A historical note on mourning a country
Blogger and commenter David Foster writes:
I’ve been remembering something written by the British general Edward Spears, describing his feelings in the aftermath of Munich:
“Like most people, I have had my private sorrows, but there is no loss that can compare with the agony of losing one’s country, and that is what some of us felt when England accepted Munich. All we believed in seemed to have lost substance.
“The life of each of us has roots without which it must wither; these derive sustenance from the soil of our native land, its thoughts, its way of life, its magnificent history; the lineage of the British race is our inspiration. The past tells us what the future should be. When we threw the Czechs to the Nazi wolves, it seemed to me as if the beacon lit centuries ago, and ever since lighting our way, had suddenly gone out, and I could not see ahead.”
Yet it was only two years after Munich that Britain demonstrated its magnificent resistance to Nazi conquest. Maybe there is hope for a similar turnaround in the USA?
I sure hope so.
I was saying to someone the other day that I’ve had plenty of disappointments and sorrows in my life. But at least they only affected me and were mostly important only to me, however sharp the pain. For many years I never felt the pain of a beloved country slipping away, and yet I feel some of that now. It’s not a new feeling, either, but it’s intensified in the last year.
I don’t like what we’ve been learning lately about how far things have gone in the US, but if this is the way it is, then we needed to know about it:
Consider what we have learned about the leaders of the country in the last four years.
We learned that they would do everything in their power to destroy a president who takes them on: delegitimizing his election; baselessly demonizing and slandering him as a Nazi, racist, and bigot; lying perpetually through media conduits to undermine and smear him; pulling documents off his desk to subvert him; concocting false narratives meant to portray him as a traitor to justify spying on him and his confidantes; waging legal and political jihads aimed at toppling him; weaponizing national security, intelligence, and law-enforcement apparatuses to punish him and like-minded dissenters from the ruling class orthodoxy; impeaching him over his desires to root out political corruption; threatening to wear wires in a bid to entrap and remove him under the 25th Amendment; claiming obstruction of justice over rightful decisions to fire subordinates as he sees fit; illegally leaking information about the most sensitive of subjects concerning his policies while simultaneously invoking state secrecy to prevent the revelation of systematic ruling class corruption and criminality; and often engaging in outright insubordination…
We learned that our courts—up to the highest court in the land—would hold such a president to a different standard than other presidents…
Everyone knows about chicanery in Democrat machine-run districts. But never has there been anything like what transpired at the apex of the perpetual coup on November 3rd. In the middle of an election night on which the president made historic gains with blacks and Hispanics and romped in the two bellwether states of Florida and Ohio; in which his Republican colleagues stunned pollsters by dominating Democrats in toss-up and even Democrat-favored races; in which the president was up by large margins in every major battleground state, suddenly, without explanation, the counting stopped.
Were the machines kicking into gear to conjure up the votes needed to stop the catastrophe of the president winning re-election? Certainly such things had been done before in isolation, but in the urban centers of several states all at once? Could a fix of this magnitude really be in?
Much more at the link.
Whether a “fix of this magnitude” actually happened, the sad thing is that the forces arrayed against Trump have already done so many clandestine and destructive things that half of America think it’s very believable that if the Trump opposition could have engineered such a fix they would have had no hesitation whatsoever in doing so.
I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take Election Fraud anymore!
Americans need to protest, by thousands and millions, in favor of Honest elections.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/11/10/out-of-sorts/#comment-2524377
(etc.)
Organize – Protest – Take Action
It’s not quite too late.
Here’s an official link for protesting the fraud:
https://stopthesteal.us
This Saturday in state capitals all over the country there will be protests starting at noon.
Thanks, huxley! I’ll be in Sacramento.
It’s not going to get easier if we stand by now.
“Yet it was only two years after Munich that Britain demonstrated its magnificent resistance to Nazi conquest.”
It’s true that Britain stood up and fought magnificently. They can be proud of the effort and we admire them for it.
But they ditched Churchill soon after the war finished and, frankly, became a second-rate power. So there’s some truth on the side of the mourners as well.
This process is something I went through and completed soon after 2007-12.
The rest are catching up, I see.
This one will prove to be a classic right up there with “Dewey Defeats Truman”:
NYT: “ELECTION OFFICIALS NATION-WIDE FIND NO FRAUD”
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1326552951956021248
Chair of the Federal Election Commission: “I do believe that there’s voting fraud taking place…”
https://twitter.com/themarketswork/status/1326559834997628928
And Joe Biden doing what he does best…
https://twitter.com/sheridan_files/status/1326342466753146884
“Yet it was only two years after Munich that Britain demonstrated its magnificent resistance to Nazi conquest. Maybe there is hope for a similar turnaround in the USA?” [David Foster, quoted above]
I’ve been thinking about this electoral situation a lot lately (I know, who hasn’t?). To carry David Foster’s parallel with 1930s Germany further, I believe that we are facing a modern day Bastogne.
General Patton expected a final push by the German Army toward the end of WW II and had his aides prepare a counter-strategy for a potential attack from one of several directions. Likewise, Trump was laying battlespace preparation to counter that of the Dems. For the Dems, preaching a blue electoral wave laid the groundwork for charges that, if Trump won, it could have only been through election fraud. Likewise, Trump’s assembling of legal teams and his insistence on well-attended rallies right up to election day helped to counter that Dem strategy and lay his own preparation for the accusation of his own charges of election fraud.
The gaslighting now continues by constant Dem and media attempts to paint Trump as likely refusing to leave office. as unwilling to concede, as Republicans unwilling to congratulate the “president-elect”. That a blue wave clearly never did materialize undermines the Democrat strategy in a fundamental and foundational way.
In WW II Bastogne was successfully defended by George Patton’s advance preparation and his belief that the war, even in its end stage, could still be lost. This was at a time when it looked to many observers that, as a result of the Battle of the Bulge, a German victory was precisely what was about to happen. Bastogne could have easily been lost but for the tenacity of George Patton; our current electoral battle would have already been lost if not for the tenacity and prescience of Donald Trump and his team.
I have written before of my belief that Trump is the right person, in the right place, at precisely the right point in time. If any other individual were in this position I would already believe that all was lost. However, Trump’s willingness to fight, his seeming indefatigable nature, and his obstreporousness (?) are exactly what is needed at this point in time to carry this fight to its end.
Mike Pompeo, responding to a question about transitioning the administration, responded the he saw absolutely no difficulty in transitioning into Donald Trump’s second term of office. Likewise, Edmund Wright asks if this could be Trump’s finest hour.
We will know soon enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bastogne
https://thepragmaticconstitutionalist.com/2020/11/is-this-trumps-finest-hour/
I share your concern about things slipping away. I also have this vague sense there’s “something” else out there lurking just over the horizon that we’re not paying attention to that’s going to smack us in the face.
Here’s is another quote…one that I have been trying *not* to think about. This passage gave me cold chills when I first read it, a couple of years ago, because of its potential similarity to our situation in America.
It is an Iroquois Indian ode, composed for a memorial service for Chief Red Jacket.
Now listen, Ye who established the Great League
Now it has become old
Now there is nothing but wilderness
Ye are in your graves who established it
Ye have taken it with you and you have placed it under you
And there is nothing left but desert
There you have taken your great minds
That which you established, you have taken with you
Ye have placed under your heads what ye have established
The Great League
Woe, Woe! Hearken ye!
We are diminished
Woe, woe!
The land has become a thicket
Woe, woe!
The clear places are deserted
They are in their graves who established it
Woe, the Great League!
Yet they declared it should endure
The Great League, Woe!
Their work has grown old
We are become wretched. Woe!
Anyone against President Trump at this point is essentially a witting or unwitting Nazi, in my opinion—Democrats sponsored pogroms in May, burned the national historic church, toppled statues, smashed shop windows, then sabotaged national elections while running a Hindenburg-type candidate for President with a female-Hitler-type running mate who cheers on violence, and they now spread Big Lie propaganda while censoring and purging critics. Extremely dangerous. Must be stopped.
Its a little difficult to stick with but if you can, this video from Dr Shiva is mind blowing, TLDR, their analysis of Michigan voting, shows a feature in the dominion software called weighted election being used, it moved Trump votes to Biden at the exact same percentage in every county except Wayne, I think this method was used in many states along with all the other fraud. It is said now that there are whistle blowers from this company coming forward now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztu5Y5obWPk&feature=emb_logo
At the 30 minute mark they start showing the linear graphs, I’m surprised youtube hasn’t taken this down.
T:
Bastonge was surrounded by the Germans and was relived by Patton’s forces and greatly helped by a break in the weather that allowed planes to drop supplies and attack. Bastonge was not at the point of the German attack.
The German offensive had been stopped further to the west by the US Army and the British forces had by then already formed a backstop for the US Army IIRC. The Germans weren’t getting to Antwerp, the goal of their offensive.
Patton’s forces and others then proceeded to flatten the bulge after hard bitter fighting in January IIRC.
