Put it this way
If we’re not in it now, we are hurtling towards the abyss. They’ve captured the government, the courts, the media, and most crucially the schools, where all of this metastasized from so many decades ago. My only consolation is that there are at a minimum over 74 million people who did not vote for this and perhaps twice that number not down with “the struggle” so to speak. Some have stated that the only way to really fight back is to run for office, get involved with school boards and community boards, enter the teaching profession, etc. etc. The problem is, with the Enemy in control of virtually everything, do you think they will now allow voices of dissent within the institutions that took them nearly a century to take over to wrest control away from them?
So, the question remains, how best to organize and focus the potential energy of tens of millions of us into a force to be reckoned with. Actually, the question is, given what I just stated, can it be focused at all into a force to be reckoned with?
I plan to say more later today, but for now I’ll just keep it to this: I expected this result and dreaded it, but it’s still very very hard to see it come to pass. I can sum up the speed of the changes this way: twelve scant years ago in 2008, Obama felt he had to distance himself from Reverend Wright in order to win. This year, a Reverend Wright clone has been elected to the Senate from the previously-red state of Georgia. What was once unacceptably radical has been nearly mainstreamed.
Prior to the Georgia debacle, the Kenosha police officer was vindicated.
The immediate fight concerns the further vindication of the police in Minneapolis and Atlanta, as well as a not guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse.
There’s nothing more that I can see that any individual can now do. They have won. Except for a violent revolution, they will now consolidate and begin intimidating the population.
I never expected to experience the demise of the US, but now looking back on the history during my lifetime, I should have seen it coming. The sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation, the Boomers of which I’m a part, are to blame for all of this. That generation got the Marxist, socialist, PC, postmodern balls all rolling. We destroyed the education of our own children and now those children are going to destroy the country; aided by aging Boomer radicals. My mother before she died at age 94 two years ago, told me that her generation made a huge mistake. They lived through the Depression, they won the War, and the mistake was to swear their children would never know such horrors. As such, she said, they raised a generation of children who were spoiled and never accepted that freedom comes with a cost. We are the living embodiment of the warning from Franklin. Our parents gave us security, and as a result, we lost liberty. RIP USA.
Well said, physicsguy. God help us.
“They’ve captured the government, the courts, the media, and most crucially the schools”
I disagree.
Most crucially the media. Yes, schools are important but most crucially … the media
These election results and last November’s have been unfortunately easy for me to weather because I knew it was over when Obama won re-election. That was the day I understood the current electorate does not care about the Constitution or this country, as structured on paper. Trump was a strange, completely unexpected speed bump and he is sui generis; a billionaire real estate developer and TV star. His election had as much to do with his being famous as it did with any policy positions he may have campaigned on.
When the results showed Obama won re-election I turned to my wife, who was equally distraught, and said, “Well, it looks like our country wants to be France. It will be alright. You and I like visiting France.” I reduced my news consumption from hours a day to minutes, and (after a few weeks of sadness) began focusing on what I could do with what small influence I have in my small corner of the planet; helping my kids, growing my investments, helping others, physical labor, practicing music, studying, learning, exercising…
I know this is very disappointing. It is sad to know evil people combined with dumb people are squandering the gift the Founding Fathers granted us and many, many people will be hurt, are being hurt, by their actions. I know that I am personally a creator; my soul needs to be focused and engaged on work that creates, aids, develops, improves. I think most of us are the same, whether we understand it, or not. Watching something good (that good people worked to build) be destroyed and dismantled by greedy, envious people makes me despondent, and limits my ability to be productive.
Be useful. Be productive. Watch for opportunities and exploit them. But do not let them consume your time and soul watching their destructive actions. Do not let them bring you down. Do not let them discourage you from doing good things; being creative and good.
It’s a political system. That’s all it is. Even in the worst political systems; violent tyranny, individuals have found ways to help their fellow humans, to do good works. Regardless of what happened in Georgia right now, today, there is someone you can help. A friend who needs a compassionate ear. A neighbor who can’t get to the store to buy groceries. A kid who needs tutoring.
And you need help. Feed your mind, your soul, your body. Read biographies of great men and women. Read classic literature. Take a painting class. Go for a hike in the fresh, January air.
And go Galt. With a smile on your face. Don’t give them your time or your money. Don’t pay for their products, or use them.
What’s better use of your entertainment dollars? Binge watching a Netflix series (Netflix, a company that funds the Obamas and produces border-line porn) or reading the works of Charles Dickens? Which will make you feel better? Which is better for your mind and soul? And don’t buy the Dickens from Amazon. Find an independent book seller and order it directly from him or her.
And help others learn what merchants are on the side of liberty and freedom and encourage them to buy from those merchants.
The sadness today is understandable. It is a sad thing. But be comforted in knowing we are not alone. For most of human existence good people have struggled to do good within poor political systems. This is bad. It is likely to get worse. But amazing people before us did incredible things under much more difficult circumstances. The most important thing now is to not let them trap you into surrendering your natural, creative gifts.
Those words are still true today. They were true yesterday. They will be true tomorrow and they were true thousands of years before Jefferson put them on parchment. No politician can alter the truth. Be of good cheer that you know the truth and live your life accordingly; as an example to others of the power that comes from knowing the truth.
Rufus, very well said. Agree 100%
Your website link (http://www.threedonia.com/) seems to go nowhere. Please tell me, is this correct? (threedonia.com is on archive.org … reading)
Forgive me a diversion, but I think this is an apt occasion to mention the “Parable of the Talents.” Jesus was an incredible philosopher and often used narrative tales as lessons of concepts he wanted others to comprehend. I have heard most of them many times, thought about some a great deal and there are still several I do not understand at all. The Parable of the Talents is one of two that I thought were incorrect, actually the wrong advice, until I grew more experienced and could see them with a more mature understanding. I did not begin to “see the light,” as it were, with this parable until I was in my 50s. In the past several years I have received great inspiration from it, and my life, now, is very different because of it.
