Jun 26 2021

The Price Of Clarity

     Our favorite Bookworm has produced her best column ever. I hope she’ll permit me a lengthy excerpt:

     For several decades, leftism has been that ghost in the American machine. For decades, leftists were the “good guys.” While they were already haunting the Democrat party, they were still invisible. The Democrat party was able to continue to pretend to be the party of the working man. Added to that, it was the party that welcomed feminists, gays and lesbians, and people of all color. It was the ecumenical party that would make the world a better place, through love, acceptance, and healthy diversity.

     A lot of conservatives tried to point out that, lurking behind this affable exterior, was a terrible haunting, a monstrous creature that intended to do to America what it had done to Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, and any other place in which it could take hold. It would destroy the Constitution and our rule of law with its powerful ectoplasmic slime and turn us into possessed people, deprived of willpower, individuality, and the desire for liberty. Instead, like Stepford Wives, possessed Americans would robotically go through their days, satisfying those who had learned to control the ghost.

     For decades, when conservatives said, “Ghost,” they were treated as…not crazy, but evil: Haters, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, elitists, and any other insult that Democrats could dish out to hide what they were doing. Because the Democrats controlled the media, pointing out that dumbing down education to make it easier for minorities harmed the minorities in the long run, Democrats cried “racist.” When conservatives argued based on 100% of all historic examples that the only governments that wish to disarm people are governments that wish to harm people, they were accused of reveling in death. When conservatives argued that any policy that destroyed the value of the nuclear family, whether it was welfare, sexual excess, same-sex marriage, or a cultural push for single motherhood, Democrats accused them of a whole panoply of wrongthink: racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. You can make your own additions to this list.

     In 2021, though, the left has given us the gift of clarity. The cutting edge of this clarity has proven to be education. Ironically, it was the Democrats’ beloved lockdown that gave parents a glimpse into their children’s classrooms. Suddenly they could see past the decades’ long con of “we love your children,” “we love to teach,” and “we are the most generous, martyred employees in America.” What they saw instead was that a substantial number of teachers and school administrators do not see educating children as a priority. Given the opportunity, they’d collect their paychecks and go home.

     Forceful and absolutely accurate from first to last. There is now no excuse for not knowing what the Democrat Party – which is today wholly controlled by the Left – is all about. The Department of “Justice’s” new attempts to prevent audits of the 2020 election and to prevent Georgia from strengthening its anti-election-fraud measures have made that plain. We’ve even had the Pretender-in-Chief tell us that the Second Amendment is useless against the federal government – that we would need “F-15s and nuclear weapons” to bring it down, so why not surrender our guns to the Omnipotent State?

     So there are no more masks. Whether the unveiling was accidental or deliberate, the truth is now plain for all to see. Though the price was high, the purchase may have been worthwhile…especially as there’s still more clarity to come. However, the second helping will be clarity about ourselves.

***

     I’ve written more than once that the Constitution’s enforcement arm is the people in arms. If We the People are not willing to take the musket down from the mantel and compel government to conform to the Supreme Law at gunpoint – perhaps with a few educational hangings for emphasis – it has no force. Governments and those who control them are unlikely to enforce any sort of constraint upon themselves or their agents. Lon Horiuchi faced no charges and was ultimately promoted.

     Of course, there is Thomas Jefferson’s well-considered qualification:

     Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

     The question is always “where the red line lies.” Concerning whether We the People could take down the federal government, have a few words from John Wilder:

     Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

     “All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

     Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things. He was right about a lot of things, too. He is correct about this:

     “As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

     Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land. But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

     The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers. Add in the Reserves? Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million. Total.

     There are three million males in Missouri. I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

     Go Missouri.

     Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth. But there are enough. And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

     No, Mr. Biden. The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

     Concerning the possibility of confiscating all the armament in private hands, thus negating any threat of revolt, we have Larry Correia to thank for illumination:

     I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply, because “we kept the gloves on”, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

     You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns? But I don’t think unrelenting total war against everyone who has ever disagreed with you on Facebook is going to be quite as clean as you expect.

     There will be no secure delivery of ammo, food, and fuel, because the guys who build that, grow that, and ship that, well, you just dropped a Hellfire on his cousin Bill because he wouldn’t turn over his SKS. Fuck you. Starve. And that’s assuming they don’t still make the delivery but the gas is tainted and food is poisoned.

     Oh wait… Poison? That would be unsportsmanlike! Really? Because your guy just brought up nuclear weapons. What? You think that you’re going to declare war on half of America, with rules of engagement that would make Genghis Khan blush, and my side would keep using Marquis of Queensbury rules?

     Oh hell no.

     Remember that single-pole switch. If it gets thrown, there will be no rules.

     The question before us is what it will take for Us the People to throw that switch.

***

     We are not our colonial forebears. Indeed, few Americans now living can trace their genealogy back to the Founding Era. But there are many, many more of us than there were of them. Can our numbers compensate for the decline in our hardiness, our self-reliance, and our willingness to defy tyrants?

     It’s unclear. Perhaps we can only know by “throwing the switch” and watching the outcome. But this, at least, is clear: The Usurpers think they have us by the short hairs. They no longer pretend to any degree of allegiance to American principles. Each move makes it less arguable that they intend the complete destruction of the Republic…though to be replaced by what, perhaps even they do not know.

     What infamy will cause us to define and declare a “red line?” Once declared, what will we do when the Usurpers cross it, as they surely will? Will we throw our cards down and leap across the table, or will we fold meekly and endure a new serfdom?

     Part of the price of clarity, it seems, is more clarity – about ourselves.

Jun 26 2021

A Perfect Visual Pun

     “Hot dogs chasing doughnuts through tunnels,” anyone?

     Only in America!

Jun 26 2021

For Those Who’ve Been Waiting…

     …if any: In Vino is now available in paperback. $9.99 US at Amazon.

Jun 26 2021

True up to a point.

In conclusion, I think it abundantly clear that what we have been told about what took place [involving Sergei and Yulia Skripal] on 4th March in the beautiful city of Salisbury is not, in fact, true. It is clear that something else happened, and much of what we have seen since then has been theatre and an attempt to cover up what actually took place.[1]

Mr. Helmer is nothing if not meticulous in nailing down every last detail of whatever he’s writing about. Quite an understatement let it be said. The events of the day when the Skripals were eventually found on the bench in town, the honking lack of a chain of custody of their blood samples taken at the hospital, the GRU “assassins” loud partying with whores story, the nerve agent in a perfume bottle disposed of in the trash, the extreme goosiness of Her Majesty’s coroners respecting the death of Dawn Sturgess, and, last but not least, the ultra-uber weirdness of the case of the vanishing Skripals in whom the U.S. government apparently has an extreme interest have the internal coherence of a Monty Python script about an accountant wanting to become a lion tamer.

The supposed absolute necessity of tearing off the roof of Sergei’s house is a major tell that all is not as it is being represented by the U.K. government, as Mr. Helmer points out. I wonder what it was that Skripal might have poisoned himself and his daughter with. If he did, whatever it was it wasn’t a novichok agent as it took its sweet time taking effect. The Skripals clearly enjoyed a leisurely drink at a pub with Sergei’s former or present MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, and then a meal before collapsing on the bench just as the chief nurse of the British army happened to be passing by. What a stroke of luck that was!

