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Home » Even though I should know better, I still experience a sense of disbelief about what’s going on

Even though I should know better, I still experience a sense of disbelief about what’s going on

The New Neo Posted on by

Some days I wake up and it takes a while for it to hit me that so many Americans seem to have lost their minds.

Oh, I’m not talking about the small number of people who are doing the burning and rioting. I’m not even talking about governors like Michigan’s Whitmer, who seem to be handling the COVID crisis in ways that combine Draconian edicts for the general population with looseness regarding the vulnerable nursing home population.

What I’m referring to is the fact that half the country seems to be willing to vote for the Democrats to perpetuate this sort of thing, Democrats who advocate (or fail to oppose) the most radical proposals ever to air in America. These voters are either unaware of what’s going on with the party or are okay with it all. They also are willing to vote for someone who is quite literally suffering from dementia, has a history of political corruption, has not answered off-the-cuff questions, may not agree to a debate, and will be a couple of weeks from his 78th birthday come Election Day.

This is almost literally unbelievable.

I’m also referring to the many governors and mayors of blue states and blue cities who are doing little to nothing to stop the destruction of their own cities – a destruction that is almost certain to cause the flight of part of their tax base and to grievously harm their economies in myriad ways. I’m talking about a populace that has become afraid of its shadow in terms of COVID, and willing to put up with almost any restriction on liberty in the name of supposed protection from the illness.

I’m also talking about a racist philosophy that calls itself “anti-racism” and that is doing far more for the revival of racism in this country than any small group of noxious neo-Nazis that remains. The anti-racism movement is also causing enmity among an unknown but probably significant number of relatives and friends who disagree on whether the anti-racism movement is a good development or a destructive one.

I could probably list more things that are hard to believe but are nevertheless the case, but I’ll stop there.

How did we get to this point? That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer: Gramscian march (especially in the field of education), the proliferation of social media and cancel culture, the MSM becoming a pure propaganda machine – we’ve discussed it all before.

The speed with which it has happened puts in mind the famous Hemingway quote about bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Indeed.

Comments

Even though I should know better, I still experience a sense of disbelief about what’s going on — 73 Comments

  1. It is sad to observe how many people continue to accept the complete falsehoods promoted by the MSM. Sheep without independent minds.

  2. The reason they are voting for Democrats is simple – Orange Man Bad. They believe or read or see commentary that Trump is evil, fascist, authoritarian, racist, misogynistic, etc and want him removed by any means necessary.

    Those cities under siege will be rewarded under the new administration and reimbursed for the damages unlike the evil Trump denying Minneapolis its request.

    Likewise, friends will be rewarded contracts like Solyndra to implement he New Green Deal, with probably the same success. Sue and Settle lawsuits will be allowed for protesters and civil suits brought against Trump personally for civil rights violations.

    How people can see this and much more yet still vote for it is unbelievable to me, but I have family members planning to do just this. Some think Trump deserves it.

  4. One of the way points on this trip would be the 1930 Lambeth Conference. A regular meeting of the heads of the Anglican Church. They decided we could separate procreation and recreation in matters of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. The Church teaches, and I believe, that the Creator of the Universe stops what he is doing to give the newly formed person a unique soul, yet formed in his image.
    With recreational sex we have much of what follows, including but limited to desctruction of the family, and all sorts of debauchery, and continued descent into madness. God has indicated His preference, that we turn our hearts to Him. But if we insist on turning away from Him, He will respect our choice. Let us pray it isn’t too late.

  5. eyemore mood….
    They hate Trump, what he stands for, and all the deplorables who support him.

  6. Synchronicity Neo…I was having the same thoughts again this morning. A FB friend posted an NPR article claiming a new record number of deaths in Florida…the usual scare the crap out of everybody again. I countered that this a fake news and that Florida’s death rate has been dropping for over 10 days. One of the usual leftist followers came back and accused me of just making it all up, so I responded with a link directly to the Florida Dept of Health site and asked him if he could read the graph in the lower right hand corner. His response: Well, I don’t believe their data. Of course when the data supports his covid fear he’s all fine. My final response was the there’s no use even talking about this since his mind is totally shut.

    I don’t think it’s just TDS, though that plays in. It’s mass psychosis since the virus showed up. How does one break an entire population of millions of people out of their delusional state???

  7. As for why we are where we are—embroiled in the current insanity that’s been raging throughout the land—the reason is pretty simple:

    The Democrats’ campaign to totally demonize Trump and his supporters—reinforced by the MSCM’s 24/7 echo chamber to make sure that the message is perpetuated constantly—has been a tremendous success.

    Trump IS—has become fundamentally transformed into—Goldstein. QED.

    Liberals ought to be asking themselves questions about this state of affairs, but they won’t.
    One reason they won’t is because they have become absolutely persuaded that this is the obvious TRUTH.
    Another reason they won’t is because they perceive themselves to be on the cutting edge—the arbiters—of morality, ethics, goodness. AND intelligence and perceptiveness. They are the GOOD GUYS, without any possible doubt.

    That they’ve been conned by the 24/7 anti-Trump, criminal prevarication and plotting by Obama, Clinton, the House Democrats and the MSCM is NOT something they’re going to even recognize.

    If they do recognize it (perhaps even partially), they’re not going to admit it.

    And if they do admit it, they will excuse it by insisting that it’s all for the greater good.

    Getting rid of Trump is THE GREATER GOOD.

    And so, in pursuit of THE GREATER GOOD, the country and its laws and its institutions—along with any conception of TRUTH—can be kissed good-bye.

    The GOOD GUYS have spoken.

  8. ‘This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.’