I think it fits with today’s events well. Most of you likely already know it, but I’ll print the version from Matthew, below, as a reference.
The first key thing to know is that “talents” were actual coins 2,000 years ago, in the Roman Empire. Although the word’s broader meaning today, also fits nicely with the moral, hearers of the parable when it was spoken would have been thinking of coins, and literal, financial investment. My reason for thinking it was wrong, even sort-of insane, are likely obvious. The third servant seems loyal. Seems to do what his master asked. Acts out of obedience and service. Yet he is; cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! It not only seems cruel. It seems like he is punished for doing what was right. It may seem today like the master has gone away. We are alone and seeds are being scattered on fallow ground (think of a restaurant owner who devoted her adult life to building her business, only to lose it last year). Some are gathering where no seed was sown (think of our congress and what they are doing with our treasury). What will you do with your talents during this time?
Matthew 25:14-30 The Parable of the Talents
physicsguy,
I agree with your mother. There are obviously many great Baby Boomers who have done great things (some even write here, on this blog), but there were/are many in that generation whose selfishness and narcissism have gone a long way towards eliminating what your mother’s generation worked so hard to construct.
AppleBetty,
It’s a long story. Short version: Japanese hackers destroyed the site. I know that sounds odd, I don’t know why it was done either, but that’s the truth.
At one point, 10 – 15 years ago, it was a rather popular site with hundreds of thousands of followers that I maintained with one, main collaborator and a few other correspondents. We probably averaged 5 – 10 posts a day on current events. I walked away (amicably) about 3 years before the hackers got to it. Coincidentally, it was after Obama won re-election. I had decided I had spent enough of the prior years on writing about politics and my focus was best spent elsewhere.
There were some posts there I was quite proud of, but it’s all gone now. It’s a weird thing to see thousands of pages of written text disappear in the blink of an eye. Hopefully we did some good at a time when we were needed.
When the Republican party got wiped out following the Johnson/Goldwater election, we libertarian/conservatives were cast into the wilderness. I took solace in the fact that I would concentrate on my professional growth and my hobbies, and hope that the politically inclined who supported Goldwater would form the base of a new political movement. It took a while, but they produced Reagan. Let’s hope history repeats itself.
Barry Dunham once gaffed about the “57 states”. Let’s see: DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, Mariannas, American Samoa, American Virgin Islands. One to go. Nominations are open.
If you want to understand what’s happening in America, you need to answer this question:
Why did Mitch McConnell prevent the American people from getting $2,000 COVID relief checks?
And before anyone starts, that is EXACTLY what happened. Instead of allowing the Senate to vote on a standalone relief proposal that might have passed, McConnell linked the $2,000 checks to other proposals that couldn’t pass. He did that. Not Pelosi or Schumer or Biden or anyone else. But why, in the midst of a government-caused economic crisis and with special elections pending to decide control of the U.S. Senate, did McConnell decide denying Americans more money was the hill he wanted to die on?
It’s not because McConnell cares about the deficit. He doesn’t. He didn’t care about it under George W. Bush. He didn’t care about it under Obama. He didn’t care about the deficit under Trump.
Mitch McConnell felt passionately about denying help to Americans losing their job or their home or their business because Mitch McConnell is a whore who only cares about pleasing his clients, rich people and big business. McConnell doesn’t care about immigration or abortion or China or trade or the environment or human rights or ANYTHING unless it affects rich people and big business.
But, like many whores, Mitch McConnell wants to pretend he’s something else. So every so often, McConnell trots out this faux-libertarian small government BS. He never does it when rich people or big business are involved, but when it just involves screwing the average America to make himself feel like something other than a whore, McConnell suddenly becomes a combination of Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul.
That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in. It’s because the GOP leadership and the conservative intellectual class is dominated by whores who only care about servicing their clients. The Democrat leadership and the liberal intellectual class are also dominated by whores who only care about servicing the same clients, rich people and big business, but they figured out a combination of faux-socialism, virtue-signaling, and identity politics works a lot better than McConnell’s faux-libertarianism.
The solution, at least for Neo and most of the commenters around here, is that the Republican party and the conservative political movement needs to be replaced or reformed. That’s a big and difficult job but nothing can change unless that happens and the first step is not letting yourself be scared into voting because one kind of whore tells you the other kind of whore is worse.
Mike
MBunge,
You’re right about Mitch and most Republicans, but I think your solution is misguided. Your dream is a newerer, betterer, more improveder political party will convince Lucy to hold that football still and this time Charlie will finally kick it through the uprights.
No offense, but the founding fathers were smarter than that. Any consolidation of power will try to consolidate more power. It’s the political equivalent of the force of gravity; mass attracts more mass, which leads to even greater attraction.
The only solution is to fight for local power and control; as local as possible. State education systems need to fight to retain power from the Department of Education. School districts need to fight to retain power from their state’s system. Schools need to fight to retain power from their district. The same needs to be done with every political institution in this nation.
Americans must always keep in mind that we vote every single day with our dollars and that is typically the most impactful vote we cast.
It’s also a vote that cannot be stolen. If you buy a Coke rather than a Pepsi, or vice versa, the other company cannot steal your decision.
When you buy from Amazon you are voting for more central purchasing and less local business.
When you buy from McDonalds or Applebees you are voting for more national franchises and fewer local restaurants.
