his reelection race Tuesday night by just under 14 percent. Oklahoma is perhaps the nation’s single reddest state; in every presidential election since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, every single Oklahoma county has voted for the Republican presidential candidate. But in 2022, DeSantis won in former “swing” state Florida by a wider margin than Stitt did in ruby red Oklahoma.

The bottom line is as straightforward as it would have been jarring to hear just a handful of years ago: Florida, the nation’s third-most populous state, has surpassed Texas, the nation’s second-most populous state, as the capital of red state America.

As Republicans lick their wounds from Tuesday’s various disappointments and engage in some deep introspection about what went wrong at the national level, one key question thus becomes: What lessons can Florida Republicans impart to Republicans elsewhere?

The TRULY “key” question is, how many of said Repugnicans would be at all interested, sincerely interested, in learning them? Or would take them to heart, or act on them?


Man, that Don Brewer sure did himself one hell of a lot of drumming on that sparse, bare-bones little kit of his, didn’t he?

Update! Some fun facts about GFR I bet y’all didn’t know. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know some of it myself, and I’ve been listening to Mark, Don, and Mel since I was still in knee-britches and high socks.

Grand Funk Railroad was formed as a trio in 1969 by Mark Farner (guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals) from Terry Knight and the Pack, and Mel Schacher (bass) from Question Mark & the Mysterians. Knight soon became the band’s manager and also named the band as a play on words for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, a well-known rail line in Michigan. First achieving recognition at the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival, the band was signed by Capitol Records. After a raucous, well-received set on the first day of the festival, Grand Funk was asked back to play at the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival II the following year. Patterned after hard-rock power trios such as Cream, the band, with Terry Knight’s marketing savvy, developed its own popular style. In August 1969 the band released its first album titled On Time, which sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold record in 1970.

In February 1970 a second album, Grand Funk (or The Red Album), was awarded gold status. Despite critical pans and little airplay, the group’s first six albums (five studio releases and one live album) were quite successful.

The hit single “I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)”, from the album Closer to Home, released in June 1970, was considered stylistically representative of Terry Knight and the Pack’s recordings. In the spring of 1970, Knight launched an intensive advertising campaign to promote the album Closer to Home. That album was certified multiplatinum despite a lack of critical approval. The band spent $100,000 on a New York City Times Square billboard to advertise Closer to Home.

By 1971, Grand Funk equaled the Beatles’ Shea Stadium attendance record, but sold out the venue in just 72 hours whereas the Beatles concert took a few weeks to sell out. Following Closer to Home, The double disc Live Album was also released later in 1970, and was another gold disc recipient. Survival and E Pluribus Funk were both released in 1971. E Pluribus Funk celebrated the Shea Stadium show with an embossed depiction of the stadium on the album cover’s reverse.

By late 1971, the band was concerned with Knight’s managerial style and fiscal responsibility. This growing dissatisfaction led Grand Funk Railroad to fire Knight in early 1972. Knight sued for breach of contract, which resulted in a protracted legal battle. At one point, Knight repossessed the band’s gear before a gig at Madison Square Garden. In VH1’s Behind the Music Grand Funk Railroad episode, Knight stated that the original contract would have run out in about three months, and that the smart decision for the band would have been to just wait out the time. However, at that moment, the band members felt they had no choice but to continue and fight for the rights to their careers and name. The legal battle with Knight lasted two years and ended when the band settled out of court. Knight came out the clear winner with the copyrights and publisher’s royalties to every Grand Funk recording made from March 1969 through March 1972, not to mention a large payoff in cash and oil wells. Farner, Brewer and Schacher were given the rights to the name Grand Funk Railroad.

In 1972 Grand Funk Railroad added Craig Frost on keyboards full-time. Originally, the band had attempted to attract Peter Frampton, late of Humble Pie; however, he was not available due to signing a solo record deal with A&M Records. The addition of Frost, however, was a stylistic shift from Grand Funk’s original garage-band based rock and roll roots to a more rhythm and blues/pop rock-oriented style. With the new lineup, Grand Funk released Phoenix, its sixth album of original music, in September 1972.

To refine Grand Funk’s sound, the band then secured veteran musician Todd Rundgren as a producer. Its two most successful albums and two number-one hit singles resulted: the Don Brewer-penned “We’re an American Band” (from the number two album We’re an American Band, released in July 1973) and “The Loco-Motion” (from their 1974 number five album Shinin’ On, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and originally recorded by Little Eva). “We’re an American Band” became Grand Funk’s first number-one hit on Farner’s 25th birthday, followed by Brewer’s number-19 hit “Walk Like a Man”. “The Loco-Motion” in 1974 was Grand Funk’s second chart-topping single, followed by Brewer’s number-11 hit “Shinin’ On”. The band continued touring the U.S., Europe and Japan.

In 1974 Grand Funk engaged Jimmy Ienner as producer and reverted to using their full name: Grand Funk Railroad. The cover of All the Girls in the World Beware!!! (December 1974) depicted the band members’ heads superimposed on the bodies of bodybuilders Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu. This album spawned the band’s last two top-10 hits, “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Bad Time” in late 1974/early 1975.

I put the stuff that was news to me in bold, so’s nobody would miss it. Unlikely as it may seem after all that, there’s more to the Grand Funk story even yet.

Footstompin’ update! What, no mention above of what I remember being one of their hugest hits?


WHOA, that’s good squishy!

Know thine enemy

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Kenny left a response to Skeptic’s comment, here:

No way PA chose Climate Change, Abortion and Trans/Pedo Grooming over Inflation, Energy Jobs, Crime, The Economy, Education and other bread and butter issues and even the gaslit polls admit that. THOSE were the hot button issues and Frankenstein Two Headed Man was on the WRONG side of every one.

Now, Kenny is a great guy, a well-read, smart, and knowledgeable guy. I feel myself privileged indeed to be able to count him as a friend, and to have him amongst us here at CF as an active participant. But he’s missing something in this one instance, something YUGE. To wit: he’s making the mistake of imagining the shitlib Left, in Pennsy or anyplace else, think more or less the way Normal Americans do. By the numbers:

  • Climate change? You mean “saving Mother Gaia” from the wanton, destructive depradations of greedy, venal, outside-Nature Hoomon Beenz
  • Abortion? You mean “a woman’s right to choose,” a sacramental right to “health care” which MUST be protected at all and any cost
  • Trans/Pedo Grooming? You mean the fundamental right to enjoy total, unrestricted sexual liberty, not that this “Grooming” nonsense ever happens anyway, you H8ful liars
  • Inflation? Ain’t none, since our most excellent President did such a marvelous job reviving a US economy Trump, in his supreme arrogance and incompetence, had so idiotically wrecked
  • Energy? If it ain’t green, it’s mean, you H8RRZZ
  • Crime? What are you, scared or something, you big coward?

And so on from there. Not only is there no shared opinions between Us and Them on the issues of the day, we don’t even agree on which issues are legitimate matters of concern and import among sensible, well-meaning people in the first place.

