The Storytellers

Sit down, oh my friends, and spread ears like elephants, and I shall tell you of the misuse of magic.

To be clear, the magic of storytelling.

I’ve been aware that storytelling has a power…. since ever. It was actually funny when someone in the comments talked about some woman who lied whether she needed to or not, and even when it hurt her. It was funny because that was me, aged circa 5. And I can tell you why people do it. They do it for the power. Because having people believe some insanity you just made up gives you a sense of power, of being smarter than others.

That’s magic mis-used.

I was fortunate both that my dad came down on every instance of lying like a ton of bricks (I have reason to suspect he had defeated a similar tendency in himself at about the same age) and that my life is a bizarreness (totally a word) magnet, so that some of the things people refused to believe — having caught me in lies often — were weird, but had happened. Like the encounter with the bubblegum pink pig.

Dad beat it into me (not literally. Dad struck me twice — barely — in my entire life, and it was rather obvious it was worse for him than for me. But that man could spank with words very thoroughly. I’d frankly rather have been physically beaten) that the problem of being an habitual liar is that no one will believe you when you tell the honest truth. And worse, that you lie to yourself, till you don’t know what the truth is. He pointed out the downfall of liars is that you have to keep track of all the lies, and make them coordinate. And eventually the entire edifice falls apart. And when it falls apart you will never be believed, ever ever again. (And I want to say dad might be optimistic on that last one. But–)

By the age of six, still faced with the necessity to make up stories and tell them, while I didn’t want to lie, I came up with the idea of telling lies people know are lies. And I wrote my first novel (“novel” because though by hand it took up 3 notebooks it was probably at most 20k words.) It gives you all the highs of making up a big lie, without the lows. And it’s a type of magic. (Of course the price of having magic is that you must use it and use it for good. And yes, even novels can be perverted. Which is part of what I want to talk about. But that’s another story.)

Narrative is a very important thing for humans. A need. Man does not live by bread alone, because we’re sentient creatures who need to have an idea of what we’re doing and what it leads to beyond “get up, eat, do things, sleep.” To be truly happy humans need a sense of purpose, a sense of where they’re going (and btw, Peterson is right that you should set yourself the highest goal you can conceivably achieve. Even if you fail, you will do more than if you don’t set yourself any goal, or set yourself on that’s easily achievable.) They also need a sense of collective purpose. For much of human history, this was set by an idea of the king and the people as a unit, the divine right of kings, and a religion that promised a perfected state of being over time.

In a new entity like ours, a new state of being collectively, this sense of purpose is particularly important since nothing else binds us, neither common religion, nor common race. Our civic religion of believing in the founding documents can hold us together, but for that it has to be taught and not undermined.

Anyway, sometime in the early 20t century or a little before, the fact that information and entertainment and… well everything that could reach out to population at large was working on the industrial model of centralization and central distribution started corrupting the stream of information.

Look, maybe they figured out during WWI the power of the lie. Or maybe it was WWII that showed it to them. They saw what destructive lies could do, and seeing it, instead of realizing lies were bad, they decided that lies were good if they were good lies.

Which it’s becoming startling obvious is what they believe. Something like: the carefully crafted lie will cause people to behave how they “should.”

The problem, of course being that “should” is according to the minds of mostly mal-educated people who have been taught their fellow men are savages and that there is an arrow of history that leads to the inevitable utilitarian communal state, which has never worked, ever, in the history of humanity, or not beyond extended family, and there often worse than anyone wants to acknowledge.

So all the through 20th century we were treated to a barrage of “news” and “entertainment” that pushed certain ideas, including that no one is clean and that the only way to make people behave decently is constant and minute supervision by the “enlightened” who make people do things for their own good. And the “message” when decided upon get promulgated down the line by everyone, including “artists” and “storytellers” but also extending to journalists and even to an extent to scientists and very certainly to politicians who whether they’re running to shape the lie, or simply to stay ahead of the lie, do lie like rugs.

Look, even 20 years ago the lie was impregnable. I saw someone here, in the comments, minutes ago, talking about how we hadn’t found WMDs in Iraq. This is one of those things that “everyone knows.” It’s also, according to my friends who served in theater, absolutely false. It was a narrative that the MSM was shaping, to get rid of Bush, (who while a socialist was, apparently, insufficiently socialistic) and it penetrated enough that those not in possession of first hand knowledge, or close and trusted second hand knowledge still believe it. And still use this as the basis of their reasoning, and whatever decisions.

There are others, too many to count. Many of which are actually in the history books. “FDR ended the great depression with make work jobs” is probably the most egregious of those.

In fact, yesterday, one of the comments I didn’t approve because it was late at night and suffice onto the day the stupidity of day, without adding more voluntarily, was talking about how we should abandon all hope, because the children have been indoctrinated and young people will accept quietly the totalitarian state because “that’s what they were taught.”

The “stupid beyond permission” in that comment is that if you were born in the 20th century you were conditioned to the idea of the totalitarian state. Sure, some people had a lighter indoctrination, consisting only of the idea that the central government and only the central government can solve big problems. Or the idea that the news media tell the truth. Or that there’s an approved truth and nothing else can be said.
Or it could be, like from my generation onward, complete and relentless indoctrination to the point people believe the most bizarre things, such as that the parties changed constituents. (Think about it. How could that even have happened? If I tried to sell that shit in a novel, it would be flimsy. In reality, it’s impossible.) This can only be sold by continuous echoing of ideas, in every possible (and impossible) medium from education to news to entertainment.

In the future, if sociology is worth a tinker’s damn, it will note that a seamless narrative that is echoed by everyone at once is the sign of a controlled narrative, which is, in blunt terms, a lie.

And yet people from my generation onward still turned against the unified lie for the messy truth. We did it even when we did it — as we had to — in isolation, and thinking we were crazy, back in the day when reading something that dissented from the narrative made you think “this can’t be a reputable source.”
Arguably a majority of people turn away from the lie in every generation.

Because the lie doesn’t work and is not congruent with reality at any level. So eventually you have no choice but to face the truth, even if you have to go against all that you’ve been taught.

So, the chances the kids will be (or already are, since they can’t talk and get through school) okay is high.

Particularly because the effect that dad told me about has come to pass.

You see, lies build on lies, and it’s worse when they’re collective lies. And even the liars come to believe the past lies, gene rationally.

Does Obama and his entire corrupted cabal hate America. Well, yes, undoubtedly. When they send their demon spawn to the street to shout “No border, no wall, no America at all” it’s fairly obvious.

But part of the problem is that they’ve also swallowed a bunch of lies (some of them so old they’re of Soviet origin.) Like the idea that world economy is a fixed pie, and that if we’re rich it is because we “stole” our prosperity from a poor nation (Snort, giggle.) Or the idea that if they implement their policies, America might vanish, but the people of the US will be happier and more prosperous. They weren’t actually lying when they expected “summer of recovery”, they were just believing an accumulation of past lies.

That’s part of the reason they always are shocked when their wonderful program doesn’t bring about paradise.

The problem for them is that enough lies have exploded, and they’ve done enough horrible shit to try to bring about paradise (particularly under Obama who combines being a true believer with being as dumb as a human being can be while being able to chew gum and breathe at the same time. Fast and Furious is the work of a mental defective.) that they can’t afford for the truth to come out, and therefore they must keep piling on bigger lies.

2020 was the mental breakdown of the left that has controlled every stream of information in the US. It succeeded to an extent because sane people couldn’t believe anyone would do something that insane. (I’ve found most of the people who cut slack to outright evil people are very good, and so lack the ability to understand criminally evil. In the same way the sane can not understand the insane.) They believed there had to be a pony under the reeking mountain of horse shit.

This is known in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress parlance as a joke that works once. Now we have their range, and as the full bilge behind the lockdowns and masking, as the fact that they denied the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquin and Ivermeticin, medicines that COULD have saved thousands of people who actually did die of Winnie the Flu, comes out, they’re going to try to lie their way out of this.

Which means the next one is going to be a doozy. And when that fails, they’re going to get us in a war.

I said when China Joe cheated his way in that this meant we were going to war with China. This seems counterintuitive, but other than GWB (and that was forced by things like 9/11) most of our big wars have been the work of a democrat president who needed to save his butt.

Well, they have a big butt and a big need to save it. And at some point, they will need to distance from China, particularly because China is going to have massive problems of their own, which they fail to understand because they don’t get trade or business. (I.e. they don’t get the poorer the US becomes, the less we buy from them. Which is already happening. And they need us to buy from them to stay afloat.) At some point int he China ImplosionTM they are going to give up on puppet states and just try to keep control at home. They’re already almost there.

At which point their money (which is mostly smell and bullshit, anyway) stops flowing, and our politicians are left holding the bag, or in the colorful saying of my birth region “F*cked and ill paid.” And in desperate need of the biggest distraction possible. Which is going to be war. Against China is a guess. Partly because in their mind China is as big and competent as us (snort giggle) ensuring a good long, and dangerous war.

This is will be bad, needless to say. But I don’t think it goes the way they want it. I think it implodes in their face, leaving a residue much like egg.

And that’s if their lies don’t implode faster and earlier.

They’ve built a nice, stinking pile of horseshit, but even they are starting to be aware there’s no pony there, and to the rest of us it’s strikingly obvious.

I don’t know what comes next. My sense of war starting this month (civil war, tbf) has receded, partly because I think the fact most states have opened up has created a diversion. For a little while, at least.

How long it lasts, I don’t know. Till the clowns who have taken over our institutions decide they need to do something is my bet. And whatever they come up with is going to backfire badly.

Plus we’re going to face a crisis in our mental health, and I’m not joking.

As it becomes obvious the huge edifice is nothing but lies, we’re going to have a lot of people who don’t know what to believe. Worse, we’re going to have a lot of people who don’t know what to do. All they’ve been “trained” to do rests on the lies, and only makes sense in the world of the lies. There are teachers, journalists, economists, all sorts of scientists who are going to face a reckoning.

Judging by what 2020 already did to people, my guess is about half the people are going to crack wide open.

And a lot of them won’t be able to find their way back to any form of sanity.