Look, you may prefer Big Macs and Applebee’s… (well, whatever it is Applebee’s serves?), but you must also understand by buying from huge, international corporations, you are voting for the Department of Education over your local school board. Eating at your local diner allows the owners to support their family and feed your neighbors. And most of the owners’ profits will stay in your community and strengthen it. Eating at McDonald’s sends the profits to Oakbrook Illinois where they are used to support communist China (where they have operations).
It may sound crazy that anything could topple McDonalds, or Amazon, or Coke, or Pepsi, but imagine telling an American living in 1960 that Sears and Roebuck would cease to exist in the next century.
If you’re feeding the Leviathan don’t be surprised when the Leviathan turns to devour you.
Pay attention to where you cast your daily, dollar (talent) ballots.
“I reduced my news consumption from hours a day to minutes, and (after a few weeks of sadness) began focusing on what I could do with what small influence I have in my small corner of the planet;” Rufus T. Firefly post Obama 2nd win.
I did the same thing. Thanks to Neo and Ace I stay apprised but at a level I can withstand. In today’s gospel reading, Christ walking on the water says, “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid.” I intend to obey Him to the best of my ability.
ORufus and physicsguy both make good points about the seeds of this problem going way back in time, and being as much about the long slow march of hedonism or hedonistic anthropological presuppositions, and entitlements spreading through the culture, as classical Marxism.
But of course, those who have been referring for years to cultural Marxism, have been saying much, if not exactly the same thing.
Apart from the Covid related hysteria, and the damage caused by the overreaction, baseline issues, as traditionally measured in this country have been good and improving over the last 4 years.
But as we have all witnessed, and to my initial surprise frankly, none of that has mattered to a highly emotional and culturally woke population, who seem to have found the means to float free above, or slide comfortably below, traditional economic and family concerns.
It is not that the ideological trend has been hard to intellectually understand. And to predict the near mechanical outcome that likely ensues when large numbers of institution ‘dwelling’ and dependent people decide that their interests and tastes as a class shall reign above all other political or human considerations and rights, is no real challenge. It has just been hard to see “fellow” Americans so blithely and even joyfully, walk into the portals of a morally bankrupt, intellectually vapid, but ego stroking totalitarian hell.
It is as if you have been sitting in a pew next to fellow congregants for years, only to find out one morning that they were just going through the motions, and have seemingly just now decided that a Satanic cult involving animal sacrifice is more satisfying to their real sensibilities and suited to their tastes and emotional dispositions. It’s hard to process. “Have they always been like this? How could I not have noticed? Was there some trait or clue in their behavior or expressions that I did not notice or preferred to ignore for the sake of convenience? …. ”
It has always been easy for us to abstractly do the math, or to construct the relevant chain of logical implications as a kind of not so hypothetical, hypothetical. It was just hard to see it applying to the population of the United States as thoroughly as we naturally expect it would to any other land mass occupied by the near mindless, morally labile, emotion driven monkey troop and herd animal versions of humanity.
But given the fact that so many of us have known family or friends who demonstrated and made quite clear that their committment to the new collective reward, responsibility, and guilt, spirit of the age [ actually the very old] was complete and could not even be discussed, it too, should have been no surprise whatever.
“I never knew you”, takes on so many layers of meaning here that it is difficult to count them all.
On the other hand maybe we knew them as they were all along; and just found it easier to pretend not to.
“Pay attention to where you cast your daily, dollar (talent) ballots.” Rufus T. Firefly
I do. And found it so ironic that August 2019 I rid my residence of everything produced in China that was applied to the body or ingested. January 2020 I became aware of the fact that many of our medications were sourced and produced in China. And then we got the virus and were affected in a BIG WAY owing to the fear unleashed, not the virus itself. China is involved in everything we decry as people that desire to see our Republic stand and recover. It will take a miracle.
Since the November debacle I also have stayed away from news using Neo and Ace for a glimpse of the mess we are in. I spoke to my 48 year old son yesterday talking about the Georgia races and he scolded me in a nice way for even being concerned about it since we don’t live in Georgia and did not have to cast a vote. Once the dust settles I think the Democrats will own the whole damn thing and it might be interesting to watch them start chewing each other up when they don’t have the GOP to blame. It’s probably wishful thinking but I hope they end up with a big inter-tribal, divisive mess. And, may our Lord have mercy on our souls.
What is there to live for if you don’t have a family and can’t see friends?
There is no chance that these lockdowns will end anytime in decades. We will never again get to see a sporting event in a full stadium, watch a movie or concert in a theater, or have a drink at a bar. If you don’t have a family, you will never again see another human’s face without a mask on it.
To compound matters, we get to look forward to President Harris and President Abrams and President Obama telling us that the only problems with the world are white men and the climate change and racism they cause. Now stand 6 feet away and look at the ground while waiting in your bread lines, proles!
I hope when I get my covid vaccine this week, I go into anaphylactic shock and pass away.
Great comments here. I’m a Georgia resident. I went to bed with both Perdue and Loeffler ahead (slightly), but of course I knew that when I woke up this morning, things would be different.
And they were.
My wife and I both feel strongly that this is all part of the end game. The end game, started, of course, with Obama’s election in 2008. There were bumps in the road for them: the 2010 election where Democrats had historic Congressional losses, the 2016 election, etc. But they are following the path they embarked on when they hitched their wagon in 2008 to a crypto-socialist that nobody knew anything about.
Anyone want to bet on the chances that Joe Manchin of WV can be induced to caucus with the GOP? That would solve the current crisis, at least for a time.