No disagreement that we are in perilous times.
T, om: You left out the best part of the Bastogne story, which I’m sure you know.
When the German commander sent a letter requesting the surrounded American forces to surrender, Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe sent the typed reply:
_____________________________
December 22, 1944
To the German Commander,
N U T S !
The American Commander
_____________________________
Americans used to talk like that. Plain-spoken. No punch pulling. Trump is a throwback to that breed.
I thought Trump was flying off half-cocked when he immediately started shouting about election fraud. But, like his claims that he was being spied upon early in Russiagate, he knew what was happening and what he was doing.
Jolly old Britain flushed Churchill in the first postwar election and converted to socialism. FDR favored Stalin over Churchill. They jettisoned their Empire quicker than fast. Let us not forget. Today the National Health Service [sic] is Britain’s largest employer, and health care there is often in name only. Kind of like our teachers’ unions.
Om,
Just for the record, I never said that Bastogne was at the point of the German attack. I did not mention it, nor the fact that Patton’s army had to fight through German held territory first for the sake of brevity, and second because IMO it did not necessarily contribute to the analogy I was making.
I do appreciate the footnote, though.
Neo
For many years I never felt the pain of a beloved country slipping away and yet I feel some of that now.
Now you know how Democrats felt the past 4 years dealing with Trump and his administration. I’m not kidding. It is just as sharp a pain.
Related:
https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1326649821210546177
To paraphrase FDR, and given the forces arrayed against the Republic, this is an election that will live in infamy.
Unlike Pearl Harbor, however, the massive attack on this country, its institutions, its traditions, its citizens and its unity has come from within.
The country cannot stand for this level of lawlessness, deviousness, corruption and disregard for truth. The country cannot survive a successful coup disguised and rationalized as “patriotic virtue”.
Trump—and those who are helping him to protect, yes and save, the country—is trying to stem this perverse tide of “passionate intensity” arrayed against his presidency, his candidacy and his country, claw back the gains his opponents have thus far fraudulently claimed, and thwart those who have attempted to bend these elections to their criminal ambition, exulting in the destruction they have planned and executed in their unshakeable belief that the ends—achieving power—justify the means of destroying the country’s fabric. To be sure, they fervently believe, in their abject confusion, that it is THEY who are saving the country.
One might think he’s doing it for himself alone, but this would be a calumny.
He, and the country, needs all the help he can get. At the very least, difficult perhaps though it may seem, one must try to be, and remain, hopeful that the forces of good will prevail.
“It is just as sharp a pain.”
Except for the small detail that your side lost fair and square.
But even “fair and square” isn’t really true. Your side lost simply because Hillary sufficiently alienated Bernie Sanders’ groupies so as to lose their support (and even gain their antipathy) and didn’t cheat nearly enough because she KNEW she had the 2016 election in the bag.
But if you’re going to rationalize and even justify the scandalous, criminal behavior of those YOU support during these elections because you were and continue to be in such deep pain over the past four years, then I’m not sure how much sympathy you really deserve.
The assumption is that elections should be fair and not stolen. Another assumption is that there is a winner and a loser. Republicans were in the political wilderness for the previous eight years.
One might be inclined to say, “Grow up”. Unless being a bad loser has become a new kind of virtue.
(Of course if you’re a Russia Hoaxer, well then, there’s not much to argue about.)
Half this country is willfully blind to what they are supporting.
The other half see clearly the cliff ahead.
If Trump fails in the courts, there will be no other alternative to politics by ‘other’ means.
Montage:
You show your usual lack of understanding.
Note that I wrote the following: “It’s not a new feeling, either, but it’s intensified in the last year.”
Intensified, not begun. I have been feeling this feeling for well over a decade.
What’s more, I’ve been around a long time, and I’m quite familiar with what the country has been prior to the 21st Century. I heard the Trump-haters shriek out their pain for four years, but it’s not the pain of losing this country’s traditional ideals. Trump stands for, and has implemented policies supporting, the traditions and policies of this country: borders that mean something, equality of opportunity and not outcome, love of America rather than hatred of it, federalism, and a huge host of other things too numerous to mention.
It is the left, the Deep State, and the Democrats who have undermined all these things. Trump haters are of several types (and some combined types): (1) those who are snobs and hate his style (2) those who hate the fact that he tried to re-institute the old norms that both parties used to agree on (3) those who believe the MSM hype and lies that he’s a racist.
So no, I have no sympathy or empathy for people who feel their country died during the Trump administration. They are either focusing on superficials (mean tweets!) or the country they are mourning is of recent leftist origin. They thought with Obama and afterward they had made the country – finally – into what they thought it should be, and they were mourning that dream and are now eager to restore it under Biden and company. Michelle Obama and they were FINALLY proud of the country they were never proud of before. And they are mourning the country they thought Obama and his successors would finally create out of the country that was.
I always understood the disappointment they felt. It would be hard to miss it, because they weren’t shy about talking about it.
“Now you know how Democrats felt the past 4 years dealing with Trump and his administration. I’m not kidding. It is just as sharp a pain.” Montage
Your pain has been self generated and springs from your acceptance of the democrats and mass media’s deceptions. Nothing Trump has done has been unconstitutional and everything he’s done has been defensible. Your pain is delusionary.
But there is no doubt about the actual pain that the left is preparing to visit upon those who disagree. Nor are any of their proposed policies constitutional. Nor does simply having the votes in the three branches to ram through unconstitutional measures render them constitutional.
Montage:
“It is just as sharp a pain.” Sort of like the woman who had to be surgically extracted from her bathroom “furniture” because she wouldn’t leave the porcelain throne? Her’s was a sharp pain I imagine.
What, did you pink “kitten” hat shrink onto your pin head after four years of howling in “resistance?”
The fat lady hasn’t sung yet Montage. Your “sharp” pain may be a bit longer than you anticipate. Courage. Perseverance in face of adversity. Try it.
We don’t quit a marathon at 22 miles because of a little “sharp” pain.
The Diplomad, a retired US diplomat who has monitored elections in other countries, has some things to say:
https://thediplomad.blogspot.com
Now you know how Democrats felt the past 4 years dealing with Trump and his administration. I’m not kidding. It is just as sharp a pain.
Montage: However, the difference was that Democrats were mourning the loss of their vision of fundamentally transforming America into a different country — such as one where male and female are mere identities chosen at will, the be-all and end-all of justice is intersectionalism and Critical Race Theory, and it’s perfectly OK to riot, loot and burn cities for weeks and months, if a black criminal dies at the hands of the police while behaving as a criminal.
The Tea Party and Trump movements would never have gotten off the ground if America were like it was at the height of Bill Clinton’s popularity.
@Montage: B*llsh*t.
Montage,
Neo said it a lot better than I could. However, I know that nothing any of us on this comments board can say will change your mind. No arguments, facts, or evidence that we could produce are going to persuade you.
So I’ll take your statement at face value and accept that you felt as if you had lost your country when Trump was elected four years ago. In fact, I know you felt that way, because I saw it. I happened to be at a professional conference in Milwaukee that night and the morning after. My overwhelmingly progressive colleagues were sobbing in the hotel hallways and the breakout rooms. Panel discussions turned into emergency therapy sessions. People claimed to fear for their lives. It reminded me of a famous photo taken at a Zionist conference in Poland in August 1939, shortly after news of the Hitler-Stalin pact broke. Those people thought they were dead too. The difference is, they really were.
But that leaves us with a question: What now?
Clearly, we have very different visions of what this country was, is, and should be. Neither side regards the other as trustworthy or even legitimate. Neither side wants to live under the sway of the other. When it comes to the really important things, we have less and less in common. Worse, we have come to despise each other, although I suspect there is more contempt on your side than on ours, and has been for a long time.
The country’s population is evenly and bitterly divided. That is not going to change. If anything, it’s probably going to get worse. Any ideas?
I shouldn’t but I’m going to:
Now you know how Democrats felt the past 4 years dealing with Trump and his administration. I’m not kidding. It is just as sharp a pain.
I don’t doubt that you and your fellows have been in pain. The fact that it’s – as observed by others above – a pain based on a shared delusion notwithstanding, I’m sure that it has been real and as sharp as you say.
But golly, Montage, I just have to urge you to examine your premises. In what way was Trump “destroying” the nation? What did he do that brought actual harm? The lower economical quintiles were gaining ground. Skilled workers were working again, at jobs they knew and were proud of. The United States was in greater control of its borders – which, yes, I know your side doesn’t like that, but why not? Giving your side credit for deep compassion rather than assuming any other motives, you all must surely understand that even the US can’t support all the tired and poor and huddled masses who would like to be here – we have to limit that incursion on the same basis as the Catholic Church would say, “Don’t give so much to charity that you become a charity case yourself.”