Ok. Moving right along. Maybe what supposedly poisoned the Skripals had nothing to do with the house but had everything to do with what they ate and/or drank in town. That way one doesn’t have to explain the long delay between exposure and result and thus the question of the hour is what was actually in Sergei’s house that required removal of the roof and extensive renovation?

I have no insight into that. Back in the years after WWII there was a couple who operated as Soviet spies in Britain. It was later discovered that they had rigged a radio antenna inside their attic but that hardly would be necessary in today’s world of the internet of things if Sergei were acting as a triple agent all along. So something besides communication gear.

What was going on in Skripal’s house is still a mystery to me but it had nothing to do with a nerve agent. Regardless, it was something hugely important to both the U.K. and U.S. governments. It’s almost as though there were a connection between Porton Down and some kind of dangerous pathogen. Did Sergei accidentally reveal something about what was going on at Porton Down? I’m not insinuating there was but with the hindsight of 2021 one can understand why questions about biological research in Britain might be inconvenient. He did have to have a tracheostomy IIRC. Because he had breathing problems? I’ll have to double check that.

My two cents.

Notes
[1] “British Government Demolishes Skripal House, Roof Falls In On Theresa May As Evidence Grows That Sergei Skripal Poisoned Himself By Accident.” By John Helmer, Dances with Bears, 1/17/19.

Jun 25 2021

Reality Is Racist, Say “Fact Checkers”

     Accurate journalism about crime, it seems, “fosters systemic racism.” Paul Joseph Watson reports:

     If taking note of actual events, or faithfully reporting them to an audience of news consumers, is “racist,” then it won’t be long before:

  • Testifying in court that you witnessed the commission of a crime is ruled contempt of court…if you mention that the perpetrator was non-white.
  • Police departments – any that still exist – refuse to accept descriptions of the perpetrator of a crime that include his race…if he’s non-white.
  • State, county, or municipally-funded “community counselors” routinely caution residents against mentioning the race of anyone observed committing an assault, mugging, burglary, or act of vandalism…if he’s non-white.
  • Stating where others can hear that you were the victim of a crime in which you clearly saw the perpetrator is declared “hate speech” and is deemed legal justification for taking your guns, your children, or the contents of your bank account…if the perp was non-white.
  • Discussing racial correlations in the commission of crimes of violence and crimes against property is outlawed as a felony under the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” exception…if you dare to mention that non-whites commit the preponderance of such crimes.

     Read Charles Murray’s Facing Reality. PLEASE!

Jun 25 2021

Lost…And Found

     [The following essay first appeared at the old Liberty’s Torch site on September 22, 2014. Consider it a companion piece to the Everything Put Together essay – FWP]

***

     James Pinkerton has a seven-year-old essay at The American Conservative that I blush to have overlooked before this:

In one of the great epics of Western literature, the hero, confronted by numerous and powerful enemies, temporarily gives in to weakness and self-pity. “I wish,” he sighs, “none of this had happened.” The hero’s wise adviser responds, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.” The old man continues, “There are other forces at work in this world … besides the will of evil.” Some events, he adds, are “meant” to be, “And that is an encouraging thought.”

     Indeed it is. Perhaps, today, we are meant to live in these times. Perhaps right here, right now, we are meant to be tested. Maybe we are meant to have faith that other forces are at work in this world, that we are meant to rediscover our strength and our survival skills.

     And so the question: can we, the people of the West, be brought to failure despite our enormous cultural and spiritual legacy? Three thousand years of history look down upon us: does this generation wish to be remembered for not having had the strength to look danger squarely in the eye? For having failed to harness our latent strength in our own defense?

     With apologies to the frankenfood-fearers and polar bear-sentimentalizers, the biggest danger we face is the Clash of Civilizations, especially as we rub against the “bloody borders” of Islam.

     Please, please read the whole thing. (If you regard fighting your way to the end of one of my essays is wearying, you’ll find this experience either terminally exhausting or exhilarating.) Pinkerton fearlessly zeroes in on what the Western world lost — in many cases, willingly — when it surrendered the ancient title of Christendom.

***

     I once wrote:

For nearly two centuries, America was seen as Olympus come to Earth: the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For a century it was a nation of heroes, envied by all the other peoples of the world, upon which they automatically called in their darkest hours. That’s an image of ourselves that should rouse all but the terminally comatose from their torpor.

     The present generation of Americans may be only half-salvageable. Cravenness is dispelled only under unforeseen trial. Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance. The forces that call for surrender to the intolerable, that march under the banner of relativism and accommodation, are mighty. From their perches in academe and the media, they’ve done gruesome damage to the history and self-regard of our nation. But that’s no reason to despair. It’s certainly no reason not to raise our own banners and march.

     We must put away venality and rediscover our just pride.
We must proclaim a gospel of responsible individual liberty, and hold strictly to it.
We must demand absolute fidelity to promises from our public officials.
We must purge our laws, our language, and our thoughts of much nonsense that entangles them.
We must cease to grant any respect to the demands of the Fakers and Takers; they must be recognized once more as parasites and objects of charity.
We must learn to discriminate between the unconscious and the conscious followers of Cthulhu and Allah. The former must be either enlightened or neutralized; the latter must be defeated by any means expedient. In no case may they be accommodated.

     These are the weapons with which we can defeat Cthulhu, Allah, and the seemingly irresistible tides of demography, and reclaim our heroism.

     “Olympus come to Earth” was a long-pondered choice for this Catholic; it was more evocative of the sentiments I wanted to stir than “Heaven come to Earth” would have been. The “gods” of classical mythology weren’t divine in the sense appropriate to a Christian or Jewish believer; they were depicted more like very powerful humans who held themselves to be “above” the laws that govern the rest of us. When they were bad, they were very, very bad; when they were good…well, that wasn’t often.

     Brave, principled men who are willing to put “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” on the line for the values they hold dear are Olympian in stature. However, they are Christian in character. That is, they bind themselves to the moral laws enunciated by the greatest Lawgiver that could ever be:

Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Matthew 22:37-40]

Now a man came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.” [Matthew, 19:16-19.]

     A land that hews straitly and explicitly to those laws may justly call itself Christendom: a land ruled, ultimately, by Christ. A land that sets them aside, whether out of negligence or in search of some other advantage, may not.

***

     There’s been a resurgence of popular interest in the “traditional” Christian sects in recent years, most notably in Catholicism. It’s not large enough to be called anything as dramatic as a movement or a renaissance, but it’s happening. Significant numbers of teens and young adults, blessed by not having received formal religious “instruction,” are discovering the immense value in Christianity, and embracing it as what it is and should always have been: a revelation of joy rather than an indoctrination in dreary renunciations and obligations.

     In On Broken Wings, I had Louis Redmond, far and away my most popular character, put it this way:

    “What has the typical response to indoctrination been, Father? What percentage of the children that have passed through parochial schools remain communicants as adults? Do we really need any other explanation for why the schools are closing down at such a rate?”

    The priest grinned without humor. “Don’t you think the property tax situation might have had something to do with it, Louis? To say nothing of the problems the Church has had with zoning boards all over the country?”