Conservatives will never win in America because of one fundamental difference between them and the democrats, liberal big donors and the democrats voters largely agree on most social issues and liberal big donors are willing to spend substantial money to support those left wing agendas, even if it hurts their financial interests. The issues that grass root conservatives care the most – such as bringing jobs back, protect the borders, and protection of free speech, are the three things that conservative donors don’t give a darn about, because of that they won’t be willing to spend any money pushing those agendas, and since the voting conservatives and the establish can never see eye to eye on so many major issues, they can’t never form a strong alliance that could challenge the left.
Rufus is right. Every buck we spend is a kind of vote.
To some extent, the big institutions have already factored this in. They seek out particular demographics not merely because they spend more readily out of necessity or choice at some stage of life, but, as we all know, because the psychological need to be accepted is greatest in some people at certain ages.
That does not mean though that a 50 year old who cuts the cable has no effect. At the least he saves himself 50 to 150 a month … along with sparing himself the privilege of paying to be insulted and offended.
[By the way, I thought exactly the same thing about the parable of the talents, and came to a similar conclusion only belatedly as well.]
Or you could buy a treadmill, and try and do something to build yourself up for the time you have left.
At the very least you might wish to consider the irony of wishing yourself as the victim dead, rather than those who are victimizing you.
I’m very despondent this AM. Here, I predicted that Trump would win about 40 states. Maybe he did, but with election fraud we’ll never know.
Without the Rule of Law in this country, we have nothing. Free and fair elections are a big part of the that. The Dems have perfected election theft. I don’t know how we recover from this.
The Dems love money and power more than the love their country and children.
I’m especially disappointed in the judiciary. They had a chance to step up and passed the buck. John Roberts is in for a big shock with a packed SCOTUS. I especially hold in contempt the elected Supreme Courts of PA and WI. Absolutely shameful and lawless opinions.
Maybe we need to hit a real rock bottom before things are fixed. But I don’t know what that looks like. Wild inflation? Crazy high unemployment? Illegal alien invasion?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a MAGA riot today.
On his way out the door, Trump needs to:
-Bomb Iran’s nuke facility;
-Pressure the Acting AG to appoint Special Counsels in the Hunter Biden and Election theft matters;
-Declassify everything;
-Pardon Steve Bannon.
“Get ready for open borders, fast-tracked new “American citizens” (read: “voters”), massive confiscatory taxes, a regulatory burden that will choke off the strongest economy, continued needless, destructive lockdowns, an intensified war on the police, massive release of imprisoned criminals, continued sell-out of America to China (led by the corrupt, criminal cretin himself), the ruinous green new deal, further restrictions on free expression in universities, social media and the workplace, “reparations” for slavery (or something else to atone for America’s non-existent “systemic racism”), and, very probably, the Fed’s speeded up printing of fiat money that can only end in hyperinflation and the destruction of the middle class. And, oh yes, institutionalization of the voting practices that reduced the 2020 presidential election to a Third World farce.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/as_the_last_line_of_defense_of_the_republic_seems_to_be_crumbling.html
“Our parents gave us security, and as a result, we lost liberty.” physicsguy
We didn’t ‘lose’ our liberties, our fellow Americans threw them away.
The famous maxim comes to mind, “Those who fail to learn from history lessons are doomed to repeat them.”
The corollary is far less known; ‘not infrequently, those who do learn from history are fated to be dragged into a repeat of history’s lessons by those who failed to learn those lessons’
One last thing, if I were Trump I would have my bags packed and move my family to another country, I was thinking Scotland but I read that they have closed Scotland for now which sounds a bit drastic to me. We have also come to a time when it appears that Trump should have been mending fences instead of burning bridges in Washington within the GOP. We have two more weeks until the 20th and then I won’t be watching or listening to any news broadcasts.
stu:
The Sh*t achieved during the LBJ era was never undone. We have passively accepted our slide into socialism. Now we will have a new Ruling Class, and their skins will be non-white.
crastas,
Go to a local playground and watch some folks play pick up basketball. If you’re young and able, join in. Miss music? Hire a musician to come to your house and play for friends you invite. Turn your living room into a musical speakeasy. (I play in a band and this very thing has been going on in my community all throughout the lockdowns. But don’t tell a soul.) Miss movies? LED projectors are fairly inexpensive. Hang a sheet or use your garage door and show movies and invite families in your neighborhood. Maybe some of the kids can make some money selling popcorn.
They are just politicians. They don’t own you. They don’t own your time. They don’t own your spirit. They can only take things you give to them.
Don’t give to them*.
*And I know what you’re thinking; taxes. Well, if you’re serious you can reduce those also. I’m selling my home (literally typing this between filling moving boxes) and moving to an apartment. No more property taxes. I’m starting my own business so I have control over how much I pay in taxes and how and why. Buy used cars to reduce sales taxes. Or, you may think your state does a good job and want to support it. It takes research and work, and it’s a pain, but it’s a lot easier than standing barefoot in January at Valley Forge waiting for a musketball to pierce your flesh.
JimNorCal,
Lincoln famously said that, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
Add to that the ‘philosophy’ of the media as well.
Agenda journalism was been being taught in college’s and university’s ‘journalism’ classes long before it came to dominate in the ‘newsroom’. ‘Professors’ pontificating in schools leads to pontificating in the media.
It is true though that the media’s influence far surpasses academia’s because they reinforce academia’s memes incessantly, so that it becomes widely accepted ‘truth’.
The biggest joke going today is all the talking heads and republican leaders on tv saying “just you wait in 2022 we will really have out stuff together and show those guys”.
Send money.
Pathetic.
I live near Chicago, collar suburb. Front lines. I see it happening. Chicago crime is spreading a lot. I see a brewing storm near every big city. The cynic in me says that maybe the “protestors” should start protesting in the affluent north Chicago suburbs where its 80% Dem. Eventually these people will find their way up there.