Shitlibs in PA, along with their likewise cognitively-challenged brethren, sistren, and whatevren scuttling fearfully about in their decaying urban hellscapes across the blighted plain, will always and forever vote against Real Americans, America That Was, and absolutely everything Our Side holds dear, worthwhile, and righteous. Because reasons, that’s why. Previous Presidents have been pleased to begin their every public address with a reference to “My fellow Americans,” which for a long, long time held at least some water. Not anymore; not since the mid-1960s at least, possibly longer. The TWANLOC acronymic is a Thing, and it’s all too apt a descriptor nowadays.

Update! The way they think. If you want to be generous and call what they do “thinking.”

If you’re reading this, chances are that when you cast your vote, your focus is on real-life issues. Gas prices. Inflation. You care about law and order, and hence didn’t like it when Democratic mayors and governors allowed Antifa and Black Lives Matter to run riot. You care about individual liberty, and hence resented the restrictions imposed during the pandemic by many of those same Democratic mayors and governors.

Millions of Democratic voters, however, don’t think like that. Many of them can afford not to. They’re part of the social, cultural, and political establishment—or at least think they’re part of it, or want to be seen as being part of it. They’re well off enough, for example, not to have to worry too much about rising prices at the gas pump or supermarket.

But even those Democrats who aren’t so well off, and whose lives are affected by grocery bills and lawlessness in the streets, won’t let such phenomena change their vote. Because their politics, take them for all in all, aren’t very firmly grounded in reality.

On the contrary, millions of them are driven, to at least some extent, by ideology. They buy the idea that American capitalism—and the American consumer—should take a serious hit to stop climate change, an ideologically rooted concept for which they’ve seen no evidence whatsoever. They defend the depredations of Antifa and BLM as noble assaults on a corrupt system, even if their own windows end up being broken.

Their own individual liberty, if on their radar at all, is far lower down on their list of values than gestures in the direction of collective well-being, so that during the lockdown they welcomed state-ordained limitations on their movements—even though those limitations had no basis in science. They believe that certain groups are by definition oppressed, and so will automatically oppose any action, however reasonable or just, that might conceivably harm illegal immigrants, offend Muslims, or make trans people uncomfortable—and by the same token will support almost anything that will presumably make members of these groups happy.

Moreover, the media that they trust have taught them to view with contempt voters who are preoccupied with such issues as crime and the cost of living. They’ve been persuaded that when some voters speak of crime, it’s a coded way of expressing racism, and that when some voters complain about high gasoline prices, they’re simply being selfish: for isn’t it far more socially responsible to worry about climate change—to which fossil fuels contribute massively—than to gripe about whatever one has to pay to fill one’s gas tank?

They see themselves as taking the long view. The unselfish view. Yes, you can describe their politics as “virtue signaling”—and you’d be right. But there’s something else they want to signal: the boundary between themselves and the rest of us. They’re desperate to make it clear to the world that they’re not MAGA folks—not grubby little “deplorables,” always preoccupied with their own narrow interests and their own so-called freedom.

After Biden took office, his handlers defined him largely in opposition to Trump. Trump wanted to build a wall, so Biden opposed it. Trump made the U.S. energy-independent, so Biden had to undo that, prontissimo. Millions of establishment Democratic voters operate the same way, perhaps often unconsciously: they define themselves in opposition to the likes of us.

By George, I think he’s got it!



Cope-out

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JD Rucker sneaks a peek at life in post-truth America.

Many are saying this is Donald Trump’s fault. Those who are saying that and jumping on the DeSantis bandwagon are falling into a trap. That’s NOT to say I’m against DeSantis or for Trump for 2024. I like them both and have challenges with both of them as well. But the rising anti-Trump sentiment is being manufactured by the powers-that-be, and it has very little to do with Trump himself.

The powers-that-be didn’t just see this election as a way to salvage Democrat power. The bigger fish that they wanted to fry was us. MAGA Republicans, America First patriots, Trump supporters…whatever you want to label those who supported people like Mastriano, Lake, Don Bolduc, Tiffany Smiley, and other America First candidates were the real targets. They want us splintered. They want the GOP Establishment to continue to manage our side of the political fence for the Uniparty Swamp.

This election was mostly about shutting us up and making us fall in line with Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the GOPe power brokers. This isn’t about Republican versus Democrat. This was about protecting the powers-that-be, the globalist elite cabal that manages the Biden-Harris regime and the Uniparty Swamp.

The problem I didn’t anticipate, this problem that is manifesting very clearly now, is that I thought they’d have to stick their necks out too far to steal these elections. They did stick their necks out even further than they did in 2020, but my fatal mistake was not realizing there would be so few willing to call them out for it. I didn’t realize until now that the false narratives were already pre-planned. They are busy herding the vast majority of Republicans into an anti-Trump, pro-DeSantis election post-mortem debate and far too many are willingly being led to that ideological slaughter.

For the past five years, I’ve been doing whatever I can to stay just below the radar. Call me a coward, but I’ve always tried to stay in my own little corner of digital conservative media, content to not get too far into the spotlight for fear of my family being targeted. I refuse to speak lies or to go along with the mainstream narrative, so I figured I’d speak the truth to a relatively small audience, big enough to feed my family but not big enough to draw the ire of cancel culture, the Deep State, or the Principalities and Powers. I figured if I wasn’t really a threat that I wouldn’t get raided at 4am by the FBI.

If you suspect the red tsunami didn’t happen because the powers-that-be wouldn’t allow it to happen, then please know that you’re not alone. There will be those on the left but especially on the right who will tell you that you’re mistaken. They’ll say you’re just coping. They’ll point to a dozen different reasons why the red tsunami failed to materialize, but stolen elections aren’t among those. They’re wrong, and many of them will know they’re wrong which means they’re lying to you. Stay firm with your beliefs. Express them if you have the courage. But one thing is certain. The gloves need to come off. Our nation is in jeopardy and far too few are willing to do what it takes to save it.

The gloves do most certainly need to come off, for good. Which doesn’t necessarily have to involve shooting, even yet, but most likely will at some point. Be all that as it may, there can be no doubt that our “elections” are indeed rigged, either through direct ballot tampering and fraud or via the modalities I mentioned earlier: decades-long Leftist indoctrination of our kids in the government schools and universities; propaganda relentlessly blasting forth from every pop-culture/entertainment media outlet; and the myriad fabrications and falsehoods promulgated by Fake News “journalists.”

Ultra über mega MAGA Express derailed?

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Our old friend Stephen says Trump is toast.

Gut-check time: Donald Trump is now 0-4 in elections held since his big win in 2016, and he could go 0-5 if his man Herschel Walker loses the Georgia runoff in December.

There’s enough blame to go around, this isn’t all on The Donald. All the Washington leadership failed us. A few state legislatures probably moved too far, too quickly after the Dobbs decision, scaring largely pro-choice GenZ young adults to vote in defiance of the polls.

But as the de facto party head, Trump can’t escape his share of the blame. So it’s my unpleasant duty to examine the rot at the top.