    Louis shook his head. “That’s nothing new. The American Church has faced those forces for three centuries. It’s only in the last fifty years that our numbers have diminished this way. And we’re mostly to blame for it.”

    He scowled. “It was always a mistake, you know. Religion isn’t for children, and to impose it on them by force has never been to anyone’s greater good. As society has secularized, the resentments over that practice have been free to come out into the open. Is the Church better off for all these claims of the physical and emotional abuse of children by priests and nuns, even if every last one of them were eventually disproved? Are Catholics better off?”

     Should the trend continue, the social gains will accumulate over time.

     This has its hazards, of course. Far too many priests and ministers are prone to preaching their own preferences rather than the truths set down in the Gospels. Christ’s dictates, as we can see from the citations from the Gospel According to Matthew, are few and simple. His yoke really is easy; His burden really is light. He forbade very few things; all that lies beyond His Commandments is within Man’s free choice, subject only to the constraint that it not be put to use oppressing, defrauding, or wounding others.

     Ironically, one of the best evidences is the redoubled fury of militant atheists and other anti-Christian forces, which see their hard-won gains among young Americans slipping from their grip. But those gains stemmed primarily from the antihedonic, hairshirted teachings of so many priests and ministers: the harping on renunciation and self-denial, even unto the point of self-mortification. Glory be to God! If our lives and their potentials are His gifts, how could it possibly be His command that we deny ourselves the pleasures of existence, or refuse to prosper, or make ourselves miserable with privation and pain amidst the innumerable bounties of the world? Does it really take a Certified Galactic Intellect to see this, or have you just been waiting for someone like me to bellow it at you?

     As clerics steadily (albeit somewhat grudgingly) replace their hairshirted preachments with the words of the Redeemer and the militant atheists are revealed as the hypocrites they are, Christendom is creeping back. The seven Christian virtues:

  • Faith: To hold fast to that which is true despite inability to prove it mathematically;
  • Hope: To stand fast upon one’s principles in the belief that deliverance is possible;
  • Charity: The active concern for others that springs from sympathetic personal connection;
  • Prudence: Sober consideration among alternatives in place of impulsiveness;
  • Justice: To defend what is right, and not to demand what is not;
  • Temperance: The exercise of restraint in the face of “too much;”
  • Fortitude: Courage and perseverance in the face of obstacles and trials.

     …are being rediscovered and reinvigorated. And young Americans are finding something two generations of naysayers canted was a fraud and a delusion: the peace of Christ.

***

     An enticing neologism occurred to me a few minutes ago: hypocrats. It’s not a word you’ll find in any dictionary, at least not yet. I would use it to refer to those who would rule you through lies. That’s a population of which there seems no shortage.

     Hypocrats in politics are obviously many. Indeed, most professional pols are plainly willing to say or do anything rather than let their prestige, power, or perquisites be taken from them. The man of Christian conscience who enters the political arena soon finds that there is little welcome there for statements of principle: i.e., statements about absolute right and wrong. If his “colleagues” don’t manage to bend him and compel him to compromise, they’re likely to ostracize him or drive him out.

     But these are merely the most visible hypocrats. Many “activists” are of similar character. Though a goodly number of allegiants to false causes such as “global warming / climate change / climate disruption” are sincere believers, their leaders are not, as is made evident by the ways they conduct their personal affairs. (Michael Loftus’s exposition captured just below makes a rather pointed point about that.) A “leader” who doesn’t believe in the cause he purports to “lead” is almost always focused on power, wealth, or both.

     The third group I have in mind this morning is the cult of relativism. “All is relative,” the relativists ceaselessly proclaim. “No religion / standard / ideology / morality / culture / creed is superior to any other. Each has its own validity.” These, can be detected by their expressed preferences, verbally and behaviorally. What’s most important is their open hostility toward the Christian-Enlightenment standard of absolute right and wrong: the barrier they’ve largely battered down to make room for the dissolute and bloodthirsty alternatives of Cthulhu and Allah.

     A standard of any sort is where one makes one’s stand. Relativism is an attempt to seduce Christians away from their stand: the cluster of compelling truths we’ve made our own and should defend to the death. Note how many militant atheists are relativists, and vice-versa. Note how they deride us for our inability to prove the existence of God, when they have no greater capability to disprove it. Note how they insist that Christianity — to be fair, they usually say “religion,” but in practice the only one they ever assail is Christianity — “is valueless,” or “has never done anything for the world,” in blatant contradiction of actual history (which they ceaselessly strain to obscure or rewrite). And note how they preen themselves on being “smarter” than us believers, when their pretensions are without any foundation.

     All these persons want to rule you: i.e., to get you to do what they want, as opposed to what you might prefer and what would benefit you personally. And they do it through lies.

     Hmm. Maybe hypocrat will find its way into the dictionaries after all.

***

     I’ll give the closing thought to the Pinkerton essay:

We in the West will always need warriors. We must have chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche—“Knights without fear and without reproach”—to safeguard our marches and protect our homes. Men such as Leonidas, whose Immortal 300 held off the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, long enough for other Greeks to rally and save the nascent West. Or Aetius, the last noble Roman, who defeated Attila the Hun, Scourge of God, at Chalons in AD 451. Or Don Juan of Austria, who led the Holy League to naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Or Jon Sobieski, whose Polish cavalry rescued Vienna from the Turks in 1683.

     These are not just legends, not just fictional characters—they were real. And if we dutifully honor those heroes, as heroic Men of the West and of Christendom, we will be rewarded with more such heroic men.

     Future epics await us. Future Knights of the West, ready to defend Christendom, are waiting to be born, waiting for the call of duty. If we bring them forth with faith and wisdom and confidence, then also will come new heroes and new legends.

     Maybe it was meant to be. And that is an encouraging thought.

     May God bless and keep you all!

Jun 25 2021

Everything Put Together…

     When the news gets just too absurd, and for whatever reason I’m disinclined to work on fiction, I tend to return to old familiar theses and themes. This morning I got a nudge toward one of them from Ragin’ Dave at Peace or Freedom:

     I think that if women were ever forced to understand just how badly feminism has screwed up their lives, they’d go on a rampage against their feminist teachers that would be talked about for centuries.

     I couldn’t agree more – but the problem is larger than marriage alone and deserves a thorough examination. The essay Dave cites is a good start – but a start only.

     (Apropos of nothing, if you peek at the URL for Dave’s site, you can see a hint of its origins: when it was established, it was titled “Four Right-Wing Wackos.” Today only Dave remains. What became of the other three? Committed, perhaps? More on this story as it develops….)

     The “macro-stability” of a society is always a reflection of the “micro-stability” of its components: families, communities, and the organizations and institutions that serve them. Smart revolutionaries who seek to destabilize a society will attack it “from the bottom:” that is, they’ll undermine the larger structure by weakening its “micro” pillars. In the case of these United States, the Left’s target of choice appears to have been the traditional family.

     In his excellent first novel The Hidden Truth, Hans G. Schantz delineated the Left’s modus operandi:

     “The women’s rights movement had three goals. First, it got women into the workplace where their labor could be taxed….So, with more women entering the workforce the supply of labor increases and wages are depressed….

     “Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle. We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal. We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests….