    I know that just about every generation has had some cause to think they were living in the end times; certainly the people who lived through the world wars or the plagues must have wondered if it was the (literal) end of the world. But things are so strange and twisted right now that it’s difficult to see how we could ever really reverse the tides. You can look back and see all the steps to how we got here, but then you turn your eyes forward again and everything is so… odd, unreal, and wrong. Like an animated psychedelic trip sequence.

    I’m not saying to give up–it’s not over till it’s over, and the small battles do matter, just as much as the overarching one does. But I do hope this is causing people to think about eternity, because we don’t have much left down here.

  9. We had a chat with a neighbor we haven’t seen in months. He insisted, and bet ten bucks, on the idea that Sweden has the worst COVID-19 record of any country in the world. Sweden isn’t even the worst in Europe. We showed him data, but he didn’t really buy it, even saying that deaths per million population isn’t a valid measure of success against the virus. And of course the northeast US states compare very unfavorably to Sweden.

  10. Pingback:Rant0matic: The New Neo Types for Me

  12. Sweden isn’t even the worst in Europe.

    Not the worse, and its rates of infection and disease have been progressive. The only suggested caveat, is that their population is largely homogeneous, which normalizes a steady, predictable response, without the spikes introduced through “flattening the curve”, immigration reform, Planned Parent (e.g. cross-contamination), and social contagion.

  13. The authoritative government action with regards to COVID has bothered me more than any other thing in my lifetime. It is so frustrating to have no one in authority willing to say STOP.

    The whole thing is getting close to evil and is at the very least just plain cruel. People’s lives are being destroyed, kids education seriously disrupted and for so many their mental health has been seriously affected. Then you have all the people that get some thrill out of bad news or seem to be rooting for things to be shut down and cancelled. It’s sick.

    But, on the bright side, I have finally found a positive reason for Twitter. There are so many people out there pushing back that I had never heard of before this. Some are data analysts, some are journalists, some are doctors, but they are out there.

    People like Alex Berenson, Justin Hart, Ian Miller, Kyle Lamb, Phil Kerpen, Aaron Ginn, Michael Levitt and some anonymous people like Ethical Skeptic. They are fighting the good fight and hopefully some day reason will take over.

  14. I have a theory that the people that will vote for Biden are voting against Trump. They’re not deluded…they see what’s going on with Biden but they’ll tell you it’s all Republican lies and things taken out of context. How else to justify voting for someone with dementia?

    But they believe that most of the destruction can be attributed to Trump. If only he weren’t president!

    But they’ve made their decision. They’re putting their faith in both the system (Democrats in charge) and whomever the VP candidate is.

  15. Just reading some of the above comments, especially Kate’s, in which she describes her neighbors disbelief of Sweden’s not-bad-at-all corona virus situation, relatively speaking, (the # of deaths in all of Sweden is about 1/4 that of New York CITY !! and they have roughly the same population).
    And given all the media reports (i.e., disinformation) one would never know that Massachusetts (pop. 6.9 million) has more corona virus deaths than does Florida (pop. 20.6 million).
    But you see, MA. is liberal progressive state – so they can do no wrong – and Florida is run by a pro-Trump Republican , so Florida is neo-Nazi state.

    Facts are meaningless when they contradict someone’s deeply held beliefs; that’s all one must understand.
    Some (many?) people do not even want to contemplate that a “sure thing” they were 1000% positive about is totally wrong; they will feel like total idiots and nobody wants to feel like an idiot. (Unless one is so stupid and/or arrogant they do not realize they are idiots; see AOC, Pelosi, senile BiteMe) .

    And the beliefs of many are easily manipulated and informed by the constant drone of propaganda; it’s just much easier to believe what you are constantly told than to bother doing a little homework and learn the facts.

  18. Eeyore, Meislin – all true. But still . . . why has maybe a majority in this country come to see things in such a way?

    I think the softening started after WWII. That ‘greatest generation’ didn’t do the great thing they did to come back and instill a tough love discipline when they had already done the hard work. They had earned the good life – made it easier than they had it – the Great Depression, WWII – and wanted to pass that easier life on to their children. I am one of the recipients, born in ’54.

    My parents both were/are (father dead, Mom 91) Great Depression kids. They passed on a work ethic to us – but we still didn’t have to work half as hard as them. We were solidly middle class back in the 60’s and 70’s which meant an annual camping trip, never in a airplane, never upscale restaurant, etc., and now as an old father with teenagers their life is luxury compared to my quite good life of half a century ago. And that life was pure luxury compared to the 30’s.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that people have been conditioned to think that everything should be possible, be doable, if you just wish it enough. Hope and Change. Every material comfort has come to pass, so why not a perfect society? It sort of follows. We just have to want it bad enough, we’re taught. We don’t need all of the ‘olds’ (like in the Chinese Cultural Revolution) that are seen as hindrances to getting to that special place.

    The 50’s and 60’s saw American society throw off those ‘old’ chains. Some were good to get rid of (overt racism), and others were jettisoned because they got in the way of personal freedom – the right of everyone to be whatever they are or want to be without any pushback from tradition. That spawned the ‘me’ generation.

    We’ve gotten to a point where many think that a society can function without norms or standards. Without them you have some thinking this is important and others thinking that is important and you have a mishmash – and disagreement. People are not on the same page as much as before.

    In a nutshell, I’d say we’ve been gravitating from a tough love upbringing to a soft love upbringing for decades. Soft love, IMO, breeds a mushy brain that doesn’t understand cause and effect very well, and certainly doesn’t know much about real consequences as in the past. And, yes, school is part of it. But school is just another part of this bigger evolution – why wouldn’t school reflect our new softer world?

