Nov 10 2021

It’s Been a Rough Month

Moving. Trying to stock the new house. Transferring a business across states. Long-term physical issues. Missing my adjustable bed and electric lounge chair.

Family issues. Weather. Missing my radio club activities. Escalating economic problems in America and the world.

So, I’m mostly posting at Right As Usual – The Next Generation. And, making my Task Lists every day, and working to cross things off them.

Like yesterday. I got some of the things I’d gone out for accomplished. I put correspondence in the mail. I returned library books. I paid bills, did household chores, and talked – several times – to my husband.

But, one of the BIG items on that list did not get done.

I’d headed out to Lowe’s, so talk to someone about which snowblower would be the best for me to handle (probably cordless, and generally as lightweight as would do the job). I’d looked at several models online, and was hoping to keep the cost around $500.

Not happening! Other than the very expensive models that were both bigger than I could handle, and around $1000 – or more – the pickings were slim. I asked, and was told that for many items that would normally be on the shelves, they were still waiting, and with no indication of when the products would make it to the store.

Yep. The supply chain, for larger items, is basically in slow-motion shutdown. If it’s in the store NOW, grab it. It likely will NOT be available in the near future. That’s Christmas stuff, large machinery and tools, home products, business equipment, and a lot more.

My fall-back is Home Depot. They seem to have the products I need in stock, and can deliver in a day or two (or I could pick them up, to shorten the time, and improve the chances they won’t be sold out under me). As I am in need of snow removal equipment, and this is Northern Ohio, this isn’t something I can just delay.

Winter is coming.

Nov 10 2021

Grotesque distortion.

Let’s be clear: I’m a screaming capitalist, but a pandemic world in which Bezos, Musk and other billionaire wealth has increased by 70% while 89 million Americans have lost their jobs is NOT capitalism, but a symptom of a rigged system in which the anti-trust rules I learned in law school, or the social and economic principles I learned in economics are simply gone.

Then again, when I was in school, we were once taught how to think, not what to think.

With each passing day, we see increased evidence of what I wrote (and described) elsewhere as “a new feudalism marked by grotesquely distorted notions of truth, reporting, data, natural market forces and political/financial accountability.[1]

I thought about titling this post “The New Feudalism” which would be, in truth, an excellent title. I could even have tried “Neo-feudalism R Us” given the modern penchant for slapping “neo” in front of various terms as though something long lost from human memory had mysteriously risen from the grave to haunt us.

“It’s baaaackkk!”

But, I really like the word “grotesque” when it comes to trying to come to grips with our final-stage experiment in self-government, and what could be a better word to tack on there to capture our aristrocrapic class’s worshipful embrace of deceit, lies, dissembling, and bullshit and every manner of attack on free speech and those brave enough to exercise it? Yes, you pathetic worm, resist and your job, reputation, and peace of mind are ours. What bill of rights, you toad? FOAD.

Mr. Piepenburg ominously — but correctly — observes that “If there’s one thing history and free market forces have taught us it’s this: In the end, broken systems die and real money returns.” And, muchachos, we certainly got us a broken system right now, though don’t look to any MSM outlet or so-called legislator to, uh, like notice this fact. Where they’re concerned all we have is a gang of boodle whores and they’ll sell out their mothers for a ticket on the gravy train of tax and Tinker Bell money.

Count on this, though. Whatever comes from the mouth of any politician or the keyboard of any trained seal will be all about putting lipstick on this pig. If you expect genuine efforts to restore what might laughingly be called sanity you will be disappointed and this freight train without brakes will plunge further and faster into the night.

Okay. Time for another margarita. I commend the whole article to you as one of the finer efforts to capture the stupidity and viciousness of the woke political, economic, media, corporate, and financial boot lickers.

Notes
[1] “How Long Can Lies & Control Supplant Reality & Free Markets?” By Matthew Piepenburg, ZeroHedge, 11/9/21.

Nov 09 2021

The Eternal Exculpation Effort

     I am frequently bemused by the extent to which the bien-pensants will go in their determination to avert their eyes – and ours – from verifiable facts. Some of them seem sincerely to believe that their wishes can remake reality. Others, of course, are simply practicing the tactics of obfuscation and deflection that have served them well in the past. In either case, the facts are as they are.

     One of those facts is that people in business seek profits, not losses. While they may do incidental charity – donations and such – that is not their raison d’etre. If they can’t make a profit in some district, they won’t operate there. They won’t offer their products and services there. They’ll go to where there are profits to be had.

     Now, one of the depressing yet undeniable facts of our time is that there’s a strong correlation between regional demographics and the profit potentials of retail businesses. A crime-ridden district will have no appeal to retailers, for theft, vandalism, and regional violence will bring them losses, not profits. And not to put too fine a point on it, the demographic common among such districts is a high proportion of Negroes.

     But the bien-pensants cannot abide the implication that Negroes and the crime rates associated with them are the reason for their own troubles. They must find another plausible cause. Capitalism being perfused by “systemic racism,” perhaps? No doubt someone has advanced that thesis, even if it would reduce to the absurd assertion that a dollar bill in a black hand is worth less than the same bill in a white hand. As that’s implausible in the extreme, the hunt is on for another explanation.

     And here it is:

     There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth: The roads themselves are racist! Who knew that asphalt and concrete could harbor racial attitudes? But the Transportation Secretary has said it, and on network television at that.

     It would be naive to expect that a Usurper Cabinet member would admit to a demographic fact as unpleasant as the correlation between Negroes and crime. The Democrats need the Negro vote to win elections. But the true elephant in the room is crime. Has anyone asked him to explain why businesses looted and torched in the urban riots of the past two years are not reopening? To make the causal vector clearer, has anyone asked him for his explanation of why retailers are fleeing San Francisco? In that city, Negroes are a relatively small minority, only about 6% of the population as of the 2010 census…but the city’s hard-Left district attorney, Chesa Boudin, has refused to prosecute crimes of theft, which have consequently exploded.

     If crime rates are high in heavily black districts, the absence of businesses from such districts requires no other explanation, certainly not “racist roads.” But no Democrat would ever admit that.

     The Negro has long been a Leftist mascot. He and the Hispanic immigrant are vital to the Democrats’ coalition strategy. The party promises to direct benefits toward members of the coalition in exchange for their electoral loyalty. But the damage done to the Negro and the Hispanic by Leftist politics has become so severe, and so obvious, that those members have begun to defect from the Democrats’ coalition. And of course, the Democrats, frantic that they might lose that voting bloc, seek to pander them securely back into the fold.

     So the roads themselves must be racist. Their placement and design intentionally discourage, if not outright forbid, the emergence of businesses in heavily black districts. It’s baked into the asphalt and the concrete! The poor downtrodden Negro must not be blamed for his state, for he can do nothing constructive about it. Quod erat demonstrandum, as we mathematicians and Latin scholars like to say.