Moving on – gay marriage is unchallenged. Unfettered access to abortion is unchallenged – though outright approval of it suffered a tich, but again, isn’t it better to encourage women to use very effective and readily available birth control than to undergo surgery as a reproductive control measure? Transgendered people no longer have a “right” to serve in the military – but schizophrenics, hemophiliacs, and paraplegics also have no “right” to serve. (There is no right to serve.)
What else? Climate change? If I’m not mistaken, the US is the only developed nation that’s meeting the Paris Accord targets – for everybody else, they’re aspirational. We continue to better our environment, while not destroying our standard of living – and as long as we’re doing it, the rest of the world can follow along. Terrorism? The logjam is breaking up in the ME and the Palestinians are no worse off than before (you must know that nobody in the ME likes those guys).
If it’s just about “tone,” then get over it – LBJ’s tone was awful. Otherwise, how is Trump destroying the nation?
Hubert,
“I suspect there is more contempt on your side than on ours, and has been for a long time.”
Much more hate on the left’s side but far more justified contempt upon our side. I offer as proof of our contempt of the left being justified; the multitude of provable lies that the left engages in on a daily basis.
Truth has no need of lies and it’s as true today as it was when Socrates observed, “when the debate is lost, the loser resorts to slander”. Their projection is literally pathological.
The time for treating the mental illness of the left with civility is long past, we can no longer afford it for they fully intend to destroy us and are close to achieving the means with which to accomplish it.
They’ve made their bet and are all in, you don’t let the loser walk away with that with which they bet. For if you do, you play the fool and enable the welcher to do it again and again.
Neo,
I don’t expect agreement here but just wanted to point out even some Republicans simply did not like the way Trump conducted business either. So Trump haters have a 4th option as well and it’s wanting to have general competence and decency in a commander in chief and one less narcissistic.
I honestly think he cares more about himself than he does about America. I’m not saying his followers don’t care about America. Some deeply do. But they have projected their love of this country onto a man who wants adulation, large crowds and attention more than he wants what is best for America. It is one reason that when all is said and done with this election he most likely will not only not concede he will do as little as he can to usher in a new president. [I’d like to be wrong about this].
It’s not easy because but rising above partisan squabbles is one of the most important things we need to do in this country to make us strong again. I say this to the left as well – who I admit many of whom are full of hate. But I am always willing to reach across the aisles. We’re all Americans after all. We just have a different vision for America. May the best ideas win.
Geoffrey, on “they fully intend to destroy us and are close to achieving the means…”
Our choice is getting ever clearer: secession, or extinction.
All Americans after all? No, not even in the most trivial sense as a population count demonstrates, and profound ideological differences illustrate.
Trying to come to an agreement with Democrats is like trying to compromise with some unrelenting rapist who insists on the right to bugger your mother. Of course the Pierre Delecto types “in the American family” appear to imagine it can be done. And I suppose some of them might even meekly point to their own torn posteriors as evidence that eventually the bleeding stops, and Mom will be alright more or less, just like she has supposedly always been after such assaults. And gee, you might even get a pat on your head later for being such a good sport … maybe.
Well, no. LOL To hell with any such “we” crap. [I just rewrote that to make it less scatologically vulgar] Those days are gone forever whatever you, or even I might otherwise wish. We are not one people, or one nation. We do not believe in or value the same things. And although the beliefs conservatives embrace generally allow for progressives to go off in a corner and do their own thing voluntarily, the collectivism of the left, of the shit-people like Biden and AOC and Shumer, does not allow for any such non-participation. Cite: The, “Individual shared responsibility mandate” and all that; where I pay for your self-induced diabetes or AIDS insurance premiums because …. well because some “we” crap your type dreamed up.
Are you going to compromise with someone who wants to fundamentally change America, and thus your life further along those lines? Well, you and Pierre obviously might.
But really, looked at coldly and rationally, is there some supra-Constitutional, law-transcending “social contract”, supposed to hold even with socialists?
If so, where is it found?
Nah, there isn’t. And playing by the imaginary rules of some such self-defeating game, is not worth the price of the candle, as has been pointed out many … many … times … before.
We can try internal secession first. In fact we have a practical and moral obligation to do so first: to be very deliberate, and let the crazies precipitate and transgress first.
These things take real planning. You need access to the sea, natural resources, defensible boundaries, a willing population not filled with provocateurs and saboteurs. That is quite a way off at present.
David Foster @ 7:34
I enjoy Diplomad posts. I didn’t realize the fraud of disqualifying votes on specious grounds was happening too. It was as if during the Democrat July wargames on the election, they devised all kinds of way to cheat. Maybe this is why North Carolina had to pause its reported vote totals because it had to fix the disqualified votes. Kudos to the Republican Party who monitored this and contacted the citizens.
Another blogger called Meaning in History also has good posts. It runs in the same measured tenor of this site but with less savoir faire. No dancing or music musings there.
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/
The dam is about to break on this story. Too many affidavits. Too many distributed data analyses. Too many channels of communication and now with Parlor the social media log jam is broken. Social Media and MSM can’t knock them down fast enough or hide them. The postal worker “recanting” only to have the denial and the actual interview broadcasted is an example. The furious barrage about the limitations of Benfield Law is exhausted. Pictures of chaos in election counting boards can’t be unseen. This is citizen activism at its finest. Barack Obama should be proud. Next time anyone sees him ask him about it.
Also Trump and the Republicans are doing something that hasn’t happened before. They refused to accept the narrative and in fact are punching back. The list of Senators not congratulating Biden isn’t have any effect on them. When leading questions are asked of the likes of Pompeo and he says “there will be a smooth transition to the Trump second term” that isn’t something they are used to. The mass desertion of Fox (me included) was never dreamed of. When Tucker, Hannity and Ingraham leave that will know a tremendous hole in Fox profitability. Some shareholders ought to be asking some penetrating questions.
The broader public is becoming aware of this. The most ardent never Trumpers will stay in their ideological boxes and never come out but non-political type are seeing this. Coupled with the second shutdown and reports of Biden doing it on a national level sets the stage where when a judgement of fraud happens there will be more acceptance than most other times. The fact that the DOJ is now involved tells me that they know something and they are going to expose it. This is really big news.
The game changer is if the allegation of voting machines changing votes is shown to be true. That is unsurmountable.
A blogger on Red State who has been referenced on this site ShipWreckedCrew has discussed how all of this was supposed to end up at the Supreme Court. The Democrats wanted this chaos to end up there. Then on a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court would decline to get involved thus permitting the fraud to stand. But divine providence struck. Ginsberg died and Barrett joined the court. That knocks that strategy to the curb as Roberts is no longer the swing vote and the other potential swing justice Kavanaugh can’t have pleasant memories of Harris.
The next battleground will be the state legislators. Only they can certify the vote as valid. It would take balls of steel to vote the election as fraudulent and either 1) send another set of electors or 2) send it to the House of Representatives. Can they fight like Trump and national Republicans?
This is Act One in a Tragicomedy. How many other acts there are we don’t know. I hope the store owners haven’t taken their plywood protection down.
I am Sparticus,
I think this is a morality play in three acts. What came first was Act I: The Greatest Crime in American History. This is Act II: The Lawfare. Next comes Act III: The Civil War.
Montage:
So Trump haters have a 4th option as well and it’s wanting to have general competence and decency in a commander in chief and one less narcissistic.
Copied and pasted from IamSparticus, with slight change in question. Please give your response to these Trump policies:
You don’t like that he ordered the killing of Iranian terror-master Soulemani?
You don’t like that he is putting the squeeze on the Mullahs?
• You don’t like that he met with Kim Jung Il who has not performed a single nuclear or missile test since meeting with him after conducting 4 tests during Obama’s term?
• You don’t like that he is stopping Chinese technology theft through spying?
• You don’t like that he put tariffs on dumped Chinese goods that forced them to agree to buy more US products?
• You don’t like that he scrapped NAFTA for USMC and stopped the export of US jobs?
o What would be super powerful to this question is if You lost your job to China or Mexico like I lost my job of 35 years. Or someone that both of You know.
• You don’t like the US having energy independence while reducing its carbon emissions? Something no other country can claim. (US is still importing oil, just a lot less…)
• You don’t like that he withdrew from the Paris Accords that doesn’t have China or India doing any carbon mitigation until after 2035 when global climate change experts say is too late?
• You don’t like that he gave Ukraine weapons that stopped Russia from overrunning the country? That Obama/Biden policy of providing non-lethal aid like blankets and food was the proper response to an armed invasion?
• You don’t like that Germany and France now have to pay more for their defense which makes them very angry?
• You don’t like that his administration has made more arrests for human trafficking in the last few years than Bush and Obama did in 16 years?
o You don’t like that he has set-up a task force to combat human trafficking which the wall is an integral part. You don’t like about this?
Moving to COVID response. That has to be handled very carefully based on a person’s frame of reference. Some good people are VERY safety minded.
• You don’t like that Trump put on a travel ban from China than Europe that all the Democrats condemned particularly Biden?
• That he put into place OPERATION WARP SPEED to develop a vaccine?