6 months ago I decided I have to get out of here. Sanity for one. I have a good 20 years left hopefully and I’m going to try to minimize my exposure to politics and everything, move away from a big city, and hope for the best. I have one i will visit within 3 months, goal is to have a different state as my residence come 2021.
There is that saying, its never as bad or as good as it seems. So theres that.
“Enemy on island. Issue in doubt” Commander Winfield S. Cunningham USN
The Fall of Wake December 23, 1941
Rufus T. Firefly,
“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, ‘uninformed’*.” Michelle Obama
* translation, holding the wrong beliefs…
By all means enjoy your children.
Take pleasure in your hobbies and creative efforts while ye can.
Personally, I love fly fishing. Hopefully, I’ll be allowed to continue to do so. As I’m not confident that “catch and release” won’t in the not-to-distant future be declared by our betters, to be cruel and unusual punishment for the fish and fly fishing outlawed.
I’m also an audiophile and enjoy listening to music I love over a fine audio system.
However, given the example of the Soviets, its just a matter of time before only approved music and art with the proper messages will be allowed by the State. ‘Racist’ music by dead white men will obviously be the first to be purged.
Perhaps flower arranging will be acceptable. Of course, flowers have feelings too, so perhaps not.
MBunge, McConnell stood on principle. The $2K per person giveaway never made much sense, just as the $0.6k give away with all of the offal attached to it made no sense. McConnell at least tried to bring a little sanity back into the process by washing off the offal before throwing out more of our money. Sadly, there is no tolerance for principle when free stuff is the alternative.
The government did the COVID relief like it does everything. It fired a blunderbuss when a targeted approach was called for. I suspect that, like me, most here had no real need for the first handout, and less for the second. Well, I laughed all the way to the bank (figuratively, I bank on line), but it was ironic laughter. Someone, sometime will have to pay the bill.
As I am wont to say, the most likely outcome of any large government initiative is unintended consequences.
BTW, I assume that everyone here has seen the stories of the fraudsters and scammers who feasted on the first giveaway. I am sure that they are disappointed that the last one wasn’t larger.
In my lifetime, we as a nation vanquished anti-black racism. What was ubiquitous is now only on the fringes, not accepted among decent people. And now an anti-white racist has been elected to the US Senate and is celebrated by a whole bunch of white leftists who don’t see what’s coming at them.
I don’t want racism of any variety. I don’t understand why people can’t see the evil.
“WPO-3 Is in Effect” General Douglas MacArthur USA
The Retreat to Bataan December 23, 1941
Rufus,
“Miss music? Hire a musician to come to your house and play for friends you invite.”
Coming to your state, city and town… “Canadian Storm Troopers Rip Apart ‘Illegal’ Family Gathering [6 people] After Neighbor Rats to Police”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2021/01/02/watch-canadian-police-storm-gathering-of-more-than-six-people-inside-home-n2582450
Think that’s a crazy one off or just in Canada? Think again.
“In Los Angeles, Democrat Mayor Eric Garcetti threatened to shut off water and power to households and businesses that violated the mayor’s prohibitions on large gatherings.
In November, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, another Democrat, put a ban on private gatherings of more than six people and called on residents to rat out any neighbors who didn’t bow down to the governor’s edict.”
Before I forget, I would like to mention that we would all probably be interested in hearing the upshot of Neo’s experiment in carefully broaching political matters with some of her sometimes emotionally intense liberal friends.
Did she get any additional hearings? Any notable reactions?
We all know the story of the squealing tire drive-off outrage reaction of one, and her subsequent apology to Neo. But I am wondering if there was more to report.
“You will proceed south with your Headquarters, Far East Air Force…” General Douglas MacArthur USA to Major General Lewis Brereton USA
Retreat of the Far East Air Force to Australia December 24, 1941
As to court-packing, new states, etc.: The Democrat majorities are slim. If a few of them can be picked off, some of the worst ideas might be averted.
Meanwhile, every state with currently Republican legislative majorities needs to act immediately to outlaw electronic voting systems.
“A large group of House Republicans planning to challenge the Electoral College votes of several states today is acknowledging that they probably won’t win but that the fight for the “rule of law” is too important to ignore.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/gop-fight-for-constitution-more-important-than-election-victory
Anyone want to bet how long it will be before Hawley and Cruz admit that the “rule of law” has just been ‘canceled’? And admit that the democrat party, by blatantly ‘canceling’ “consent of the governed” has irreparably broken the last vestige of America’s social contract, thus rendering the Constitution a dead letter?
Of course, once they’re imprisoned for “sedition and treason”* communicating their thoughts from prison is unlikely…
*several Congressional ‘representatives’ have opined that they’re straying close to sedition and treason… a fairly blatant warning.
That is, if the ‘woke’ mob doesn’t first make a final visit to their homes. Rand Paul was the “canary in the coal mine” on permitted violence to Congressional representatives who won’t get with the program.
What was once unacceptably radical has been nearly mainstreamed.
Just 19 years ago, black NFL players were carrying the American flag around the field just after the 9-11 attacks. Does anyone think for a minute that will happen now?
We’ve all joked about the PC environment on college campuses. We’ve also all seen posts, over the last few years, of the utterly insane things actually going on in college campuses.
The point is that it didn’t take very long for the country to go under. Yes, it was building for a while, but the final stretch was very short. I don’t know what happens next, but I’m not exactly optimistic. I’m within 10 years of retirement and for the first time in my life, I’m worried I’m going to lose everything I’ve worked for.
Michael Towns, I have thought of that too, that maybe Manchin would switch parties or at least provide a vote against some of the more radical ideas.
Isn’t that reassuring, to know that the fate of the Republic lies in the hands of Joe Manchin?