Trump’s man in Pennsylvania, a TV celebrity doctor of questionable ethics, lost to a stroke victim who can barely speak. Yes, there was cheating in Philly — there’s always cheating in Philly. That didn’t stop Trump from winning Pennsylvania in 2016, and it wouldn’t have stopped any other GOP candidate against John Fetterman, except for Trump’s hand-picked candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Despite rising wages, energy independence, and no new wars, Trump lost the House in 2018. He lost the White House two years later the Senate in Georgia’s double-runoff the next January, and his slate of Senate candidates underperformed on Tuesday night.

There’s been so much losing, I’m tired of all the losing.

If you still want Trumpism, MAGA, and all that, fine. So do I.

But we won’t get it from Trump.

I’ll always be grateful to Trump for showing the GOP how to fight, and particularly for the slate of justices and judges he and McConnell pushed in such numbers through the Senate.

But those wins are forever ago in political time, and there have just been too many unaccountable losses in between.

Once again, if GOP primary voters select Trump as the nominee, he’ll have my full support. But for all the reasons I’ve just given you, I don’t expect him to make the comeback I once hoped he would.

I’ve slowly come around to that same conclusion myself, albeit reluctantly. At this point, Trump appears to me to be a kinda-sorta inverse Gen Sherman: if nominated, he won’t be allowed to win. If elected, he won’t be allowed to serve. I’m seeing much chatter out there from disappointed, frustrated, and/or disgruntled 2016 Trump voters flatly renouncing their previous support for him, swearing they won’t bother voting for him again. I don’t necessarily share the sentiment, mind, but I do understand it.

Yes, Trump will almost certainly run for Prez in 2024, right enough. Much as I do hate to say it, however, I see the odds of him overcoming the margin of fraud to win (a non-negotiable prerequisite in all US “elections” going forward, after having two (2) consecutive elections stolen without repercussion), taking office, and accomplishing much of anything that won’t be totally undone before lunchtime on Jan 21, 2028 by his incoming DemonRat successor—exactly as took place in Jan 2021—as being mighty slim indeed.

Like I said, I do hate to say it, I truly do. But, well, there it is.

On the other hand update! If disagreeing with reliably-execrable, ten-pounds-of-dogshit-in-a-five-pound-sack “Crunchy Con” nitwit Rod Dreher is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

I woke up this morning in London hoping — not just hoping, but expecting — to see news of a Red Wave having crashed upon the shores of an America sick of the woke Democrats. I was disappointed. The Red Wave talk turned out to be bullshit. As I write, we still don’t know the outcome of control of the Senate. We do know, though, that the Trump-endorsed candidate in Pennsylvania was beaten by a brain-damaged Democrat. That tells you something. That tells you a lot, actually.

What a contrast between DeSantis, a conservative who actually gets things done, and wins (even a majority of Latinos!), and Donald Trump, a has-been whose candidates — with the exception of Sen.-elect Vance — fared poorly on Tuesday. The underwhelming election results on Tuesday, in a country suffering from high crime and high inflation, ought to send a big sign to the conservative electorate: the more the Right stands by the fatmouthing loser Trump, the further behind we will fall. I concede that Trump’s endorsement likely carried JDV over the line in the Ohio GOP primary, and for that I’m grateful. But the future of American conservatism is not with Donald Trump.

It has fallen to Matt Walsh, Chris Rufo, Libs of Tiktok, and others to take on the scourge of gender ideology. With the exception of DeSantis, no other major elected Republican politician has wanted to touch wokeness. I cannot understand why. The country is falling apart, the libs are becoming totalitarians who are coming after children, and most of the GOP just sits there with its thumb up its backside, running on the thrilling platform of “hey, at least we’re not the other guys.” No, forget it. That’s over.

To the MAGA diehards, I say: is this really what you want? A Republican Party that can’t decisively whip the Democrats even in an extremely favorable year? Because this is what you are going to get if you keep sticking with Trump. Like it or not, a lot of independents just hate the guy, and that’s never going to change. Conservatives like me would vote for him in 2024 just to keep the Democrats out of office, but in that case I would vote knowing I was checking the box for a big mouth who won’t get much done, because whereas Ron DeSantis would actually govern, Trump would do nothing but preen and talk about himself.

Oof. So much to dislike there it’s difficult to know where to start picking it apart. So I ain’t gonna bother.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

“This is the most important thread you can read following what happened last night”

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So sayeth the fine folks over at Not The Bee, and they might well be onto something.

Some post-election thoughts:

1- Everything I have been saying about democracy was vindicated last night. The fact that such a massive number of people voted for more of the same after two years of horrific mismanagement shows that it is unfit to choose its own leaders.

2- Public education and its consequences have been a disaster for the American people. Any Christians that still think sending their children to public schools is a morally neutral choice are choosing national suicide.

2a- The damage is probably already irreversible at this point. The D’s staved off what should have been a bloodbath through the youth vote. The boomers and Xers can no longer counterbalance the pozzed generations electorally.

3- With such an advanced level of moral degeneracy, the best thing for the world is that American global influence wane rapidly, and it probably will. Our unique flavor of degeneracy seems to be bound up with a commitment to incompetence, and our global hegemon cannot last long.

Ahh, the elusive silver lining shows up at last. But Jefferson’s fabled “reign of witches” will NOT just “pass over” on its own; it will have to be ushered out, and quite forcefully. In the contemporary context, Jefferson’s profound wisdom doesn’t meet the case, as the rest of the passage shows (emphasis mine):

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

What will it avail us to retain our principles, once all else is lost? Jefferson seems to have had the sequence exactly backwards this one time.

At this historic moment, it strikes me as surpassing strange that Jefferson, of all people, would counsel reliance on “luck” and “patience” instead of bold, vigorous action in defiance of corruption and raw tyranny. After all, this is the same man who also told us this:

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

One of these quotes is NOT like the other. Ah well; Thomas Jefferson, great as he inarguably was, was only human too. And no human can be right EVERY time.

Amerika v2.0’s energy future: ain’t none

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As laid out by our senile, decrepit, corrupt old pervert of a Pretend pResident.

Biden Keeps Promising To Make Energy More Expensive. Believe Him.

Precisely so. After all, it’s the only thing the rat-bastard has ever said that was actually true.

Yes, we’re going to make energy more expensive.

That’s Joe Biden’s closing message for 2022. “We’re going to be shutting these [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” Biden told a crowd in deep blue California on Friday, arguing that it was “cheaper” to generate electricity from wind and solar.

I’ve noted this before more than once here, but it bears revisiting now and again: the technology of the distant, long-dead past can never be adequate to meet the energy demands of modern industrialized economies.

The earliest-known references to windmills are to a Persian millwright in AD 644 and to windmills in Seistan, Persia, in AD 915. These windmills are of the horizontal-mill type, with sails radiating from a vertical axis standing in a fixed building, which has openings for the inlet and outlet of the wind diametrically opposite to each other. Each mill drives a single pair of stones directly, without the use of gears, and the design is derived from the earliest water mills. Persian millwrights, taken prisoner by the forces of Genghis Khan, were sent to China to instruct in the building of windmills; their use for irrigation there has lasted ever since.