• That he followed the scientists when Fauci said masks don’t work in March?
o You don’t like that?
• You don’t like he still says wear a mask even when the WHO says they are ineffective?
Geoffrey Britain,
Thanks for your response. It doesn’t really matter if, objectively, our contempt is justified and theirs isn’t. The question I asked Montage remains: What now?
If I’m reading you correctly, and I may not be, you seem to be arguing in favor of armed confrontation. Do you know what that would entail? Are you a combat veteran? Have you experienced war at the sharp end? I haven’t. I had an uncle who fought as an infantryman with the Seventh Army from southern France to southern Germany, including encounters with Waffen SS units during Operation Nordwind. He survived, but it messed him up for the rest of his life. Civil wars are even worse. Think of Ireland in the 1920s, or Spain in 1936, or Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Or our own civil war, but with 21st-century weapons and foreign adversaries who would love to get involved in the destruction. Is that the road you want to go down?
Being prudently prepared to defend your freedoms and your way of life, should that unfortunate necessity arise, is one thing. Spoiling for a civil war in the hope or expectation of crushing the other side is quite another. If the 20th century taught us anything, it taught us that wars are unpredictable and unpredictably destructive. Let’s be very careful about the spirits we summon.
So my prior posts are in a sense reactive to events. I am a forward looking person. This is what I am doing in the future.
First, work with TRUE THE VOTE. Get the voting rolls correct so the pre-creation of ballots cannot work.
Second, continue to be a poll watcher and now be a part of the Tea Party and try to remake the Republican Party.
Third, work assiduously to defeat any Soros, Tom Steyer or other Totalitarian minded endorsed candidate that right now afflict my state like Whitmer, Benson and Nessel. Make people know about who backs these people. They were lucky in that they came in during the Flint water crisis but now people have a taste of life under them in the age of COVID.
Fourth, engage with people around me with questions as re-posted by Gringo (thanks). Remembering that change is a process and not a moment.
I don’t know what your situation is but each one of us has a part to pay in this drama called life. Do your best with what you have. Remember you are not alone. Millions are walking along side with you.
Montage:
Plenty of Republicans didn’t and don’t like Trump, although it was not usually because of his policies but instead because of his personality. I am extremely familiar with their arguments and have written many many posts about NeverTrumpers on the GOP side.
As or me, I did not like Trump during the campaign, as any reader here knows, but once he was president I looked at what he was actually doing and the vast majority of his actions gained my approval. The NeverTrumpers own snobbery was very much in evidence in the focus of their disapproval. He was just too coarse for them.
It’s been decades since there has been any sort of meaningful reaching across the aisle by Democrats. All the “reaching” in the last twenty years or so has been by Republicans (McCain was the champ of this). Finally, in the last couple of years, Republicans have finally got the picture that the Democrats will not compromise and Democrats are the ones filled with hatred. Biden is one of the worst offenders, talking healing out of one side of his mouth and talking trash (and lies) out of the other.
To say otherwise is to fail to have observed what’s been going on.
Montage,
The problem is that we are not talking about “partisan squabbles”. Partisan squabbles were Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan jousting back and forth within an agreed-upon framework and a common political culture.
No. We’re talking about fundamental, foundational, existential differences in culture, outlook, and values that may not be–hell, probably aren’t–reconcilable. Thus my question.
One thing that might help: an honest, sober recognition of this by our political class and a practical discussion about possible solutions. I’m not holding my breath on that.
I subscribe to the Chicago Tribune with delivery 3 days a week (mainly for the Sunday coupons). Today, in the main section of the paper, there was not a single mention of Trump in any headlines. There were 2 of Biden, but I think the first one was on page 5.
They’re setting the stage for the possibility that if Trump is successful, it will come out of nowhere. That in itself will make it look like an illegal action. Perception is reality, as they say. If Trump pulls it off, the reaction is going to be frightening.
Sparticus, ex-FBI Mark Wauck, at Meaning in History, is a stud, and its many good (and experienced) commenters make that site a daily must.
It’s not Parlor, it’s Parler.
And, Youtube also has competition from Rumble.
Dare anyone guess, when Tucker, Hannity and Ingraham leave?
Act One in a Tragicomedy, Act Three will be secession, and (assuming the Dems hurl the Deep State, to smash all such mov’ts), Act Four will be the bloodbath.
While folks like Montage here likely will be quite on board, with the DS ruthlessly smashing the secessionists, some moderate liberals (e.g. Taibbi) may have enough humanity within them, to consider helping the secessionists avoid extermination.
I don’t expect agreement here but just wanted to point out even some Republicans simply did not like the way Trump conducted business either. –Montage
I believe Eric Berne in his pop-psych classic, “Games People Play,” called this maneuver, “Let’s You and Him Fight.” Montage plays the woman.
Trump’s personality is NYC. We southerners have a term for them: damn Yankees.
I don’t care about his personalty. I care about his policies, his results.
Neo @ 10:14 (McCain was the champ of this). I would substitute chump for the champ.
AnanyMouse @ 10:31. thanks for the spelling correction.
Dare anyone guess, when Tucker, Hannity and Ingraham leave?
All three have alternate sources of income. Tucker has a stake in Daily Caller and the others have radio show that probably don’t pay as much. They will leave once the Hard News tries to impose their will on them. I guess it will be sometime in January 2021 if Biden is named president. When Trump prevails the Hard News will leave them alone.
Neo & Montage, on “even *some* Republicans simply did not like… although it was not usually because of his policies….”
Not so fast, but (typical for Montage, who seems to purport to have been living under a rock) some Republicans always hated Trump’s clear substantive *challenge*, to their party brass’ bastardization of conservatism by Dubya, McStain, etc.
The clear preponderance of Elite Republicans dislike of Trump *was* because of his policies, and his daring to appeal to the Outré Deplorables.
The noise about his style was mostly deceit, to mask the real class-snobbery, Invade the World/ Invite the World motives.
Where Montage says “the left as well – who I admit many of whom are full of hate”, that’s not close to doing justice to reality.
How about, “the clear preponderance of whom are full of hate….”
And, regarding the Dem/ MSM leaders, it’s “the *overwhelming* preponderance of whom are full of hate….”
The time for “reaching across the aisle” ended, no later than when this Preponderance
displayed an Orgy of hate toward N. Sandmann, and *no* major Dem/ MSM leader said boo against it.
This “election” and the 4+ years that preceded it have been exercises in mass hatred from Democrats. It’s all they have. Even my dearest friends are absolutely consumed by it, and yet they fancy themselves overflowing with love for humanity (Deplorables need not apply).
aNanyMouse,
I do not favor secession, I favor eviction, i.e. deportation. I do not think that America can deter its external threats without access to both coasts.
Hubert,
I am not arguing “in favor” of armed confrontation. I simply see it as highly probable. I fully agree that a civil war would be horrific beyond imagination. As a veteran, I have seen war but only from offshore on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam “police action”. I fully agree with Gen. Sherman, “War is hell”.
The only way I see civil war as possibly being avoidable is if Trump prevails and takes decisive action. While also being supported in his actions by the US Military, which would prevent Deep State operatives from intervening against Trump’s lawful orders.
There are indications that Trump is preparing to take just such actions after his lawsuits prevail in the courts. There’s no doubt that legally they should prevail. There’s also no doubt that activist judges would throw them out of court.
See: “Should You Be Getting Ready for Civil War? President Trump Is”
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3905103/posts
This very insightful article explains:
“There is no other logical explanation for Trump replacing the top ranks of the Department of Defense with loyalists at this point in his Presidency UNLESS he plans on or strongly suspects he will need to invoke the Insurrection Act.
There has not been any violent protests or looting since the Election and the media crowning Joe Biden as President-Elect, and there’s no reason to expect that there would be between now and January 20, 2021 UNLESS Donald J. Trump was determined to be the rightful winner of the Presidential Election.
Trump’s moves in regards to the Department of Defense are crystal clear in their meaning. The President is VERY confident he will ultimately be the rightful winner of the Election and fully expects the result to be massive civil unrest, perhaps bordering on civil war.”
@Neo who said “For many years I never felt the pain of a beloved country slipping away, and yet I feel some of that now. It’s not a new feeling, either, but it’s intensified in the last year.”