Rufus-
Your acts are entirely consistent with the Democratic crushing of the Middle Class, which you anticipate: To own less. Of course some of your rent will be used by your landlord to pay property tax. You will drive used cars, again a reduction in your property value. It is where we all headed, the death of the Middle Class, by the reduction of its properties and their values. Socialism, the rule by unelected “experts”, is our destiny.
Hmm. I have to think about it, but there may be a hidden lesson there.
Those who have dug into the history of that battle and its outcome will have come to the realization that the couple of paragraphs devoted to it in the history surveys, or the movie version, dont tell the full story.
The defenders, despite undergoing incredible trials and responding heroically, were not wiped out fighting to the last man. The commander, deprived of communications, surrendered his garrison during the infantry battle on the island. And if the impression taken from the surviving Marines was accurate, they were in the process of actually beating or at least stalemating the Japanese assault troops at the very moment of surrender.
In addition the thousand plus civilian contractors who we usually forget about were not treated honorably by the Japanese but many were worked to death and eventually murdered much later.
This does not even take into account the Saratoga controversy.
The lesson, is not to give up. In our case, there is no one coming to the rescue anyways. And there is no hope returning to a home we once knew “after the war” by giving up – even when all is “obviously” lost.
I’m also tempted to expound a bit on the role of the themselves subverted Christian Churches in preaching a demoralizing and evervating Gospel of feelings and passivity to their flocks; and in their contributing to, if not actually sparking this social debacle. The institutional Roman Catholic Church for example, infested as it has become with collectivist homosexual and feminist nesters, has probably had almost as harmful an effect on our concepts of, and faith in , and confidence in the rightness of fighting for inviolable individual political rights and public virtue, as have the Mainline Protestant Churches, or Reform Judaism. But that is another matter, I guess.
Even if everything Pres. Trump accomplished is erased by the end of this month, I will always be thankful that his presidency opened my eyes to how bad things really were already. I may not be able to do much, if anything, about it, but at least I have some inkling of what’s happening, and why, as the American experiment dies with a whimper.
Looks like the opening of CW2 is happening right now on the steps of the Capitol.
They are overwhelming police and breaking into the building; this is not going to end well.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/01/06/trump-supporters-breach-capitol-hill-n2582672
Wow, physicsguy. I don’t know what to say about this; in general, I don’t support violence. But the “news” reaction to a right-leaning event is going to be totally different from its reaction to the leftist violence of the summer and fall.
Tear gas now being used inside Capitol building as protestors outside congress chambers
@ Cornhead,
You have done your duty and more, as has I am Spartacus.
You are correct regarding the rule of law. But if there is one thing the Republican Party can theoretically still do, it is to spend some of their precious funds investigating – i.e. looking for those bits of direct evidence – the means which you suspect may have stolen some states.
At this point, it is, apart from some outright admissions of ballot harvesting and the like, all circumstantial. And even in the cases of proven fraud of the latter type, it has not been collated, organized and authoritatively issued.
If the governing institutions of this country will not or cannot undertake the project, who else can, or would have the resources and motivation to do so if not the Republicans themselves?
If the government will not investigate illegalities, the party most affected by them ought to have the will and the gumption to do so.
This cannot be a project of gathering together all the mud and rumors every self-seeking right wing internet attention whore has spread, and then throwing it up against a wall.
This has to focus on cases proving intentional malice and fraud. It does not have to prove the election was stolen. It has to prove to people well disposed enough to potentially vote Republican, that criminal acts took place, and that these acts are in serious measure the modus operandi of the Democrat establishment.
It must answer the questions of lingering doubt which obscure any path forward, and demoralize the faithful and their allies even before they begin their march.
Not knowing exactly what, how, where, and when in irrefutable detail, means – adopting yet another metaphor – that we consent to sail along in the current fog, never knowing what effect our actions and attempts to steer may have.
Just knowing even one indisputable instance is a small victory. One rocky shoal noted and mapped authoritatively and publicly. Ever other discovery builds it out.
We have to KNOW and to be able to “see” exactly what , where, a d how it was managed, and by whom …
Otherwise we are living in that proverbial wilderness of mirrors.
We need to know. To really know.
“Looks like the opening of CW2 is happening right now on the steps of the Capitol.”
More like the dawning of right wing antifa. It’s like that old anti-drug PSA: “I learned it from you!”
Mike
“We need to know. To really know.”
That’s a sucker’s game. We just spent four years watching the media, tech companies, the U.S. intelligence community, and even members of the executive branch work to undermine and delegitimize an elected U.S. President in ways and to an extent none of us have ever seen. Whether there was or wasn’t significant election fraud at the end of that doesn’t really matter.
Mike
If an election cannot be audited, did democracy die in darkness?
The American dream: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. #Fetal-Amercan BabyLivesMatter
“My mother before she died at age 94 two years ago, told me that her generation made a huge mistake. They lived through the Depression, they won the War, and the mistake was to swear their children would never know such horrors. As such, she said, they raised a generation of children who were spoiled and never accepted that freedom comes with a cost.”
I am not that old but made some of the same mistakes with my five kids. My father was an alcoholic SOB and I was determined that I would do better. As a result, I have three leftist kids who are immune to reason (Two are lawyers) and the only one who owns his own home is the only one without a college degree. The lefties all have graduate degrees.
“So, the question remains, how best to organize and focus the potential energy of tens of millions of us into a force to be reckoned with. Actually, the question is, given what I just stated, can it be focused at all into a force to be reckoned with?”
I hope Neo addresses this question. Most commenters on this thread have not. I don’t claim to know an answer but we have to look for one instead of just giving up and saying that the left has won.
I think there are some glimmers of hope. Here in California we had a series of propositions presented to the voters. The propositions addressed hot button right and left issues:
repealing the proposition 13 protection of property tax increases for business property.