    I’ve thought for a couple of decades now that it will take getting our collective face shoved in the shit pile a few times before we start to sober up. The change, when it comes – and I don’t see how to avoid it – will necessarily be painful.

  19. Nancy Pelosi’s caving to the Squad and Diane Feinstein’s latest remarks on China ( see Tyler O’neil at PJM yesterday) makes me think that it is just a herd mentality in which people don’t want to risk their status.

  20. I am expecting that people who still do their thinking based on their ‘feelz’, in the Democratic Party model, will dutifully vote for Biden. But I suspect that there is a pronounced demographic shift underway that is moving voters in virtually all demographic groups, toward Trump – and by that, I mean not only Democrat, but Hispanic, Black, and other sub-groups that are nominally captured in the databases.

    You see it leaking out all over social media; you don’t see it even mentioned in the industrial media. People who rely on their brains for a living cannot un-see what is happening, and they likewise cannot deny to themselves that it’s poison – and this is making them speak up on social media.

    Note to Barry Meislin: Just FYI, the charges against the McCloskeys have not been dropped. The State DA has weighed in and said he is moving to have them dismissed, which is not the same thing, and which has not yet been done.

  22. Neo’s description sounds like the plot to a bad political potboiler. But wait, there’s more.

    Okay, I’m a pessimist by nature and experience, so feel free to get out your box of salt. But I don’t really believe that Republican candidates have the ruthlessness required to defeat the combined forces of the Democrats and their handmaidens — you know the usual suspects: news media, social media, administrative state, deep state, academia, etc. Neither do I think that Trump can overcome the non-stop propaganda that started even before he took office.

    Consequently, we’ll soon be looking at a Democratic President, Senate, and House. Their answer to a weakened economy will be the Green New Deal. Shockingly, Democrats really take the Green New Deal seriously. They’re like children playing with fire — children who love the thrill but don’t grasp the danger. The Green New Deal will crash the economy like a rock. The inevitable fiscal response will make it even worse, and there’s no monetary policy that can mitigate that kind of disaster.

    I’m pretty sure that within two years, we’ll have depression-era unemployment levels combined with runaway inflation. The government response will be straight-up socialism. Assuming there’s even the will to do so, this mess will takes decades to correct.

    I console myself with the memory of many bad political predictions. For example, I never thought there was even a small chance that Trump would be elected. Nevertheless, I’m looking to buy gold on a dip. Right now, there are too many people who agree with me, so the price of gold has gone up like a rocket.

    As they say, hope for the best, plan for the worst.

  23. I’ve seen this movie before. I had been an oil geologist who joined the Navy in 1954 rather than be drafted. Ended up as a Naval aviator. By 1967 I was a Navy aviation recruiter in the San Francisco Bay area. Up to that point I had not seen any anti-American activity other than maybe some student protests against the draft. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the U.C. Berkeley campus. We were face to face with students and some faculty who were shouting Communist slogans and expressing deep hatred for us. It was a culture shock. It was like suddenly landing on an alien planet. For the next eight years, as I left the Navy and started flying for an airline, I saw the Communist movement as it worked to foment racial strife and anti-Americanism with the attendant violence, arson, and partisan politics. I feared the system would fail. But somehow we muddled through and a man named Reagan steered us back toward normalcy. Reagan was as hated a s Trump is. He was constantly belittled by the MSM and the Dems. He was a great communicator who got his message out in spite of the MSM. And he had the courage of his convictions. Trump is not Reagan, but he has the courage of his convictions as well. That’s a rare thing in our politicians.

    We’re in worse shape as a country now because so many who have been (mis)-educated by our schools in the last 25 years are now brainwashed by leftist educators. AOC is a case in point. We are teetering, but there are still many good, sensible people in this country. People who build things (electricians, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, engineers, equipment operators, etc.), people who run small businesses, people who farm/ranch/log/mine, people like the commenters here, and more are all going to vote in great numbers in this election because they see the unchecked violence in our cities and they don’t like that it’s not being stood up to by Democrat Mayors and governors. So, I’m concerned, but also hopeful that this country is not yet ready to fail.
    Let not our hearts be troubled……yet.

  24. Kate, on “bet ten bucks, on the idea that Sweden has the worst COVID-19 record”.
    Trouble is, you didn’t pin him down, on a means of defining the (worst) COVID-19 record.
    Let this be a lesson to everyone about today’s Left: give them no more wiggle room, than you’d give to any Mobster.
    Most of them are only about “power now, power tomorrow, power forever”.
    For more on this (in the readers’ Comments on the main essay), see
    https://areoMagazine.com/2020/07/30/possible-Conversations/ .

  27. In my family, those with 4 year degrees or higher are nearly all in the “progressives” camp. Those with 2 year degrees or less are more conservative, some much more.

    Several of the higher degrees became teachers or became government employees. None really went into business.

    Was the education indoctrination or were they inclined towards the “progressive” side and found careers that supported them? We can’t discuss this otherwise the politics will certainly destroy the family.

  28. “How does one break an entire population of millions of people out of their delusional state???” physicsguy

    People cannot be saved… from themselves. The predictable future brutal reality they are courting will break some of those millions out of their delusional state but the majority will eagerly embrace ‘retribution’ against whomever the left scapegoats.

    And because those who seek retribution will be the very ones who enabled the tragedy, they will richly deserve reaping what they’ve sown.

    Another side to the ‘coin’ of willfull denial in the face of reality’s ‘feedback’ is the forfeiture of having a future say in governance. That is a bare minimum of consequence to the destruction they will have wrought. Actions must have proportionate consequence.