     “The second reason is to get children out of the potentially antisocial environment of the home and into educational settings where we can be sure they’ll get the right values and learn the right lessons to be happy and productive members of society. Working mothers need to send their children to daycare and after-school care where we can be sure they get exposed to the right lessons, or at least not to bad ideas….

     “They are going to assign homework to their students: enough homework to guarantee that even elementary school students are spending all their spare time doing homework. Their poor parents, eager to see that Junior stays up with the rest of the class, will be spending all their time helping their kids get incrementally more proficient on the tests we have designed. They’ll be too busy doing homework to pick up on any antisocial messages at home….

     “Children will be too busy to learn independence at home, too busy to do chores, to learn how to take care of themselves, to be responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Their parents will have to cater to their little darlings’ every need, and their little darlings will be utterly dependent on their parents. When the kids grow up, they will be used to having someone else take care of them. They will shift that spirit of dependence from their parents to their university professors, and ultimately to their government. The next generation will be psychologically prepared to accept a government that would be intrusive even by today’s relaxed standards – a government that will tell them exactly how to behave and what to think. Not a Big Brother government, but a Mommy-State….

     “Eventually, we may even outlaw homeschooling as antisocial, like our more progressive cousins in Germany already do. Everyone must know their place in society and work together for social good, not private profit….

     “The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement. Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion….

     “All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits., and experiment with any man who catches their fancy….And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there….

     “In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it. The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels….

     “It’s profoundly ironic. A strong, independent woman is now one who meekly obeys the media’s and society’s clamor to be a career girl and sleep around with whatever stud catches her fancy or with other girls for that matter. A woman with the courage to defy that social pressure and devote herself from a young age to building a home and raising a family is an aberration, a weirdo, a traitor to her sex. There aren’t many women with the balls to stand up against that kind of social pressure. It’s not in their nature.”

     This is a painfully accurate if compressed description of what’s been done to American womanhood these past sixty years. Be not deceived by specious “rights talk.” No genuine “right” is at issue, only the determination of the Left to weaken and ultimately destroy the nuclear family. The assault is ongoing, consistent in its aims, and does not tolerate setbacks.

     I had a fictional sociologist declaim thus:

     “Families are the fundamental building blocks of a stable society. Extended families — clans — are the best conceivable environment for the rearing of children, the perpetuation of a commercial forte, and the germination of new families and their ventures. A clan like yours, Miss Albermayer, conserves a brilliant genetic line and a priceless medical specialty at the same time. A clan like yours, Mr. Morelon, makes possible a benign agricultural empire and produces natural leaders one after another while connecting Hope to its most distant origins. And all healthy families, which cherish life and bind their members to one another in unembarrassed love, can find far more to occupy and amuse them than they need.”
     Teresza’s mind lit with memories of the way the Morelons had enfolded her and made her one of them. No day could have been long enough for all they had to say and do and share with one another.
     “When Earth’s regard for families and their most fundamental function deteriorated, her people ceased to enjoy the sorts of ties that had held them together throughout the history of Man. Without families, and especially without children, they groped for other things to fill their time, whether to give them a sense of purpose, or to distract them from the waning of their lives. Some invested themselves in industry or commerce, but without the sense of the family line to be built up and made prominent, those things failed to satisfy. Others immersed themselves in games, toys, fripperies, and increasingly bizarre forms of entertainment, which palled on them even faster. Still others made a fetish out of sex; there was a substantial sex industry on Earth, though it tended to operate in the shadows and was seldom openly discussed. They needed emotion and substance, but all they could contrive was sensation and novelty, and they pumped an ever greater share of their effort and wealth into seeking them. That’s my thesis, for what it’s worth.”

     [From Which Art In Hope, which I continue to maintain is my best novel and the only genuinely important thing I’ve ever written.]

     It appalls me how often I find myself repeating such ideas. It sometimes seems that our minds have been conditioned to reject them without even a moment’s consideration. But then, there’s a rather substantial propaganda industry at work among us, isn’t there? And it repeats its base messages continuously: Forget the future, live for the moment, everyone’s entitled to copious sex without consequences, if it feels good do it, what’s right is what’s right for you, there are no absolute standards…

     The direct effect on women has been devastating. The indirect effect on men, children, and the nuclear family has been even worse. Cassie Jaye will tell you.

     You don’t need to be a gypsy fortuneteller to read these tea leaves. A present-moment orientation, coupled to contemporary women’s horror of aging and feminism-propounded notions about “gender equality,” has led to a radical decline in the formation of families through marriage, a radical acceleration of their dissolution through divorce, and a “birth dearth” that imperils the future of the Western world.

     Europe is even farther gone than are we, which is why they’ve imported their own replacements…who are proving to be the executioners of what most Americans think of as European culture. But we’re catching up to the Old World very swiftly.

     Mark Steyn has been eloquent on this subject: The future belongs to those who show up for it. Without families and children, the Christian-Enlightenment culture of the United States and Western Europe will not “show up.” Our values and ideals will gutter out in a few generations. And it will largely be the Leftism-powered nonsense of “feminism” that snuffs our candle.

     What’s that you say? I haven’t yet completed the incomplete sentence in the title? Hm! You’re right. I’d almost forgotten:

Everything Put Together,
Sooner Or Later,
Falls Apart.

     Societies, too. But do have a nice day.

Jun 25 2021

Pearls of expression.

On the topic of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace views on equity and antiracism in nuclear policymaking:

So, nuclear power is now racist. Poor [Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov, poor [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov–now you understand why Lavrov is a chain smoker? You would become one when you have to deal with woke imbeciles who have nuclear weapons and nuclear power at their disposal–a classic case of a monkey with a grenade. I am sure they need diversity officers on US Navy’s SSBNs of Ohio-class and operators of US nuclear power stations should only be judged and allowed to carry out their duties at the controls of nuclear power stations only after they pass Critical Race Theory exam, which, of course, automatically opens many vacancies for “diverse voices”. The US is becoming a third world country with an astonishing speed. So, famous Lavrov’s meme is perfectly applicable to this situation.

I’m not sure what Mr. Martyanov means by Lavrov’s meme. Perhaps he means Putin’s assertion that the U.S. is not agreement capable but I suspect Martyanov would not make such a mistake.

I like the Andrei Andreevich Gromyko’s “famous dictum that ten years of negotiations is better than one day of war” that is referred to earlier in the post. Personally, I don’t enjoy looking at photos or stills of any of the wars of the last century. The suffering, death, and absolute idiocy are unpleasant to contemplate now. But the fools that run this country are twice as reckless and stupid as the men who started WWI. That slaughter means precisely nothing to our morons. Not to mention the unnecessary slaughter of the War for Southern Independence.

Notes
[1] “And So It Starts.” By Andrei Martyanov, Reminiscence of the Future…, 6/23/21.

Jun 24 2021

Hitler’s Missing Speech

So I’ve “gotten into it” any number of times about Hitler being a Socialist, that you can’t say NAZI without understanding it comes from “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”, and so on.  And there is plenty of evidence that he was, indeed, a Socialist.

—–

—–

I was born and raised in the “People’s Republic of Marxachusetts” and grew up very, very liberal.  Name a Left/Right issue, I was on the Left.  No question.  Yet each time I abandoned a Left position to move Rightward, I can point to a seminal event or other piece of insight/learning that ushered in a reconsidering of my former position and – often – describe my thought process after that event as well as new insights and thought patterns that started to ascend.