The vertical windmill, with sails on a horizontal axis, derives directly from the Roman water mill with its right-angle drive to the stones through a single pair of gears. The earliest form of vertical mill is known as the post mill. It has a boxlike body containing the gearing, millstones, and machinery and carrying the sails. It is mounted on a well-supported wooden post socketed into a horizontal beam on the level of the second floor of the mill body. On this it can be turned so that the sails can be faced into the wind.

The next development was to place the stones and gearing in a fixed tower. This has a movable top, or cap, which carries the sails and can be turned around on a track, or curb, on top of the tower. The earliest-known illustration of a tower mill is dated about 1420. Both post and tower mills were to be found throughout Europe and were also built by settlers in America.

To work efficiently, the sails of a windmill must face squarely into the wind, and in the early mills the turning of the post-mill body, or the tower-mill cap, was done by hand by means of a long tailpole stretching down to the ground. In 1745 Edmund Lee in England invented the automatic fantail. This consists of a set of five to eight smaller vanes mounted on the tailpole or the ladder of a post mill at right angles to the sails and connected by gearing to wheels running on a track around the mill. When the wind veers it strikes the sides of the vanes, turns them and hence the track wheels also, which turn the mill body until the sails are again square into the wind. The fantail may also be fitted to the caps of tower mills, driving down to a geared rack on the curb.

Interesting enough as a historical study, no doubt, but there’s a reason windmills were in the main abandoned: because, as civilization progressed and technological advances were achieved one after another, something much better came along to replace them. As, y’know, tends to happen over time. As for solar panels, they are by no means anything new either.

It all began with Edmond Becquerel, a young physicist working in France, who in 1839 observed and discovered the photovoltaic effect— a process that produces a voltage or electric current when exposed to light or radiant energy. A few decades later, French mathematician Augustin Mouchot was inspired by the physicist’s work. He began registering patents for solar-powered engines in the 1860s. From France to the U.S., inventors were inspired by the patents of the mathematician and filed for patents on solar-powered devices as early as 1888.

Take a light step back to 1883 when New York inventor Charles Fritts created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold. Fritts reported that the selenium module produced a current “that is continuous, constant, and of considerable force.” This cell achieved an energy conversion rate of 1 to 2 percent. Most modern solar cells work at an efficiency of 15 to 20 percent. So, Fritts created what was a low impact solar cell, but still, it was the beginning of photovoltaic solar panel innovation in America. Named after Italian physicist, chemist and pioneer of electricity and power, Alessandro Volta, photovoltaic is the more technical term for turning light energy into electricity, and used interchangeably with the term photoelectric.

…That same year (1888), a Russian scientist by the name of Aleksandr Stoletov created the first solar cell based on the photoelectric effect, which is when light falls on a material and electrons are released. This effect was first observed by a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz. In his research, Hertz discovered that more power was created by ultraviolet light than visible light. Today, solar cells use the photoelectric effect to convert sunlight into power. In 1894, American inventor Melvin Severy received patents 527,377 for an “Apparatus for mounting and operating thermopiles” and 527,379 for an “Apparatus for generating electricity by solar heat.” Both patents were essentially early solar cells based on the discovery of the photoelectric effect. The first generated “electricity by the action of solar heat upon a thermo-pile” and could produce a constant electric current during the daily and annual movements of the sun, which alleviated anyone from having to move the thermopile according to the sun’s movements. Severy’s second patent from 1889 was also meant for using the sun’s thermal energy to produce electricity for heat, light and power. The “thermos piles,” or solar cells as we call them today, were mounted on a standard to allow them to be controlled in the vertical direction as well as on a turntable, which enabled them to move in a horizontal plane. “By the combination of these two movements, the face of the pile can be maintained opposite the sun all times of the day and all seasons of the year,” reads the patent.

Uh huh…on each and every day the sun is shining, which is nothing like every day, not anywhere in the entire world. Then we get into the storage end of the solar-power equation, ie, batteries. Which, despite some genuine improvement over recent years, is a whole ‘nother kettle of expensive, unreliable, not-ready-for-prime-time fish, other than on a very small, private-home scale.

Ironic, is it not, that the very ones who have for so long insufferably claimed to have a corner on plumping for “new ideas” and “fresh concepts” and “progress”—even going so far, in their boundless hubris, as to misnomer themselves “Progressives”—are the selfsame ones who today insist that “the way of the Future” is to regress to the dim and distant past. Back to the Harsanyi piece for the sad, sorry denouement.

In California, which not only leads the nation in “clean energy” production but is leading the rest of us into rolling blackouts, residents pay 24.62 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy, around double the national average. There are only three other states where residents fork 20 or more cents over, the isolated Hawaii and Alaska and the frack-banning New York. The price of a gallon of gas in California is around two dollars over the national average, at $5.458. In Texas, it’s $3.173.

The president also forgot to mention that affordable natural gas, propelled by technological efficiencies like fracking, is as much a reason for the struggles of coal.

After West Virginia’s Joe Manchin groused about Biden’s denigration of his state’s top industry , the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “walked back” the comments, contending that the president’s “remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”

How they were distorted, she did not say. The statement stresses that the president understands that “the men and women of coal country built this nation” but that, yes, we must shut down the coal industry — as well as the oil and gas production. Biden is sorry that you’re offended. “Our goal as a nation is to combat climate change and increase our energy security by producing clean and efficient American energy,” the statement falsely goes on to say. Wind and solar, both victims to vagaries of the weather, aren’t, by any definition, “efficient.”

The kerfuffle, as with most debates over gas and oil, is confusing. The administration’s stated goal — one of the major policy planks of the Democratic Party — is to deliberately, through mandates or bans or taxes or contrived “markets,” make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive to force a “transition.” Biden’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice promises that a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions will exist no later than 2050. California has banned new gas-powered cars by 2035. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, supported by virtually every Democratic Party presidential candidate last time around, is far more extreme.

None of these climate plans can be implemented without the effective nationalization of the energy sector and the banning of fossil fuels. Solar, after decades of mandates and subsidies and cronyism, accounts for around 3 percent of the national portfolio. Both wind and solar need to be propped up by fossil fuel generation. In anything resembling a functioning market, “clean energy” loses, not only to oil, gas, and coal, but also to nuclear power.

Well, they need to be propped up by sustainable, plentiful fossil fuels if one assumes that the shitlib goal is to provide energy sufficient to heat and cool American homes, keep American fridges and freezers stocked and the sustenance within them unspoiled, invigorate our economy, and just generally keep Western Civ moving forward efficiently and affordably. Unfortunately for us all, there is no discernible sign to date that any such thing is their actual goal. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Great Divide

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Fran gets down to the nitty-gritty of it for us.

Well, it’s finally here: Election Day 2022. Until late this evening, those of us unwilling to break the law can know very little about what’s taking place. Unfortunately, there are quite a few who are willing to break the law. Whether they can cheat sufficiently to retain their grip on the federal Leviathan will be the determinant of much that follows. They managed it in 2020; we must not assume that they can’t do it again.