Nor is it new for me. Long story short, I was born in 42 into America’s finest hour on the world stage and have watched since the Korean war our country repeatedly get it wrong. What I have seen since watching the troops come after WW2 is the socio-political decline – the natural atrophying of the FDR consensus. In a word, ‘entropy’, which always requires reform and renewal, even if it is just the damned plumbing. So Trump saw the required direction exactly right in his core slogan “Make America Great Again.” My desire to see America ‘get it right’ again has led me over and over to support our country’s wars and Trump made me see that I was emotionally holding onto a past triumphant America and denying the degree of corruption that I was seeing. A key moment came on an extended visit to New Mexico in 2007 when Martha Stewart and Conrad Black were convicted. Don’t ask me how, but I strongly intuited that both had been framed and even corresponded with Black when he was in jail in Florida. It was not until I saw a YouTube conversation some time ago between Black and Mark Steyn that I realised just how rotten things had become. (Can’t find it just now…hmmm) So yes, all that is happening is making me feel that my beloved country is slipping away. Trump has made an admittedly flawed attempt to stand against the entropic tide, and at the level of power it seems all may be lost. I believe the secular left knows only the hermeneutics of power – that is what Democrats revealed about themselves for the past 4 years. I disagree with those above who think civil war is inevitable. I think they underestimate the unknown unknowns which can arise from the human collective or, if you are religiously inclined, from the transcendent. In any case, God Bless America.
Sounds like a criticism of 44 and not of 45 once you take away all the fantastic lies about each.
I say leftists like Montage are selfish, narcissistic and cruel. Someone close to me (but who now lives in a city that is more that twice as White as my city), yet who is otherwise very much like Montage, has publicly written and declined to take down this:
There is no longer any need for armed confrontation. I have already changed the outcome.
Sorry, all you gun ammo buying summer warriors that wanted to jump on a civil war 2 annihilation plot line. Too late for that one. Wait until the next grand cycle if you want a Terminator style war against the Cabal.
I thought Trump was flying off half-cocked when he immediately started shouting about election fraud. But, like his claims that he was being spied upon early in Russiagate, he knew what was happening and what he was doing.
I know, it is the same reaction people use against Ymarsakar. They think it is all made up or a joke, and then later they have to ignore the raven humble pie.
Trump even refers to himself as Donald Trump, in the last B debate. Amusing. He also uses the term “We”.
GB, don’t worry, I got this. It is amusing watching the children of man talk about all this civil war 2 stuff. I was working on the subject myself, since 2007. I doubt any really understood what I was talking about or the stakes concerning internal treason.
Hubert, what is next will be interesting. I am favoring a script that will use Amy Barrett to cordon off or build a wall, between urban Blue city states and rural/outside city Red areas. This will, legally, bifurcate the two, so they aren’t trying to over power each other. A kind of “super” gerry mander.
Spart, parlor is an actual app that people made to hijack off of Bongino’s rumble parler fame. SO it is not just a spelling correction, as Bongino also tweets about the mistake. It is like people buying Zoom stock from China, vs the Zoom that is the you know, Zoom conference software. Different zooms, but humans are stupid and they don’t know the difference often times between light or dark, or zoom or zoom, or parler vs parlor.
Whomever came up with the name “parler” though… it’s nearly as non sensical as “twitter”. Rumble is far better. Brandnewtube is also better energetically.
A version of “patriot” would have been better.
I also like conspiritualist, which is hilarios. Just like the Alt Right was a combination of Deep State terminology, conspiracy land paranoia, and various political minorities gathering together, conspiritualism is the combination of the Male dominated conspiracy world paranoia with the female dominated new age “spiritual” world.
Hahahaah. It’s like a DPS, Tank, Healer OP class. Nobody knows how to build it or how it operates, it just works.
Bongino is an interesting character. I wonder if he is going to be healed of cancer and use that to actually wake up the rest of America, to how radiation kills you, not the cancer. And alternative healing will fix the issue faster.
The noise about his style was mostly deceit, to mask the real class-snobbery, Invade the World/ Invite the World motives. a-nany
It is likely unconscious or subconscious deceit of the self. As Trump is a type of Ymar, I have personally been hit with similar things. People don’t understand my content, they disagree with my content, or they personally find my existence offensive, but what they choose to hit back with is a criticism of the style and delivery method instead. Something about the Spirit of America inhabiting Trump’s body, triggers people, and if they rebutted the problem too directly, they might come to consciously realize what set them off, which makes them too vulnerable given much of it has to do with personal and childhood traumas.
This is how Satan also root hacks/trojans the minds of humans. Conservatives are not immune to this.
One might have thought this to be impossible but MSCM desperation is making them even more insane than they already are:
Tom Friedman advocates criminal subversion (no doubt while knitting eyebrows and stroking chin) –
https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/new-york-times-columnist-urges-democrats-to-commit-voter-fraud-in-georgia/
And this fellow is simply precious –
https://notthebee.com/article/new-york-times-reporter-wants-you-to-know-that-something-can-be-factually-true-but-morally-wrong
H/T Instapundit (for both)
But it’s the “NY Times” you say?
Oh well, in that case never mind…
BTW, Matthew Tyrmand seems to have tracked down an actual Nazi collaborator among the ancestors of at least one of today’s Trump-hating enforcers: https://mission.substack.com/p/huffpo-smear-merchant-luke-obrien
If you vote for Trump, you:
Are Racist
Are Homophobic
Are Islamophobic
Are Antisemitic
Are sexist
You deserve to rot in hell (no I don’t believe in hell but if there was one you would be going there).
This has been a PSA.
IOW:
=You’re not sufficiently deferential to the preferred mascot groups of the world’s leftoids.
=You understand the difference between normal human sexuality and deviant sexuality, and you have a teleological understanding of what sex is for and what it isn’t.
=You’re actually willing to side with your co-religionists, with the Jews, and with your ordinary secular countrymen, something the TWANLOC crew is not. You’re also willing to view Islam and Muslim subcultures with a critical disposition, which the TWANLOC crew only applies to evangelicals and Catholic clergymen (if ‘criticism’ is the right word for their vulgarities).
=Did you ask him if he fancies Jared Kushner is ‘anti-semitic’? Will he take counsel from Caroline Glick and Benjamin Netanyahu on this subject?
=IOW, obnoxious women can’t roll the President or his supporters with forensic gamesmanship, and don’t go through their lives evaluating every situation with the assumption that women have options and men have obligations.
I take it from your remarks that the person in question is a first-degree relative. My sympathies.
I favor eviction, i.e. deportation. I do not think that America can deter its external threats without access to both coasts.
Push comes to shove, yes.
Gb, i read that counter coup article. Hehe. I know a lot of things that it did not cover.
You can’t fix Yammer.
Friday 13th, is it time for the q mass arrests yet? I am expecting a big surprise by nov 20th. N9v 14tg is juicy mars.
What mars? Read psalm 19: 1.
The heavens declare the glory of my god
Om, you fixed your repeating line. What changed?
Yammer is what Yammer does.
Ever heard the saying “You can’t fix stupid.”
It also follows that “You can’t fix Yammer.”
Well, you aren’t stupid but you are broken.
Geoffrey, I can see why, over secession, you favor “eviction, i.e. deportation. I do not think that America can deter its external threats without access to both coasts.”
Alas, unless Trump/ Durham can deal a fatal (legal) blow to today’s Dems (on SpyGate etc.), trying for mass deportation would quickly lead to cataclysmic civil war.
I’d rather see an effort to buy part of W. Canada (near Alaska), for access to the Pacific.
Montage, thanks again for coming here, to this increasingly echo sounding chamber. Which is a very comfy chamber, because it literally echoes what I mostly agree with.
On the issue of “feeling pain”, in most cases it’s mostly imaginary. I’d be interested in actual cases of Dems being hurt because of Trump. I know of far more cases of anti-PC / Trump supporter types being hurt by society: James Damore at Google, various professors being fired or resigning.
I hope you continue to visit, despite Neo’s excellent comments in disagreement with you, and “our usual” anti-Montage pile on. Like so many mostly college educated Americans, you have an emotional dislike of Trump, the person. (I also don’t like listening to him, tho reading his tweets is good, and I’ve read some of his speeches.) There’s no accounting for taste – but policies are most important for me.
I hope Trump wins (20% still possible), but now expect Biden (80%).
You claim to also say “rise above it” to the left. Can you link any sites? I’m always looking for non-Republican sites that seem reasonable, perhaps like Althouse. So far Turley seems the best to me, but he’s pretty limited to Free Speech. Tho it’s arguably the most important American feature, with 2nd Amendment right to guns being the most American of American rights (EU countries don’t have gun rights, tho they do have free speech.)
One more important disagreement:
But they have projected their love of this country onto a man who wants adulation, large crowds and attention more than he wants what is best for America.
I fully agree that Trump wants, seems even to need, to be the center of attention. Trump has chosen to support policies which he thinks most people think are best for America. His support for what is best is precisely in order to be successful and thus get large crowds to give him attention and adulation.
You don’t mention his desire to win, but in every speech of his, winning is a big and consistent goal. He wants attention, he gets it if he wins, he wins if his polices are best for America
What most people think is best policy = Trump policy (chosen for success).
Most people favor some legal immigration, but are against illegal immigration.
Against activist judges making laws.
Against China stealing US jobs.
Trade policies for more US jobs.
Lower taxes for more US jobs.
More fracking for more US jobs AND more domestic oil & gas production.
Against endless wars. [When was the last time the US won? Killing Gaddafi???]