Repealing the California equal rights amendment so that the state can discriminate on racial issues.
Allowing municipalities much more freedom to impose rent control.
Repealing AB5 that outlawed companies like Uber and Lyft to work with people on 1099 and instead force them to be W2 employees.
On every one of these issues the conservative view won. And this despite the state voting for Biden over Trump by 2 to 1.
i’m not a Pollyanna. Many bad things did pass such as a Soros district attorney being elected in Los Angeles county. But even that election was close.
someone commented that conservatives don’t like to do the grind it out culture war. That’s very true. It’s easy to say let’s get into Civil War 2 but a lot harder to fight it out on school boards and local elections. Somehow we need to learn to grind it out
“If the government will not investigate illegalities, the party most affected by them ought to have the will and the gumption to do so.’ DNW
Collaborators do not challenge their masters.
Violence in the Capitol building! FINALLY THE COMMON MAN REBELS AGAINST THIS FRAUD and “ELECTION” CHARADE!
watching Newsmax, the RINO Mark Halperin says this clearly falls at the President’s feet, droning that cuckolded Rs on the Hill tell him “there will be consequences” for Trump. Screw ‘em. CW2 for real is the only power to halt the STEAL, now!
Newsmax had some British commentator on at the top of the hour telling it straight, and truly ‘like it is’ — that Rs are spineless whimps in the face of Nazi psy ops Against the Truth! In the face of Democracy hating Democrats, Hell bent on one party fascist rule. The FACT OF FRAUD, yet Rs do practically nothing for the People! Sing it, Brother! Amen.
But who is he? This Brit commentator who gets it best?
On the CW! It’s the only way to restore Our Liberty!
I have friends on the ground in DC , the are posting that the rioters are not MAGA but antifa. She saw them headed towards the capital and were openly talking about their plans.
Considering losing friends or relations over politics.
Do I want to hear smug, self-righteous falsehoods put out on the grounds that, should I disagree, I’m damn’ near a criminal?
Oh the emotional hysteria here. All is lost, we are headed to the abyss. Yada, yada, yada.
What did you think would eventually happen?
Not long ago I said that this loose talk about so-called fraud (yet to be shown at a reasonable standard to be true) will make would-be GOP voters stay home.
Why would anyone, who is convinced that the electoral system is so corrupt, give any legitimacy to this runoff election?
The election was lost long before November. All this bluster and fantasy since just raises false hope, raises expectations, raises grievances and emotions.
Thank you all for propping up that fantasy and losing the GA runoff, handing the Dems what they need.
Thank you all for keeping up the fantasy that something will magically happen today to reverse it all.
Oh, of a certain mind, that is all entertaining as h*ll. Then reality sets in.
Oh, now exhortations of let’s not give up. Great. How about engage in people outside your bubble? Try to convince.
But that is “too hard”! Better to whine on a blog comment section than to try to effect REAL change. Keyboard jockeys all.
Four years ago, I was convinced that Scott Adams was dead wrong. Now I’m thinking maybe he was right – most everyone ARE meat puppets. All they need is someone to repeat something enough times to them and it sticks – building the supportive logic after the fact.
Trump and his lies (a flood, both big and small, as we knew since 2016), and the so-called “conservative” media – with all their incentives to tell their audience what they want to hear. And, the justifications we’d hear from them all for behavior we’d excoriate a Dem POTUS for.
So, now we have a “right” who are every bit as fringe as the “left” we all worried about, for the very same type of reasons we called the left out on previously.
Like fish in water, those fringes have no idea they are wet. Meat puppets all the way down.
Thank you all for paving the way for a Dem majority in Congress.
It didn’t have to be this way, IF you had stuck by the principles you SAY you stand for. Biden didn’t win by much.
They didn’t need fraud, they just needed you to be disengaged, to engage in identity politics of your own, and to go down the fringe path Trump and the media charlatans were leading you.
What will you ACTUALLY do now?
Please share more, Keith! I haven’t heard this from PT News stream, which streams live in the crowds from the Capitol…. Your source may or may not be correct….
Two things happen in a Banana Republic.
1) Either the opposition reaches an overwhelming critical mass. And those in power decides capitulation is their only opportunity to survive.
2) People hit slightly lower critical mass and the shooting begins.
After a couple of cycles when more people begin to realize that voting makes no difference. That this will slowly extend to state and local elections they will get the point.
This is why the Left always screamed bloody murder when a new Supreme Court justice was sworn in. The joke was on us for believing they would do anything about it
MBunge chimes in after a long sabbatical with wisdom that fraudulent elections don’t matter because, everyone who thinks that it is a problem is falling for a “sucker’s game.”
All is lost, nothing can be done, shoot first and ask questions later, “kill them all and let God sort them out” are other gems of wisdom from the past than can be applied to the present situation Mike (not Mr.)
Big Maq:
It’s not “loose talk about fraud” that got us here.
This has been brewing since long long before Trump. As I said in the post, Trump was the result not the cause. Four years of the entire apparatus of the state agencies and the Democratic Party trying to oust Trump from his duly elected presidency sure didn’t help either, though. But I assume that was just fine with you. Also, months of riots from the left, just hunky-dory.
BigMaq and MBunge return. What a day. Woman shot by Capitol Police in the Capitol and this is President Trump’s fault too? (sarc) Do tell.
“MBunge chimes in after a long sabbatical”
Not long enough for you to get over your butthurt from me slapping you around in the comment threads.
But just in case anyone missed the point, letting four years of unpatriotic, undemocratic, and sometimes violent attacks on our political system go punished or unpunished, acknowledged or unacknowledged based on whether or not election fraud can be proved in a court of law is the sucker’s game. If there was no fraud, or if it can’t be proven in court, does that make everything else in the last four years hunky dory?