It’s part of the cleavage that has riven the American people into two mutually hostile camps.

The division isn’t principally a matter of ideology, or of attachment to particular government policies. It’s mainly about self-concept.

We in the Right mostly adhere to the original conception of the United States as The Land of the Free. There are a few paternalists among us, but the great majority of us simply want to be left alone in our private pursuits. In consequence, what we want from government at all levels is to stay the BLEEP! away from us. Keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off our wallets and stick to keeping order in the streets. We can manage our own affairs without your “help.”

Over there on the Left, they’re mainly persons who hold “an assumption of differential rectitude” (cf. Thomas Sowell). They regard themselves as our moral superiors. In their minds, that entitles them to boss us around. Questioning their self-assessment provokes behavior decent persons would prefer not to face. However, not questioning their self-assessment allows them to assume that we’re okay with having them run our lives.

This cleavage in the American people is bringing about a cleavage in the nation. It’s assumed a fairly definite geographic shape. Those preponderant in one region are looked upon with disdain (at best) by those preponderant in the other. The current trend in intra-national relocations is slowly but steadily reinforcing that division. It’s also providing grounds for intensified intra-national hostilities. If you needed something to lose sleep over, you’re welcome.

None of this should be news to any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch. The driving processes have been at work for decades. What matters most is the division between the moral visions of Red and Blue America. Yes, such divisions have existed before. But never has one side preached to itself that its superiority justifies the subjugation of the other by any means necessary.

A hell of a thing, innit, when those whose sole desire is to be left alone to live as they see fit must contend with a fanatical, über-arrogant opposition whose Prime Directive is that it must never, ever leave anybody alone. Really, though, the hell of it is that only one side can legitimately lay claim to being the contemporary representatives of the vision laid out for America by its Founding Fathers in the DoI and the US Constitution. Which goes a long way towards explicating the visceral, frothing opposition to those things, as well as the Founders themselves, on the part of the Goosesteppin’ Left.

The long, dark road

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A sneak peek at Schlichter’s new book, We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America. All boldface in the excerpts mine, by the way.

Will America Fall With A Bang Or A Whimper?
Radio host and writer Kurt Schlichter’s latest book, ‘We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America,’ games out many scenarios that could lead to the country’s collapse with illuminating and even amusing results.

Although entertaining on its own, Schlichter’s crash course in classical history has a deeper point that applies to today. Like Rome, America will fall, but this fall won’t be anything sudden or even perceptible to most people. He explains that America’s fall will probably “be a transformational change. … The old ways can simply stop meeting the needs of the present, and something different replaces them.” For the past three decades, Schlichter charts the mounting corruption of the American government, the departure from constitutional limits, and the growing unrest among Americans, particularly conservatives. Even if these problems are fixed, the system will be different than it was in the early ’90s.

Even though President Trump turned away from this apparent trajectory somewhat, Schlichter acknowledges that Trump’s administration suffered from personnel issues for his first two years, and then was sunk by Covid-19 and trusting the experts. Now, “when Biden was sort-of elected, the Democrats pushed hard as they could to the left even though the voters had seen fit to literally provide them the barest imaginable legislative majority.” Consequently, certain checks on political abuses like the Electoral College, election integrity measures, the filibuster, and the authority of elected officials (vs. unelected technocrats) are being challenged or eliminated.

This brings Schlichter to today’s precious present in which an ascendent leftist elite imposes its will on a resistant population. Indeed, the global response to Covid offered a taste of this, as national governments stripped populations of most of their freedoms in the name of public health. What distinguishes the U.S. from other nations, however, is that Americans have the right to bear arms. For Schlichter, this is the ultimate check on power: “They [Americans] understand that the decision to allow or disallow any act by the government ultimately resides with themselves.”

Americans like to tell themselves that cozy lie, but absent a credible and somber threat to resort to those sharply-curtailed 2A rights if and when they must, all the guns ever made add up to no more than empty bluster, easily laughed off by our tormenters as just more hot air expelled by unserious, contemptible blowhards.

This leads him to think that a time will come soon when violence breaks out. He grants that quite a few things will need to happen before this happens: “What this [a civil war] means is that for America to reach a state of tyranny, there must not only be massive and systemic violations but, simultaneously, the elimination of any meaningful ability to address those wrongs, either under the Constitution or otherwise.”

Um. I really don’t have to point out the gaping hole in the premise here, do I?

It’s at this point that Schlichter’s role as polemicist turns into one of a prophet, forecasting a variety of outcomes in the near future. First, he describes an America captured by the hard left, which brings tensions to a breaking point. Unfettered by the constitutional checks and balances, the Democrats would wreck the economy with uncontrolled deficit spending, permanently restrict individual freedoms, and refuse to enforce laws on protected classes. Any modicum of prosperity, peace, and stability would immediately be lost in an anarchic frenzy.

Huh. Maybe I do at that. Kurt speaks as if those “massive and systemic violations,” the intentionally rubbled economy, uncontrolled deficit spending, &c are mere grim but as yet unrealized future possibilities, instead of having long since come to pass, every last one of them.

Assuming none of these prognostications come to pass and the center holds for a little while longer, Schlichter concludes that Americans will have three choices: restore the constitutional order, elect a right-wing authoritarian leader, or elect a left-wing authoritarian leader. Since he discussed the last option already, he spends some time on the second option, the conservative authoritarian. He likens this to the reign of Augustus Caesar, which, at least in the beginning, had many things going for it. In one fell swoop, an authoritarian leader could fix the problems of crime, immigration, woke indoctrination, energy and water shortages, and people like Ilhan Omar holding office. However, as Schlichter concludes, “Yes, an authoritarian can make the trains run on time for a while, but that kind of regime has to derail eventually.” A few decent emperors may have succeeded Augustus, but none of them were quite as effective.

I’ve been leaning towards Option 2 for a good while now myself, albeit reluctantly. The wise old quip about socialism—you can vote your way into it, but must shoot your way out—holds equally true for all other flavors of authoritarianism. That stipulated, in order to undertake any truly serious effort to restore American Constitutional liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we must first rid ourselves of the insidious threat to freedom and individual self-determination posed by our “Enemies, domestic” on the Left. And there’s only one sure way to achieve that most laudable of goals: by suppressing Leftists and Leftist cant ruthlessly, ferociously, every time and everywhere they dare to rear their ugly heads.

I’ve often stated that I have no good or easy solutions to propose for this crippling conundrum; this is not an admission of intellectual shortcoming or inadequacy on my part, mind. It’s simply because it’s become my firm belief that, at this late stage of the game, there ARE NO good or easy solutions left to us. Henceforth, every choice will be difficult, costly, and damaging in one way or another.

At each and every turn, we readily descry a path fraught with hazard, uncertainty, pain, and wretchedness. Through a perfectly natural human reluctance to confront the ugly reality of our situation, to relax into comforting fantasy about where we now are and what we now must do, we have painted ourselves into a very tight corner indeed.