I haven’t seen others talk about this insight, so I’m happy to come up with it:
“Trump Feeds his Narcissism by Having the Best Policies for America”
Thanks to your phrasing of why you don’t like Trump. Gaining insight is exactly why I’d like to hear more disagreement, from you and others who disagree.
Art Deco: “I take it from your remarks that the person in question is a first-degree relative. My sympathies.” Yes. And thank you for your sympathies.
I feel like a failure. It’s not that she voted Biden. It’s the absolute lack of critical thinking. I even sent to her endorsements of POTUS by at least a half a dozen each of whites, blacks, latinos, asians, jews, gay men, lesbians, straight men, and straight women. (Depending on how one counts, many endorsers fit in multiple categories.) And still no recanting of the accusations. (You’d think that a particular single endorser who disproved her accusation would have been sufficient.)
She, of course, and sadly, is not alone when it comes to a lack of critical thinking.
A jewish lawyer in an office that share’s my elevator lobby shares that same opinion. Jared, Ivanka, his jewish grandchildren, Steve Mnuchin, Stephen Miller, Morgan Ortagus, moving embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Height—no matter. Trump’s an anti-semite.
Trump’s appointing to important positions Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, Hope Hicks, Ronna McDaniel, Nikki Haley, and a higher percentage of women federal judges than any other president besides Obama—no matter. Trump’s a misogynist.
And thanks for the TWANLOC acronym.
aNanyMouse,
Are you for dividing the country? Because Washington State ain’t leaving the Union without winning a civil war.
Here is a smattering of what you give up just in the greater Seattle area alone:
1 NAS Whidbey Island This is the home port for the west coast Growler community I believe. They also have many Orion and new Poseidon maritime patrol planes.
2 Indian Island Naval weapons depot. Ships going to and from Naval Shipyard Puget Sound load and unload their munitions here.
3 Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport and the Torpedo Test Range in Hood Canal.
4 Bangor Trident Submarine Base. 3 miles of weapons bunkers here. Might be more nukes here than anywhere else in America.
5 NSY Puget Sound. Usually a supercarrier under refit here. This also where we cut the reactor compartment out of the retired subs. The reactor compartments are buried at Hanford.
6 Boeing Everett. 767 tankers being built here.
7 Boeing Renton. Poseidon ASW planes being built here.
aNanyMouse,
If Trump prevails in the courts, civil war may be avoided, though more likely delayed. Trump taking decisive, highly controversial and provocative actions will be necessary and to do so, Trump will have to have a supportive US Military.
If Trump does not prevail or is assassinated, I don’t see how it doesn’t come down to acceptance of 1984 or civil war.
I favor mass revocation of citizenship and deportation after civil war.
I deeply hope that I’m wrong. But see no persuasive alternative scenario going forward.
An example of narcissism writ large.
Chases Eagles:
Military, Nuclear Facilities, Electrical Power Generation
Joint Base Lewis-McCord – Fort Lewis (US Army) McCord Air Field (USAF)
From Eastern Washington:
Yakima Firing Range (US Army)
Department of Energy Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Research and National Security)
Fairchild AFB -Spokane
Grand Coulee Dam – just a little bit of hydropower
Narcissism was a comment on Tom Grey’slatest tome.
Tom Grey: Excellent analysis. Your, Jamie, and others’ points about the pain and harm endured by progressives are excellent. We’ve all witnessed the amazing publicly demonstrated physical manifestations of pain suffered by progressives from having conservatives in power, while conservatives appear immune to similar pain when progressives are in power. Sure, we express our dispair, discomfort and disappointment in writing and other discussions. But physical manifestations of pain? No.
I have asked progressives what actual harm they or people they actually personally know have suffered as a result of any actions by Trump. The only actual answer I received was from one or two folks who think their taxes might have risen because of the removal of SALT deductions. Sure, there was the sympathetic pain for the likes of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, and somehow those events were Trump’s fault. When I pointed out that similar events occurred while Obama was president, such as Baltimore’s Freddie Gray and Ferguson’s Michael Brown, all I got was blank stares. When I asked these progressives about their feelings for those who have been injured or who have had their businesses or property destroyed in blm/antifa riots, again just blank stares.
There is a real mental illness afflicting a hyuuuuuuuuge segment of our society I tell ya.
Just to revisit the “we” business again. The hostility of progressives who have adopted the managerial and expert directed theory of government – aka social engineering – have not bothered to hide their outright contempt and hostility toward those disinterested in being managed by others, for many decades now.
The theories and assumptions partially described in the link to the history teacher’s essay on that Gospel of the Enlightenment, believed by those who have no in-depth knowledge of history, are deeply embedded in the very fabric of what it means to be a supposedly self-defining progressive. The language of the fantasy has worked its way into decades of poorly reasoned emissions from the Supreme Court, flowed in torrents from the vanity publications of the ” chattering class”, and forms the core worldview of every Democrat politician I can personally think of.
They believe themselves to be the Children of Light, of tolerance, and intellect. And if anyone resists accepting this premise without ant further discussion, woe to that unperson. Or as they styled him in somewhat earlier days, a “gap toothed Neanderthal slated for extinction”. A, by the governing class hastened along extinction, if deemed to be the means necessary.
This is NOT new. It has merely reached a crisis point wherein your daughters and ex wives, and woke sons, are willing to talk publicly of politically organized persecution, dispossession, and even homicide, as if it is the most “natural” thing in the world to them.
And, given their petulant vainglory, their objective moral nihilism, and their substitution in the place of ” the nothingness” an imaginary “science based” doctrine of self-creative ascent to godhood, so it just might be the thing most in accord with the personal natures they have established and cultivated.
“… yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”
On (silly?) civil war talk – if Reps and anti-Biden / anti-Dem / anti- Deep State Dictators are unwilling to organize and protest, they’re not very likely to be effective at organized opposition.
This Sat. go out and protest.
Stopthesteal.us
truethevote.org << could use some volunteer help for GA … today??
Get MeWe, get Parler to get better organized.
Wow, it looks like votes were switched in Nebraska too! That 1 elector vote for Biden in Nebraska looks stolen.
Om, you are making progress. I recall you thought i was a know nothing clown some time ago. That has converted to ‘not stupid’. Before long, you will no longer be a broken son of a broken slave plantation sys.
You do not know what i am doing as i have deployed the prince of peace. That is merely part of human soul growth. The kids get into trouble and rebel.
No fighting by name calling tom either.
Gb, you are right and also wrong. Victory is inevitable. Nothing you humans can do, can stop it. Nithing can stop it, not even me.
This is the steins;gate.
If thess years had not happened, would any of you here been capable of opening your eyes to treason? Your egos saw treason and civil war. Nobody like ymar told you. You researched and figured out. How excellent, children.
You are being trained to unlearn yourself. The godhead has decreed that time is up. Humanity will no longer be allowed the luxury of free evil.
Enjoy the lighting for we are the storm.
Re: Montage…
Tom Grey: I too appreciate dissenting voices here. At times I do my bit in that direction. You may have noticed.
A month or two ago I asked Montage about his participation — in particular that he often does not respond to his responses.
Granted, it’s hard to respond to a pile-on, but he didn’t mention that. He admitted he often doesn’t even bother to read the topic after dropping his comment. He considers that as a sufficient contribution — to make us yokels think apparently.
Since then, I don’t take Montage seriously as a good faith interlocutor.
Yammer will yammer, that can’t be fixed it seems.
huxley:
Montage is a reliable source of predictable progressive disinformation. His comments may deceive the gullible, which is not a characteristic of readers of this blog, IMO.
What are Tom’s motives for welcoming Montage’s talking points, virtue signaling for his own blog? Dread of the “echo chamber?”
Ymarsakar:
I have said many times that I am highly reluctant to ban regular commenters here. So, as I’ve said before, I have no interest in banning you.
But I am asking you to please stop insulting people here. You used to do it a bit, but now it has become nearly constant.
I am unbelievably sad and depressed to think that our wonderful country has been stolen. It is MUCH more than an election. It is our freedom. Socialism is merely the step on the way to communism. People have lost their fear of communism, but we older people remember.
Hasn’t been stolen yet.
Not yet….
One of the more interesting things that emerges from this tainted election—to me at least—is that it fully exonerates Hillary, at least in a manner of speaking.
Yes, it’s true: she SHOULD have won in 2016. She WOULD have won in 2016…except that…well, because all the polls had her winning by a landslide the DEMOCRATIC PARTY MACHINE DIDN’T BOTHER to gear up and “do what had to be done”.
Wasn’t ready. Wasn’t prepared. Was basking in Victory.
There was no way Trump should have won. NO WAY.
But, Halleluya, there occurred this, this—there’s no other word—“deus ex machina”.
(For a long while there, I thought that Bernie and his bros played a significant part in Hillary’s defeat; and I was most certainly grateful to him…but now I realize that I was entirely mistaken: had the DEMOCRATIC MACHINE been ready, ANY DEFICIT would clearly have been overcome. So my apologies, Bernie, for giving you way too much credit for Trump’s victory….any credit at all, actually.)