When communism was revealed as a lie, yes, a lot of people became religious, but a lot embraced communism double-hard.

Prepare for the same yet again. And prepare for trouble. Big trouble.

We might have postponed the reckoning (I suspect no more than a few months) but the four stand ready to ride and create mayhem of massive proportions.

There will be wars and rumors of wars. And official rumors, from the top, that are worse than rumors. Narrative, lying narrative.

They have never used their powers for good, and they don’t even know where good is and couldn’t find good with two hands, a pole and a seeing eye dog.

Be ready for the waters to get rough. Get to safe places, physically, emotionally, financially.

And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

When the narrative breaks, the shards go everywhere. Even your own mind. And some of them are sharp enough to cut like madness.

236 thoughts on “The Storytellers

    1. Bums… “homeless”… were a small and fairly stable percentage of the populace. We’re seeing a lot more of them because:

      A) they’re being allowed to camp in public instead of being run out of town

      B) various city, county, and state polities now directly support their lifestyle

      and C) “synthetic marijuana.” All those scare stories about marijuana and LSD, that’s what some people got when they smoked or snorted something some rando brewed up in his garage. A friend’s son wound up burning out some important bits of his brain with one of those, and is now effectively a ward of the state in his mid-30s. Well, at least he didn’t try to chew someone’s face off…

      1. There has always been a small population –yes. Hobos and hippies. Bums. But what we are seeing now is cities of homeless. I think explosion is appropriate. Also I’m sorry about your friend’s son… it sounds horrible and I am not surprised that there are more of these type.

      2. The “homeless crisis” is being fueled by Democratic Party policies with the goal of nationalizing housing and turning housing into a Soviet style government provided/run system. The budgets that HarrisBiden propose and that are being pursued in Democratic Party run states reflect this and even tend to say the quiet part out loud.

        1. Is there a homeless crisis? Are there more homeless people or is it just the homeless concentrating where the conditions for them are best? Are they even doing that? All we know is what the media tells us or the limited sample we can see with our eyes. I’m genuinely perplexed about this issue since it’s a narrative that’s useful to politicians of both sides.

            1. I don’t think it’s just the Democrats. It’s a useful thing for both of them

              1. Both parties loudly point out problems and propose solutions that the swear they’ll implement, if you just donate money to them and elect them to office.

                For some reason, those problems are never, in fact, solved. If one were a cynic, one might conclude that there’s no actual intention to solve anything.

            1. Oregon is already “complying”. In that there was a legislative initiative for state vote to do exactly this. “To comply with Federal Law and not forgo federal funds for roads, etc.” Pretty sure it passed. I voted “no”. Wouldn’t surprise me if when we sell our family home (when/if mom joins dad), it will be replaced with multi-family, along with the house next door (long story). The two houses are lots immediately south of corner lots with duplexes on them already (as previously allowed by old zoning laws). Our house is the same. We aren’t close to duplexes, but we are awfully close to the grade school, on an almost 1/4 acre lot. Multi story, multiplex, pushed to back of property line, parking at front, no problem. They’ve done this already on new developments on main roads into the development, no multiplex (more than duplex), but duplexes, reserving the single family homes back in the less trafficked sections (let “discrimination” against duplex rental begin). I guess they could be putting in multiplex owned condos instead …

          1. There will be a ‘Homeless Crisis’ as soon as it serves the Democrats’ purposes for there to be one. Right now they’re just laying the groundwork.

          2. There is a homeless crisis. It is mental health related as well as drug and alcohol. The mental health laws are written notes that family or concerned friends can’t force treatment, meaning that borderline people when they get a little worse, automatically get LOTS worse, because no one can rein then in. The lefts drive to legalize drugs is also doing a number on homelessness. Meth heads do not care if they live on the street. A certain percentage of people who try drugs get addicted. Making it more acceptable and almost a “rite of passage” meant more addicts. It’s a long time coming but the crisis is here.

        2. They’re hammering the small landlords pretty hard now. “Oh, you can’t collect rent, you can’t evict, and by the way, you still owe taxes. Have a nice day.” They’ve effectively taken their property without paying for it.

          None of this is unintended.

      3. The synthetic cannabinoid crap is absolutely terrifying. OMG it is bad.

        And they MIX the synthetics with fentanyl, angel dust, molly, whatever and then shoot it up. Putting Mr. and Mrs. BrainFry in a nice homeless shelter won’t fix the problem, of that you can be sure. These are major brain damage cases, they’re not going to “get over it.”

        Do -not- let your kids try the illegal weed. It is fantastically unsafe.

        1. I recall when legalization advocates asked, “have you ever seen a violent pothead?”

          Which always surprised me, because while I believe I had a much smaller sample than most, “of course” was clearly the most honest answer.

          I wouldn’t necessarily say that a paranoid pothead is worse than an angry drunk.
          But I’d be hard-pressed to argue that it’s much better, either.

      4. In our state we are not allowed to kick them out of the town because the state supreme court ruled that “where they live” is their home. Never mind that it is taxpayer funded property and we pay the taxes. The City Council talked about it and were told “no” by the city attorney.

        1. Sounds like it’s time for a new city attorney. Bugger IS elected, right?

          1. Or a new state supreme court, more like. If the city attorney is just trying to save the city’s bacon from being sued, he’s doing his job.

    2. I know a few things about that, but I have a lot of “unknowns” as well.

      I know that an awful lot of them are mentally ill. I also know that those camps are recruiting grounds and bivouacs for Antifa. I surmise that the creation of “homeless camps” is intentional, an important component of creating the infrastructure of leftist terror. They don’t have pre-existing masses of trained men, like the freikorps that formed the cadre of the SA, or the partisan units that formed the cadre of the (original) KKK, so they’re trying to gin it up from whole cloth.

      However, what I don’t know is whether the majority of the people in those camps are mentally ill and/or just plain hobos–people who simply don’t want a settled life. Or to what extent are also people who are simply down on their luck–although I dare say that anyone who is simply unfortunate would pretty quickly find that those camps are toxic, and find a better place to be.

      1. I knew a woman once who had worked in a homeless shelter, and she concluded that the vast majority of them didn’t want to leave the streets. After all, to have to live on the streets you have have NO options. Not so much as a friend’s couch.

        1. That’s been my experience, too. But these tent cities got so big, so fast, that I would like confirmation that they’re all hobos or insane.

          1. I have the impression some blue city governments have incentivized homelessness by offering “help.” So homeless people gravitate where they get more “help.”

            1. Of course they are. Democrats are all about enabling counter-social behavior and breaking down civilization.

          2. Eugene has three types of homeless camps; beyond the homeless shelters. Those with provided solid, non-tent, lockable shelters, in designated group areas. Area has restroom, shower facilities, and other sanitary facilities. Don’t know how they handle kitchen options. Then there are designated camping, camps; again with at least bathrooms, and garbage disposal. Then there are the “distributed” campers, camp wherever they get away with, for awhile, anyway. The first two options have rules to stay there. Rules that do not forbid pets, and allow families to stay together. But no drugs, no drinking, onsite. Must participate in site chores (whatever those are). I don’t know how full these sites and traditional shelters are nightly. I do know the area still has a horrible problem with the 3rd camping option.

            They camp in parks. They camp in right-of-ways off of Beltline, Delta, but not hwy 126, once it passes over the freeway as that is Springfield. Now Hwy 126 west, at least until it is out of the city … Not much problem in suburbs, not even the parks (out here anyway) although we do/did(?) have someone tenting between fence onto sidewalk on Irvington. Guessing because, although within city growth boundary, only the newer neighborhoods are city. Us county neighborhoods have been left alone; so far.

            1. The one camp under 126 next to Skinner Butte (we stop there every time we go see the family in S.Or) was remarkable neat and clean a week ago. Nothing like the ones I pass every day on Foster or Powell here in PDX.

              1. Don’t know where all the hard, Conestoga Wagon styled hard official camps are but know where two are located. 1) Off East entrance to Autzen parking 2) On hwy 99 where SE start of Prairie Road. The structures look solid and everything is in a neat row. Now how clean inside? They are surrounded by privacy fences. The official camp at NW Expressway and RR/Chambers/RR Blvd (it is a confused intersection) is a tent facility. It is fenced but not privacy fence. That appears to be kept neat.

                The other camps? They start neat, but quickly turn into “not”; even if only one person. I know when these camps are forced to move, they leave a lot of garbage behind, that take specialized bio-hazard clean up crews (which are also swamped with dealing with the fire areas up Hwy 126 (Blue River), Hwy 122 (Detroit), N. Umpqua (Glide), and other areas. The other problem with the homeless is their occupying school yards at night. Might not be camping out there, but occupying to do drugs, whatever. Valid or not, when that happens it is blamed on the residents of the closest not-sanctioned camp, and they are ran out. Not arrested or forced out of the area, but just “move along”.

                So far, repeatably the following areas have been cleaned out, reoccupied, cleaned out, on regular cycles: Under Beltline bridge RR, the E & W off ramps mediums at RR from BL (these will get cleaned out as HS starts in the fall and parents complain their students are being harassed, or commuters get tired of the eyesore). Parks under Jefferson/Willamette bridge (one starting up, again there). Across where Beltline comes in at W. 11 (this one is getting narlly, suspect they’ll get cleaned out soonish). Along Beltline greenway, anywhere between Coburg Road and NW Expressway, either side. The ones that are nestled in the trees near the church and in the blackberries that can keep camp clean and (more or less) invisible tend to stay longer. Yes, Hwy 126 as it appears to cross over Coburg road always has 2 to 4 dispersed campers, which seem to be cleaner (probably because of lack of volume). These are just the areas we drive regularly.

                Only know about the Autzen camp because of the Covid clinic shot processing the county did, (hubby got his there). Rarely drive by the Hwy 126 camp. Rest? Live in that area. Otherwise IDK where they are camping other than what is reported … Downtown and other parks, otherwise, IDK. Some of these camps aren’t really that close to services offered down off of 1st street. The formal Conestoga camps they take services to the residents, but the other type of camps and the “illegal” camps, they don’t.