     When your premises are wrong, no amount of logic can save you. But that’s a point of interest only to those who believe that one’s reasoning should be grounded in the facts.

     It’s time for a nationwide belly laugh at this lunacy, as raucous and derisive as our throats can achieve. Yet even that might not get the Democrats to take stock of themselves. It might awaken a few more minds to the ludicrousness of the Left’s polemics and the desperation of its panderings, but that’s about all we can expect until the Usurpers are ejected from the corridors of power.

Nov 08 2021

From The “Je M’accuse” Files

     For some years, I fought back against being called a racist. For some time after that, I simply ignored it. Today I embrace the characterization. I maintain that there’s enough evidence to do so.

     Evidence such as this report from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial:

     George Floyd’s nephew, Cortez Rice, has issued veiled threats to the jurors in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, with the support of Unicorn Riot, an antifa affiliated organization. “I ain’t even gonna name the people that I know that’s up in the Kenosha trial,” Rice said. “But it’s cameras in there. It’s definitely cameras up in there. There’s definitely people taking pictures of the juries and everything like that. We know what’s going on.” “so we need the same results, man.” said Rice in a video released today. Rice has a history of intimidating jurors and judges in prominent cases, coordinating with antifa and BLM activists. In the Daunte Wright case, Rice located the apartment of the female judge presiding over the case and stood outside the door of her home.

     No one needs my sort of memory to recall what happened to Derek Chauvin after the death of multiple felon George Floyd. Very few would need to consult Wikipedia over what was done to George Zimmerman after the death of murderous teenage thug Trayvon Martin. Few would need to be reminded about the hounding of Officer Darren Wilson after his wholly justified shooting of strong-arm thug Michael Brown. Few would be unaware of what happened to Officer Kim Potter over the death of wanted felon Daunte Wright. And who could forget the case of Mohammed Noor and Justine Damond?

     Looking back not too many years, we have the case that catapulted the odious Al Sharpton to national notoriety: the wholly fabricated claims of Tawana Brawley to having been gang-raped by a group of white men. Few need Lexis/Nexis to recall the trials of the cops in the Rodney King case, or the riots that followed the original acquittals. What about the refusal of a majority black jury to convict O. J. Simpson, despite irrefutable evidence that he had murdered his white ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman? Am I alone in recalling Crystal Gail Mangum and the Duke Lacrosse players? What about the rape-torture-murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom?

     Blacks kill blacks in staggering numbers. By comparison, the number of blacks killed by whites – whether the killer is a policeman or a civilian – is tiny. Yet we’ve had three years of “Black Lives Matter” riots, some of which have featured “protestors” chanting “What do we want? Dead cops!”

     Many would protest that the great majority of American Negroes are peaceable and law-abiding. I would concede that without argument. The sole problem with the point is that it’s wholly irrelevant. Consider the comparable case of Islamic terrorism. A few years back, the great Brigitte Gabriel faced a Muslim questioner who raised the “most Muslims are peaceful” point:

     Note also something that Miss Gabriel did not say, but which is highly relevant: When some Muslim or Muslims commit an atrocity, the immediate response of the rest of the Islamic world is to scream “You must not blame Islam!”…even if the perpetrators explicitly invoked the teachings of Islam as their license and motivation. American Negroes have the same mass-protective response when one of them is caught in a heinous act…especially if he’s arrested or shot for it. They reflexively circle the wagons around “one of our own.”

     Yes, the media are complicit. Yes, the Left exploits racial conflicts for its own purposes. And yes, no member our pusillanimous political class would dream of stating – where anyone could hear him, at least – that America’s problems with violent crime, crimes against property, and general racial animosity are the doing of black criminals and black racial agitators. Why, that would be discriminatory!

     Soon it won’t matter. The backlash is building. White Americans are beginning to pay attention to analyses such as Charles Murray’s and commentators such as Jared Taylor. We’re finding ways to insulate ourselves from “black culture.” We too can circle the wagons – and our responsibility for our lives, families, and communities has made it imperative that we do so.

     Take heed. Whatever your race, take heed. Once the backlash casts off its restraints, it won’t care about your identity, your achievements, or your intentions…only which side you’re on.

Nov 07 2021

Brilliance That Must Not Blush Unseen

     I’ve long had a high regard for Paul Joseph Watson. I know, I know: “he’s not to everyone’s taste.” But he strikes the jugular with great regularity. I have yet to catch him in a falsehood or a deliberate distortion, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m alert to such things. So I recommend him to others who have a hankering for commentary that crosscuts the ugly trends in contemporary society.

     The video below is some of his very bravest and best work. I urge my Gentle Readers to play it for themselves. What you will see is a great part of the reason I and millions of like-minded others have completely separated ourselves from the mass media. It’s likely to tip you over from an inchoate unease about social manipulation to a white-hot fury about the perversions being defended by the media…if you haven’t erupted into full-scale rage already:

     I’ve been writing about some of these things for a long time, but Watson’s piercing observations and video collages drive the matter home with a jackhammer. Many things you’ve tried to wish away are really, truly happening. They’re at the core of the ideological assault on Western consciousness, and Watson points them up brilliantly.

     The product, as he says, is you. Us. We the Socially Re-engineered People. The barrages of messages – some subliminal, some overt – share the common aim of denormalizing every longstanding Western ideal or norm. Indeed, the target is the idea of normality itself.

     Please share it with everyone you know.

Nov 07 2021

Wishful Thinking In Its Rawest State

     On May 1, 2015, I retired from employment as a software engineer, a trade I practiced for nearly five decades to great satisfaction and profit. I keep in touch with old colleagues, both for friendship’s sake and so I can have a sense for how developments affect the kind of work I once did. But I seldom read trade publications any more. It appears that that might have been a mistake. They’ve opened their pages to destructive nonsense:

     The commonly held belief that programming is inherently hard lacks sufficient evidence. Stating this belief can send influential messages that can have serious unintended consequences including inequitable practices. Further, this position is most often based on incomplete knowledge of the world’s learners. More studies need to include a greater diversity of all kinds including but not limited to ability, ethnicity, geographic region, gender identity, native language, race, and socioeconomic background.

     Seldom will you encounter a more fatuous, wishful-thinking-based statement. I have no knowledge of author Brett Becker, but from the paragraph above he appears to be deeply infected with “woke.” This infectious agent, sometimes called the SJW virus, has been responsible for more lunacy, and more destruction, than any other intellectual malady of recent years. It habitually expresses itself in “shoulds” – and anyone who’s been reading Liberty’s Torch for a while will know how fond I am of that word.

     The article goes on in a predictable fashion. Having claimed that the notion that programming is hard lacks evidence, it then goes on to dismiss the existing evidence – the number and characteristics of those who practice the trade successfully – as somehow irrelevant to the contention. It’s all very much in the SJW tradition of promoting the desires of the author over the demands of reality. But the author’s chief target is not the evidence but our statements: he wants us to stop saying that programming is hard, as if not saying so could make it easy enough for anyone to master.