Meanwhile, back at the “Victory” party, Hillary, in full, magnificent Palestinian Rules Mode (which mode was fully embraced by the Democratic Party over the last dozen or so years), blamed her TRAGIC debacle on others. “Not me”, she cried. “You, you and you and you, you all BLEW IT!” Clearly, it HAD TO BE someone else’s fault…
It must be said, though that even before the election, Hillary, to her immense credit and extraordinary prescience, got the Russia Hoax up and rolling already in June/July 2016, so that following Trump’s victory, Obama, Comey and Brennan et al., could pick up Hillary’s ball and run with it, handcrafting with meticulous care and sheer talent that exquisite tour de force that was Obamagate…. Alas, they can’t even take any credit for that masterpiece, which is a real shame considering that it should have been the new gold standard for intricate, ultra-complex, multi-level and multi-dimensional government venality and corruption. That is until these crookedest of elections blew Obamagate off the table and entirely out of the casino….
Anyway, if it’s any solace (but…no, it’s not), something that should have been clear on November 4th has been borne out, viz. had the playing field been even, had the vote been a fair one, Trump would have won in a landslide, setting records for both turnout and the popular vote.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/examining_the_code_internet_geeks_conclude_trumps_win_was_yuuuge.html
Yes, folks, the ONLY reason why Biden has “set the record” (heh) is because the Democratic Machine had to beat Trump’s record number of votes.
So there they were, merrily flipping and adding and tossing out, ,etc., but upon realizing that they were going to lose in spite of it all they “paused”—simply stopped, actually—the ballot counting early Wednesday morning and several hours later resumed with a whole new batch of newly minted cards, I mean ballots, and began to flip and add and toss out in earnest.
And so…Biden—“honored and humbled”—sets the record and “WINS”!! (You’d think he’d at least show a bit gratitude, if not to Trump, then to all those Deplorables…
And the Mainstream Corrupt Media—surprise!—declare him President Elect!! (Well, he certainly worked hard enough for it.)
Except not so fast, Mr. Big Guy.
Yes, you and your side worked real hard to rip this one off but you’ll have to wait just a bit longer to see whether this grandest of supremo heists will stand, magnificent though it is.
Just a wee bit longer….
Would be a shame, though, if it doesn’t…wouldn’t it…
But sure, in the meantime take a bow, as you remind us how “honored and humbled” you are and how dear to your heart is NATIONAL UNITY.
It’s darkest of dark humor, certainly, but we could all use the laughs…
I think it is just fine that Montage comments here. He would appear in a better light though if he would respond on point to the rebuttals others offer.
I do not include my own rejoinders here, as I make no pretense that Montage and I even inhabit the same moral universe.
But others here who are more kindly disposed toward, and less contemptuous of, him, have repeatedly tried to broach specific issues in contention with no success.
This is, unfortunately, a pattern I have observed progressives and even sensitive conservatives conforming to for years now. The data points they sometimes introduce are, it seems, mostly feints, or at best ornamentation added to what are not much more than personal attacks delivered behind a ” so sorry you are stupid and delusional” cover line.
Often times in the past, I found while chasing down links or references, that the claims they made were not even supported by the cites they proffered. It was just for show.
In a mindset that elevates the subjective to a place of moral preeminence, “facts” become mere baubles deployed to stylishly ornament a rhetoric of villification.
The virtually complete lack of progressive interest this election cycle in the economic realm, gives one some idea of what it actually counted for with them as an issue in the past.
As it was going as well or much better than could be rationally expected in the realms of economics, and international relations, they had to come up with an unverifiable and invisible form of “systemic” racism, and complain about mean tweets, and express feelings of intolerable embarassment, as pins upon which to hang their public rage.
There were of course things Trump and his supporters advanced which were objective acomplishments, and which the liberals nonetheless did in fact hate. Acomplishments such as advancing the rule of law, and supporting free speech and American traditions, and adhering to constitutional governance. But admitting to your brother in law it is hatred of that that is the real bug up your closet collectivist ass, instead of complaining it is all about mean tweets and racism, is a rather more ideologically, and socially, fraught proposition.
Just to point out, that whichever Republican had won the Presidential election, the Left—and the media—vying with one another in the vituperation sweepstakes, would have hated that President.
And smeared that President.
And libeled, and slandered, and misrepresented and lied constantly about that President.
It is true that the hysterical hatred they had for Trump was—is—because Trump fought back, defied them, didn’t kowtow to their vicious, bottomless egos, didn’t deign to grant them the honor they believe is their due.
He refused to pander to their amour propre. Thus he enraged them.
They also further hated him because of his personality; because he decided he didn’t want to—or have to—depend on them, choosing twitter as his medium to address the citizenry.
And because he so ably and constantly mocked them. Showed them—and everyone who bothered noticing—how ridiculous they were. And are.
But no one should doubt that they would have treated any Republican President with similar contempt or that they would have done their best to elicit the same contempt and hatred amongst their readers, listeners and viewers.
Thx Huxley. I do notice your often insightful posts.
But now I’m here to give advance news, from my new MeWe acct.
https://mewe.com/group/5fa34ba399a9ce75af6cd4e7 << this is the StopTheSteal group
Could easily lose many hours there, but there's coordination and social communication about a huge Sat. March on DC.
Really interesting computer code (Python reading JSON scripts) about changing votes from Trump to Biden, in the thousands. Claim (clickbait? worked on me)
Dominion software deleted over 2.7 million votes nationwide, switched over 500,000 from Trump to Biden
https://www.distributednews.com/473962.html
HT MeWe – StopTheSteal
Similar “bombshell”
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html
Now a Tweet by the President!
“REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.”
@ChanelRion
@OANN
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
I can’t keep up with all the breaking news.
Protest.
Redo the election is better than just invalidate and have the House pick Trump (26-23; each state gets one vote).
The silly Dems are not the enemy, altho they do support the evil Deep State Dictators.
Ron Coleman’s twitter feed has an array of information that ought to prove helpful in the pushback—including similar fraud in previous elections.
(Well, “ought to”….)
It’s worth scrolling down:
https://twitter.com/roncoleman
For example,
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1326981600689602561
https://twitter.com/JoeOltmann/status/1326944912143683587
https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1326937255231938562
and information on what’s happening specifically in PA., about Dominion, about Richard Hopkins and more shake-outs in the Trump administration.
Onward.
Tom Grey: If the vote switch data and analysis are correct, that’s all she wrote and some people, many people, should be going to prison. This would be the mother of all political scandals in America.
It has seemed to me that successful electoral fraud on this scale would have to based on software hacks. Sure, every little bit helps, but you can all get so far manipulating mail-in ballots by hand.
Fingers crossed. But Democrats must have been pretty confident, or pretty desperate, to hope no one would check the raw data. It’s a rather transparent hack. Almost seems too simple.
I sure do remember how the voting counts slowed down that night once Trump took a firm lead.
On Montage – I previously thought he was merely an occasional troll to not to be fed, but lately I seriously take his comments as very indicative of the progressives. Not only in being wrong, but in how they are wrong, the phrases of wrongness.
His claim: Trump is addicted to the spot-light, a big-mouthed attention whore.
Therefore, Trump does not care about the best interests of America.
I’m absolutely certain that our previous few anti-Trump commenters, Jessie Larner (?), Michael, some others, basically feel this too.
Feel it. Believe it. And only later engage their brains to justify these feelings, to rationalize their beliefs.
And it’s logically false. Even if Trump is a narcissist, sexist blah blah blah, he still might have the best policies. But to Trump-haters, it’s hating Trump’s character, arrogance, vulgarity, being a bully, a creep, etc. Hate first, OrangeManBad, Trump is icky. No need to even look at policy.
There’s some parallel with being against the selfish Free Market.
Selfishness is considered “bad” – but free market capitalism works so well because rule-bound selfishness is so reliable. The baker doesn’t bake bread for YOU, he bakes it to get money, for himself, out of selfishness. (See Adam Smith, among others – Libbers would be happy to give you a yuuuuge reading list!)
I’ve long admired Trump for his willingness to fight, and unquenchable desire to win. To “do whatever it takes”, within the legal rules (including the bendable, flexible gray lines), in order to make money, for himself.
Now he selfishly, narcissistically, wants to Make America Greater than ever before, and become the Greatest non-war President in History. With the Best Policies Ever.
And I believe he really does want the best policies, for his own glory. A Glory Hog. (Don’t you hate those guys in HS basketball? they always shoot, never pass) Not because they’re the best policies, but because they’ll have the best outcomes which proves he’s the best President. (Not the “good intentions” most progs demand.)
Trump haters hate him because he’s a glory hog. All supporters should understand that. But like LeBron James, the late Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan (I don’t think it was him commenting), the teams often win more when they feed the ball to the glory hog who is really good.