As one example, still fresh in my mind despite (cough cough a long time), is the moment when I started to doubt the anti-gun teachings I’d been impressed with all my life (bolding in original):

I was living in the Midwest when my police officer neighbor remarked that I should get a gun for self-defense. Having been raised, all my life, to believe that civilian gun ownership was wrong, it shocked me to my core that – of all people – a cop was telling me this.

Unlike most Leftists – and have no doubt that I still was one – I didn’t dismiss this as a flier data point stated by a knuckledraggingslopedforeheadredneck, but rather it made me think those great two words that often stand at the threshold of a new insight: That’s weird…

I can also describe – and did – the thought processes and cascades that came from that moment.  As I can when I started to question my “pro-abortion” stance to move towards the pro-life view.  And many other shifts, including my transitioning from a climate alarmist to CO2-mageddon skeptic.  All of this ties back to something our host said some time ago on their old blog about humility.  In this context, the willingness to admit the possibility of error.  Humility is the opposite of Vanity, and while the Seven Deadly Sins – and Seven Heavenly Virtues – are Catholic constructs (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) I have found them to be useful intellectual tools. I have told my children, in teaching them my values, that it’s my belief that all humans have 1-2 sins that dominate a particular person’s weaknesses, that there are 1-2 that are “intermediate”, and the rest fall off Pareto-like into the trivial.

As noted in an excellent book I recently read, learning requires change, and change requires the humility to admit one might be wrong in one’s beliefs.  This is, as an aside, is something I would ask when doing interviews back in my days as a corporate slave, er, drone, um, I mean employee: Tell me about a time when you changed your mind on something significant.  Describe the background, your initial thoughts, what you changed to, and why you changed your mind.

If reworded a little, it’s also an excellent question to ask of a potential new boss.

—–

—–

THE KEY

So I engage with people who say things like “Well, OK, yes, Hitler was a socialist, but then he flipped to the opposite…”  This is, of course, mental contortionism of the first order arising, from reading Liberal Fascism, as a way to differentiate between the “good” international socialism of the USSR from the “bad” national socialism of the Fascists – only necessary after Operation Barbarossa started.  Speaking of, Bill Whittle weighs in on this important piece of history:

“The Worst Thing That Ever Happened”: Barbarossa Changed Human History 80 Years Ago

But there’s something missing: the speech wherein he announced this shift.

I ask – never with any response of course – for the translated writings, the captioned speeches, where he announced this miraculous change in policy, this fundamental shift.  Surely it has to be there!  Surely people can point to the barnburner speeches, the pamphlets, the leaflets, announcing this grand and immense step away from everything his followers believed to the new, non-Socialist mentality!  Doubtless the historians also have scathing anecdotes, letters, and other documents as Hitler’s socialist supporters voiced white-hot outrage at this betrayal of their fundamental beliefs. Right?  Bueller?  Bueller?

—–

—–

Hitler was a Socialist, and never renounced it.  Mussolini was proudly a Socialist and declared so many times, and never renounced it.  So add their death toll to the 100+ million.  And the next time someone says that Hitler made a grand shift, ask for the speech, the leaflets, etc.  You, too, will get silence.

Not that they’ll ever make the connection of course, or correct themselves.  Vanity – particularly vanity that is founded on a belief one is better, more noble, more educated, etc. –  cannot change, and leads to errors, and hubris.  Which leads to Nemesis.  Nothing truly every changes…

Jun 24 2021

Tendentious Tarantella Or Revolutionary Rodomontade?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

***

1. McAfee’s “Suicide.”

     You’re probably already familiar with this story. John McAfee famously said that he would not kill himself – that if he were to die in custody, it would not be by his own hand. And now we have the report of his “apparent suicide.” But that didn’t make me think of Jeffrey Epstein. It made me think of Michael Milken.

     For those unfamiliar with the Milken affair, the feds were out for his blood from the moment he and Drexel Burnham Lambert began the “junk bond revolution” that enriched them. He was pressured into pleading guilty to six felonies he did not commit. The feds simply threatened to go after his brother and grandmother, who would be effectively defenseless against them. Two powerful accounts of this atrocity are available: Daniel Fischel’s Payback and Jesse Kornbluth’s Highly Confident.

     A similar kind of pressure could be used to induce an otherwise happy and vital man to kill himself. Moreover, the FBI and DOJ are now so far outside the law that I would have no problem believing they had done so to John McAfee. His existence has offended them for some time. When the forensic experts declare his death “unquestionably a suicide,” and present conclusive evidence to that effect, keep that possibility in mind.

***

2. Meanwhile, In Our Nation’s Capital…

     Washington D.C. is among the most violent urban areas in the world. It has several times led the list of U.S. cities for murders per capita, and is never far from the top. So what have the good citizens of that city done about their violence problem? They’ve put a convicted, incarcerated murderer into public office:

     As the homicide rate hits a record high in Washington D.C. the city elects a convicted murderer to public office in a unique election featuring all inmate candidates. The freshly elected public official, Joel Caston, has been in prison 26 years and is currently incarcerated at the District of Columbia Jail. In 1996 Caston was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder for ambushing and killing a man in the city’s Anacostia neighborhood. Court records obtained by Judicial Watch indicate that a 2016 appeal was denied. In the document, Caston’s attorneys name the victim, which is not common practice today. Court records also reveal a “speed loader”—a device used to rapidly load ammunition into a firearm—was found by police under Caston’s mattress after the shooting. It contained six rounds of .44 caliber ammunition as well as additional rounds of ammo.

     Now Caston is a commissioner on D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC), which advises the D.C. Council and other local government entities involving matters ranging from liquor license applications to public safety. Commissioners serve two-year terms and are elected in even-numbered years. The ANC was established to bring “government closer to the people, and to bring the people closer to government,” according to its website. Caston was chosen by voters to represent Ward 7, one of D.C.’s most crime-infested areas.

     Truly, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s one of the reasons I write fiction: it provides me an alternate environment in which people make sense.

***

3. Flip-Flopping Championship, Varsity Edition.

     Say, remember when requiring a photo ID to vote was denounced by the whole of the Democrat Party as racist? The times, they are a-changin’:

     In 2018, Georgia’s wannabe governor, Stacey Abrams, said voter ID laws are intended to “scare people out of voting.” Now, she audaciously says, “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.”

     For years, then-Pastor Raphael Warnock, now a senator from Georgia, claimed ID laws were a form of “voter suppression” so “unnecessary and unjustifiable” that they amount to “dismember[ing]” Martin Luther King Jr.

     Now he lies, “I have never been opposed to voter ID. And in fact, I don’t know anybody who is.”

     On goes the roster of Democrats and leftist groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union who opposed voter-ID laws as “part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights.” The most recent Democratic summary sheet for the John Lewis Act repeatedly names voter ID laws as a chief example of the supposedly nefarious practices it aims to combat.

     Now that they see what Manchin sees — the public supports voter ID despite the Left’s decades of scaremongering against it — they are finally willing to jettison the claims they knew were meretricious all along.