     Programming is hard because it’s a method for instantiating solutions to problems – and solving problems is hard. It requires sustained focus, observational acuity, the ability to separate the relevant from the irrelevant, a high degree of comfort with abstractions, a specific kind of eloquence, and the willingness to persevere in the pursuit of mistakes, whether large or small. These things cannot be taught to everyone. Those who are talented at them are consequently rare and highly paid, as I was.

     The longtime relationship between programming and applied mathematics is no accident. Both are problem-solving methodologies, and both are hard to master. Many a promising student of the sciences is deflected from his original ambitions by the inability to progress far enough in mathematics. That’s not a character flaw but a specific kind of intellectual limitation. That limitation is shared by nearly everyone who has ever lived.

     What pains persons such as Brett Becker is that the distribution of the aptitudes and abilities required for success in programming strongly favors two demographics: Caucasian and Oriental men. He dislikes this viscerally, as so many SJWs do. It impedes his worship of that chimeric destroyer of societies, “equality.” Ability “shouldn’t” be biased racially or sexually! It “should” be uniformly available to all persons, without regard for race, sex, creed, national origin, or political affiliation. That’s equality, and we will have equality despite all opposition, including that from Nature itself!

     You know the rest of the argument, Gentle Reader. In these latter days, it’s habitually waged in street battles, with bricks and Molotov cocktails. But it won’t change the reality of the situation. What’s hard to do – what requires sustained focus, intellect, sharp observation, and savage persistence – only those with high ability will do with success. And for whatever reason, those qualities are not uniformly distributed among the races and sexes of Man.

     But that won’t keep the Brett Beckers of the world from trying to silence us. It’s their mission, you see. They must have their “shoulds,” or their Weltanschauung will crumble. Eric Hoffer knew their kind well. They have not changed since he wrote The True Believer. We must not expect them to change any time soon.

Nov 06 2021

Kind But Deadly Assumptions

     Some things must be seen and heard to be believed, like an “Energy Secretary” laughing about skyrocketing gas prices:

     If the rapid increases in energy products have affected you, I’d bet you’re not laughing. Homeowners whose homes will cost twice as much to heat this winter won’t laugh either. But why did Granholm laugh about them?

     Short answer: Because it’s in the script.

     Slightly longer answer: Because she can’t say openly that it’s the fully intended and fully expected result of the Usurper Regime’s policies.

     Yes, there’s a senile, incoherent stooge in the Oval Office. And many have hoped that he doesn’t understand the consequences of his regime’s energy policies. But when attempting to assess the level of comprehension of members of the Regime, Biden included, it’s not the way to bet.

     They do understand. The policies were instituted to produce exactly the results we’ve seen, are seeing, and will see much more of. Villainy, not ignorance and not stupidity.

     What, did you expect the villains who openly stole the White House not to impose villainous policies upon us? Welcome to our planet! We hope for friendly and profitable relations with your planet, too!

***

     From time to time I get tired of writing this crap. I feel as if I’m talking to myself, a practice for which others have been certified in the past. Then again, it’s an old habit. As an old favorite math teacher once said, when you talk to yourself, you can be confident that you’ll be understood, and you won’t get any backtalk.

     (When I was a wee lad, one of my aunts found it particularly funny. “You got money in the bank?” she’d jibe. I, not yet fully aware of the relationship between solvency and incarceration for lunacy, simply went on talking to myself. For completeness, I suppose I should mention that that aunt was a millionaire. Draw your own conclusions.)

     But I keep on. Partly, it’s because there are Gentle Readers out there who claim to benefit somehow from my drivel. Also, it’s my version of the scream of cleansing rage:

     Whatever. I’m here, I write, and that’s the end of it. I do hope someone gets at least the occasional Blinding Flash of the Obvious® from it. But back to the point from which the title came: Some assumptions are superficially kind but deadly in effect. Here’s one, from a Nobel Laureate in economics who dedicated the greater part of his life to writing about it:

     Ponder it while I refill my mug.

***

     “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” – Robert J. Hanlon

     “You’re really fucking naive, Hanlon, you know that?” – Me.

     Yes, Virginia, there are stupid people in the world. Moreover, we’ve made a nation so prosperous and comfortable that in the main, they’re not unduly discommoded by their intellectual deficits. But there are also malicious people in the world. Plenty of them. They’re disproportionately represented in politics. And it is a survival requirement that you learn to tell the malicious from the stupid.

     The task is actually rather straightforward. Let me draw you a flowchart:

     Is there anyone out there who found that confusing? Vague, perhaps? I hope not. The flowchart is a well-proven technique for guiding decisions and actions. It’s not just for us software weenies. If you don’t know how to read one, find a ten-year-old and have him explain it to you. The one who programmed your VCR for you would serve nicely.

     This technique leaves few destructive actions uncategorized. With politicians, the answer is nearly always “Malicious.” They are not, as a rule stupid. Neither are they ignorant of basic economics or the ways people respond to economic incentives and penalties. Yet many buy into the deflections and rationalizations – not because stupidity is a plausible explanation, but because we have become uncomfortable with the very concept of evil. We’re massively reluctant to call anyone evil, regardless of the evidence. It’s just too…impolite.

     But evil is real.
     There are evil men.
     Evil men pursue power.
     They balk at no effective tactic.
     And they intend the consequences of their actions.
     Ergo, the Usurpers, from Joe Biden on down, are evil.
     If they are not stopped, they will do still more evil, intentionally.
     To assume otherwise, with the future of the nation at stake, is deadly.

     Your move, America.

Nov 05 2021

Tools For Predation

     Every thief has his favorite tools. Car thieves once carried “slim jims” they used to defeat the locks on car doors. House burglars carry whatever will help them to defeat homeowners’ locks and other provisions. Street muggers, of course, carry weapons: knives or guns.

     Activists “carry” your compassion for others, which they seek to inflame through carefully planned promotional campaigns and imposed, unearned guilt.

     Just recently, Elon Musk, whose trail to glory started here on Earth with PayPal and is now extending into the skies via SpaceX, made a startling offer. The genesis is reported here:

     [A]ccording to David Beasley, the director of the World Food Program:

     Billionaires need to “step up now, on a one-time basis”, said David Beasley in an interview on CNN’s Connect the World with Becky Anderson that aired Tuesday — citing specifically the world’s two richest men, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
     “$6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” he added.

     The kindest possible analysis of Beasley’s claim is that he’s naive, misinformed to the point of total ignorance. Money cannot and will not solve “world hunger.” The only “solution” to hunger is a reliable supply of food. (Anyone who hasn’t learned this from his own stomach fluids should consult a nutritionist.) Money only helps if food is continuously and reliably available for purchase…which, in most hunger-stricken regions of the world, it isn’t.