          3. Mayor of Aurora, Colorado, did a three day stint pretending to be homeless, staying in shelters and in the camps. He wrote an article on it that basically confirmed what most non-leftists already knew–the shelters have rules, and people staying there tend to be the “temporarily down on their luck, trying to get back on their feet” sort, while the camps were full of people who were mentally ill, chemically dependent (often self-medicating for mental illness), and people who just didn’t want to live by any rules.

            1. The shelters have rules, and people staying there tend to be the “temporarily down on their luck”,

              All three type of “official” shelters offered in Eugene require residents to follow rules. The difference with the official camps is residents aren’t expected to vacate their bed, with all their possessions, daily, then hope they score a bed the next night, like the traditional shelters. Pets are allowed (I think). The built structures are lockable so they don’t have to tote what they’ve managed to keep. Families/couples are kept together (more or less, the built Conestoga like structures aren’t that big). Although families with children, the system tries to get into vouchered hotels and transitioned into low rent apartments. The hard shelters also work for t hose who can’t handle houses/property, or apartments, or regular jobs, but aren’t strung out on self medication, and can follow the rules. The official self tent shelters supposedly have rules too, don’t know if this option is just an overflow because of lack of hard shelters, or if the rules are slightly loser. latter camp was the first step towards the hard shelter camps, just FYI. This leaves the ones strung out on drugs, self medicating or not, who really should be forced into long term hospitalization, which is now illegal. While a few maybe those so PSTD damaged that any isolation is required, they are a very few, and can be picked out in the camps of a total of ONE, and generally pretty much well hidden.

              Self medication isn’t always for mental health. It also can be for not diagnosed or controlled chronic conditions like Lupis, etc.

        2. My understanding is that couch surfing at a friend’s place is considered “homeless” as far as the government is concerned. In fact, I think that it is correct to describe the person as “homeless”, but that state is not in fact an actual problem.

          1. Depends on how much they want to goose the numbers — however, the person is not in the tent-filled encampment.

      2. In the past few weeks, I had a “splurge” of exploring RVs and campers of all types. (The pinnacle was discovering there were Winnebago helicopters in the late 70s!)

        One of the things that I kept getting in my “news feed” during this time was articles on living on the road — living out of vans, or RVs, or campers, or whatnot.

        I can’t help but suspect that a large percentage of people who “simply don’t want a settled life”, and even a lot of people who are down on their luck, are living out of vehicles of some sort. They are almost certainly invisible, because they’ll likely be finding random places to sleep, and would certainly be avoiding the homeless camps like the plague.

        1. RV’s – legal boon docking. There is a X (14 locally) day time limit imposed (can’t just squat). There are legal RV communities from full time rentals to overnight, to own your own lot (sunbird communities in Arizona).

          Inlaws had the latter in Lake Havasu, AZ. Their other locations were her mom’s backyard, and they camp host at various campgrounds around Oregon (depending on which season, crabbing Fort Stevens, Croppy ??? reservoir, etc. He is a mechanic so he shows up, does all the small yard appliance, lawn mowers, etc., maintenance and repairs a few hours over the weeks, then they are gone.) They got tired or Lake Havasu local, so sold. Then her mom broke her hip and they’ve been here for the last few winters. Now her paternal Uncle moved in to her “She Shed” at her mom’s, her brothers moved back in with mom. I’m more surprised about BIL for sticking around. But then BIL doesn’t deal with the house household at all. They still take off for the camp hosting gigs. Just got a new RV, their 3rd since they’ve retired.

          The former, the RV rental options, even with Thousand Trails, or so they pitched, with enough points you can work the system to essentially spend full time in their and associated systems. We didn’t buy into it (primarily because there aren’t any facilities near most the places we go). But we’ve been to enough of their listen-to-the-pitch-free-giveaways. Inlaws started this way, but they didn’t buy into the system, instead they got a membership because someone was giving away “just take over the annual assessment”, got rid of it the same way, once they quit the wider traveling. Have HS classmates that just sold their business, home, and are taking their RV full time on the road (with motorcycles). IDK if they are utilizing the Thousand Trails or similar system or not, haven’t asked.

          Wyndham Condo Vacation Club makes the same pitch as Thousand Trails. With enough points, you can retire and spend all your time moving from club to club based on your fancy. (Again. Wyndham lacks facilities near where we travel.) Regarding Wyndham, Thousand Trails, or other similar club. I know of two (2!) that really this isn’t just a super expensive money drain. Both got in early. Early enough that the new category of fees that get imposed when actually using properties, they are grandfathered out of. Even on new points acquired. Still get the annual maintenance cost increases. Both continue to acquire additional points, through people trying to get rid of theirs, usually at discounted prices. One turns and resells the points. (One is the step parent of my cousins, married to my Uncle’s Ex. The other, the broker, is the one who arranges the lodging for the Men’s Away Golf Trips; almost always stay in Wyndham properties be they condos or VRBO rentals.)

          Technically the full time RV’rs, or Wyndham full timers, are “homeless”. But they definitely are not resource poor homeless. Note it isn’t just Retired doing this either. There are examples plenty, that take to blogs, on how to work from the full time moving RV lifestyle. How to take families and remote learning options for kids.

      3. Given that Antifa shows up anytime the authorities try to clean out the camps, pretty clear that they have some vested interest, either as a recruiting ground (although most Antifa seem to be white, middle class) or just as a way to condition us to letting things around us go to hell.

        1. I don’t think it’s any sort of vague goal of “creating chaos”. They NEED these camps, and I’m pretty sure it’s both for recruitment and bivouac, but I have an awful feeling that there are other reasons as well.

  1. Getting past harvest would be very good. Let’s postpone the breakdown until food is in, such as is being planted.

  2. Hopefully the storytellers in government will be blocked from actions to make things irrevocably worse. There is so much to be done to fight the Marxist teachers, Media and Democrats there aren’t enough hours in the day.

      1. You seem to keep amazing hours. How do you keep going? At any rate get fully healthy.

  3. My idea of an unavoidable hot war with China goes like this:

    Nuke Beijing. War over!

    Tho just as with the USSR, would be massively better if we can wait them out and let China fail under its own weight.

    1. Most countries are highly centralized; everything of importance runs through their capitol. The USA is one of the handful that’s not like that. For that matter, if a nuke turned the District of Columbia into a glow-in-the-dark tourist attraction, the population would be split between “don’t care” and “par-tay!”

      1. Par-tay! No more federal government pounding on Texas. I’d mourn the good people and art crisped in the strike but otherwise….

        1. It’s that time of year again. It took a lot of damage last year. Considering how many people would die, it’s wrong to hope for a failure but ……

          1. Isn’t Wuhan downstream from 3 Gorges? Coverup and victimhood in one tidy package at the cost of a few million lives that the CCP wouldn’t miss.

      1. Nah, too much chance the worst miscreants would escape — and far worse for us, WAY too much “humanitarian aid” would get funneled to China thereafter. And wind up in all the wrong pockets.

        But yeah, from what I hear, some year soon downstream is gonna be free whitewater rafting.

          1. Why do you hate bobcats? 😛

            Filling them with zebra mussels and Asian carp, on the other hand…

  4. I was a big fan of one world government for years – all the best people (pick your definition of “best”; it was fairly ubiquitous) told me so. It took a LONG time to get over that – 30 years, maybe. It still hits me, sometimes.
    I don’t think “lie” works for that. There were some useful idiots, but I think people really believed it. It was the zeitgeist of the 20th century. It took a lot of time for “best men” to become a joke. The Temple of Doom ending is STILL one of the few pop-culture mockings of the concept. The FBI probably still exists due to Bones (and other crime dramas), to a large extent.
    In the 21st century, “everyone knows” that distributed systems are better than centralized control, but that has not made its way into pop-culture, yet. The US governmental systems – as designed, not as currently functioning – are perfectly suited to this sort of thing. Let’s get back to the future!

    1. I don’t know about Spielberg. In Crystal Skull you have a conversation between Indy and the dean mourning the rise of McCarthyism, and yet the plot delpends on there really are teams of Soviet agents in the U.S. working against us!

    2. Raiders of the Lost Ark.

      “Top. Men.”

      I can’t remember the ending of Temple of Doom.

      Ghostbusters took potshots at the government and experts, as well.

      1. “And you…you, Lenny, will be responsible for saving the lives of millions of registered voters.”

        1. Also, the government “expert”, Walter Peck, is an interfering busy-body who makes things much worse.

          1. That’s true, but look at it from Peck’s point of view: here are a bunch of people who clearly haven’t done all the requisite paperwork who are handling high-energy machinery right in the middle of downtown (which *was* a very stupid move on the Ghostbusters’ part), most of whom were fired from their previous job for lack of results, and when you ask them (actually quite politely, at least at the very beginning) to do the same thing every other company in New York has had to do, their chief executive smarts off to you and treats you like an ass. (Not to mention that all the Ghostbusters needed to do was install a backup UPS for their facilities with controls not accessible from on-site, and they might have avoided the whole problem.)

            Everybody loves Peter Venkman because he’s funny, but he’s also an object lesson in the fact that sometimes, being cooperative rather than unnecessarily confrontational spares everybody a heck of a lot of hassle.

      2. The ending of ToD is entirely unmemorable. Indy, Shorty and Screech (forget her name, but she spent half the movie screaming her lungs out) go back to the village, return the stone, Indy and Screech kiss. The end.

    3. So was I. I picked it up by assmosis, mostly from old SF. Of *course* there’d be a World Government. It was one of the givens; nobody questioned it.

      Until someone asked me what that World Government would likely look like. And I thought about that for a while, and eventually decided that East Germany was probably the *best* it would wind up looking like.

      “What if you didn’t like that government? Where would you go?”

      Yeah. That’s a pointier question now than it was then.

      1. A “one world” government could work, if there were somewhere to go for the people who want none of it. But then, it wouldn’t be a “one world” government anymore, would it?

        So the one-worlders would then have to push themselves out, maybe call themselves a “Federation of Planets” or some such (tm, copyright, etc) Because that’s the problem, if there’s somewhere to get away to, it shows up how not-good things are in the one-world government (else why did so many try to get away from the OBVIOUSLY better government system of West Germany / USSR / Cuba / North Korea?)