     Of course they expect us to believe them – but just wait until a state enacts a statute that requires not merely a photo ID but collateral proof of citizenship: a birth certificate or naturalization certificate. That, they will never abide. Without the votes of millions of illegal immigrants, the Democrats would become a minor party in one election – and they know it.

***

4. CRT In Schools.

     I’m old enough to remember Cathode Ray Tubes; are you? Ah, the eighteen thousand Hertz squeal from the refresh circuit! Many of my colleagues lost their high-frequency hearing to that electronic shriek. But I’m afraid this is not about that:

     A school board meeting for Loudoun county schools in Virginia came to a grinding halt yesterday after some boisterous activity that “violated decorum“, according to chair, Chair Brenda L. Sheridan.

     What, exactly was so boisterous about this school board meeting? What, exactly, “violated decorum” at the Loudoun County School Board meeting? What was all of the Loundness up in Loudoun? Comments against Proposed Policy 8040 on the rights of transgender and gender-expansive students. One person was arrested and there was at least one person injured and another individual was issued a trespassing charge, authorities say.

     News accounts with regard to the meeting seem vague. Someone was arrested. Someone was injured. Someone was issued a trespassing charge. In fact, reports like this one, will lead a reader to believe that the meeting was shut down because of those attendees opposed to Proposed Policy 8040. The accounts from Twitchy tell a different story, stating that former Virginia state senator Dick Black (R) had his mic cut off in the midst of his comments opposing Critical Race Theory in schools. Parents responded loudly to this by belting out The National Anthem.

     But the news said what followed suit was “loudness and opposition”, an abrupt end to public comment (about 200 individuals were slated to speak) and the sheriff calling the board meeting an “unlawful assembly”.

     School boards are usually full of would-be dictators who can’t abide being questioned or criticized. It seems to go with the position. Indeed, where I live, one of the most prominent opponents of school board policy was co-opted by being elected to the school board…after which he was more fiercely defensive about the board’s plans and policies than anyone else on it. There’s a moral in there, somewhere.

     Still, the above is a new low for any school board. The board ought to have realized that it faced overwhelming opposition and beat a hasty retreat. What it did indicates a religious commitment to the Critical Race Theory agenda. Why? What makes that bundle of slanders against America and American whites so attractive to them? Money, perhaps?

     It will be a while before there’s reliable information to be had on this subject. Watch for similar dust-ups in other school districts, particularly in supposedly “blue” states.

***

5. “We Have To Destroy The Country In Order To Save It.”

     This story should be the talk of the nation – and perhaps it soon will be:

     Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered remarks on gun control with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

     Joe Biden and the Democrats are coming for the guns and they aren’t even hiding it anymore.

     Biden on Wednesday attacked the 2nd Amendment and said it was never designed to give Americans weapons to protect against a tyrannical government.

     “If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government? You need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is, it’s always been the ability to limit, to rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who could own them,” Biden said.

     That’s an open challenge. I think it’s aimed at those who hope the tide of election audits now forming could be used to force the Usurpers out of their usurped positions. We can be sure that the Usurpers will resist. The question has always been what measures they would employ in their efforts.

     With the brain-dead Biden in the Oval Office, there’s no guarantee that the next use of a nuclear weapon won’t be against American citizens on American soil. It wouldn’t bother his handlers and minders. They’re without any detectable shred of conscience.

***

     That’s all for today, I think. The yard work looms, and I must away. But do have a nice day.

Jun 24 2021

Conversations

     The C.S.O. and I were bantering over dinner, deriding various social fads from the Sixties all the way to today, when this happened:

FWP: But you know which was the silliest of them?
CSO: Which one? They’re all pretty silly.

FWP: Yeah, but…Free Love?
CSO: Hm?

FWP: C’mon! There’s no such thing as “Free Love!” Sometimes there’s “Deeply Discounted Love,” but it’s never free!
CSO: (smiles) You forgot something…

FWP: What?
CSO: (infomercial announcer’s voice) But wait: there’s more! Call within the next five minutes and we’ll double your order! Pay only separate shipping and handling!
FWP: (Chokes on a fried scallop)

     Perhaps this will settle whether lunatics have more fun.

Jun 23 2021

Everything’s Worse In…

     SURPRISE! I shan’t finish the sentence begun in the title just yet. (Caught you lookin’ up in the air, didn’t I?)

     No, I was just recalling a joke I heard a long, long time ago, the central motif of which was that “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” I’m sure there’s more than one such joke. But now, see if you can connect it to this report from the Gateway Pundit:

     Senate Republicans blocked the S.1 election bill on Tuesday, which would have sealed Democrat victories forever by legalizing cheating.

     S1, the bill that will destroy America, is ripe with dangerous measures to guarantee that it is easy to cheat. This was the first bill introduced by the Democrat House Communists in 2021….

     Nathan Brand tweeted a very revealing clip, saying:

     When Democrats say the quiet part out loud… “If we deliver [S.1], we maintain power in 2022. If we don’t…we risk losing power.” The Democrat election bills are about one thing only: power.

     And just in case you don’t believe it really happened, have a video clip:

     I tried to download the clip, to make certain that it cannot be surreptitiously deleted, but – SURPRISE! YouTube won’t permit the download. Gee, I wonder why?

     Jamaal Bowman represents the 16th Congressional district of the state of New York. That district includes the north Bronx and a portion of southern Westchester.

     Everything’s worse in New York. The laws, the taxes, the politics, the cost of living, the traffic, the noise, the constant harassment from local officials and functionaries…a number of whom openly carry guns, and I’m not talking about policemen or deputy sheriffs. Our politicians are much worse: the Democrats are both stupider and further to the Left; the Republicans are almost all Democrats in sheep’s clothing. I submit the Dishonorable Mr. Bowman as Exhibit One (and our governor, our Assembly and Senate, and the rest of our Congressional representation as Exhibits Two through N).

     (I’m on the east end of Long Island, which was at one time regarded as the best and safest place to live in the United States. A brief while ago, the C.S.O. and I were actively planning to relocate to Idaho. We dropped the idea when we came face to face with the difficulties of moving our animals and all our crap. I’ve started to wonder if it might have been worth it after all.)

     Bowman made that statement just yesterday. I haven’t heard that any New York Republican has wrapped it around his neck and twisted, at least not yet. Frankly, it would surprise me were a New York Republican to do so. They’re either spineless worms who’ll sign on to the Democrats’ agenda for fear of being called “racists” by New York’s odious media, or they’re just as power-hungry and principle-free as their Democrat “colleagues.” There hasn’t been a decent one in sixty years or more.

     It’s time to repost an old favorite: a quote from Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1968 tome The Rich and the Super-Rich:

     …it is a settled conclusion among seasoned observers that, Congress apart as a separate case, the lower legislatures — state, county, and municipal — are Augean stables of misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance from year to year and decade to decade, and that they are preponderantly staffed by riffraff, or what the police define as “undesirables,” people who if they were not in influential positions would be unceremoniously told to “keep moving.” Exceptions among them are minor. Many of them, including congressmen, refuse to go before the television cameras because it is then so plainly obvious to everybody what they are. Their whole demeanor arouses instant distrust in the intelligent. They are, all too painfully, type-cast for the race track, the sideshow carnival, the back alley, the peep show, the low tavern, the bordello, the dive. Evasiveness, dissimulation, insincerity shine through their false bonhomie like beacon lights….