One thing is certain: carrying on under the delusional fiction that we still live in the America we grew up in—a stumbling but still essentially sound America with a badly warped but still basically functional system—will get us noplace we want to be, and gain us nothing worth having. No matter which way we finally jump or what we finally decide to do, there’s trouble up the road for sure.



RINO is as RINO does

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What a disappointment this Eyepatch McCain fellow has turned out to be.

Why would Rep. Crenshaw go on a podcast, Hold These Truths, with Nick Troiano for less than a week before the elections to make America First candidates look bad?

Troiano said that most of the Republican nominees for the House “aren’t accepting the results of the 2020 election.”

Troiano asked Crenshaw what that meant for the future and claimed, “this is a, you know, real threat to our ability to keep the republic.”

Crenshaw claimed that people who question election results are attention seekers.

Oh absolutely, Dan. Say, know where else Da Peepul are forbidden to “question elections”? Oh, bastions of liberty like Iran, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Somalia, garden spots like that. Jesse Kelly puts it quite well, I think.


Remember, now, Crenshaw still misrepresents himself as a “conservative.” Asshole. “QUESTION” the election? Hell, I’ll just say it straight up: THE 2020 ELECTION WAS FRAUDULENT. And the day I let some professional politician tell me I’m not allowed to say so is…well, it won’t be a good day, let’s just leave it at that. There are two pertinent questions remaining before us, and Aesop ain’t a-skeered to axe ’em.

It seems to me that what folks ought to be pondering about now, are the answers to two related questions:

1) If the 2022 elections follow the same pattern that 2020 did, and you watch it stolen in broad daylight right before your eyes, and the other side gaslights you into thinking you should ignore your lying eyes. AGAIN;

OR

2) If there’s a Red Tsunami, but when the dust settles, and the media pants-wetting is over, nothing changes, because the Stupid Party is unalterably spring-loaded to feckless and studied incompetence, like always, rather than cutting out the civilizational rot with machetes, and burning it all with a flamethrower,

WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO?

As I said the other day, I’m more and more leaning towards the belief that the Donks will try to bolster confidence in the integrity of American “elections,” now at their lowest ebb in our history, by letting the GOPe win this one, although I will also certainly admit to the possibility that they’ve become so emboldened by win after win that they’ll cheat just as a matter of long-established habit, if nothing else.

As for Question 2, that one’s a lead-pipe cinch, unfortunately. Which leaves us all staring down the barrel of that last one, the only one that truly matters anymore.

A Woke military is worse than no military at all

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Man, this decline-and-fall business isn’t turning out to be nearly as amusing as it looks like being in all those old movies about the Roman Empire in its final days.

Our Disunity Is a National Security Threat
The military now reflects the selfishness and fragmentation of our culture. Welcome to the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial decline.

In the lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action practices, a group of senior retired military officers filed an amicus brief, which argued that maintaining affirmative action was a “national security imperative.” Those signing off include four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, six former superintendents of the service academies, and 17 retired four-star generals, including Wesley Clark and William McRaven.

A ““national security imperative”? SERIOUSLY? Sorry, fellas, but I’m gonna need you to explain to me, in detail, exactly how you arrived at THAT bizarre conclusion.

Recruiting an adequate number of troops and increasing their quality also seems pretty important. But we know that recent efforts at recruiting have been a disaster, amplified by the mass expulsion of troops who refused the COVID vaccine.

While things carried on for a while out of habit, eventually the patriotic, mostly white, rural Americans who formed the backbone of the military started doing an about face. Polls show that fewer veterans now want their kids to follow in their footsteps. Conservative Republicans, once the most stalwart supporters of the military, have lately become more critical and less trusting.

No real mystery about that. Hell, I’ve wondered for a while now what the hell any new enlistee might think he’s signing up to defend with his very life, literally, and what the hell might be keeping career soldiers in the ranks nowadays.

Declining interest in service by conservative and white Americans is not irrational. Why fight for a governing class that hates you, deems you the central political problem, seeks to humiliate you, and disrespects your ancestors at every opportunity? Why serve an American empire that pursues foreign wars like those in Iraq and Ukraine that have almost no relationship to actual national security and explicitly serve a left-wing ideology?

One might respond that military service is good even under these conditions in order to get useful training and make a living. But even under such a self-serving standard, the incentive to do so is declining, as white men within the military are subject to a rigged game, where it is harder to get ahead, and the old standards of excellence no longer matter. This will only get worse without a dramatic reset in the culture of our military and political leaders.

During the War on Terror, lavish praise for military service flowed from a widespread feeling of guilt. After the 9/11 attacks, the country wanted safety and revenge—but, other than service members and their families, very few Americans carried the burdens of war. The civilian-military gap was amplified by the increasing self-perception of servicemembers as “warriors,” rather than mere soldiers. From this romantic view of military service as a superior way of life undertaken by superior people, we see the first seedlings of a warrior aristocracy.

A constitutional republic and a warrior aristocracy are polar opposites. The European aristocracy found its origins in rewards for battlefield merit, where particular acts of bravery led to a title bestowed on the hero and his heirs, as well as land, the right to income from taxes for land-bound peasants, and exemption from taxes otherwise owed to the king.

Since every national military establishment must necessarily be representative of the broader society it both serves and is drawn from, how could anybody find any of this at all shocking? As corruption, venality, and self-absorption have gradually become endemic in American society, its military has declined right along with it, in direct proportion. How could any reasonable, rational person possibly expect otherwise? Thus:

In exchange for the prestige and perquisites of military service, one thing is absolutely essential: loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the American people. Without patriotism, the military becomes a very sophisticated gang, one that easily can be turned against the American people. Some will scoff that such a prospect is unthinkable, but one would have thought General Mark Milley undermining the commander-in-chief or a Marine selling his services to the Chinese were impossible too.

Again: shocking? Unexpected? Hardly. “Loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the American people” have all become mighty thin on the ground amongst the general populace, over many decades. In effect, the military amounts to a mirror held up to American faces, no more nor less. If Americans don’t like what they see there, the only people who can change that is…well, guess who.

 

Forget, HELL!

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Stupid, smarmy bint expects forgiveness absent any hint of contrition, repentance, and reform. Which is assuredly NOT the way it works.

This is the ultimate slap in the face by “nice Christians” who believe Jesus wouldn’t want us to keep the Nazis waiting at the train station.

Those of us who were right from the beginning about this “pandemic” and were called unloving Grandma killers by these willfully ignorant, tyrant enabling Sheeple, aren’t “gloating.”

We didn’t make “lucky” guesses.

We read the data.

We knew the entire history of virology and true “Science” was being discarded.

We saw the double standards and illogic of unbiblical “lockdown” measures.

We were shocked and dismayed by how “nice Christians” enabled such Tyranny.

And we witnessed the true nature of EVIL at work in every “recommendation” and “mandate.”

And you had the exact same data and opportunity.

You didn’t “make a mistake” and “did the best you could” because you “had no way of knowing.”

You CHOSE your path and its consequences.