  29. Said it before, one way or another. TDSers apply some vile adjective to Trump and believe it reflects literal, objective truth. When asked for facts, or confronted with facts….it’s as if they shift to a different way of knowing which is unreachable by rational processes.
    There are enough people in this country that there can be some of any kind you can name. What shocks me is the raw numbers.
    Or, to put it another way, they have no shame in abandoning one position after another as each is shown to be meaningless without ever weakening in their TDS. So they were wrong about……. No matter. They’re still right. How can a rational human still be proud of…being wrong continually?
    Confirmation bias “proves” something and because it proves it, the thing becomes even more true. And since it’s already true, the next nonsense comes along and is used to confirm because, since the thing is already known to be true, this is one more in the pile of affirmations. But what happens when each event is demonstrably bogus? Nobody’s pushing collusion or obstruction and the response to the virus is at the hands of the governors. Any of Trump’s faults are…bogus. Plenty of resources to NYC which the locals couldn’t figure out how to use. People may fulminate, but they can’t deny the empty hospital ship, Javits Center, Samaritan’s Purse. But they’ll drop back to the next. IMO, this is unprecedented in the numbers. There were always idiots. But the numbers….
    I threw something into the mix. See if it comes out. Trump favors HCL because Putin is heavily invested in it. The beauty of this is that it can’t be disproven and so…must be true. Genius

  30. From my perspective as an American in Australia, Brexit is a little more in the foreground. Remember Brexit did happen first. – demonstrating clearly to me that this ‘disturbance in the force’ is not a function of Trump or anyone else’s personality. In the UK, Teresa May, openly a remainer, got into power and after being unable to ‘get brexit done’ her own party won a crushing victory because it was led by a determined leaver – Boris Johnson. For me as both an American and an Australian the mother country of the Anglosphere just got it sovereignty back. In the US it looks to me, from a distance, that many people want to return to normal and they think Biden is the way back. A relative expressed this quite well – pointing out that all Biden had to do was stay quiet and Trump would defeat himself. I think that is quite possibly true. It is also seems possible that the transparent antics the Democrats of the past 4 years culminating in the current crescendo could collapse suddenly, as Neo points out. As an expatriate, I have no street sense of what is happening under the surface. How many Black voters are disgusted by the unholy alliance of the communists with their local thugs? Is Candice Owens just a single individual like Jonathan Isaac standing up in a sea of fools? I don’t know. How many other voters, I know some, have convinced themselves that Comey, Clapper and Brennan are heros? I don’t know. What I am convinced of is that even if the Democrats get in and try to step back from the where their ideological inertia is taking them they will find it pretty well impossible. The question now is whether they will hit the wall in power or out. The underlying dynamic is that the progression of Obama leading to Trump has vastly accelerated the hunger for ‘hope and change’ which, one way or the other, will bring about the collapse of communism from its own internal contradictions. And yes it is dangerous. If they bring down the US it will be much harder to avoid the collapse of Western Civilisation.

  31. The normal human experience, throughout history, and prehistory, has been ignorance, poverty and oppression. Western civilization, which defeated all these, was a brief exception but in the end our stupidity won, as it always does, and now we will go back to normal. I weep for my grandchildren.

  32. I do not usually quote Rush Limbaugh but the usual charitable description he uses for them is “Low Information Voters”. One of my liberal co-workers who lives in Chicago responded to me when I mentioned Biden’s mental incapacity is something to the effect ” It’s ok, we need to elect Joe and he will have good people around him (essentially former Obama people running things as an unelected committee)”.

  33. They live in their safe little enclaves of Tiburon, and Palos Verdes Estates and such. The draconian rules don’t effect them: they have the money to survive whatever is thrown at them. They get their news from NPR.

    They read people like some chick name Heather Cox Richardson, who lies like a cheap toupee about what’s going on: Barr is hysterical, Portland’s rioters are peaceful protesters, Trump Russia happened, the Steele Dossier is true, Flynn is a traitor and the judge is just serving justice…

    Postmodernity had give the Democrats a life they wouldn’t have without it: truth is relative.

  34. “These voters are either unaware of what’s going on with the party or are okay with it all.”

    The media from which they get their “news” keeps them unaware of all but a few select facts which are falsely contextualized to justify events, and does not tell them how those facts will play out in the future. It’s all a lie. People who fall for it are either stupid, ignorant, evil, or all three.

  35. Kate: “It is sad to observe how many people continue to accept the complete falsehoods promoted by the MSM.”

    If the media reported anything even close to both sides of stories, a lot of things would begin to self-heal.

  36. I had never heard of Heather Cox Richardson, so I looked her up. Latest book: How the South Won the Civil War. Somehow I doubt that my ancestor who died fighting for the Confederacy would get much satisfaction from this news. I guess Richardson is just another academic popularizer exposing the lie that was America from the start.

  37. Mac, it reminds me of something I heard an older Greek gentleman say once, that the Germans actually won World War II in a way. On one level, it’s an obviously absurd statement, and yet the fellow isn’t stupid, so I had to imagine that there was some reason for him to say that. In a certain sense, he wasn’t entirely wrong; Marshall Plan, NATO membership, Wirtschaftswunder, etc. (Oh, and a really nice rail transit system.)

    But how long does a view have to be to be “the long view”? (I mean, take Keynes’ infamous quote, for instance, “In the long run we are all dead”.) On the one hand, Germany in 1946 was of course a hot mess. But looking at more or less the same country (well, minus a few parts here and there – one could pine for Breslau or Königsberg if so inclined) fifty years after that and things looked much improved, even above and beyond any pre-war conditions. At the same time, things had changed somewhat for the victors, too, and not necessarily for the better.