     As to other legislatures, Senator Estes Kefauver found representatives of the vulpine Chicago Mafia ensconced in the Illinois legislature, which has been rocked by one scandal of the standard variety after the other off and on for seventy-five years. What he didn’t bring out was that the Mafians were clearly superior types to many non-Mafians.

     Public attention, indeed, usually centers on only a few lower legislatures — Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois — and the impression is thereby fostered in the unduly trusting that the ones they don’t hear about are on the level. But such an impression is false. The ones just mentioned come into more frequent view because their jurisdictions are extremely competitive and the pickings are richer. Fierce fights over the spoils generate telltale commotion. Most of the states are quieter under strict one-party quasi-Soviet Establishment dominance, with local newspapers cut in on the gravy. Public criticism and information are held to a minimum, grousers are thrown a bone, and not many in the local populace know or really care. Even so, scandalous goings-on explode into view from time to time in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and elsewhere — no state excepted. Any enterprising newspaper at any time could send an aggressive reporter into any one of them and come up with enough ordure to make the Founding Fathers collectively vomit up their very souls in their graves.

     With apologies to the late Mr. Lundberg, Congress in this Year of Our Lord 2021 does not deserve to be “excepted as a separate case.” If the smaller, less opulent states have legislators to compare with Jamaal Bowman, Major Owens, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this nation is well and truly finished.

     Where’s my BLEEP!ing planetoid, damn it?

Jun 22 2021

Liberty’s last gleaming.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.[1]

The quotation above captures the steady, relentless shift from a nation of free people to a people who are becoming ciphers in their own land where liberty, privacy, the rule of law, neutral electoral mechanisms, and simple rationality are all but gone. Corporate money and individual billionaires have inordinate influence in elections and massive media outlets deluge the nation in lies and “narratives” that spring effortlessly into the national “conversation” overnight.

Public policy and legislation are playthings for anybody but ordinary citizens. Agencies make a pretence of soliciting public views on proposed regulations but on important issues insiders will write the final drafts with deft dismissal of inconvenient public views. “We considered the thoughtful views of the XL pipeline workers but the imperatives of forestalling climate change . . . .”

Mobs can dominate the streets in the blink of an eye over manufactured nothings and then we go from a nation of ubiquitous government to one of invisible government.

There’s still a veneer of freedom but any of us can be doxxed and find our cars torched, our jobs gone, our credit cards canceled, or our dwelling McCloskeyized. Sources of crowd funding can become instantly unavailable to those too well informed, too patriotic, or too white. Blogs can be canceled by quasi private tech giants doing the government’s First Amendment dirty work. Salutary state laws can be ignored by fatuous federal prosecutions for violation of “civil rights” or the vagaries of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Civil rights, equal protection, and due process are magical concepts that the feds can mine like the Comstock Lode to make BOHICA the replacement for Annuit cœptis” on the Great Seal of the United States.

Even without this, it’s a fool’s game to think mere schlubs can overcome the money of the uber rich and the media monopolies. The steering wheel has come off in our hands.

Long live populism, devolution, nullification, fully informed juries, closed borders, deportations ad astra, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And here’s to a joyous tar and feathering of corporate CEO who sponsors BLM (Blacks Liberating Merchandise) and every RINO and limp-wristed “conservative” with not a lick of fight in them.

Notes
[1] “The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, The FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes A Day.” By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, ZeroHedge, 6/20/21.

Jun 22 2021

Eternal hostility to legacy Americans.

In the 1960s, African American’s opposed to the Vietnam war adopted the slogan “No Viet Cong ever called me n1g.ger” — the real enemy, they surmised, was white people at home in the United States. Legacy Americans must make a similar realisation: “No Chicom ever called me racist”. The biggest threat today isn’t Russia or China, it’s the permanent regime in Washington. Woke excesses are so often met with eye-rolling, jokes and memes. The last institutional redoubts of the worlds preeminent military power are being captured by woke derangement. That’s of world-historical significance.[1]

This is an eye-opening piece. It sets out the rot that is at the heart of America today. The woke left is certifiable but — with the able and enthusiastic assistance of the monopoly treason media — it is effective, unbelievably malicious, and the enemy of common decency.

Pardon the demure language in the title and the slight edit in the quoted language. It’s merely to minimize the chances that it — or this site — will mysteriously disappear. Such are our times.

Notes
[1] “The Intersectional Empire Takes on the World.” By Oliver Williams, The Unz Review, 6/18/21.

Jun 21 2021

Quick Takes

So I needed blood drawn today.  Went to the local lab clinic and there were “You must wear a mask” on signs everywhere.

I didn’t.

Nobody said anything.  Maybe they assumed I’ve been Jabbed.  But it didn’t say anything about “If you’re vaccinated, no mask” just Thou Shalt Wear a Face Diaper plastered everywhere.

F that.

And if they ask to see my certificate?  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak German”…  And while this image is offensive, I beg our host’s tolerance – for it is becoming increasingly apt:

—–

>>>===<<<

All over the webz is the news of the Massachusetts tracker / alert system being stealth-installed.  Checked my phone.  Yup.

—–

—–

Uninstalled.  And I’ll check every few days to see if it gets put back on.  Certainly nobody asked my permission to put this on my phone.

Per a person I know who knows this stuff, the only way to be sure your phone is not on-even-if-off is to take out the battery.  And, possibly, foil around it to boot.

And in reading the Boston Glob piece about this, one comment struck me (bolding added):

MassNotify, a free service developed in conjunction with Apple and Google, works anonymously and “does not track” users or divulge their information…

Pack your bags and get in the cattle car, Comrade.  Trust us, when you get to the work camp it’s only a shower first. How f*cking naive can a person be?

>>>===<<<

—–

There is a medical consensus – such as it is – that our hyperclean lifestyle is what is triggering our immune systems who, no longer challenged, develop allergies as the immune system hasn’t learned to differentiate between real threats from pathogens and non-threats like pollen, etc.  That’s why I’ve had no great issue with our kids playing outdoors, getting dirty, etc., even as my wife screams bloody murder about them getting filthy.  In parallel, Bill Whittle – in the long video I referenced earlier here – discussed the “Worry Gene” and implied that, absent actual things to worry about, we’ll invent things to worry about.

In watching, particularly, my younger kid whining about not having the right kind of ketchup or whatever, there are times when I openly say BRING ON THE EMP ALREADY.  I’ve already been trying to introduce them to foraging, and make the point: it may not taste great, but it’ll keep you alive.

>>>===<<<

—–

One last observation.

The more I think about, for example, the 2012 election – in which I was utterly baffled that Barackus could have won despite his flexibility comment on a hot mike – the more I am completely convinced that elections have been gamed for cycle after cycle, and for decades.

It was only the DS / globalists who were so desperate to stop Trump that they pulled out all the stops and thus, to thinking and observant people, got caught with their over-the-top skullduggery.  So chalk up another thing for which Trump should be thanked.