        1. Which with just a few seconds thought, also shows up with the Dems are so very, very averse to any sort of “States Rights,” because how many people would end up fleeing the oh-so-well governed blue states?

          1. I agree, but I would point out the men who’ve wanted to start their own little kingdom’s; and created far worse than they started with.
            We don’t see it as often as the instances of people fleeing persecution/tyranny, but they do happen.

            1. Yes, there would be the possibility of Jonestown.

              I presume you wanted to point that out so we didn’t all get too carried away thinking that the ability for some to opt out would create Heaven?

              1. It should be kept in mind that, as Communists, Jonestown wanted (at least in theory, if not in practice) to be the One World Government.

                The ince thing about the ability to “opt-out” is that one can go and do whatever they please, whether it be to prove to the world that they weren’t fit to rule it, or prove to the world that they should just be left alone, to do their own thing.

        2. Given the rather mixed results of “big government” in general, if there were someplace for others to go, the OWG would pretty much have to invade it at some point, because most of the ideas of the BG sorts cannot succeed unless there’s no competition.

          You see it every day on Twatter and the like, with the left silencing anyone that disagrees because deep down in their heart (or approximation thereof) they know, even if they don’t consciously think about it, that their worldview cannot compete in an honest marketplace of ideas.

          1. imnohbody said
            “Given the rather mixed results of “big government” ”
            Mixed? Are you sure? Big Governments results run from mild failure to downright catastrophe with the mean lying closer to the latter. When it succeeds it seems to do so almost in spite of itself.

            1. I didn’t specify the nature of the mix. Results of “bad and worse” is, technically, a mix. 😉

        3. Also, they’d NEED a common enemy to stay united.
          And if the existential enemy is largely imaginary, so much the better.

      2. Individuals feel that they’re ignored by various levels of government in our “republic”. How cozy and personal would it feel to be ruled by a few psychos and their world wide gestapo?
        It’s like not thinking through “gun control” or “reparations”, but much worse.

      3. The Systems Alliance from the Mass Effect game is a variant, I guess. It was established by various nations of Earth, but those nations retain their sovereignty. It mainly acts as humanity’s representative to the galaxy at large, though even then there are independent human colonies running around. Though aside from some Codex entries here and there, there’s not much detail on it. It’s in the background, one of the things Shepard has to deal with.

      4. Even I who was percolated in conservatism (lol) picked up the one world government from old SF. I think it was my time in the Navy when I saw some top-down government at work that I realized how top heavy it was. AND how it didn’t work.

        1. I believe one world government was popular back in old SF because the alternative was seen as being a post-nuclear-war apocalypse world.

          1. That, and even level-headed people thought the UN would work out, and eventually evolve into true world government.

    I beg to disagree. They not only know but believe with a religious fervor exactly what constitutes “good.”
    The thing is, good to them is whatever it takes to defeat the enemy. Which would be we Trump following, conservative, knuckle dragging, Ghod and Country worshiping buffoons. We are evil so whatever it takes to defeat us is by its very nature right.
    I also tend to think that they have been bug nuts crazy for years and years past.
    Once upon a time they were the Tories who chastised we insurgents for defying our rightful Lord King and master.
    Then they became the Democrats that argued to point of our bloodiest conflict that slavery was natural and condoned in the Bible and sacrificed tens of thousands of men to maintain such a system of governance.
    And after that war, unable to accept defeat, they imposed Jim Crow, numerous impediment to minority voting, the KKK as their militant action arm, and countless other impediments large and small to our principle of equality.
    Latest kerfuffle has been going on since last half of the 20th century with a long history of protests by cannon fodder all to advance their narrative, ostensibly socialist, but in fact truly nothing more than the rule of the many by an elite few which is precisely where the conjoined paths of socialism and communism ultimately lead.
    Good Lord bless the internet for it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to deny the truth of our lying eyes. Truth that we are and always have been manipulated for purposed never in our own best interest.
    Perhaps the single greatest miracle of the 20th century was not the disillusion of the USSR, but was the fact that it happened with so little bloodshed. I do not see us freeing ourselves from our minders and assumed betters will be anywhere near as clean and bloodless.

    1. their attitude is exemplified by the Union strike against Bear Archery in Gaylord, Michigan, back when. Bear was forced to close operations in Michigan, moved to Florida (Right To Work even back then) and reduced their offerings (though gained some back supplying GM with fiberglass springs) and nearly everyone in Gaylord lost their jobs, and the Union considers it a win. They got their way in not accepting whatever Bear offered, and boy, did they show them. sorry about the workers’ house foreclosures and inability to pay bills . . . . The Union Bosses “won” one against management, the fodder/workers got shafted,

      1. Or when Hostess was forced to close when the employee union wouldn’t play ball.

          1. And the store stockers have more work to do, since Hostess is no longer vendor-stocked (like Coke, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Old Dutch, Little Debbie…).

        1. I watched unions destroy business after business in Ireland, so I was not at all surprised at Hostess. I remember one sausage (iirc) company which told the union that they wouldn’t be able to meet the x year contract’s mandated 10% wage increase without laying off half the work force and the union insisted that no one lose their job and the pay raise go through. The company offered to let the union guys look at the books and they’d stick with the contract if the union could find the money. The union refused that too, so the company stopped taking new orders, fulfilled all the outstanding ones, and shut permanently, so that everyone lost their job. I still don’t see how anyone could consider that a win, even the union, since it would mean that many fewer people paying dues.

          With the Hostess mess, you’d think when the Teamsters are telling the other union that there is no blood left to squeeze from that stone, they’d listen?

          tl;dr: I don’t trust unions.

          1. I think part of it is the fear that if the union lets the company win once, it shows weakness on the part of the union. Better to go scorched earth than to let the company win.

            Plus, the union leadership doesn’t work for the company. They’ll still have a job even if the company goes under.

          2. I was raised in Idaho, where the unions attempted an armed communist revolution at the end of the 19th century.
            And I had friends whose fathers were crippled in union shop “industrial accidents” for supporting Right to Work.

            I do trust unions.
            I trust them to be evil and destructive.
            (I acknowledge that at certain points of history, they’ve been a necessary evil. So they do rank ahead of malaria.)

            1. Big unions, where the union leadership keep their jobs, because they are paid by the union but no employee?


              Smaller one employer unions? Where if the employer goes away the union leadership also lose jobs, because they are not being paid by the union? Leadership, while elected, at best is a volunteer position?

              Those I can support.

              Don’t know of one anymore. Well technically the one we, me and hubby, belonged to (well he did, I only did for 3 years … stupid owl & St Helen), is still a sub-union. Leadership still isn’t paid by the union, from either level. They are still required to work for the single employer. No management is a member of the union, but came through union ranks (there was a rumor they had to undergo lobotomy upon taking manager position, but you know …) The *Liaison* between the larger union and the sub-union is an employee of the larger union. The sub-single-employer union was forced into this relationship when the rules changed for the pension funding percentage of single employer pensions. Once the pension change went through they were out of compliance and no way to get back in, no matter how rosy their portfolio was. Not a pension heavily vested in their own stock either. Company is “not-for-profit” (not non-profit, that is different).

              1. The big unions have been pushing to absorb as many of the smaller unions as possible. I think I’ve seen at least a couple of instances were they went to court to force the matter, and won.

                It’s all power and money for them.

                1. I know the local union shopped around, a lot. The Carpenter & Joiners were the least objectionable one. Hubby was on the search as one of the Pension & Trust Union Rep. They were forced into the change because of Pension Rules. It isn’t like their union, even small, is a money source for the bigger union. They are not getting money out of a company that, by definition, will not, ever, make a profit. Member count, now, maybe goes as high as 60. Other unions (or Carpenters, IDK) also absorbed the other same company job unions, for same reason. When this one member count goes up, another member count goes down as contracts shuffle back and forth. Most people don’t even know what the job is (Log Scalers). Now if, as alleged, Oregon, Washington, California (north), Idaho, and Alaska, had legislated that ALL timber coming off private and public lands had to be scaled by 3rd party, non-company, Log Scalers, the dynamic would have changed. But that was squashed.

            2. It’s amazing how those who tout unions never think we can notice where the violence always gets directed, and it’s not at the employers.

            3. Around here (Appalachia and surrounds) you hear about how unions saved the coal miners and the steel workers when the evil business owners did dastardly things in response to unionization efforts. To which I point out that, while the UMW still has a nice (albeit derelict) hall in scenic downtown Hinton, WV, the actual coal industry is under increasing pressure, despite the fact that coal is or would be the ONLY thing that would keep the lights on and recharge your idiotic electric car — at least until we could get new nukes online. And if you want a trip, go to Mt Washington in Pittsburgh and enjoy the view across the Monongahela River of their pristine downtown and appreciate that that river valley USED TO BE chockablock with steel mills.

          3. Also, Unions were, and often still are somewhat tied into organized crime, but there seems to be a disconnect where “Good For Business” has fallen by the wayside.

            1. Well, unions exist to defeat the collective action problem implicit in the prisoner’s dilemma, so….

  6. I wonder how many of them can get by if they cling to their masks. Yesterday, I ran across another one sitting in his sealed car alone wearing his face diaper.

    My initial thought was that we should give them until the end of June to get used to normality again, then (metaphorically) rip the diapers off; after all, there’s a reason that we don’t go around covering our faces in public normally. But reading this, I’m starting to think that maybe we need to let people keep the masks as long as they need them; like an emotional support peacock, it might help them cling to sanity in such a way that they don’t fall off a cliff.

    1. Weekend trip/getaway… no mask theater for restaurant costumers, but staff still had such* – in South Dakota, mind you – so i assume it is likely lingering *local* or corporate CYA and such. This morning, a little VERY out of the way cafe… NOBODY (at least that I saw) was masked. AND they finally are back to the old opening times. The closing times are shifted, but they had so little business in the final hour that it doesn’t matter, so that will stay.

      * As if worn properly… most know the masks are worthless and cho(o)se to breathe.

      1. I lean towards it being corporate CYA.
        Ostensibly here, if you’ve had the WuFlu shots, you no longer need to wear a mask, not that anyone’s asking anyone if they’ve had the shot.
        Restaurants, very, very few customers wore masks going in / out, and a large part of the staff was wearing them “wrong” (below the nose,) or outright pulling them below the chin to chat with people.