    However, wind the clock ahead some more and it becomes really murky indeed who ultimately ‘won’ or ‘lost’. But this, I think, is surely stretching the conceit of the original assertion too far. Now as to Ms. Richardson, I suppose her intent with that title – maybe – is to point out these kinds of long-term effects. I don’t know, I haven’t read the book. If so, there might be some redeeming value in the hypothesis.

  38. How the South Won the Civil War.

    She’s another professor-hustler trying to get attention by peddling what you’re supposed to find an innovative and counter-intuitive thesis. The tactic gets to be a bore after a while. The introduction has a great deal of blather about political disputes of the last sixty years. She’s a votary of Eric Foner. Pope Benedict once remarked of some complaint he’d received from the usual suspects in the Church that it was so jejune he could have written it himself without waiting to receive it. Somehow, I suspect you won’t learn anything from this woman but talking points. She’s a full professor at Boston College.

  39. “Was the education indoctrination or were they inclined towards the “progressive” side and found careers that supported them? “

    My take:

    The second mostly. You would have to be an idiot not to realize that you were being indoctrinated.

    If they were indoctrinated, then they were idiots. They are not idiots, therefore they were not really indoctrinated [“against their will”]. Modus Tollens LOL

    What they heard, appealed to them. What they sought as a result, was a form-fitting niche which could be used to confirm, what it was that they heard, that had appealed to them; with regard to risk or its avoidance, self esteem and its accrual, and perceived social status and authority.

    Now, one might say that there is a difference between having an innate critical sense and being able to think deeply through problems on the one hand, and an ability (or desire) to remember and recite clerical details and authorities on the other hand. And you might argue that the first is in some ways as important as the second as a marker of intellectual ability. But it is the latter that counts for most degrees.

    You basically explained the breakout yourself: “Several of the higher degrees became teachers or became government employees. None really went into business.”

    It should be mentioned here that whatever you mean by “business”, I would generally mean the production of goods and material wealth, along with certain services. Of course, it is common to refer to anyone who is involved in making, manipulating, or analyzing financial matters as being “in business”, too.

  40. Heather Cox Richardson’s book on ‘the Civil War’ has in it 19 mentions of Barry Goldwater, 13 of Richard Nixon, 4 of Ronald Reagan, 8 of Newt Gingrich, and 11 of Donald Trump. There are 5 to U.S. Grant.

  41. On the one hand, Germany in 1946 was of course a hot mess. But looking at more or less the same country (well, minus a few parts here and there – one could pine for Breslau or Königsberg if so inclined) fifty years after that and things looked much improved,

    Per the Maddison Project, the growth rate in Germany’s per capita product for the period running from 1867 to 1913 and that for the period between 1913 and 1959 were almost precisely the same. The post-war recovery in East and West Germany had wiped the effects of every injury the country had suffered over the previous 32 years.

  42. “were they inclined towards the “progressive” side, and found careers that supported them? “
    Maybe, but other opportunities/ factors could’ve easily much changed that equation, esp. in the volatile economy (and cultural scene) we’ve had in recent decades.
    Besides, the “progressive” side has become so different, from what it was even 15 years ago.
    So, I’ll bet that, 15 years ago, many wouldn’t have imagined the recent transformation of the “progressive” mentality.

  43. Art Deco:

    You present another example of the missaplication of economic statistics:

    “The post-war recovery in East and West Germany had wiped the effects of every injury the country had suffered over the previous 32 years.”

    The destruction brought to Eastern Europe and Western Europe by the German instigation of WWII is omitted. All the dead Poles, Jews, Dutch, French, British, and Germans, not to mention the “Russians.” All the destroyed architecture, art, culture reduced ti comparison of economic output, numbers without context.

  44. You present another example of the missaplication of economic statistics:

    No, I’m talking about one thing and you fancy I should be talking about some other thing.

  45. Besides, the “progressive” side has become so different, from what it was even 15 years ago.

    No, they’re not much different, just less cordial and less scrupulous (I’m guessing due to cohort effects). In 2005, we might refer to ‘the nutroots’ and speak of the dynamic between the conventional left (the Sulzbergers and Grahams and the bulk of the Congressional caucus) and the Kos kooks. Now the Sulzbergers and the Bezos crew have decided it’s their business model to occupy the cultural space which was once occupied by Kos et al. The fogeys like Pelosi do not have any systematic policy disputes with The Squad, just disagreements over tactics.

    Keep in mind what by all appearances animates street-level Democrats. Some of them are sentimentalists motivated in a haphazard way by the pain in the world (in my experience, these types tend to be women from a variety of social strata and in late middle age or older). Most of them in the civic sphere are the sum of their antagonisms, their resentments, and their conceits. Policy discussion is instrumental to issuing animadversions about or concocting means to injure the enemy.

    We used to speak of the three legged-stool. While you have people with a variety of interests and priorities on the right, as we speak all differences are submerged to pursue the priority object: to be able to enjoy conventional life without being harassed by the karenwaffe. They’re everywhere and they never sleep: Democratic pols, the media, the academy, the school apparat (and, very often, the teachers), the HR office, the Millennial cluster B personality disorder set, and the odious lawyers these people hire (commonly colluding with those on the bench).

  46. Art Deco:

    You are using economic data from two vastly different historical periods to make the point that you can cite data. An apple is compared fo an orange, see they very similar, they have the same diameter. Same measurement, worthless conclusion.