Jun 21 2021

From The “You Don’t Say?” Files

     I was sitting in the waiting area of the neighborhood car wash, being subjected, as we all are from time to time, to a “complimentary” television broadcast. It was set to a local news station, and I could neither turn it off nor change the channel. I did my best to shut it out, until the broadcaster played a rather curious commercial. It was for a plastic surgery group.

     What made it “curious,” you ask? Well consider this opening line from its pitch:

     “Plastic surgery is a very personal thing.”

     You know, I never would have guessed. I’d always thought an alteration to the very structure of your body was just one more thing you order from Amazon. It would come in a corrugated cardboard box, delivered by a UPS truck if you’re one of the hoi polloi, or an Amazon truck if you’re a Prime subscriber. Not these plastic surgeons! They actually sit with you and talk to you – ask you what you’d like nipped off or tucked in. And then they do as you’ve asked, rather than just selecting a look out of a catalog!

     But wait: there’s more! The pitch continued in a most reassuring (and not at all varicose) vein:

     “We treat each patient as an individual.”

     ALERT THE MEDIA! At long last, a plastic surgery group whose surgeons don’t operate on large groups of patients in a football-field-sized operating theater, assembly-line fashion!

     Gentle Reader, I wish I could…but I can’t. Do have a nice day!

Jun 21 2021

Garrett On The Communist Infiltration Of The United States

     I was musing over the advance of outright Communism in America’s universities – oh, it’s not always called that, but the content is Communist from first to last – when I recalled this bit of the late Garet Garret’s tome The People’s Pottage:

     Revolution in the modern case is no longer an uncouth business. The ancient demagogic art, like every other art, has, as we say, advanced. It has become in fact a science—the science of political dynamics. And your scientific revolutionary in spectacles regards force in a cold, impartial manner. It may or may not be necessary. If not, so much the better; to employ it wantonly, or for the love of it, when it is not necessary, is vulgar, unintelligent and wasteful. Destruction is not the aim. The more you destroy the less there is to take over. Always the single end in view is a transfer of power.

     Outside of the Communist party and its aurora of radical intellectuals few Americans seemed to know that revolution had become a department of knowledge, with a philosophy and a doctorate of its own, a language, a great body of experimental data, schools of method, textbooks, and manuals—and this was revolution regarded not as an act of heroic redress in a particular situation, but revolution as a means to power in the abstract case.

     There was a prodigious literature of revolutionary thought concealed only by the respectability of its dress. Americans generally associated dangerous doctrine with bad printing, rude grammar, and stealthy distribution. Here was revolutionary doctrine in well printed and well written books, alongside of best sellers at your bookstore or in competition with detectives on your news-dealer’s counter. As such it was all probably harmless, or it was about something that could happen in Europe, not here. A little communism on the newsstand like that might be good for us, in fact, regarded as a twinge of pain in a robust, somewhat reckless social body. One ought to read it, perhaps, just to know. But one had tried, and what dreary stuff it had turned out to be!….

     Their influence for a while was underestimated, especially by those who thought their free enterprise world was too strong to be in danger, and said: A little radicalism is perhaps good for us. It will make us think.”

     Garrett wrote that in the Fifties, when America was the richest, strongest, and safest nation on Earth. If only we had paid an appropriate degree of attention.

Jun 21 2021

Dead Giveaways Dept.

     Now and then it all becomes too terribly clear:

     Chapman University in California is having segregated “Cultural Graduation” ceremonies including “Black Graduation,” “APIDA Graduation,” “Lavender Graduation,” “disability Graduation,” “Middle Eastern Graduation,” and “Latinx Graduation.”

     The segregated ceremonies, which will be taking place in addition to the main commencement, will take place on July 30, July 31, August 1, August 6, August 7, and August 8.

     “Cultural graduation celebrations are additions to the university-wide commencement ceremony, students are free to register for these additional celebrations to share the joy of graduation with their friends and family if they choose to,” a post on the college’s Cross-Cultural Center’s Instagram stated.

     America’s universities have been in the vanguard of the new segregationists since the beginning of the trend. Thus, the above isn’t really much of a surprise. But the self-congratulating blatancy of it is stunning even so.

     However, your Curmudgeon (as usual) has a suggestion for how these “cultural graduation ceremonies might be appropriately enhanced. Commencement ceremonies have traditionally been accompanied by a pamphlet that lists the names of the graduates, and cites those who’ve earned particular honors. How about:

  • Next to each graduate’s name, include his class rank and his final grade-point average;
  • If a graduate has failed to keep up with his college bills, list his arrears to his name as well;
  • Single out any graduates who’ve had run-ins with the law during their undergraduate years.

     Surely, in these days of moral and cultural relativism, no one could object to having all that information in the commencement pamphlet! And think how useful it would be to potential employers…not to mention process servers, bounty hunters, and police departments.

     A tangent: Despite the accelerating trend toward separating the races at ceremonies of this kind, we have yet to hear calls for separate white, black, Asian, and Latino valedictorians. I can’t imagine why. If race is to be made the central aspect of everything in society, surely we shouldn’t avert our eyes from such an equalizing measure. Of course, there would be talk…especially if the white or Asian valedictorian’s final GPA were 4.00 while that of the black or Latino valedictorian is 2.75. But these trifles should not unduly obstruct the celebration of achievement! After all, the races and ethnicities have different “learning styles,” don’t they? It’s all part of celebrating our gloriously diverse American multiculture, right?

     Read Facing Reality. Read it!

Jun 21 2021

Who is this toad?

As of September 2020, there were 31 Soros-backed DAs in the United States. That might not sound like a lot, but it includes the DAs of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and St. Louis. All told, tens of millions of Americans are now victims of the Soros racket in the form of their local top prosecutor.[1]

American’s seem to be genetically unaware of sedition. Anyone pushing for open borders is guilty of rank treason. An anti-white revolution is underway and whites remain in a stupor. George Soros is second to none in financing everything that is vile and destructive here and in Europe. And he’s beloved by the political class.

Notes
[1] “Godfather of Color Revolutions: Is George Soros the Most Dangerous Man Alive?” By Ammodotcom, ZeroHedge, 6/18/21.

Jun 20 2021

New Fiction

     Pope Clement XV, the first American to be raised to the papacy, is under attack from within the Vatican. Powerful cardinals, averse to his efforts to reform the Catholic clergy, are trying to force him to resign his office. To undermine him, they spread rumors of his involvement in financial and sexual improprieties. To retain the papacy he must discover their identities and defeat the rumors…but how?

     The foremost technology firm of the day, Todd Iverson’s Arcologics, is about to introduce an artificial, completely automated womb. The device is capable of protecting and nurturing a child from zygote state all the way to birth. It would make the destruction of unborn children utterly unnecessary…but there are forces determined to see that it never reaches the light of day.

     Fountain, a young futanari with unprecedented powers over food, is exploring wine: what it is, what it can do, and what it can be persuaded to do. Pope Clement has asked her if she can concoct a wine that elicits utter, perfectly candid truth from those who consume it. Her explorations lead her into realms never before penetrated by even the greatest of vintners…and a moral thicket that tests her understanding of right, wrong, and God’s will to its limits.

     In Vino is the sequel to the Futanari Saga novels Innocents, Experiences, and The Wise and the Mad. Only $3.99 in Amazon Kindle eBook format.

Load more