     Why isn’t it available for purchase? The amount of food produced every year is staggering. It’s more than enough for everyone to have enough to eat. Why can’t all those starving people get to it?

     Quite simply, they’re prevented from doing so by their rulers.

     Deliberately imposed hunger – famine – is one of the totalitarian’s tools for keeping his subjects in line. There are several ways to impose a famine on a district. Stalin’s minions simply rounded up the food produced by the Ukrainian peasants, then shot the peasants. The Sandinistas of Nicaragua did much the same, albeit with fewer killings. Socialist regimes compel the surrender of food stocks to themselves, then purport to “distribute it fairly.” Rulers who seek to preserve a veneer of legitimacy have other tricks, licensure and regulation most prominent among them.

     An illuminating episode occurred in socialist Burma, under the heavy hand of dictator Ne Win:

     Ne Win set out his ideas in a manifesto: The Burmese Way to Socialism, which proclaimed two antithetical principles: a commitment to Marxism and the promise of “a new society for all, economically secure and morally better.” It was the commitment to Marxism that won.

     More than 90% of Burma’s commerce and industry was nationalized, creating drastic shortages of all commodities on the home market and – the natural consequence – widespread corruption and a flourishing black market, despite severe penalties. In agriculture, Ne Win went even further than his distant mentors of the Soviet Union, for instance by “nationalizing” onions, potatoes, and beans. All three items promptly disappeared, since the farmers saw no special reason to produce them. Ne Win’s response was typically authoritarian. He decontrolled onions, potatoes, and beans; all three rapidly reappeared on the market. He then pounced on the private traders who were handling the reborn items, ordering the army to seize the more successful firms, and jailing the successful owners.

     [Arthur Seldon and Brian Crozier, Socialism: The Grand Delusion. Emphasis added by FWP.]

     Bleeding-heart activists prattle about “world hunger” and our “responsibility” to “step up” without bothering to address any of these niggling little details. Elon Musk is too smart for that. He actually agreed to a $6 billion donation to the cause, but under one condition:

     But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent.

     He later reiterated and added a clarifying requirement:

     Please publish your current & proposed spending in detail so people can see exactly where money goes.
     Sunlight is a wonderful thing.

     As of this instant, Beasley has agreed to those conditions: a remarkable development, but not one that guarantees that any food will reach anyone. Remember what I said above about the hungry being systematically prevented from obtaining food? The rulers of the hunger-ridden regions have yet to have their say.

     We sent a great deal of food to Ethiopia and Somalia when we were told they were starving. When it arrived it was promptly seized by those who held power: Mengistu Haile Maryam and Mohammad Farad Aidid. None of it ever reached the starving commoners whose plight had touched our hearts and opened our wallets. The dictators and warlords, on the other hand, ate well – then sold what they didn’t eat to persons and organizations beholden to them.

     The media, ever hungry for their own sort of nutrition – “crises” and “emergencies” sell air time and column-inches – cooperate willingly. As usual, Robert A. Heinlein, through one of his patented “older and wiser” characters, has illuminated the matter:

     “Half the food on this planet is in the black market, or is not reckoned through one ruling or another. Or they keep two sets of books, and figures submitted to the F.N. having nothing to do with the economy. Do you think that grain from Thailand and Burma and Australia is correctly reported to the Control Board by Great China? I’m sure that the India representative on that food board doesn’t. But India keeps quiet because she gets the lion’s share from Luna…and then ‘plays politics with hunger’–a phrase you may remember–by using our grain to control her elections. Kerala had a planned famine last year. Did you see it in the news?”
     “No.”
     “Because it wasn’t in the news. A managed democracy is a wonderful thing, Manuel, for the managers…and its greatest strength is a ‘free press’ when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers define what is ‘irresponsible.’ Do you know what Luna needs most?”
     “More ice.”
     “A news system that does not bottleneck through one channel. Our friend Mike is our greatest danger.”
     “Huh? Don’t you trust Mike?”
     “Manuel, on some subjects I don’t trust even myself. Limiting the freedom of news ‘just a little bit’ is in the same category with the classic example ‘a little bit pregnant.'”

     [From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]

     Many an activist gets a share of the gravy. The high incomes and luxurious homes of professional activists and the employees of their “charities” have often been in the news…yet few persons ever remark on the dissonance between their representation as selfless servants of the downtrodden and the lives they lead and the fortunes they possess.

     No, not all activists are evil. Many are just stupid or horribly naive. Nearly all are completely ignorant of the conditions that conduce to prosperity…and hunger. Many would rather not know. The lessons of history are as lost on them as they are on the proponents of socialism. “This time, we’ll get it right” seems to be their mantra.

     I await eagerly any news from the meeting of David Beasley and Elon Musk.

Nov 04 2021

Always Reinforce Success!

     One of the harder tactical lessons to learn, if we judge by the behavior of field commanders throughout history, is rather simple:

Cut Your Losses;
Reinforce Your Successes.

     The first part of that maxim is on all fours with “Don’t throw good money after bad.” It’s remarkable how many people will nod sagely when they hear that, but ignore it when the play turns against them. You say the cards / the dice / the skirmishes are running against you? Cut your losses. Save your remaining resources and go elsewhere. Yet note how many gamblers double down when they’re losing. The words apparently never got to their decision-making lobes.

     Reinforcing success is equally important. When the tide is in your favor, use it. Bring up your local reserves and punch a big hole in the enemy’s line. Penetrate and attack his forces from the rear, just as you would if you’d pierced his flank. Never waste an opportunity to strike decisively.

     The Right has had several successes these past few days. It’s time to reinforce them. How? There are many ways, but as a narrow-gauge commentator, my preference is to hammer on the ironies until the Left screams “racism!” (And you know they will.) Here’s a good one – and I hope John Krasinski, who’s supposedly a liberal Democrat, doesn’t mind seeing his face used in a conservative cause:

     Smarts, doesn’t it? Speaking of the Left’s propensity for racism-shouting, the election of Winsome Sears, a Negro, as lieutenant-governor of Virginia provides another marker. Her opponent was Hala Ayala, a half-Hispanic / quarter Irish / quarter Lebanese of far lighter skin tone. But of course the pundits are crying “racism” over the Youngkin / Sears victory. So let’s pile on:

Hala Ayala and Winsome Sears:

The “Racists” Elected The One On The Right.

     Use your creativity. The iron is hot:

Hit them till your knuckles bleed.
Don’t give them a moment’s rest.
Always reinforce success!