  47. You are using economic data from two vastly different historical periods to make the point that you can cite data.

    No, I’m pointing out that growth in production per capita in those two periods occurred at the same rate, net. It was to point out that by 1959, production per capita had returned to a long-term trend line. The point of departure was a remark by ‘Philip Sells’. It’s quoted there above in italics.

  48. Deco, on “they’re not much different”,
    Yes they are, esp. when compared to what they opposed then, vs. what they oppose now.
    Back then, Conservatism Inc. was, if anything, more suspect than the Dem establishment, and the “nutroots” had such titans as Greenwald and Taibbi, both of whom have since turned ferociously against so much of today’s Left, for the very best of reasons.
    The GOP brass have been *dragged* into sanity by the greatest populist since TR (D. Trump), while the Dem brass have shown us (largely thanx to *SparkleFarts*) the most spectacular intellectual/ moral collapse in the history of modern democratic governance.
    I’ll grant that, them becoming less cordial and less scrupulous, may’ve owed partly to cohort effects, but the *speed* of this collapse needed a powerful spur, and got that from SparkleFarts.

    As to what animates street-level Democrats, much of it once was legit union distrust of the Big Boys, and legit doubts about the Patriot Act and overseas wars.
    Only when Dem brass clearly threw Labor under the bus, could a Trump draw (what had been) Labor, and those who distrust the Patriot Act (Deep State) and overseas wars, into the GOP.
    Via such events is how you get Greenwald & Dersh now only on Fox, not CNN or MSNBC.

  49. Back then, Conservatism Inc. was, if anything, more suspect than the Dem establishment,

    ????

    and the “nutroots” had such titans as Greenwald and Taibbi, both of whom have since turned ferociously against so much of today’s Left, for the very best of reasons.

    Greenwald, arguably. Taibbi was known at the time as a bad boy foreign correspondent, critical of the establishment media because they had misreported events in Russia badly. I do not recall he was associated with Kos or other sites.

    One thing we’ve discovered in the intervening years is that Greenwald and Taibbi had some fixed standards which animated their commentary. Most gliberals and leftoids have improvisations which provide justifications for whatever the going line is in the Democratic Party.

  50. Re: how you go bankrupt: thank you for giving the full reference. The meaning is so sensible that it’s easy to gloss over the source.

  51. I see people (leftists in this case) who are clinging dogmatically to an older way of looking at the world, which is threatened by new realities.

    Today’s leftists are the Bull Connors, Lester Maddoxes and George Wallaces of the early 1960s. Antifa is today’s Ku Klux Klan. Their response is beyond debate — anger, violence and supremacism.

    I’ve known people in the KKK and liked them. I know people on the left and like them too. I understand how they see the world as they do.

    I have no idea how to talk to either group about what I consider their irrationality.

  52. I’m talking about a populace that has become afraid of its shadow in terms of COVID
    This is the part that is stunning to me. But, it goes back to observations about pre-Hitler Germany….
    I was often asked over the years “How could they have let him come to power?” During the 0bama administration I began answering “You are ‘they’.”
    The fear. The perceived need for a hero leader to pull them out of the morass. It took decades of indoctrination to tear down the American ethos enough that a well-propagandized crisis could produce this response.

    doing far more for the revival of racism in this country
    Well, that’s kinda the point. Destruction is their end. They believe in the midst of it they will stride like Colossus and build their utopia. Because they’re idiots who think history is what it is because we hadn’t evolved enough or “they just didn’t do it right.” Fools.

  53. There’s not a great deal of talk here about what to do if the Left actually wins on November 3 and they install a puppet Biden regime in the White House. Many of the comments center around accepting the inevitable while hoping the commenters can ride out the storm, or they simply seem to tearfully kiss the USA goodbye as a free nation. Well, you don’t have to submit hoping that you don’t get sent to the slaughterhouse first. What’s more, you may not need much violence to successfully resist the ever more evil Left. Here’s what may work.

    https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/adding-strategic-nonviolence-unconventional-warfare-doctrine

    And one more way to fight back. The two links should be viewed as a single package. Stop hand wringing and start thinking.

    https://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Nations-Global-Informal-Economy-ebook/dp/B004KPM1DA/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Stealth+of+Nations&qid=1596429052&s=books&sr=1-1

  54. SciVo: I first read “The Sun Also Rises” (Hemingway) when I was 23. I still consider it essential reading for the 20th C.

    Funny. Deep. Eminently quotable. In some ways Hemingway was the Tom Wolfe of his era.

    Sadly anti-Semitic like the Zeitgeist then, but what are you going to do.

  55. I was often asked over the years “How could they have let him come to power?” During the 0bama administration I began answering “You are ‘they’.”
    The fear. The perceived need for a hero leader to pull them out of the morass. It took decades of indoctrination to tear down the American ethos enough that a well-propagandized crisis could produce this response.

    The German public over the period running from 1914 to 1933 had received three separate blows far more injurious to mundane life than anything we experienced during the period running from 2000 to 2008. It was only during the third blow that the totalitarian parties displaced the constitutionalist parties to such an extent that the latter could no longer govern. Through dumb luck or passable judgment, Hitler selected Hjalmar Schacht for consequential positions in his government. The government was vicious, but it also made intelligent choices in policy and tactics which left Germany in good form by the end of 1938. The problem was that it was Hitler who made those choices, and he actually believed his own rubbish about lebensraum and the Jews. Somebody sensible (Salazar, Franco, Schuschnigg) would have kept the army in reserve and made use of a series of carrots and sticks to buffalo the various players (Lithuania, Poland, and Italy) into relinquishing Germanophone territory to Germany and in co-operating with various German initiatives contra Britain, France, and Soviet Russia.