Now that we’ve been proven right beyond all shadow of an “Expert” doubt, we are NOT going to “move forward” with those who demand forgiveness without showing a shred of repentance.

We are filled with Righteous Indignation.

You need to seek forgiveness, in sackcloth and ashes, from the God you have offended for the Evil you have enabled. For the elderly who were left to die alone. For the children who had their childhoods stolen. For your neighbors who had their lives and livelihoods destroyed so you could feel safe. For your fellow citizens who will NEVER be able to return to “normal” after what you’ve done. God’s Justice DEMANDS there be trials AND punishments. To demand “forgiveness” without accountability is NOT WWJD.

We cannot and WILL NOT “work with you.” To order us to AGAIN comply by granting you “amnesty” and an ease of conscience that is not ours to give, shows that you will only repeat your prior actions when TPTB unleash the next “crisis.” You called us “Grandma killers” then and “unloving and unforgiving” now. And all of history shows you will happily comply with Evil when this happens again.

Absolutely, positively correct, right down the line. To grant those I labelled way back when “CoVid panic-ninnies” an absolution they haven’t earned is to guarantee they’ll do this again, as many times as we agree to forgive and forget. As I constantly argued, again and again and again, back in 2020: you NEVER willingly surrender your freedom to snakes-in-the-grass like Prof Oster, because once you have, the only way you’ll ever get it back again, assuming you ever do, is at the point of the sword—or, more precisely, at the muzzle of the AR15. Which, fancy that, is just ANOTHER thing “people” like her want to take away from us.

Gee, wonder why that might be.

As an old bumper sticker popular many years ago amongst us unreconstructed Southrons had it: Forget, HELL!

Believe it
Forget THIS, motherfuckers

Update! Billy Beck says it far better than I ever could.

This woman must think that she’s talking to a 1957 Cub Scout den that got in a fight when someone mis-counted the marbles, or something a lot like that. A person in that situation could afford the authority of using that royal “we” without having to explain it to the children. It becomes a mystery with nearly sinister undertones when this person is talking about the scope and scale of militant destruction put upon America in the past three years.

Let’s note how Dr. Oster confesses that the ones who were in the dark are the ones who said and did what they did. They commanded people’s lives into virtual cages with orders against doing the business to sustain them. They ordered administration of ostensible medicines (“vaccines”) to as many people as they possibly could, under the plain extortion of threatening all other aspects of life — jobs, educations, transport services, medical services, for instance — as penalty for refusal. Honest medical analyses of these drugs are now revealing effects catastrophic to and horribly conclusive of human lives around the world. They smashed the souls and intellects of an entire generation of children, including all imaginable and unimaginable implications ranging from toddlers to adolescents and beyond, with scientifically laughable nonsense applied to schools: the very sorts of schools that once taught me enough to know how plainly psychotic the whole thing was

Dr. Oster: “But the thing is: We didn’t know.”

That is, indeed, “the thing”. It’s the very thing that the commissars and research-fetishist should have been thinking, before they might have had to say it out-loud, after they’d done what they did, but if only they hadn’t done it.

It’s the thing that countless Americans were shouting as hard as they could into the gas-blast from “experts” and “authorities” who never stopped telling them how stupid and evil they were. They were viciously betrayed by the insidious promise of “public square” opportunity for “voice” in social media and then “cancelled” (a word of marvelous facility, now) for dissent, with monstrous digital precision, by faceless corporations selling “community”.

And now, these people — this heathen caste — are professorially instructed that “dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop”.

There’s a phrase fit to Balkanize, for you.

By an unexpected tum of our history, a bit of the truth, an insignificant part of the whole, was allowed out in the open. But those same hands which once screwed tight our handcuffs now hold out their palms in reconciliation: “No, don’t! Don’t dig up the past! Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye.”

But the proverb goes on to say: “Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.”

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — “The Gulag Archipelago”, vol. I, “Preface”, p. X)

At the lowest, most basic, level of principle, this caste of dissent is called upon to dismiss and dispose of the experienced reality which is the the material of morality itself. The harm that they’ve suffered, and the outrage of having it at the hands of obvious incompetents and malevolents, has shown them more than enough about how not to live as human beings instead of despised subjects. Wholesale demolition of society is what they’ve seen and lived on every quarter, and that’s what they’re being told to forgive and forget, on the now plainly hollowed pretext of “the good of society”. This goes beyond contradiction and hypocrisy to psychological assault, with the added insult that it comes from a self-preened “unapologetically data-driven” economist. Nobody who has had to hear — remotely — of a dear loved one’s death because their presence was forbidden by “data-driven authority” should have to think about something like this for one stolen heartbeat before dismissing it with contempt or hatred or whatever the current research says about the completely sensible and righteous human response.

People who are morals-driven, even at their most charitable, are simply not now disposed to stand for this.

How well or whether the Dr. Osters of America might conceive an understanding of that fact, and why it exists as a fact, would tell a lot about whether the almost maniacal demand for “unity” is as flatly cynical as it seems. There can be nothing like that between people who think that the agonies of the past three years are to be understood and condemned, and people who cannot and will not see that demand as a matter of moral principles: applied studies in how to live, versus how let it all go to massive deathly mayhem.

I must say, I do enjoy the bleating from the Osters of the world, all wailing so very piteously that we didn’t know, we didn’t know, how could we have KNOOOOWWWNNNN…

Well, speak for yourdamnedself, bitch; I KNEW, and I don’t think anybody out there considers me any kind of “expert” on anything at all. Go fuck yourself and your proposed “amnesty” right in the liver, with a rusty railroad spike, until it stops hurting so much.

Updated update! I second Francis’s reminder, wholeheartedly and with big clanging bells on.

But let’s not omit this, for without it the formula would be fatally unbalanced: We mustn’t forgive ourselves either. We gave in when we should have resisted with all our might. We accepted dictatorial impositions and abridgements of our God-given rights when we should have mustered our rage and employed the corpses of our would-be tyrants to decorate lampposts from coast to coast. We acted like pusillanimous cretins rather than the heirs of Patrick Henry, who’s undoubtedly spinning in his grave fast enough to power all of Virginia over this embarrassment.

The survivors of the Holocaust made a mantra out of the saying “Never again.” The great majority of us wouldn’t even speak our minds for fear of ostracism, demonization, and unemployment. And over what? A disease that’s proved less dangerous than ordinary influenza! A disease that has hardly any effect on the populations most oppressed and disadvantaged by the lockdowns – our minor children!

No. Do not forgive. To forgive would be to accept that our oppressors’ hypothetical “good intentions” should exonerate them for their totalitarian conduct. To forgive would be to “understand” cowardice instead of reproving it as it deserves.

To forgive would be to forget. The two are never separated by much.

Amen, brother. The panic-ninnies and ostracizers can burn for all me. This I vow: NEVER to forget. NEVER to forgive. Ms Oster can go look for her scapegrace absolution someplace else, she’ll find none here.