Nov 03 2021

When Princes Meet

     Just because I feel like it…and because it is exactly what princes do:

When princes meet, the poor little men must tremble
In judgment seat. they speak of their wars while great armies assemble
Their armor shines to shame the sun
They move like gods they do resemble
All bow their necks to iron feet when princes meet

When castles rise the poor little men must build them
To charm the skies, they throw up the turrets where the great lords will them
They dig the dungeons from the earth
And their brothers wives and children fill them
All those below cast down their eyes when castles rise

God save the king
For he grants us leave to serve him
His praises sing
And grant that we may deserve him
Who counts the cost?
The cattle and men to be lost?
‘Tis no small thing to serve a king

When kings make war, the poor little men must fight them
They must do more, they hold out their necks for great lords’ swords to bite them
The sons of the lords cleave through their ranks
In the hopes some warrior king might knight them
It’s what the poor little men are for when kings make war

Hide your cattle in the woods, Francois
The lord is looking your way
Hide your women and your goods, Francois
They’re coming around to make you pay
Hide if you can, poor little man
Think of a prayer to say
Hide if you can, poor little man
Think of a prayer to say

God save the king
For he grants us leave to serve him
His praises sing
And grant that we may deserve him
Who counts the cost?
The cattle and men to be lost?
‘Tis no small thing to serve a king

– Tom Paxton –

Nov 03 2021

Has The Bitching Begun?

     It appears (note that carefully selected verb) that Glenn Youngkin has prevailed over former governor Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia. The margin wasn’t a large one – slightly more than 1% of the votes cast – but it appears (yes, again) to be safe at this time. So for the next four years, Virginia will have a GOP governor, who appears (best I can do, Gentle Reader) to be rather in the style of President Donald Trump, to attempt to undo the mess created by Ralph Northam.

     Has the bitching started yet? I can’t hear it from this far away, but I can’t imagine that the silence from the Democrats will prevail. You see, there’s a little matter of 300,000 “absentee” ballots that the Democrats claim – and the Postal Service denies – were held up in the mail, and therefore could not possibly reach the voters they were intended for in time to be filled out, returned, and counted. Why so many “absentee” ballots in a state where slightly more than 3 million people voted? Unclear.

     The McAuliffe campaign was already complaining bitterly about those ballots a few days ago. It seems (I was getting tired of “appears”) they had hopes for them. Margin of victory hopes.

     The shenanigans the Democrats pulled with mailed-in ballots in November 2020 are now famous. Aware that the Virginia governor’s race was attracting national attention as a “bellwether” election, they were determined, even desperate to win it. For a Trump-like outsider candidate to wrest supposedly blue Virginia from their arms would embarrass them terribly.

     And now it’s happened. Looks like it, anyway. These days, an election can go on for weeks. Remember Election 2000 and the Florida recounts?

     What about those 300,000 ballots? What about the lawsuit? Does any conceivable development have a chance of overturning the reported election results? Well, the numerous, multiply documented, videoed and attested irregularities in the November 2020 elections haven’t had much effect…yet. But the Democrats’ lawsuit might just open a bigger can of worms than they realize. If they can press, successfully, for the November 2 tally to be set aside on the grounds of the foofaurauw over the “absentee” ballots, it will set a marker in place: a precedent for deeming all election results to be “apparent,” strictly provisional pending the outcome of innumerable challenges, until all the lawsuits have been settled and the dust has cleared. We might not have another “one and done” election in our lifetimes.

     Allegations of irregularities in the handling of the mails are inherently a matter for the federal courts. There’s been a lot of nonsense from those courts lately. Verdicts that contradict unimpeachable evidence. Verdicts that require one to accept that black is white. I would not dare to predict the outcome of the McAuliffe campaign’s suit, nor could I predict what would come of it in either case.

     We are watching a development whose consequences could exceed anyone’s imagination. As usual.

Nov 01 2021

A Bellwether Election?

     Apparently, the polls are now unanimous: Glenn Youngkin commands a significant lead over Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia. Even the blatantly partisan Washington Post has called out McAuliffe on his lies, gaffes, and dirty tactics. Were the polls a reliable indicator of anything, Virginia would elect Youngkin its next governor…but as has been said many times, the only poll that really counts is the one that takes place on Election Day.

     Despite Youngkin’s lead, the prognosticators have predicted a narrow win for McAuliffe. Indeed, I consider that more likely than any other result, for two reasons. First, Virginia has been “turning blue” for some time, owing to the great many federal workers who’ve made their homes there. Second, the Democrat Party has adopted a win-at-any-cost posture, and is likely to deploy its full range of cheats to put its favored candidate in the Commonwealth’s governor’s mansion. So Virginia’s urban districts will “turn out” at approximately a 100% rate, and the Dems will cheat to whatever extent is required to make up any remaining margin.

     After the famous presidential election of 2000, in which a handful of votes from a single state decided the contest in favor of George W. Bush, commentator Mark Steyn coined a striking phrase. He spoke of the need for future Republican candidates to prevail beyond “the margin of lawyer.” At that time, of course, the threat to a Republican’s electoral victory took the form of post-balloting legal challenges to the accuracy of the tallies. But as the poet has said, things are different today.

     Should my pessimism prove incorrect and the election go dramatically Youngkin’s way, as would be appropriate given McAuliffe’s deceits and gaffes, it will be a marker for the Congressional elections to come in 2022. The Democrats are playing a “mainchance” strategy. While public-opinion polls have suggested that the GOP will pick up seats in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats, sensing that the loss of control of those bodies would put an end to their national agenda for the foreseeable future, will shove the throttle to the firewall on their election-corruption engines. If Youngkin prevails tomorrow, extreme nationwide Democrat vote fraud in 2022 will become a certainty.

     Whether Republican candidates and the party apparatus would mount legal challenges to the integrity of stolen elections, this year or next, is unclear. The GOP has shown little appetite for such combats. Indeed, had they challenged the blatantly corrupt tallies in two states in 1960 – Illinois and Texas – Richard Nixon would have prevailed over John F. Kennedy. As Nixon was opposed to the notion of going to war in Vietnam, the nation’s history would be quite different.

     The central consideration to bear in mind is that word gets around. People cannot be fooled for long. They will know if the elections are stolen from their preferred candidates. If the Republican Party, nominally the party that stands for limited government, free markets, and a strong national defense, should again fail to defend their interests, they will withdraw their support once and for all. They will begin a determined search for an alternative at last. They might not settle on a democratic approach – note the small “d.”

     And so the Virginia gubernatorial contest might be a harbinger of more than just the probable outcome of the 2022 elections. As I wrote earlier this year:

     People will tolerate a great deal before they snap, but they will snap. Especially if they’re being told that they must tolerate personal abuse or oppression, the abuse of their loved ones, or the destruction of something they love. And if Americans should snap, the reverberations will circle the globe. As Larry Correia and others have observed, we’ve got two and only two settings: Vote and Shoot everybody. Governments, law enforcers, bureaucrats, and activists should beware. Day by day we move ever closer to throwing that switch.

     Keep your freezer full, your pantry stocked, and your powder dry.

Oct 31 2021

Concerning Hallowe’en And Related Things

     The costuming, the candy, and the partying all to the side, Hallowe’en – the night before All Saints Day – is actually a Christian event of some antiquity. It and All Saints Day (November 1) itself arose as counterweights to the pagan festival of Samhain, which also occurs on these two days.