It’s like Big Maq blaming the VOTERS for what’s gone wrong. That the GOP and the conservative movement has FAILED those voters isn’t even something imaginable. Like communism, our betters can never fail. They can only be failed.
Mike
Antifa agitators are in the protest mix at the Capitol, according to PT News.
“This year, a Reverend Wright [“Hate America First”] clone has been elected to the Senate from the previously-red state of Georgia.” Shame him unto Death! This scumbag has no right to represent a free people. Shame him.
Rerun the Presidential elections in the seven FAKE ELECTION states, under Federal Troops direction. Otherwise, a fake election has Zero legit.
Captain Obvious finds his voice and and a new cliché, but not more eloquence or nuance; everyone but Captain Mike is a sucker. Time away well spent? Doesn’t seem so.
Well, I’m sure that you would make an exception for Cornhead, right?
And I would assume that you are familiar with I am Spartacus’ involvement in on the ground politics and poll work.
So not all keyboard jockeys.
Try to convince them of what? To get their goddamned collectivist faces out of my face? To take their grubby hands out of my pockets? To convince them that individual liberty is better than collectivist libertinism?
You were preaching that 4 years ago, and had no specific advice but to engage ” ‘ others’ “: presumably as if they were not, uh, others. Kind of an interview with a vampire – or woke critical theorist or diversity monitor – strategy?
I don’t for some reason think that that is what you mean. And since they don’t want to discuss it or afford an opportunity to be convinced anyway – in case you missed that news and the sound of squealing tires – it is hard to fathom what kind of engagement prior to convincing you are talking about. Perhaps you mean convincing some bi-polar university leftist that you love and cherish it so much that it should back the eff off out of gratitude. Is that the kind of convincing you are talking about? Big heaping helpings of unconditional positive regard for every moral mutant ward of the state, willing and otherwise?
No one here has even been able to get you to answer these questions in a straightforward manner. And it was like pulling teeth for three months to get your sensitive conservative comrade in ideals “Bill” to own up to the fact that the comforts of illegal aliens rated higher than the rule of law. http://www.thenewneo.com/2016/09/22/more-publius-more-flight-93-election/
So, Big Maq, what the hell is there to convince anyone of, and who exactly is open to convincing?
Using words, I mean …
“The defenders, despite undergoing incredible trials and responding heroically, were not wiped out fighting to the last man. The commander, deprived of communications, surrendered his garrison during the infantry battle on the island. And if the impression taken from the surviving Marines was accurate, they were in the process of actually beating or at least stalemating the Japanese assault troops at the very moment of surrender.” – DNW
I didn’t know Cronkite was on his staff.
“The point is that it didn’t take very long for the country to go under. Yes, it was building for a while, but the final stretch was very short.” – I Callahan
“How Did You Go Bankrupt?”
“Two Ways. Gradually and Then Suddenly.”
– Hemingway in “The Sun Also Rises”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a MAGA riot today.” – Cornhead
Your other predictions were probably correct too.
However, I think the MAGA crowd was doing okay until some mostly peaceful Antifa-embeds lit the fuse.
“Anyone want to bet how long it will be before Hawley and Cruz admit that the “rule of law” has just been ‘canceled’? And admit that the democrat party, by blatantly ‘canceling’ “consent of the governed” has irreparably broken the last vestige of America’s social contract, thus rendering the Constitution a dead letter?” – Geoffrey
Normally, that would cue the Thomas More quote about cutting down all the laws in England to get at the Devil, but I saw it recently in a comment on a blog, pointing at Trump and the MAGA party.
Back to the Bible, I found consolation over the last couple of days reading from the Book of Lamentations.
As to Physics Guy’s mother . . . my parents’ generation too. . . she’s right that they made it too easy for us boomers, but I don’t blame them. It’s only natural that they hoped to shield us from what they had been through.
The WWII dividend earned by them was our undoing. The result for us was a life devoid of severe consequences. We could choose, experiment, fail, whatever, and the consequences were nil. This picked up steam through the 60s to where we are now where more or less anything goes.
We have become arrogant. We do what feels good, without much of any pushback. Unless they’re easy and painless, many traditions are either ignored or discarded.
This arrogance is reflected in everything around us. Who needs a stinking gold standard when smart men can manage the economy so much better? Who needs archaic norms of behavior that were so stifling? Who needs a meritocracy when equality of outcome is obviously what’s needed? etc. etc.
The biggest arrogance is that we think we are superior, more evolved, than our forebears – so much so that we don’t need to look to them for guidance. It makes us not able to learn from our own history.
Last point – I have probably said this here before. My reading of history has taught me one overarching theme – that change is difficult. All history is change, but when ideas get too far ahead of the gut feelings you are asking for bloodshed. Our founders created a most ingenious system that recognizes this in humans, and thus created a three steps forward, two steps back system that has so far stood the test of time. But with those pushing the progressive juggernaut insisting on no backward steps, much less a breather, they are playing with fire.
God help us.
Well said, M. Williams.
One answer is to establish redoubts from which we can operate with impunity and in which we are relatively invulnerable. Redoubts come in many sizes, but the smallest viable one is probably a county and the largest a state. Concentrate ourselves so that we have control. Elect local officials and hold them accountable. Use the local school board and superintendent to fix the schools, or redesign things so there are no conventional schools, but state or county resources who assist citizens in homeschooling? Declare second amendment zones where the locally elected sheriff follows the constitution. If the state passes onerous regulations, ignore them, and elect a sheriff who will as well. Disincorporate towns to county control.
There are a lot of things we can do…