The threatening truth

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Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

It is instructive – it is vitally important – that we remember how truths about “masks” and “vaccines” and the actual danger of “the virus” were cat-called as “misinformation,” “anti” Science and, yes, “denialism.” How those who dared to speak the truth were persecuted and punished – and still are (viz, the recent punishing of Dr. Peter McCullough, the eminent cardiologist, for stating truths about “the virus” and the “vaccines”).

That is what comes of tolerating cat-calls in lieu of conversations, no matter how uncomfortable those conversations may be. No matter how wrong some people may be, sometimes.

If a person is antagonistic toward a group of people on account of race or religion or some other such non-specific attribute, that will become clear enough soon enough – and that person’s arguments or statements can be picked apart on the basis of sloppiness, inaccuracy and disingenuousness (after a pattern has been established, after it becomes clear that contrary facts aren’t acknowledged and the person’s arguments and statements change to reflect the chastening effect of truth). That person’s statements and arguments can then be dismissed as wrong, without resorting to cat-calling.

It is easy to cat-call the arguments and statements of those you disagree with – and even easier, if you dislike them, personally.

With good reason.

It is very easy, for example, to dislike the person of someone as personally loathsome as Dr. Fauci – or the CEO of Pfizer, Anthony Bourla. But it is also easy to deflect and dismiss – and even pathologize – any questioning of their actions, their views, their policies, as being “anti” – including, in the case of Bourla, – “semitic” as simply (exactly the right modifier) motivated by dislike of them personally, or on account of their race or religion. And that – if accepted as argument-ending before there is an argument – confers upon their actions, their views and their policies a kind of blanket immunity from being questioned or criticized.

Well, a free society cannot exist without questioning and criticism, whether right or wrong and however uncomfortable certain topics may make some people feel. A free society requires people who can think – and aren’t cat-called for doing so. Even when what they think – and say – is racist or anti-Semitic. Not placed in air-fingers quote marks because it is a fact that there are such people.

But there are also worse people.

They are the people who use those terms to cat-call people who aren’t those things but who make statements or raise questions they’d rather not address, often because they are true and the truth can be very threatening, to falsehood. We’ve had an object lesson about that over the course of the past almost three years now. The lies told us about “the virus,” which were used to further worse lies about “masks” – and then on to “vaccines” – which nearly led to camps – show us what happens when such lies are protected by accusing those who dare to question them as being “anti,” as being “deniers.”

And there is still the road ahead of us, with a fork in it.

Peters explains why this fork is a most perilous one indeed, and why it’s imperative that we choose the right one.

 

“Suicide by obedience”

Posted on      by     

Adjust to the New Paradigm on the fly, or perish.

The important message I want to relate right now, is this is all a diversion. All of these domestic issues, the insanity of drag queen strip-tease in schools is designed to enrage and distract us from the fact that literally every nation in the world owes more money than can possibly be repaid; it’s a shell game that’s running out of time. It’s the economic monstrosity of the world that’s driving nuclear war, because, like 9/11, there has to be a dramatic and terrifying moment in order to institute an earthquake of new, more-restrictive laws; in this case the great reset by which all government and banking debt will be erased, but not yours, not your car, your home, just theirs and they’ll use your assets to free themselves.

The governing powers are so jealous of our every penny, that soon they’ll just take it. Forget taxes, forget legality, they want it and we have it and they have the forces to take it. There are no principles involved here. To do that, they need a war, they need a crisis and they’ve long ago stopped caring what is right, proper or legal. Everything they’ve done in the past two years proves that point. If they’re willing to kill you, they’ll surely rob you.

Nothing will stop it. Nothing can be done about the entirety of Western civilization committing suicide by obedience, except disobedience. It’s probably too late for that to have much effect, but its a question of dying on your feet or on your knees. No matter what happens, there will be enough leftists/communists left to blame it all on our founders and capitalism. The importance of Nine Principles of Freedom, I think, is a starting point for whoever is left in deciding what sort of society to rebuild after the cataclysmic events to come.

In the chaos of post-nuclear war, there’s a chance to resettle and reorganize, but the globalists will have to be confronted directly. They’re instigating this nuclear exchange to arrive at that chaos to institute their vision. Nothing says that those who understand the principles of the republic can’t exploit that breach just as well as they can.

If we don’t step into that breach and refuse, be willing to lay down our lives to resist that sweeping change, you might as well put a Trump 2024 sign in your yard and wait for the Stasi.

If, by some miracle, all of it can be headed off, there’s the longer, tougher road of disobedience that will take an extraordinary shift in personal dynamics to save anything of the world we knew prior to 2019. Even then, it was a disaster. You have to go further back, much further.

Yep, back to around 1950, at the very least. As TL implies, the fact that you might not win doesn’t by any means excuse one from fighting on anyway. In any such conflict, the outcome is never guaranteed; the one and only absolute certainty is that if you don’t fight, you will definitely lose.

It is to laugh

Posted on      by     

That, or cry, I suppose.

The inherent humor to be found in a president ordering a cut in gas production and then wondering why gas prices rise, all while blaming it on the greed of oil companies—a scenario previously demonstrated beyond doubt just a half dozen years ago by another president—is difficult to ignore.

It will be a sardonic laugh we can all have as we cool our heels and wonder why the diesel-powered trucks are not delivering the goods this winter. The scare of global warming, the supposed cause of this specific governmental overreach, will do us little good come January, but the frightening cure will likely have destroyed the most innovative economy in history—and any potential for a practical solution.

And on Tuesday, November 8, be assured that the huge imbalance of Democratic votes that appear magically when and wherever an establishment hack is in danger of losing his or her sinecure, is nothing to be concerned about. The election is not “stolen.” It is only borrowed. The software in those election machines was not tampered with, it was corrected. The names of those voters who are deceased but voted nonetheless was just a clerical error, and those who voted twice did so only by accident. Anyway, it didn’t happen, but believe us now, and it will never happen again.

How then should we describe the psychosis that gripped our nation and the world over the past two years? Wearing masks was suddenly not just a Halloween trick or treat. There are countless books about mass murderers, but the stories are usually so much the same. Nice boy. Quiet. A loner. But this one is unique. You can expect more books, but now it will be the victim’s fault—some people just didn’t Fauci fast enough! You know the litany about lockdowns, school closings, rising crime, ineffective vaccines, all of it misinformation!

But wait! What about all of those people who are still wearing masks? The overwhelming negative evidence about the social, psychological, and physical effects of wearing masks is now over two years old. And then there is the total criminal stupidity of giving children COVID vaccinations, and boosters—where does this actually end?

Speaking of children’s treats, isn’t it special that the tall muscular girl in your daughter’s gym class gets to shower with the rest of the team? You had brothers, so it was nothing new for you, but wow! You must know, don’t you, that he’s the one—I mean she’s the one—who got the team into the State championships! What can be wrong with that? Well, of course, your daughter didn’t quite reach the mark this year.  But we all have to make a few sacrifices, don’t we?

WE do, yeah. Shitlibs, freaks, headcases, Democrat Party victim-class constituencies, and sundry other reprobates never seem to, somehow.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

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

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