     The peasants and bourgeoise of European Christendom were taught to fear and abjure paganism and the festival of Samhain. Among the legends of the time was that on that evening, the pagans would conjure spirits from Hell to walk among them, doing what evil they could. Accordingly, it became a regular practice to lock and barricade the doors of every Christian home as the evening of October 31 approached. After a while, as the fear of supernatural mischief-makers abated, the same people and their descendants began to mock the pagans by costuming themselves as ghosts, witches, and devils, and then roving about their communities “scaring” those who would not propitiate them with an edible treat. Therein lie the origins of our contemporary, secularized practices.

     But Hallowe’en retains some supernatural significance, especially in Latin countries. It’s the opening of a triduum called The Day of the Dead, which is dedicated to those who have preceded us into eternity: remembering them (October 31), venerating those who have become saints (All Saints’ Day, November 1), and praying for the souls still immured in Purgatory (All Souls’ Day, November 2).

     The Church still maintains All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day celebrations and commemorations. On November 1, Catholics are encouraged to pray to their patron saints for guidance in this life and intercession with Jesus Christ for the sake of our eventual salvation. On November 2, we are encouraged to pray for our beloved dead, exhorting them to a swift exit from their final trials and admission to Heaven:

Prayer for the Dead:

In your hands, O Lord,
we humbly entrust our brothers and sisters.
In this life you embraced them with your tender love;
deliver them now from every evil
and bid them eternal rest.

The old order has passed away:
welcome them into paradise,
where there will be no sorrow, no weeping or pain,
but fullness of peace and joy
with your Son and the Holy Spirit
forever and ever. Amen.

Prayer for the Faithful Departed:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.

Prayer for the Souls in Purgatory:

O Lord, almighty God, we beseech you,
by the very precious blood of Jesus, poured out during his Passion,
to deliver the souls of Purgatory,
and especially those which must as soon as possible enter your Glory,
so that they begin right now to bless you for all eternity
and intercede tirelessly for us.
Amen.
Sweet Heart of Mary, be our salvation.

Memorare:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help,
or sought thy intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence
I fly unto thee,
O Virgin of virgins, my Mother.
To thee do I come,
before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.

     It’s hard to reach one’s mature years without accumulating at least a few beloved dead. Remember them throughout these next three days, and pray for them. Don’t expect them to send thank-you cards; the postage is prohibitive.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Oct 31 2021

The attack on whites.

It can not be made any clearer that white people, their rights, culture, history, and achievements are under full scale attack by their own government and own school systems. This sense of helplessness, together with declining job opportunities and incomes, rising prices, overrun borders, and inability to correct the situation through elections, makes it clear that white Americans have had their country taken away from them.

“Do Americans Have a Future?” By Paul Craig Roberts, The Burning Platform, 10/30/21.

Oct 31 2021

What?!!

H/t: Burning Platform.

Oct 30 2021

Scientism, Democratism, And Statism

     The ism suffix particle most often indicates a faith, or a similarly faith-based system of beliefs. There are a few exceptions – bruxism, for instance, is dentists’ term for habitual grinding of the teeth, and a neologism is just a newly coined word – but the rule is usually reliable.

     Recently, we’ve had discussions about scientism versus actual science. Scientism, to be specific, is a de facto worship of men who call themselves scientists, whether or not they really are. We are told not to argue with them, as if they were a priesthood dispensing a revelation. But scientism has nothing whatsoever in common with science, which is a process of open inquiry, inference, prediction, and experimentation. It’s doubtful these discussions have changed many minds. My lexical approach isn’t likely to change many, either – what could, in these days of absolute polarization? – but it’s what I do.

     In keeping with the above approach to this important contemporary foofaurauw, I’d like to introduce for your consideration and possible rhetorical exploitation the coinage democratism, which I shall define as the worship of numbers presented to us as the results of honest elections. Thou shalt not question the election tallies! cry the apostles of democratism. They are a sacred gift, the fruits of our priceless inheritance of democracy! In this manner they shout down any Americans who doubt that the 2020 elections were conducted according to the applicable laws. The creed of democratism displaces the legally codified procedure of electoral balloting that’s usually albeit inaccurately called democracy.

     Note how nicely democratism conduces to the interests of the Ruling Class. What’s that? You claim we don’t have a Ruling Class? But then, why was it felonious lese majeste that Americans assembled in Washington to protest an election they sincerely believe was stolen from them? What makes it akin to treason to argue that there cannot be eighty-one million living American citizens who would vote to install as president a senile and demonstrably sick old man who has fantasized his entire history, continues to repeat thoroughly debunked lies, can’t complete three sentences in a row, has difficulty reading from a teleprompter, and spent nearly the whole of the campaign season hiding in his basement?

     Both scientism and democratism have been harnessed to the cart of statism: the worship of political power and those who wield it. They’ve proved extraordinarily strong draft animals. In combination with the engine of propaganda and deceit we call the media, they’ve all but completed the subjugation of what was once the freest, most prosperous, and most secure nation ever to have existed.

     Seems like November 2000 was just yesterday, doesn’t it, Gentle Reader?

     The very folks who screamed and raved and ceaselessly agitated to overturn the 2000 presidential election results are unanimous today about how the election is over and done and certified by the states and the Senate, so we should all “move on.” That includes a fair number of pundits considered right-of-center. While some advance arguments that have a little substance, most are simply trying to protect their rice bowls. As our English cousins might say, they’ve “done a corner” in democratism. When We the People demand that the many clear evidences of massive election fraud be properly investigated, it threatens to upset their applecarts. Impugn the integrity of those who turn the electoral wheels? Risk the ire of the regime by questioning its legitimacy? What would they do without their media perches, their access to politicians and Deep State officials, their welcome in the Georgetown cocktail party circuit? Sell used cars?

     The scientism promoted by the acolytes of Faucism plays into this rather nicely. Hey, there was a pandemic in progress! We had to go to voting by mail! There was no alternative! You didn’t want everyone to get sick, did you? Saint Anthony has spoken! Thou shalt not question the High Priest of Covidism!

     Ah, such fun. But it has been used to install a set of Usurpers at the levers of federal power. Removing their claws from those levers will be difficult at best. And until then, we must deal with their depredations, tacitly enabled and assisted by quislings and milquetoasts who call themselves Republicans.

     A people who deserve to be free would not be sitting idle as this transpires. There would already be purges of Boards of Election and state governments to remove and punish the villains who made it possible. They would evict the “go along to get along” Republicans from their seats and replace them with patriots good for more than mouthing self-righteous insincerities into microphones. They would not be satisfied to chant “let’s go Brandon” at football games. Neither would they be kept down by scientistic oppressors wielding an engineered quasi-flu virus as their bludgeon.

