Maybe some of those high winds will clean out Washington’s homeless tent cities.

“ SEATTLE – Get ready for an active evening of weather across Western Washington! We’re tracking strong, widespread and prolonged winds. Rain will be heavy, increasing the risk for flooding and landslides.

Coastal communities are facing a flooding threat today as high tides combine with low pressure in the atmosphere. Later tonight, mountain snow could be quite intense.

The strongest winds will likely happen between 4-7 p.m. Tuesday, but gusts are already picking up across Western Washington. Many communities from Seattle through Bellingham will see gusts to 50 mph. Gusts to 55 to 60 mph are in the forecast for Olympia and southward. While we can’t rule out Seattle from seeing gusts to 60 mph, it’s more likely to the south. Gusts in excess of 65 mph are possible for the Central and North Coast. The South Washington Coast could see winds of 60 to 80 mph!”

I agree regarding the l totalitarian left/right falsity. The left really exploded when TIK posted “Hitler Was A Socislist” albeit a totalitarian one. When he posted quotes from him the wailing, denial, and wholescale reinvention of words began. Ends and means. Power as an end.

Since we’re in the Christmas season, I’ll include here the concluding chorale of Cantata VI (for the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6) from the Weihnachtsoratorium: the trumpets, kettledrums, and oboe give the chorale melody a festive, even regal, sound to accompany the text written by Bach’s librettist (Christoph Friedrich Henrici):

Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen
An eurer Feinde Schar,
Denn Christus hat zerbrochen,
Was euch zuwider war.
Tod, Teufel, Sünd und Hölle
Sind ganz und gar geschwächt;
Bei Gott hat seine Stelle
Das menschliche Geschlecht.

A rough English translation:

Now are you well avenged
On the entire troop of your enemies,
Because Christ has shattered
All that stood against you.
Death, the Devil, Sin, and Hell
Are utterly devastated.
Humankind now has its place
At God’s side.

Now– and here is where Bach’s heart is present as well as his head– the chorale tune sung at the conclusion of the entire oratorio is more familiar to most Western Christians as the Passion Chorale–the hymn tune used on Good Friday for the hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” It is Bach’s way of reminding his hearers that Christ’s death was foreshadowed from His birth, and that this is what brings humans close to God’s own heart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lULC5uyVb70&ab_channel=JohnBeake

And to thank Neo for the many dance videos she posts for all of us over the course of the year, here is Kathryn Morgan’s ballet improvisation set to the Adagio from Bach’s Concerto in D Minor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmE-bmv_CB0&ab_channel=KathrynMorgan

Genocide and gulags strike me as likely, if not inevitable, outcomes for a “one-party totalitarian state.”

It occurs to me “Stalinism” as “one-party totalitarian police state” might work better when conservatives make the argument to non-conservatives that Communism and Nazism were essentially the same and not at opposite ends of the left-right political spectrum.

With the bonus of genocide and Gulags; features not bugs?

Putin speaks fondly of Old Uncle Joe.

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/12/make-george-santos-speaker.html#more

Fortunately, Stalinism has not become overused to the point it has become purely a term of abuse like “fascist” and “neoconservative.”
________________________

Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality,[1][2] and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism
________________________

Minus the specifics of Joseph Stalin and the years he was head of the USSR, it is a workable definition for a pathological leftist state.

I like that the definition leads with “one-party totalitarian police state.” That’s a key distinction for me.