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  58. What I find puzzling is all of the municipal, county, and even state officials who have very visibly refused to “do their duty,” who have very visibly refused to uphold the law, and to protect the citizens, the property, and the jurisdictions they swore that they would protect.

    Do they expect that those who they left defenseless or even actively threw to the wolves—citizens who were beaten, whose family members might even have been permanently crippled or killed, whose businesses and livelihoods were destroyed–will forget, and more importantly forgive?

    It has always been said that Americans—and American politicians–were short term thinkers, people who focused on the immediate future, and not on the long term, and it’s consequences.

    But is it possible that these Leftist officials don’t see that—if their side looses, and there is no guarantee that their side will win—the citizens they abandoned will form a howling mob that will come after them?

    What about all those citizens—part of the tax base—who will flee these cities and states– and, if they possibly can, many will, indeed, flee.

    Apparently these Leftist officials/politicians just don’t care.

    Do these officials think “well, by the time these citizens I’ve betrayed are in a position to come for me, I’ll be out of office and well away from here, “the scene of the crime,” so, I will be able to avoid payback?”

    Is that what these officials think?

    Or are we supposing—as the evidence seems to indicate–that despite the facade they present to get elected to office, these politicians have no guiding moral code or compass at all except expediency—in fact, are amoral, and aren’t even thinking at all, but are lemmings and reacting—holding their finger up to the wind, and going in whichever direction that wind happens to be blowing in that instant, with no thought of consequences further down the line?

  59. They would rather vote for a candidate who really did grab women by the pussy that one who only talked about it.

    And I don’t mean Biden, either.

  60. “…puzzling…”

    The only way I can parse this is that they believe that this is the way they will get rid of POTUS45.

    And that NOTHING ELSES MATTERS.

    And/or they believe it is excellent politics—that they are supported by most if not all “non-deplorable” Americans such that it CAN ONLY BE a winning strategy (which will enable the above).

    And/or they believe it doesn’t matter a whit because they have the election in the bag—whether because
    – the MSCM together will be spinning furiously (nothing new there, but they’ll certainly try to take it to the next level), and/or
    – the major search engines and social media giants will do their utmost to cripple Trump’s campaign or block or distort any information emanating from it, and/or
    – Pelosi is absolutely sure that mail-in-balloting WILL HAVE TO BE implemented in November, and/or
    – Pelosi (backed by her pathetic posse) has another “master stroke” (aka definitive trick) up her sleeve that will tie up Trump so effectively—or topple him—that he will be prevented from even getting to the finish line.
    – Other?

    Remember: everything (as in EVERYTHING!) is Trump’s fault. This is the Democratic Party position. And the Democratic Party—in all their perceptiveness and righteousness (and sheer hatred)—is absolutely certain that most Americans agree with them.

    Ergo, how could anyone in their right mind vote for Trump??

    There is a certain logic to it.

    The logic of the psychopath.

  61. This is what I noticed when I was in university thinking of pursuing a doctorate to be an academic myself. The Left, or academia, will study what they think is quite ridiculous or some left-leaning topic, especially in fields like sociology, so the Religious Right, conservatives and collective behavior (in their minds collective behavior stem from right-wing thinking) and feminism. They study things like (the lack of) men’s participation in feminist movements and the idea of masculinity (either eschewing the traditional sense of masculinity or pointing to ‘toxic’ masculinity). On a personal page of a sociology professor her masthead had “feminist” in big black letters. That’s a part of who she is. She can openly proclaim that. An atheist professor can openly and aggressively mock Christians, not just once, but repeatedly. He too has a personal page in which he does this. This comes from a single sociology department within my state. I suppose this is an example of either the department covering their bases in terms of specialities (that are supported by fellow sociologists) and/or their attempt to diversify intellectual thought to build and maintain a robust faculty. I’m gonna bank on the former.

    So what’s the point? I wonder how both of these academics view the current COVID and BLM chaos. I’ll project myself and say they support the draconian restrictions, the looting, vandalism, property destruction, Cancel Culture, the kneeling, the “must-have-a-dialogue” push. There’s nothing toxic about it, but only if we count the pushback. Only rubes and ignorant people do that. There’s nothing collective about it because how can you not support ‘black lives’ (if the supposed minority support it we must listen; they are absolutely correct) and distrust Science (if MDs, PhDs and working healthcare professionals support it then you should too – without question) ?

    It’s the same old “we’re smart; you’re dumb” (formally educated, advanced degree holders vs non-formally educated), “we’re sophisticated; you’re a backwater hick” (city & ‘progressive’ suburbs vs non-progressive suburbs & rural/small town),”we’re on the right side of history; you’re a bigot who will lose” (modern day social justice vs the “ignorant”). All of this has been pronounced in one way or another since mid-March.

  63. Some days I wake up and it takes a while for it to hit me that so many Americans seem to have lost their minds.

    Welcome to Ymar’s world.

    I woke up in 2007 and thought patriots were insane to let the traitors get away with all this stuff. In truth, their sanity meant I was the insane one. And of course, if they were insane, it made me sane in comparison. That’s why people here that thought or felt I was insane, I had a rather secret laugh about.

    I’m also referring to the many governors and mayors of blue states and blue cities who are doing little to nothing to stop the destruction of their own cities – a destruction that is almost certain to cause the flight of part of their tax base and to grievously harm their economies in myriad ways. I’m talking about a populace that has become afraid of its shadow in terms of COVID, and willing to put up with almost any restriction on liberty in the name of supposed protection from the illness.