     But I’ve said all that before, to no demonstrable effect. Words on a computer screen can do very little. Anyway, I’ve emitted more than my quota. Do as you please, America. Pretend that everything will be back to normal by and by. I’ll shut up now.

     (Where the Hell is that planetoid?)

Oct 30 2021

Pearls of expression.

Liberal/socialist pundits assure us that “unregulated” private-sector activity (although extinct since at least the 1970s) is to blame for every social ill; just a few thousand more rules and a few trillion more dollars for new centralized programs and we’ll be safe from those lingering free-market barbarians.

“Financial False Hope.” By Steve Penfield, The Unz Review, 2/28/21 (emphasis removed).

Oct 29 2021

Preparations

     [Rather than strain a tired brain beyond its current capacity, I’ve decided to recycle a piece from 2017, when the urban rioting we’ve “enjoyed” since then was just coming over the horizon. – FWP]

***

     A great deal of one’s ability to feel secure – i.e., prepared for likely developments rather than threatened by them – depends upon the stability of one’s surroundings, both physically and conceptually. You can be the biggest, toughest, meanest SOB in all of Creation, armed to the teeth, ready, willing and able to fight a grizzly barehanded and utterly confident that you’d prevail, and you’ll still value the sense that things around you won’t change too swiftly or too radically. This is especially the case with persons who have loved ones to support, nurture, and protect.

     Conservatism in politics arises from the sense that things must not be permitted to change rapidly. The political conservative holds, with the two great Thomases (Aquinas and Jefferson), that stability in the law is valuable in and of itself. Even if some change in the law appears necessary or highly desirable, he’s loath to introduce it in a fashion likely to destabilize the settled arrangements of millions. He recognizes both the tendency of men to adapt to their surroundings and the stress and fatigue that rapid adaptation engenders. He’s probably experienced some of it himself.

     The Constitutional design embeds respect for those wisdoms. The bicameral legislature and the requirement for presidential approval of a new law were put in place to slow the rate of change. Even the most dramatic alteration to the legal landscape must pass all three gates. That makes it possible to see a change coming and ready oneself for the eventuality…in theory, at least.

     Changes in the social order aren’t nearly as well buffered. In recent decades there have been a huge number of truly radical alterations in our social customs. This especially concerns the poorly defined thing called tolerance and the efforts of various persons, institutions, and agencies of government to compel it. A considerable amount of linguistic legerdemain is involved, most of it originating from the political Left. The phenomenon reeks of the delusion that alterations in language can effect alterations in reality itself.

     It would be bad enough were the demands for mandatory “tolerance” to pertain to things that are genuinely tolerable. In fact, we’re being required to tolerate increasing amounts and degrees of the intolerable. The most recent demands for “tolerance” include open invasion, outright madness, and undisguised, rampant violence. It’s supremely difficult to prepare for a world in which such things reign.

***

     Early in the 1980s, Herman Kahn, one of the preeminent geniuses of the Twentieth Century, conducted an offhand survey, of persons in decision-making roles in government and the military, about whether nuclear weapons would be used in the foreseeable future. There emerged a strong consensus that they would be. Kahn proposed that that consensus alone was a sufficient reason to study nuclear weapons: what they can do, how they might be used, whether particular situations could justify their use, and what the consequences of various uses would be. As reasonable as Kahn’s statement was, nevertheless it evoked a hurricane of denunciation, some of it from normally sensible persons.

     The typical human mind creates barriers within itself to the consideration of developments it regards as “unthinkable.” (As a riposte to persons who were desperate to define Kahn’s studies as “unthinkable,” he titled one of his most important books Thinking About The Unthinkable.) Yet “unthinkable” has no meaning. Indeed, it’s a one-word contradiction in terms. Its de facto meaning is “I don’t want to think about it.” That response, of course, has no bearing on whether the “unthinkable” will actually occur.

     I’m not about to open a discussion about the use of nuclear weapons, the relevance of international arms-control negotiations and treaties, the quests of gangster-states such as Iran and North Korea for nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and whatnot. I do take an interest in those things – I have for a very long time – but most people shy away from them as “unthinkable.” My conjecture is that the prospect of a war, or a terrorist strike, that employs nukes horrifies them too greatly to engage their reason. They’d rather believe that it can’t happen…and therefore that it won’t.

     Americans have had that very reaction to other developments that have already taken place:

  • The nullification of the Constitutional order.
  • The rise of totalitarian rule by unelected bureaucrats.
  • The dismissal of the principles that once undergirded the law.
  • The emergence of delusions that afflict millions, especially among the young.
  • The invasion of the United States by persons openly hostile to its laws and norms.
  • Demands for the acceptance of deviances that threaten the basis of American society.
  • And of course, demands for legal privileges and “free stuff” by identity-politics groups.

     These things have already set the foundation of the nation quivering. Ordinary Americans, accustomed to the norms and arrangements of earlier times and desperate to believe that they’ll resume and continue, are being challenged to prepare for what might come next. So they narrow their focus; they concentrate grimly on only what’s immediately around them. It’s just one more way of saying that “it can’t happen here.”

     Persons in the preparationist community – “preppers,” for short – do as they do because they’re aware that “it can happen here” – that America is not divinely protected against disasters, especially disasters its people might bring upon themselves. The degree of dedication and the fraction of his resources any particular prepper puts to his preparations are determined principally by his estimate of the speed of transformation and the ugliness of what it portends. His physical arrangements might be impressive, but his mindset is the really important thing. He has taken responsibility for his own well-being and that of his loved ones. He may be wrong, but he’ll be prepared for his estimate of the (survivable) worst the future might bring.

***

“The world’s in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,”
The old father of wild pigs,
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.

[Robinson Jeffers]

     It’s impossible to be adequately prepared for everything. The only possible response to some developments is death. Yet the will to prepare, to brace for a foreseeable eventuality, is among the most valuable of human traits. It’s an essential component of the virtue of fortitude.

     My friend Remus has invested a large amount of his considerable intellect and energy in preparing, in a generalized fashion, for the terminus of our handbasket’s journey. He’s issued several maxims of great value to just about anyone. The one that comes to mind this fine July morning is quite brief:

Stay away from crowds.

     Another friend in Virginia, cognizant of the danger of crowds from his years in law enforcement, has built himself – quite literally; he built it himself — a mountain redoubt: a compound well stocked with all the necessities and defensible against anything short of a national army or an airborne assault. He and Remus might not have prepared for every possible eventuality, but they’ve surveyed the visible developments with open eyes, have assessed what they threaten as credible, and have braced themselves for what seems most likely to come. (Yes, they’re among the many who’ve exhorted me to move off Long Island.) They regard their preparations as the responsible things to do – the measures appropriate to the protection of whom and what they love.

     Disaster might not come. My friends’ preparations might prove unnecessary. (I certainly hope so.) Ultimately, that doesn’t matter. What’s most important is the demonstration of how responsible persons act when their worries begin to surge.

     Not enough Americans would consider them models.