        1. Absolutely corporate CYA, and largely lawyer repellant at that.

          Where I work (a large home improvement sort of business), customers who’ve been vaccinated (no mention of anyone who’s been vaccinated by getting the bug) don’t have to wear masks, those not vaccinated should wear masks, but you can’t ask anyone without a mask if they’ve been vaccinated. Which I guess is a step up from banning any non mask-wearers from the place for a year, if not forever. Kinda.

          Meanwhile, employees, vaccinated/recovered from the bug or not, no choice but wear the mask or quit.

          Some of us blame it on the corporate offices being located in Wisconsin.

      2. Here there are still some still wearing masks, probably as you say due to corporate CYA… but most of ’em are wearing ’em below their chins. “When you said I had to wear a mask, you should have been more specific!”

        Probably 80% of everyone else is face-naked.

        Costco has gone to “you must be either masked or vaccinated” but is not requiring confirmation of the latter.

        1. The West Seattle QFC (a Kroger company) had the usual “Do Not Enter Without A Mask” sign but also had a little sign saying “Fully vaccinated people need not wear a mask” kind of off up to the right of the main sign in less obvious colors. So I stuffed the mask back in my pocket and went in.

          There were three out of maybe fifty customers unmasked and one out of five (visible) staffers. Nobody as much as glared at me.

          1. Been to Costco. Rather than one greater, they now have two. When asked if I was vaccinated because not masked, responded “Would I be unmasked?” (Darn it this greeter was more persistent and asked again.) me: “Duh!” (Channeling my inner teen. Didn’t work.) Third time. Polite voice: “Do you want to see the damn card?” Was let to go on in. IN the mean time, about a dozen others walked by unmasked, unasked 🙂

            Fred Meyers (local Kroger). Little sign stating if vaccinated no mask needed, but easy to miss if not paying attention. No one asking.

            Local Sports Bar. Big Sign “Vaccinated? No mask needed. We will not ask.” They have more than their liquor license to lose too. They also have video lottery section. They are being subtle about it. Not like it is pasted on outside their entrance door. But as soon as you’ve walked in, plain and clear.

    2. I think love says we refuse to allow public insanity. If my neighbor is wearing the slave muzzle, I’m not letting that go. I’m saying something.

      1. “You know, you don’t need to wear that anymore, CDC and our gov say so”
        “No! I have to keep wearing it!”
        “Why, are you sick and trying to keep other people from catching what you’ve got?”
        “NO! What if I walk by someone who has the COVID?!?! I don’t wanna DIE!!!”
        “So you think that mask, that’s about the same level of protection as a chain-link fence is in keeping out mosquitos, is going to do any good? Hang on, I’m calling the nice men in the white coats that will give you a nice coat that lets you hug yourself.”

        1. I’ve given up on trying to impart sense to the senseless. I just announce, “Masks are a lie!”


          If anybody asks, I elaborate: “Using a cheap paper mask to stop a virus is like trying to stop fog with a barbed-wire fence.”

        2. I get a different response:”They’re talking about variants, and you might have to get another shot…I just don’t want to take the chance I might give it to someone else.” From someone who has been vaccinated. And who is utterly sweet-tempered, honest, and believes what she sees on the news because of course since she would never lie about things like that, they wouldn’t either.

        3. I was polite and “reasonable” today, but I still almost made a receptionist cry.
          She was vehement that I needed to wear a mask.
          Rather than argue, and miss an important appointment, I just said “it’s stupid, but fine” and asked for one.
          She didn’t have any to give me, and was horrified when I said that if she demanded I wear the stupid thing, that it was her responsibility to supply the stupid thing.
          Evidently, I should keep a supply in my car. “Because most medical facilities won’t let you come in without a mask.” I pointed out that the medical facilities that demanded masks, generally made you wear one that they provided, and those (hypothetical?) that didn’t, made them freely available.
          She was adamant that the doctor would refuse to see me if I wasn’t wearing one.

          The doctor wasn’t wearing one, and expressed no issue with my failure to comply.

          1. I deal with medical all the time. Every medical office supplies a mask. In fact, they give me a mask because they want me to throw away the mask I wore to get inside. The receptionist sounds kooky.

  7. As time goes on, some will be further vacuumed up by the lies, but I think more will finally gain some wisdom through experience and wake up.
    TPTB have a pocket list of things to lie about and use as crises and global rallying cries. Pandemics, racism, external threats, internal threats, “gun” violence, etc. They’ll use whatever they think they’ll need. The lies are already made, they just have to roll them out.
    In the near future (beside what is already on-going), I’m looking for another pandemic, UFO confusion, and cyber attacks. The latter may be preceded by WEF “Cyber Polygon”, just like the beer flu was preceded by their “Event 201”.
    We are white water rafting and the rapids will get worse. Oars, helmet, preserver? Check!

    1. I want a 26 foot jet boat so I can climb up the rapids, then blaze down them again.

  8. The “hot” part of the internal strife will start when Democrats at some point this summer engineer a scenario that eliminates the filibuster or simply disregards it so they can ram through HR1, and all the other noxious power grabs that they intend to implement by hook or by crook.

    That may be through finagling things to conduct vote when the two Senators in their own party who are blocking ending the filibuster are “not available”, a Republican Senator or two suffering a Hillary special, or instigating widespread “civil unrest” through their paramilitary, that targets all the people the Democrats hate and desperately want to “get rid of”, especially if it can be coordinated with yet another attack on Israel by Iran through its proxies so as to gin up even more antisemitic violence as part and parcel of it.

  9. Watch your six at all times in public. As the Amazon delivery driver beat-down of an elderly white woman showed, people who have been driven insane by critical race theory or by the pandemic lockdowns, or both, can snap at any moment. They don’t have to be in a BLM march with a black mask. They can be the person next to you in the post office. I’m in a liberal area so I’m very cautious. A person wearing a mask outside is now a good indicator of someone who is denying reality to the very last scrap of their sanity.

    1. Good advice, thanks. North of Seattle darkness means I trust no one outside my house. I enjoy many of my neighbors, and I believe they would turn into “good Germans” without thinking twice.

      Mask-wearers are half crazy; mask-wearing-workers are double that. It’s getting hot and they’re forced into a muzzle? That’s a recipe for insane overreaction.

      1. > good Germans

        We’ve seen the bureaucracy, the media, and too much of corporate America march in lockstep. And cheered on by the Karens and Kens, and the fellow-travelers and the won’t-want-troubles.

        1. A lot of people like that in the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of New Jersey as well.

    2. Agreed – I’m fairly sure that many on-the-edge people have been driven right over it by the whipped-up panic over the covidiocy and the lockdowns. The Amazon driver beating up that woman, other unprovoked attacks on total strangers, that road-rage shooting in California that killed a six-year old boy in the back seat of his mother’s car because she flipped the bird at another driver who cut her off, and a passenger in that car opened fire. (Shooting at someone for flipping you off? WTH?) People are on edge, and senseless stuff like that is pushing them all the way over.
      And that’s not even including deliberate incitements by Antifa and BLM…

    3. “A person wearing a mask outside is now a good indicator of someone who is denying reality to the very last scrap of their sanity.”

      This is true, especially the ones on bikes, but I do delivery – the drivers for Amazon and other delivery services are still required by their companies to wear them.

      1. To realize that all those companies are based on the Left coast. I drive for Lyft (San Francisco). Yesterday, I did 6 rides. One wore a mask throughout the ride. The rest had some variation of the get-out. First one (a blind woman), said, “You seem to be nice” when asking if I cared that she took her mask off.” All of the others asked if I was following the company diktat and expressed “so tired of the bullshit” sentiments on the subject. I see this as a growing and hopeful trend.

  10. Collectivists of any stripe are having trouble with reality. Any time someone claims knowledge based on a “careful binning” of people, whether melanin-based, or verbally-based, or any other “differentiating factor”, it’s clear that thoughtful consideration is out the window. My point is that each individual is unique, from DNA out. If we don’t treat them, or think of them so, then we’re no better than they are.

    Some people follow, some people lead, but most people just want to live their lives in peace. The latter is the key to why so few people actively protest on either side. Without some form of conscription wars don’t last long. What I see coming are skirmishes at the edges of “civilization.” Mostly those who think they can force people to follow with find a serious problem with armed angry otherwise peaceful people. It’s easier to intimidate a large populous without any weapons, much easier.

  11. Side thread on the WMD’s thing: that was an early “drinking bleach” hoax. If you read the Authorization of Use of Force, we went back to war with Iraq because Iraq was kicking out inspectors that were there to prevent them developing WMDs, shooting at our aircraft*, and otherwise violating the terms of their surrender in the first Gulf War.

    The whole idea that we went there becaue we believed Saddam had WMDs was basically made up by the newsies to bash Bush.

    So yeah, narrative. And if you pushed back, people looked at you like you’d grown a third head or told them gravity wasn’t real.

    *It didn’t make the news because they only succeeded shooting down a couple drones. All the times their SAM sites engaged our manned aircraft resulted in F-16 1: SAM: ded.

    But there were a lot of HARMs that we ended up feeding them. And if we kept playing defensive it was only a matter of time until they figured it out and we started losing people.

    1. During that time I was on an airline flight sitting next to a man with an interesting business card. The number of news stories about no WMDs was huge and I asked him why there was no public acknowledgement with images showing they did exist. He replied, “If we do that we’ll have problems disposing of them because a large number of actors would try to get to them.” I’ve no way of knowing if what he said was true, but knowing the IEDs are a result of the square mile of ordinance that we were unable to guard effectively and unable to destroy, because 1 square mile of explosives going off….????? I’ll believe that some WMDs existed, were destroyed, and it didn’t matter that much afterward, we were committed, pun intended.

      1. There was an occasional article about WMDs being discovered in Iraq. But it never made the big news sites.

        1. Canada had several articles, and I used to have a folder full of links of things like tons of yellow cake and nerve agents being sent off.