    They have been ordered to deploy all assets. All the reserve power of the Leftist alliance and Deep State is being engaged. And as I warned you and others like GB here, their strategic power reserves are far deeper and powerful than you all could imagine.

    They have to pull the trigger now, in 2020, because too many people are entering Ymar’s world. I will personally throw your slave masters into the Great Lake of Fire. And I will enjoy it, having waited patiently all this time, an eternity really, for the Godhead to authorize the Hammer Fall.

  64. With its mastery of the black arts of propaganda, the media is not only an enemy of the people, it is the MOST POWERFUL enemy we face!

    Unless the DOJ can somehow prosecute the media for what it has done in supporting the plot to destroy America, I don’t know that it matters how many others go to jail – the media seems to have the uncanny ability to create useful idiot criminals at a rate faster than we could possibly throw them in jail!

  65. eeyore mood:
    “In my family, those with 4 year degrees or higher are nearly all in the “progressives” camp. Those with 2 year degrees or less are more conservative, some much more.”

    I suspect that you don’t have any 4 year STEM degrees in that mix, excepting software types. I think it has to do with the fact that STEM work requires that your manipulation of abstractions must eventually return to the real world. Your calculation of the stress on that beam will demonstrate its validity when the bridge holds… or collapses. Either your calculation of the resistor divider is correct and accounts for tolerances, or the temperature reads wrong, and $100k worth of the wrong fraction is distilled. Most software’s connection to reality is mediated by the surface of a screen, so they’re the exception.

    Fields that deal in abstractions with little connection to reality, or where their influences have little negative feedback tend to assign too much weight to a fancy turn of phrase,which leaves them vulnerable to the snake-oil of the left.

    The weasels are working at screwing up STEM, or at least gluing a veneer of leftism over it with mechanisms like “Engineering Education”, which slides the low-rigor “education” curricula grads into engineering administration, where they can implement leftist wet-dreams, like relaxed grading for POCs.

  66. had received three separate blows far more injurious to mundane life than anything we experienced during the period running from 2000 to 2008
    Which is why the panic-mongering among the media and political classes.
    But, 0bama’s injury was not to mundane life but to the political one. It was his admin that took a 20lb sledgehammer to parts of our Constitutional republic where previous progressives had already chipped away with a hammer.

    And, quite simply, the lack of real pushback from so much of the electorate allowed it, encouraged it, and led to the craziness we’ve seen from the ‘left’ since Trump’s election.

  67. You took what I’ve been thinking and wrote it up with nice words and stuff, so thanks! — it’s nice to read things like this and realize there are kindred spirits that haven’t gone completely mad.

    My worry is that most people DO think this is crazy, but the Left has achieved a fear factor that will prevent decent people from saying or doing anything for fear of losing their job or worse (being swatted by antifa, etc).

    And, now the Left is blatantly rigging elections, by literally spying on political opponents and getting caught red-handed (nobody seems to care about that, anymore, and you even left it off your summation, but that is seriously crazy stuff!) and forcing vote-by-mail laws last minute with obvious fraud built in (you can literally vote on behalf of someone else in Nevada if they’re elderly or disabled).

    I always wondered how an entire country, like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or Red China, could be put under the thumbs of such evil and incompetent people, when the vast majority opposed everything that was happening. I’m afraid I’m seeing it happen before my eyes, here.

    Thank God for the 2nd Amendment, at least.

  68. Deco, on “Greenwald and Taibbi had some fixed standards”.
    Which makes them weather-vanes of sorts.
    What they write carries weight with smart swing players.

    And, you’re right about Schacht.
    I’ve been told that his scrip money setup for heavy industry was similar to Stalin’s, but I know of no English-language literature which really gets into this.
    Do you know of any?

  69. OK, Michael G., you may not need much violence to successfully resist tyranny, but note, it took Gandhi over *26 years* to get the Brits out of India, this after they were quite weakened, by Hitler having them on the ropes in WWII.
    If the Dem gov’t is that weakened by foreign pressure, it’ll be a grim situation, for all of us who aren’t used to the India level of privation.

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  72. Lies and “gas lighting” are everywhere.

    Talk about not believing.

    You might have heard the news about and seen the incredible videos of the enormous explosion which took place today at the seaport in Beirut, an explosion so large and powerful that it momentarily generated a huge mushroom cloud, then an overpressure wavefront–shattering windows all over the city, overturning and crushing cars, starting numerous fires, injuring hundreds or more, and killing an as yet undetermined number of people.

    Well, the early explanation for the source of this massive, deadly explosion was reported to be the explosion of a warehouse full of “fireworks” that were stored in the port area.

    Fortunately, someone remembered that Benjamin Netanyahu had made a speech at the UN in September of 2018—complete with aerial photos of the port, pinpointing certain buildings there—and warning of the rockets/munitions that Hezbollah was manufacturing/had stored at the very locations at that port which look like they might have been the site where today’s monstrous explosions at the port in Beirut took place.*

    See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/flashback-netanyahu-warned-united-nations-iranian-missile-stockpiles-beirut-back-2018-video/

  73. P.S.–Here is another possibility, some 2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate, which according to the linked comment and article, was likely stored since 2013 in a warehouse at the port.

    Why the hell would you just let a chemical that had a very real potential to catastrophically explode just sit there for years in a warehouse–apparently forgotten–at your port, and not move it somewhere safer, get rid of it as soon as possible?

    Perhaps this huge explosion was the combination of both this Ammonium Nitrate and the reported Hezbollah munitions that were reportedly located in the same area exploding at the same time–one setting off the other.

    See https://www.redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/08/04/abandoned-shipment-of-ammonium-nitrate-behind-the-explosion-in-beirut-today/

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