***

     I don’t intend to beat this into the magma. What I want to emphasize is the great value of taking responsibility for your own well-being, and for the well-being of anyone who happens to be under your protection. That virtue has been badly weakened these last few decades. It’s been displaced by the belief that our Big Nanny in Washington, in concert with the lesser nannies in the state capitals, will make sure everything comes out all right.

     They won’t. More to the point, they can’t.
     What you foresee and fear is yours to deal with.
     Your neighbors might assist you; “your government” won’t.
     That’s the way things are, regardless of anyone’s contrary opinion.

     Plan accordingly. And do please stay away from crowds.

***

     UPDATE: To those who believe that “the police will keep order,” I offer this item of evidence to the contrary. Don’t imagine that the police in your district, if faced with the same sort of situation, would prove any more reliable.

Oct 29 2021

The precarious balance.

Americans are in a precarious position with regard to their own government. America has an empire, but the empire hates the Americans – largely using them as tax serfs to fund failed social programs at home and failed wars of choice overseas. If anything, the American people are an obstacle to the aims of the American Empire.

The American citizenry is one thing most of the rest of the world isn’t: A threat to the American empire. The massive reaction by globalist elites to Donald Trump shows just how particularly thin-skinned they are about peasant rebellions at home. And constant attacks on Second Amendment have failed to disarm the American middle class.[1]

Mr. Jacobs discusses the way in which changes in the lethality of military technology affect the power balance between ruler and ruled. Even armed Americans face overwhelmingly superior combat power in the hands of the state. The state has so far resorted to something short of a direct takeover but the betrayal of the constitutional scheme at the hands of the Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court has been ongoing for over a century and satisfactory to all but the most impatient of our domestic enemies. The end result of that is that now centralized political and judicial power is just as lethal as high explosives and super-accurate weaponry . . . and more cost effective, as Jacobs makes clear in his discussion of lockdowns targeting millions of small businesses and unrestrained street thuggery as an explicit threat to what remains of the yeoman class.

Violence against the American population, moreover, is problematic as members of our military may be willing to chase the Taliban in distant mountains but bombarding Omaha will not sit well with the servicemen with family in the target area.

Too, foreign military adventures can still rely on intact manufacturing and distribution systems but unpopular operations against the citizenry will not have that luxury. Rail lines, fiber optic cables, bridges, pipelines, power lines and transformer stations would require enormous manpower to secure. And truck drivers and other key people in the transportation system are unlikely to cooperate with serious attacks on the population. Not to mention the economic fragility of the nation given the gross mismanagement of the treason class. Our impressive organs of repression cannot depend on the robustness that existed in the Depression when some 60% of the population still lived on farms and had a modicum of independence from The Grid.

Even the inherently repressive or unequal feudal system involved a strong possibility of effective government that paid more than lip service to the notion of salus populi. We can discuss when and how that did not obtain then but one thing that is not true now is that our federal government is sincerely concerned for the welfare of the American people. It is not. It’s business is all about the foulest betrayal. And business is very, very good.

We’ll see how this all plays out if or when the clowns decide to make a move and order the military to take the field again a la Gen. Sherman some time ago. The vulnerability of complex systems to foot dragging and creative interruption will be tested.

Notes
[1] “A Distributed Capacity for Violence: A Brief History of Weapons Technology and Political Power.” By Sam Jacobs, Ammo.com, 10/27/21 (?).

Oct 28 2021

The Difference Between Public and Private Actions

Trevor Noah is not COMPLETELY wrong here.

NOAH: “And I’m sorry, guys, but any parent who thinks their 17-year-old school’s assignment is too explicit, they need to check out his browser history, because trust me, he can handle it. It this shows you that the real dangerous ideology in society isn’t conservatism or liberalism. It’s helicopter parenting. An AP is basically a college course. How long will this lady be trying to protect her kid?”

He is pointing out that MANY (certainly not all) 17-year olds are, in fact conversant with what used to be called ‘smutty talk”. Most of them have heard of the words, and have speculated – privately, with trusted friends – about the activities (or, perhaps, less extreme ones) mentioned in the assignments. Among closest friends, this would not be unusual to talk about.

Talk. Not engage in.

From the above linked report

So, even though the numbers include those 18 & 19, STILL less than 1/2. And, that does not break apart those barely adult people who MIGHT be married. I would suspect that the percent of sexually experienced teens increases sharply with age. Which would indicate that LESS than 40% of American teens aged 17 have engaged in sex.

Full report here.

Are SOME of those students checking out porn sites?

DUH!

Does that mean that all, or even most of them are engaging in similar activities?

Probably not. For some, looking will satisfy their curiosity. For some, the videos will lead them to experiment IRL and engage in sex. And for some, the raunchier videos will leave them thinking “Ewwww!”, and vowing to never have sex.

This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. See the graphs at the link – from at least the 1950s onward, premarital sex was not uncommon.

Researchers looking at birth records compared to wedding dates for Colonial America noted that approximately 1/3 of the births were well short of 9 months after the wedding. So, Americans have always been relatively relaxed about sex between the unmarried, as long as the couple got married.

What’s the big deal with marriage?

It represented a commitment to financial responsibility for one’s actions. Even the Puritans treated a ‘rushed’ marriage as a relatively minor incident. The full fury of the community was reserved for those cases where the man in the relationship would not marry the woman when their transgression was discovered, when one of the two was married to another, or when a woman was intimate with more than one person.

A failure to punish such acts would create a breach in community relations and possible financial costs to keep the children from starving. Shaming those who failed to uphold the standards sent a stern message to others who might be doing, or thinking of doing, the same.

Now, did that stop the antics? Of course not. But, it did drive the flouting of established morality underground. Privately, you might be a rake. But, publicly, you went along with the crowd. And, if caught, you married the woman. That action, belated though it was, satisfied the group.

Similarly, young people might discuss the most salacious acts in private. But, publicly, they generally don’t (yes, there are exceptions). The school assignment forces students to talk/write about their sex lives (real or imagined) with classmates, in a public setting. Kids being kids, any discussion will start mildly, and – as others get more outrageous, and get public acclaim for their “honesty”, even those not comfortable with it start going along with the crowd.

Once someone has committed to public talk, they find it hard to reserve their private life to themselves. This is a ‘grooming activity’ – the predator gets a kid to say something, or view some mildly raunchy porn, and it spirals from there.

I am taking the time to spell out what sensible people already know, as it needs to be stated – this is designed to de-sensitize kids about adult subjects, talking about them in public, and doing so in sex-mixed groups. The more evangelistic(!) of the pro-sex teens will drive this the rest of the way. Failure to fully participate will lead to those teens being targeted – as prudes, as liars (because EVERYONE thinks/views/talks about sex), and as people who can be ridiculed and harassed without fear of consequences. Unlike a Muslim or Hindu who will display discomfort, the Christian will be coerced/forced to “lighten up” and join in.

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