    2. Saddam *said* he had WMDs – nerve gas, biological agents, and he’d have nukes Real Soon Now. And that he would use them against the United States. He bragged about it quite often.

      Hey, all we did was take him at his word.

      “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

      1. That’s the thing *it was not why we went to war*

        It was a useful squirrel that everyone got wrapped up it, so that the newsies could completely ignore to reasons we had to go. And they’ve made it stick for nearly 20 years.

        We went to war with Iraq because they invaded a country we had defensive treaties with. And when we won, they agreed to terms that would make sure they did not invade our allies again.

        Saddam promptly started violating those terms the moment we left. And at that point we had a legal and moral obligation to enforce those terms, by force, and even by invasion of necessary.

        Unfortunately we had a feckless coward in the White House at the time who was perfectly happy to let someone shoot at Americans and American allies so long as they didn’t make to big of a mess.

        It was never about WMDs. It was always about whether the US will honour our treaties or defend our allies.

        Unfortunately, no-one in our press corps had enough basic dignity to care, even back then.

        1. If you make cease fire agreements and have declared red lines, and you subsequently refuse to enforce them, ALL such agreements become meaningless, thereby further diminishing any deterrence of bad conduct by bad actors.

        2. We were already nearby, it was convenient to deal with Iraq before leaving instead of waiting for Saddam to work himself up into following through with his threats.

        3. THIS. WMDs were brought up by the US, including by The Ultimate Political General Colin Powell when he went to the UN, as supplemental evidence of Saddam doing bad things beyond the proximate legal cause. But the reason we went BACK to war was that Saddam repeatedly violated the terms of the Desert Storm cease-fire agreement, to the point that the war AUTOMATICALLY was back on.

          Letting him get away with violating the terms of the cease fire would undermine every future agreement involving the US ending (or heading off) any conflict. There has to be a downside to breaking an agreement aside from “give sanctions more time”.

          Going in to stop Iraq blatantly violating the international agreements that suspended the Kuwait war, combined will all the evidence of ill intent, including an attempted state assassination of a just-barely-ex US President, repeated attempted murder of US pilots that failed only due to the skill of said pilots in dodging, giving sanctuary and stipend to internationally wanted terror leaders, promising to pay suicide bomber families (I never saw if he ever paid up), and generally behaving in a criminal manner, was a valid act of state.

          A good argument can certainly be made for then going with the Kratman Option of retaining the Iraqi Army in being, picking a handy competent Sunni General who will stay bought, installing him as the new Supreme Dude, and aside from a big permanently leased air and SOF base with runways pointed dircetly at Tehran, declaring victory and sending everyone else home.

          Instead GWB got talked into sticking around to “nation build’, and the people sent to do that were from DoS, so they were, you know, morons.

          It should have been an in-and-out back home by Christmas 2003 deal. If it had been, Barry Sotoero would never have been elected. We probably would have then been stuck with President “Maverick” instead, but that’s still a better timeline than the one we got.

          1. I had completely forgotten about the assassination attempt too.

            I agree we handled the occupation badly. I’m genuinely not sure if we would have had been better off setting up a strongman and getting out, or if we should have just outright made it a protectorate, and told them we’d stay there until we were satisfied or the heat death of the universe, whichever came first.

            I do know the half in/half out thing we pulled served to make everyone we needed to work with us convinced that we were going to abandon them, and everyone we were fighting against convinced that all they needed to do was wait us out.

            The legacy of Vietnam, really.

          2. Barry the Unready got in because the economy crashed a month before the election. Maverick was ahead in the polls till then.

            1. Yeah, but absent the Iraq war downside, Barry would never have been close – imagine if GWB had not been radioactive due to Iraq, even though by that time the surge had won the insurgency, and could have campaigned for whoever was the nom.

              And then after the financial panic when all those bankers were all perp walked and are still in prison, and the CEO of GM… OOPS! Sorry, that was a different timeline too.

              But yeah, interesting timing on that financial panic, eh?

              1. GWB would have been radioactive no matter what, his only advantage is he isn’t Al Gore.

                I do find the discussion about why we went into Iraq interesting because there was never any mention of anything about responsibility to allies and while that is an understandable reason to go to war and might even have been the reason some policy makers had, it’s not what they told us

                No, they told us that Sadaam had the bomb, pesticides and chemical agents were not what they were on about. The day I found out that we didn’t actually know, that an American or British special forces guy hadn’t actually ID’d them, was another step in the total loss of faith in our institutions.

                FEIW, the next step was when Dick Fuld walked away scot free from Lehman with $500mm of his shareholders money after repeatedly breaking the law with repo105. This was another expedient lie and both lies happened under GWB along with the Patriot act and massive corruption and spending. I became a founding member of the Mercutio Party — a plague on both your houses.

                Barry the Unready didn’t deserve to win but the republicans certainly deserved to lose.


                  It’s not what was reported… by the ever trustworthy press.

            2. a) crash may have been deliberate, or deliberately exacerbated
              b) McCain may have been trying to lose
              c) results of the 2008 election may have been contaminated by fraud

              Given the 2020 MO, in hindsight, why should we offer the benefit of doubt on these three points regarding 2008.

              Romney seems likely also as an intentional loser.

              1. I don’t think the crash was deliberate, it was just the ending of another ponzi finance episode. We’re likely to have another one end any day now. All inflationary booms are followed by deflationary busts. This one should be a doozy.

                1. Given “will this thing crash” could only have an answer of “Yes” after all the mismanagement and malregulation of the derivatives market and the banking system overall, especially in allowing any regulated bank entity to ever be “too big to fail”, the question that makes me wonder where I put my foil beanie is the timing vs. the election.

                  Note that there was never anything done to address “too big to fail” – they added stress testing and other minor changes in regs, but nothing was done about regulators allowing and even encouraging entities to be so large they could not be allowed to fail from their own mismanagement with their execs subsequently doing perp walks pour encourager les autres.

                  A conveniently timed crisis that ‘interferes in an election putting a pol into office, and after the election that pol does not go after the crisis actors for their roles in triggering the crisis – well, to tie back to Sarah theme, that story features a pretty obvious quid pro quo.

                  1. From the banks point of view Barry was more risky since ole maverick never met a bank handout he didn’t like. just give him his wars and he was OK. — I’m not an admirer. Seriously though, the decisions were made under GWB, arguably under Clinton, since they had entirely outsourced all economic regulation to the FRB. Remember the committee to save the world with Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers?

                    To me the competence of experts is the great narrative, Plato put it in Socrates’’ mouth in the apology. We have experts in building houses, experts in training horses, and the rest but experts qua expert, there are none.

                    1. Expertise seems to only really come from specialized experience, and to a lesser extent specialized training. And training or experience in one thing has an opportunity cost in training or experience in other things.

                      For all that I’ve chased being good at everything, and to some extent am still chasing it, it is likely impossible. Fooling myself, or fooling others are the more feasible alternatives. I cannot always fool others, but fooling myself is easy.

                      If there are techniques that apply to every problem, then those techniques are potentially something that everyone can learn. Expertise requires techniques or knowledge that some people do not have. Stuff everyone can learn, but few bother to might be a bad basis for trying to convince people to trust one as an expert.

                2. Someone played the market to crash it, because people always figure the knobs least able to fix it, will, so it favors them (Dems got that going with FDR), and McCain could be assured to handle it (the situation) in the worst possible way . . . prime suspect a certain Hungarian socialist P.O.S. and one of those giving GWB advice (and had for the previous crash/bailouts) was some slob named Timothy The Tax Dodger.

              2. I think McCain wanted to win. I also think he was an egotist. I voted for him (and Palin), but I hadn’t trusted him since I saw a victory party at one of his primary victories. He was WAY too comfortable with the adoration of his followers.
                I think he was egotistical enough to believe suspending his campaign in order to ride into D.C. and save the day would make him look Presidential. Instead it made him look foolish.

                1. one has to be an egotist of some level to run for the Office. Those less egotistic tend not to run, or act like they don’t want to be bothered (Fred Thompson). It’s almost like Douglas Adams wrote . . . anyone capable of being elected should not be allowed to hold the job . . . only almost.

              3. McCain wasn’t (intentionally) trying to lose. He’d been sore over some under-handed stuff by the Bush campaign in 2000, and as far as he was concerned he was *owed* the presidency. I’m convinced that a lot of his obnoxiousness dates back to feeling betrayed by a party that didn’t get him into the White House.

                There is no way he would have intentionally lost.

          3. The go in, pick a general who “gets it” and then leaving with the warning “don’t make us come back, you really won’t like it if we have to come back” was absolutely what should have been done. Unfortunately GWB’s people were enamored of “nation building” which ending up making things much worse than they would have been otherwise.

          4. That was my stance at the time. Stick Chalabi on the lead tank, declare liberation, give him a couple mil to buy loyalty, stick around just long enough to stabilize the change as “status quo”, and be done.
            (Except with having Iran in the vice, and cranking the screws. )

            At the time, I said Bush’s plan to bring democracy to the muddle east was a dangerous gamble, and credited him with being more moral than I for wanting to make the attempt.
            I’ve since reconsidered the second part.

            1. Instead of Chalabi it needed to be a then-current Iraqi Army general officers so the Army would be his constituency, but yeah.

          5. I recall something like, “They should get a second chance.”… after they had already had something around 20 chances… so…

          6. There were also (and still are) people who claim that we made it about how Saddam had assisted 9/11, even though we knew he hadn’t. This is also untrue. There WAS stuff in the case made about the fact that he sponsored and provided assistance to various terrorist groups in the Middle East, which was true, and thus part of the “War on Terror”. Especially if you consider the fact that Bin Laden made a HYUGE deal about US troops being on Saudi soil as one of his reasons for attacking, and those troops were on Saudi soil in defense against Saddam. So, by taking out the threat, we could theoretically remove one of the irritants that motivated Al-Qaeda. Theoretically.

            The Saudis would never be willing to lose that leverage over the US and their own people, though, so that was a lost cause.

    3. Re shooting at the no-fly-zone enforcement planes: Recall that the Iraqis operated an integrated air defense system built on top of fairly capable Soviet hardware that had been extensively and thoroughly upgraded (iirc by the Frogs) with a western compute and communication layer. What we were doing was training that very capable system to get better and better at defeating US air warfare TTP. And Saddam was still sharing all his intel with Russia.

      Training an expert system is how it eventually gets better than you.

    4. What I heard from someone I reasonably believe had an inside track: Saddam did have WMD (whatever that really means, tho he said there was also a portable bioweapons lab), but we didn’t find any in Iraq because they’d already been hauled off to Syria via the northern route.

      Which I suppose means everything promptly got looted by eager local tribesmen.

      I’m not sure I ever heard any of the other rationales for the war (I didn’t much care, being of the opinion that we should just let them shoot each other, and shoot any who step out of bounds), but you can’t very well let someone spit on terms like that, and ever expect to be able to enforce anything again.

      1. “Which I suppose means everything promptly got looted by eager local tribesmen.”

        Actually, Assad got hold of them, and used them a few years later. No one ever found anyplace he could have MADE them……

        1. Why, they were made in Aleppo 4, until Ghost got the place blown off the map! 😛

  12. I feel stronger after reading this, Sarah. I’m not sure why, except it doesn’t advocate weakness. It advocates standing up and being the best that human beings can be: courageous, thoughtful, and ruthless.

  13. I tend to feel a bit removed from most of the madness sitting up here on top of the world but I’m quite aware that if, or when, the fit hits the shan, Alaska’s right in the middle of the great circle route twix mid China and mid lower forty eight America.

    Oh well…

      1. Just remember that the CCP wants the areas back from Russia that they think Russia wrongfully took from them as well. Of course so do the Jihadists, who want to recreate and then expand their Caliphate. The conflicts between Turkey, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., are about who will rule the Caliphate, not about establishing it and killing or subjugating the infidels.

        1. Hmmm, a war between China and Russia…

          “Can we root for both sides to lose?” 😛
          “Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace!”

          1. And Russia believes that if you are Russian, than no matter where you are, you are part of “Mother Russia” and that your country should be Russian territory.

              1. It’s actually pretty common; remember Hitler’s justification for invading the Sudetenland? The German population “oppressed by non-Germans.

              2. Look up “Russian America” in your favorite search engine. The Tsar’s cartographers didn’t establish definite eastern borders for all of it, but at the present state borders that was an area of around 893,000 square miles; about the size of Ukraine, France, Poland, modern Germany, Great Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and minor polities), Moldova, Denmark, and Portugal combined.

                Hawaii was just a zit at 11,000 square miles. The Russians decided it produced nothing useful and was impractical to defend, and abandoned it. The British took it over because it was there, then abandoned it for the same reasons. The Americans took it over next, since it was a useful halfway point to the dream of an American Raj in the Far East. Then the Japanese wanted it badly, for no reason I ever figured out…

                Four and a half US states were once under the Russian flag. Britain wound up with title to Washington; Oregon was shared between Britain and the US through claims we bought from France, and Spain’s claims in California had overlapped Russia’s anyway. Hawaii was theoretically independent after the British left and became a state more or less by force. We paid gold and American dollars for Alaska. A good chunk of that Alaska Purchase money came right back to America, as the Tsar’s military bought vast amounts of small arms and industrial equipment.

                note: there was a whole lot of 18th and 19th-century politics involved in all that, and where the lines were and who was on each side depended a lot on what angle you were observing from.

                  1. There’s a reason why the Russian River in California is called that.

                    On the other hand, the Russians were very thin on the ground, even more so than the French or British. IIRC in all of Oregon and California there was at most one trading post, and settlement in Alaska meant mostly missionaries and transient fur trappers.

                    Quibble though: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and most of Idaho were all part of the “Oregon Country”, claimed in its entirety by both the UK and the US. Remember “54-40 or fight”? That was a slogan meaning “the US should claim the whole thing instead of dividing it”, because the northern demarcation of the Oregon Country was at 54°40′ latitude (just south of the current Canada-Alaska border). This was settled by fixing the US-Canada border at 49°.

                    1. The lone Russian post in California is called Fort Ross. I visited there as a kid – the reconstructed fort was very interesting. The Russians sold it all just before the big gold discovery in 1848 – to John Sutter. He purchased the armaments that they didn’t want to bother with.


    Hat tip, Pixy Misa.

    I disagree with EFF, in that I see malice in the decision. Everyone remember SESTA?

    I think this is a deliberate choice, in lockstep with that.

    We’ve seen a lot of deeply laid plans become active. It seems plausible that the stupid sons of bitches think they have a cure for people using the internet to get alternative information.

  15. Oh, Kamala is NOT going to like having to put out without quid pro quo.

    Biden’s backers would love to have a war with Russia in Ukraine. Which sucks for the Ukrainians.

  16. I think the biggest false narrative in the world after the competence and effectiveness of the FRB, is China or for that matter war with China. Where will we fight them, Korea? Yes, they are trying to build the ability to project force and they are trying to reduce our ability to do the same but right now they would have difficulty taking out Taiwan. The argument is that they’ll be better 20 years from now, but 20 years from now they’ll have lost at least twenty percent of their working age population and a more of their military age population. Demographics are a stone cold b-tch.

    1. France said the same things about Germany right up until the they got blitzkrieged into surrendering.

        1. Neither France of Germany had ballistic missiles (at least at the beginning of the war) or nukes.

          1. Does China have nukes that work? Can Winnie the Pooh actually get the PLA generals, who have become rich on trade and have significant holdings in (e.g.,) Taiwan, to launch them? I take China seriously but I don’t believe the narrative. I have the advantage of having spent a great deal of time there and seeing what actually is rather than what they say there is. I’ve also made a fair bit of money in China, mostly on the short side, It’s my business to know, I have actual skin in the game. China’ s power is mostly narrative, China’s weakness is mostly fact.

            1. Why launch? Load into a shipping crate and it can go anywhere. Setting it off might be another issue.

              1. That would seem to be more an Iran thing than a China thing. China, and particularly the PLA generals, has something to lose, The Mullah’s not so much and the Mullah’s have that Shia Armageddon thing, the Chinese not so much.

              2. There are open-source things that point to that not being as easy as one might believe.

                1. Container ship. Long Beach harbor. BOOM.

                  The problem is setting off the BOOM part, but a long timer and suitable routing for the container would handle that.

                  I admit to considerable surprise that it hasn’t already been done. (Tho would not be astonished to learn it’s already been tried.)

                  1. There are open source capabilities now advertised by companies that provide the hardware, capabilities which at some previous point could have not have been publicly acknowledged, detailing hardware than can pick up emissions one might see from fissile materials through intervening material including shielding, at distance significant enough that one could do the math about detection from x distance outside a container ship.

                    Also note publicly reported practices of making container ships stop out some distance from US ports for an inspection visit by very specific inspectors, and also various acknowledged agreements where inspections of a similar nature have been agreed to be carried out at departure or en route ports overseas.

                    Thus doing the container thing may not be as easy as one might presume.

                    1. Radioactive isotopes are being actively smuggled over the border from Mexico; Carbon, etc.

            2. China has set off 47 “test” bombs, and they had unrestricted access to the US nuclear weapons program under the first Bush Administration, plus whatever information they got from the USSR while they were still BFFs.

              1. Let alone all the nice Missile/MIRV information they got from Billy Bob letting people export multi satellite launch capacity willy nilly. Quick eyeball of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (a poor source to be sure, but they’re what we can see) shows about 300 launch vehicles, of those about 2/3 have sufficient range (10000Nm+) to be a threat. even a 10% success rate loses 20 cities (they’d shoot Counter Value, not Counter Force, i suspect their CEP is on a par with our Atlas/Titan hardware of the 60s/70s). Not anything anyone wants to happen.

                1. We can tell they target countervalue, because the throw weight of each missile is so high. You don’t build 3 megaton warheads if you think you can get a direct hit on a missile silo, or anything smaller than a 5 mile circle.

  17. Magic indeed.

    When I was young I had a pair of moles arranged vertically on the side of my neck. (I’ve since had them removed.) When I was in elementary school I used to tell other kids that was where the vampire bit me. I’d seen enough tv that I knew what vampires were and that they weren’t real, and I’d assumed that the other kids would know I was joking, even if I was telling the story with a straight face. It was a bit of a shock to me when certain kids started avoiding me at recess because they were afraid I’d bite them next.

    It confused me, back then, that they would believe what was so obviously not true. It was broad daylight, for goodness’ sake! If I were really a vampire the sunlight would destroy me long before I could get to them, and if I was a thrall, I’d have to get them past the teachers and yard duties in order to take them to my new dark master. The illogic of it was something I had a hard time reconciling.

    These days it seem that the less logic there is involved (or rather the more illogic involved) the more readily people will believe it.

    “Putting up a wall is racist!” Really? Are you going to tell me that your property doesn’t have a fence around it to keep the neighbor’s kids out of your yard? “That’s different!”

    “Believe the science!” Science is the method by which we grope our way towards understanding the way the universe works, not an absolute law that should never be questioned. We stopped believing the world was flat some time ago, but only after we questioned what was known as ‘fact’ at that time. Are you saying that we now know everything about the universe and there is no need for further exploration? “Science denier!”

    “Wear a mask or you’ll kill us all!” I’ve already had it. I can’t give it to you and I can’t get it from you. Why should I wear something that is useless, restricts my oxygen intake, and makes my face break out in unsightly spots? “Variants!”

    They have been given their story and they cling to it. I’m not sure yet if it’s simply because they are afraid to disbelieve the story, or if they like feeling scared and helpless, or if it’s something else. As an engineer by inclination as well as training, discarding logic for feelings is … it’s not something I can wrap my head around. I know I’m guilty of it myself in certain situations, after all I’m human. But when someone points out what I’m doing, I am chagrinned, pass it off with a joke about ruining my fun with silly earth logic, and then get on with the business at hand by the most efficient method I can put together.

    1. But…but…asking questions and understanding things is haaaard! Yelling ‘racist!!’ is easy.

    2. This reminds me of the study I read that people will believe apocalyptic claims of disaster more than plain old everyday problems.

      There are some big holes in the human ability to judge and weigh risks and probability in our current times. I imagine most of this comes from things that kept us alive back in the paleolithic but is now dysfunctional.

      1. I met someone who believed that my dog (Nemo of blessed memory) had gotten his cancer (canine lymphoma) from eating dry kibble instead of home cooked dog food.

      1. Peering through a slit in a blanket while cursing a veering wildly down the road?

        Spike took a minimalist approach to dealing with daylight…

    3. It’s a religion. They’re true believers; you’re a heretic.

      The problem with growing away from organized religion is that (given that humans are hardwired to believe in =something= ) …when a substitute is found, the true believer clings to their new faith with renewed fervor, and pursues heretics with similar zeal.

      This is why there’s no explaining anything to Leftist true believers; for them it’s not a matter of facts, but of faith.

  18. Funny about that “One World Government” stuff. I have found that those most heartily in favor of it always imagine themselves being the ones in charge, never under the boot of those in charge. Wonder why? Maybe it’s just, as I have always believed, a case of arrested development. Every child imagines what the world would be like if he or she could swap places with mommy and daddy. The child never considers the responsibilities in the position of authority; only the power that comes with it. Inside every Antifa, BLM’er and SJW is a spoiled child working out his or her daddy issues. Bank on it.

  19. you should set yourself the highest goal you can conceivably achieve…

    Guest lecturer back when I was at uni had two questions I’ve always remembered: “What’s the most important problem in your field? Why aren’t you working on it?” And since then, mostly, I have been.


    WMD were found by US and Polish forces in Iraq as well as in IEDs…. they happened to be legacies from Saddam’s previous programs….the failure to destroy them by his regime was one of the acts of noncompliance with the settlement ending Gulf War One / Desert Storm. I have included links from CBS and the Daily Mail. If they don’t post, WPDE! On October 14, 2014 the New York Times published an article on US troops injured while destroying Iraqi WMDs….they were “nonexistent” until the narrative was well established in the minds of the public.

    1. That there is one of the two ways I can see this going hot. The ATF tries to enforce those rules in states with laws that declare them illegal, state police or Guard make them stop, the FICUS (probably Kommie Harris by then) calls it an ‘insurrection’ and declares war on Florida or Texas. Probably Florida; Ron DeSantis is currently the biggest burr under their butts.
      The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

      1. The really messed up part is that the majority of people who this will turn into felons will have no clue about any of this until they get a boot in the face and a flashbang in their baby’s crib.

        From the cynical planner perspective this is an amazing opportunity; every revolution needs a few carefully edited martyr narratives in the public eye.

        1. And remember that “background checks” are de facto gun registration, with all the knowledge that implies. (If you believe any such data is ever discarded, I have a bridge for you.)

    2. I have thought of a third way things could go hot — Biden the FICUS gets shot by ‘White Supremacists!!’ and Kommie Harris tries to declare martial law.

      When everybody knows REAL white supremacists would shoot Harris.

        1. Honestly, I was expecting Obama to get shot, or at least shot at. The fact that he didn’t is the biggest single reason to disbelieve any notions about how prominent white supremacist organizations, groups, or people are.

          1. They didn’t think they needed the false flag; by the time they realized differently, Trump was in office.

            Now? It wouldn’t surprise me.

  21. Here’s something to ask the Leftroids: How do the heads of all those ‘Non-Profit Corporations’ get so fucking rich?

  22. I have some small amounts of optimism to see here.

    A lot of the blue cities are not looking at recoveries because any employee that can work remotely is laying down a “I’m working from home or you can find someone else to do my job.” Enough of them are at the sort of rankings that the companies will have to honor that threat.

    Hollywood is laying out their “bless your heart” articles to justify an informal break-away from the Chinese market, especially for films. The word is going through the industry that they need to start making money now, or else they won’t have an industry.

    Far too many people have seen behind the curtain and while they’re afraid of being destroyed by the Woke Mobs, that fear seems to be getting weaker.

    It’s not going to be a good two-to-four years, but as long as nobody does anything particularly stupid or have their car stall out in front of a bistro in Sarajevo, it’s going to be bad but not terrible.

    1. And just what are the odds that the Democrats can go two years without doing anything particularly stupid? They haven’t gone two WEEKS without doing something particularly stupid since Trump threw his MAGA hat in the ring five years ago.
      There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

  23. Very interesting post today….kind of “more” interesting to me because I was just suspended from Facebook for posting this quote (made back in 2016…doesn’t FB have anything better to do than search old posts?) by Joseph Goebbels..” If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”…..I abhor censorship of “free speech”, even by privately owned companies…I do accept that they “may”? have the right to do this (I guess…still thinking about that one)…But as horrid as the man Goebbels was, he was right about this.

    1. That’s like that quote that goes something like “whoever you can’t laugh at, that’s who rules you”. Sure, it may have been said by a neo-Nazi, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

  24. Back in the 1990s when I was repairing one of my many public-school maleducation gaps, I read nearly every book my library system had on the Nazi-era genocide of Jews and other undesirables. Back-to-back, Elite Weisel’s memoirs and a book on the history of 20th Century propaganda.

    Did you know that the Vile Hun* in WW1 would shove whole nunneries into ovens? Well, your friends in the Newspapers made sure you did. For the war effort. So when Mr Weisel (and other escapees from the murder camps tried to tell the world, or even warn Jewish communities they were disbelieved.


    That will come as a shock to the United States (of China) Chamber of Commerce as well. All those jobs outsourced and nothing to show for it except glowing press clippings.


    Nope, they know they’re peddling lies but those peddled lies can bring them power… and with that power comes wealth. Just ask Bernie “Three House Sanders” or Barack Obama; neither of whom have any actual expertise beyond lying. It’s not a coincidence that their redistribution efforts distribute to them first. Everybody from the liars to the lied-to knows they’re lies but they want to get in on the graft while they can. That’s why you can’t debate them and why they’re so irrational, everything they allegedly believe are lies.

    But the leftist dream is collapsing around the world because the lied-to are realizing that there is no graft for them. They were willing to be salaried “useful idiots” but they’re not eager to be starving, homeless, unemployed, and freezing in the dark peasants. And it’s likely to get very ugly because the lied-to won’t want to admit that they were willing participants in the lies, so they’ll turn on the liars. If you look at the politicians, media, entertainment industry, institutions, and corporations you can see the fear, and if close enough you could smell the fear.

  26. In the old D&D books, they actually included Satan. As far as I remember, if you attacked him with any weapon or magic, you fell under his power. He could only be defeated by prayer and good deeds. There was even an article in one of the old Dragon Magazines written by a Lutheran or Presbyterian minister talking about that.

    The fact is, if we use the enemy’s tools, we become them. There are few differences between us and them: Hitler loved what he loved and hated what he hated. He used storytelling and hate (in Hugo Boss suits) to build in Berlin a rival to the empire of hate growing in Moscow. And similar cancers still exist around the world. Few governments are truly “on the side of the angels.” Individually, then, we must shoulder that responsibility.

    Nikolai Yezhov was infamously airbrushed out of a photo with Stalin. The Progressives have tried to do that with all of their lies, and it’s up to us to strictly tell the truth and take the consequences. Wikipedia, in their “American Dream” article, flatly tells us it’s all a lie and life in the PRC is better.

    Meanwhile, the old Roman Empire is gone (replaced multiple times by ever more temporary ruling elites); but the Christianity of the slaves and nobodies survived.

    Ask yourselves why.

    1. ” the old Roman Empire is gone (replaced multiple times by ever more temporary ruling elites); but the Christianity of the slaves and nobodies survived.”

      Er. Please read up on the history of the Roman Empire. The elites were Christian before it collapsed.

  27. … having people believe some insanity you just made up gives you a sense of power, of being smarter than others.

    Journalist and JFK biographer Richard Reeves ascribed this trait to Presidents Kennedy and FDR. Lying was virtually their default

    Turner Catledge was the White House correspondent of the New York Times when Roosevelt was president … and Catledge once said privately, because people didn’t write this way in those days, that Franklin Roosevelt’s first instinct was always to lie, and he always began by lying, and then he’d look out and he said, ‘I can get away with the truth with these people.’ (laughter) and he would switch from the lie or the partial truth to the truth in mid-sentence. Kennedy’s whole life, in many ways, particularly where his health was involved, was a lie. And there were great details, so we talk about the character of Kennedy’s health. When John Kennedy and the lies he told along the way..

    Lying is a way for political leaders to gain and exercise power, ad many of them would “rather climb up a tree and tell a lie, than stand on the ground and tell the truth.”

    One important thig about liars – they believe everybody lies. Thus they trust none. And they imagine themselves smarter and more potent than those who fall for their lies, while admiring those who lie well.

    Which explains much about MSM journalists.

  28. we hadn’t found WMDs in Iraq

    Welllll … this is true, for certain values of “Found.” We never had a press conference in which the actual weapons were put on display and if we had there would have been ample scoffers claiming those weapons were “fake” or had been made/planed by the US.

    The important thing here is that a) WMDs were but one – and one of the lesser – casus belli and b) there were always going to be many who denied the evidence of such weapons no matter how compelling the proof. Ilhan Omar, for example, represents a type who could never accept America innocence.

    So ultimately, “finding” WMDs wouldn’t matter.

    1. Regarding WMDs, one questions how Iraq could have gassed the Kurds without chemical weapons? And how certain neighbors of Iraq post war somehow got ahold of WMDs we know they did not have before, if I remember correctly? Also, cases of Gulf War Syndrome, causes of which are suspected to include exposure to chemical weapons (nerve gas)?

      True, the WMDs were but a part (a smaller part, actually) of the reasons. But the continued blindness to any possible evidence that there *were* went past annoying a good long time ago.

  29. The ‘stupid beyond permission’ in that comment is that if you were born in the 20th century you were conditioned to the idea of the totalitarian state.

    Hah – as if “indoctrination” works! If that were true we’d all be Catholic, wouldn’t we? And all the Catholics would abide the Church’s instruction.

    And we’d all be riding unicorns somewhere over the rainbows.

  30. … they’ve also swallowed a bunch of lies (some of them so old they’re of Soviet origin.)

    Some of them so old they’re of Serpentine origin.

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