And to me, the Best Policies for America is more important than his vulgarity, or his Tweet insults. Tho most would say he’s good, or a genius, at making up insulting nicknames.
And Barry is correct that any Rep who wins will get smeared by the media, lied about, lied to by the Dem Deep State, with false claims of immorality and non-PC behavior. That’s why I support calling it Democrat Derangement Syndrome. As Rubio & Cruz start prepping for 2024, we’ll see more of it against them. So the Derangement Syndrome should have the same name.
Neo, i would ask you which lines you thought were insults?
It should be quite obvious who was calling tom a narcissist and it was not ymarsakar.
But i dont notice you seeing any of that.
I saw it and made a note.
Ymarsakar:
I’m speaking not just of this thread. I’m speaking of a general increase in insults – and especially in very condescending remarks – from you that I’ve noticed over time. In particular, I actually don’t mean insults to person A or person B (although there’s some of that, too), but condescension to everyone here as a “human” – a group you assert you are not exactly part of, it seems. I’m talking about statements of yours such as these, for example, which did occur in this thread:
“It is amusing watching the children of man talk…”
“If these years had not happened, would any of you here been capable of opening your eyes to treason?…You researched and figured out. How excellent, children. ”
Also from yesterday: “You humans are insufferably arrogant,…”
Let’s put aside for a moment whether you have some sort of special powers, which seems to be what you are claiming (most people do not ascribe to that particular belief system about you). However, over the years your comments have certainly been interesting, to say the least, and you certainly have a unique point of view.
However, as I’ve said in the past, I’m running a blog here and if people keep insulting other people I try to stop that. I have spoken to many people to tell them to stop squabbling and insulting each other. Obviously I don’t catch everything anyone says, and also it just would take too long and be too much effort to try to ascertain “who started it.” There are certainly other people who insult people here at times. But the sort of blanket insult/condescension you offer to “humans” includes everyone and I’d like it to stop. That probably was not clear from my earlier comment about it, but that’s what I meant in addition to asking you and everyone else to refrain from insulting each other personally as individuals.
I’d also be pleased if you were to keep the discussions of your larger belief system about who you are to a minimum. It’s not that you can never mention it, but over and over and over is not going to convince people nor is it going to make your other messages more credible. In fact, I have a feeling that such assertions may make most people just scroll past.
I try to treat everyone here with respect, and I would hope everyone else would, too, although I realize that’s not going to happen. It’s possible to say whatever a person wants to say – including disagreement, or corrections to the point of view another person might hold – without insulting or being so condescending. The occasional insult or condescension isn’t even the problem, really. It’s when a commenter does it over and over as a regular modus operandi.
DNW, on ‘a pattern I have observed progressives and even sensitive conservatives conforming to for years now.
The data points they sometimes introduce are, it seems, mostly feints, or at best ornamentation added to what are not much more than *personal attacks* delivered behind a ” so sorry you are *stupid and delusional*” cover line.’:
Such “feint” trends are, why I have as little as possible to do with progressives or “sensitive” conservatives, except when I can offer tutorial exercizes, for the *edification* of someone I quite care about.
The clear/ vast preponderance of progressives (and even “sensitive” conservatives) nowadays care far more about being seen to Virtue Signal, than they care about engaging their intellectual equals about real issues, in an adult manner.
When I encounter a “so sorry you are *stupid and delusional*” cover line, I make a point to my loved ones, that they best avoid such Virtue Signalers, like the plague.
The aspect of who are humans or not is quite on topic. As others have raised it here.
You say it is condescending, yet you ignore the content by criticizing the style. Either i am addressing humans or i am addressing lesser or greater than humans. These are rather simple topics. Twanloc to they live to zombie, demonization. If you are not human, what are you? Lizard, demon?
The statements i wrote are true. How can it be an insult for someone to be human?
Unfortunately for your realm, neo, i am running a war. Those statements you dismiss as insults, are important for those that wish to win, to not get ….. no word for it but they get it. 2020 apoc stuff.
I am not concerned over who you ban or which non humans are reading. Son of man is a title, not an insult.
You can try to do what you wish neo, in your realm, although each action has perilous effects on the soul level.
However i would note one thing, what i mean behind my writing is not for you to determine. That is outside your realm. Attempting to define my realm in your manner is a boundary violation. Which has consequences that will be enforced by a karma system. I am not involved except to reject your attempt to bridge into my realm. I did not give you permission to redefine my work as an insult. Any permission i unknowlingly gave you or you think you have over me, i withdraw to the son of god.
Also i dont see my comment telling om no attacking tom as narcissist.
Your…. actually their attempts are transparent and ineffective. I see you now. I reply now
All,
I take Montage’s views seriously. Seriously enough to ask him/her a completely serious question: What now? No discernible answer yet (unless “May the best ideas win” was an oblique response of sorts), but I’m still hoping.
I grew up in a New England college town, surrounded by people like Montage. Ninety-five percent of my colleagues (I’ve worked in higher ed for 30 years) are people like Montage. Some of my oldest friends are people like Montage, which makes it rather hard to dehumanize them and view them as the Enemy. It may come to that, but I sure as hell hope it doesn’t.
People like Montage are the other half of this country. They get a vote too. Multiple votes, apparently, depending on where they live. Or lived.
Montage is unusual in being willing to communicate at all with people like us. We should take advantage of that. Most people on the Left simply refuse to engage with people who don’t share their worldview. James Lindsay explains why:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/
Those of you who frequent the Powerline blog are probably familiar with a contrarian commenter there, a D.C. lawyer whose initials are PD. PD gets a lot of grief, but I’m grateful that he persists in posting in that mostly unfriendly environment. Unless he’s just taking the piss (a possibility), his comments provide extremely useful anthropological insights into the attitudes and rationalization processes of an especially smug and condescending denizen of the D.C. swamp. I wondered at first whether he was a Titania McGrath-like spoof, but no, he’s the real deal.
Montage can be evasive, but in general he/she is a lot nicer than PD. Let us therefore do our best to make him/her feel genuinely welcome. As they say in the part of the country where I now live: It dudn’t cost you nothing to be polite.
Montage will get a polite and decorous hanging with all due ceremony if he/she takes arms against our side and our side wins.
If Montage’s side wins, we’ll be up against the wall without ceremony. When the Bolsheviks shot Admiral Kolchak on the banks of a frozen river, he asked the officer commanding to send a message to his wife in Paris. Just about the last thing he heard was ‘I will, if I can be bothered to remember’. Then they booted his corpse down onto the ice and left it for the dogs.
There is a difference.
Ymarsakar:
I voice my opinions here, and I have opinions about what you and everyone else writes. I don’t think anyone needs another person’s permission to venture an opinion.
I certainly have no particular power to determine what you mean behind your writing. What you mean is what you mean, and all I do is to read what is written by you and others, and come to conclusions about what is said and what it means based on my own experiences and thoughts. I assume that sometimes I’m correct and sometimes I’m wrong.
For that matter, I can’t determine what’s behind anyone’s statements here. But I still read them, observe, and give my opinions and reactions. And each person who reads what I write can have his or her own opinion about whether I’m right or wrong.
As I said, I don’t catch everything and I don’t stop every insult. I try to focus on particularly egregious instances of condescension and/or insults, and/or commenters who are doing a lot of it. Recently there has been an increase in the amount of general squabbling here, and I’ve been more busy than usual and I have missed some of it, probably more than I usually miss.
I will add, for clarification, that I was not saying that calling someone a human or humans is an insult. I was speaking not just of insults but of being condescending to everyone here – such as “You humans are insufferably arrogant.”
Geoffrey Britain,
“I am not arguing “in favor” of armed confrontation. I simply see it as highly probable.”
Thanks for clarifying. Thanks too for the reference to the Free Republic piece on Trump cleaning house at DoD. More on that from J.E. Dyer:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/11/11/ghosts-of-spygate-force-shift-in-washington-continues-as-more-defense-officials-leave/
On your point about access to the coasts: wouldn’t your former service be able to interdict interference by sea, as it did in the Atlantic during our first and I hope only hot civil war? Those are a couple of big-ass oceans, the Pacific especially. Not easy to sneak an invasion force across without being spotted. And the red states do have some major ports of their own (Galveston, Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, and Charleston). You might want to check out Michael Vlahos’ blog at:
https://www.anewcivilwar.com/vlahos-blog
He’s a professor at JHU and a naval strategist by training. Might be worth asking him, especially since he seems to be thinking along the same lines you are.
Zaphod,
True enough, if it comes to that. We’re not there yet. In the meantime, no harm in talking.
In “Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific During World War II” (great book), Jasper Holmes wrote that the most effective USN intelligence officers were those who had old friends on the other side.
@Hubert:
You make valid points. And that’s a good book recommendation. Right up my alley interests-wise. Thanks!
Off to buy it now, even the cost of making one of the most obnoxious of Oligarchs a bit richer.
The trick is going to be knowing to flip as fast as the speed of light from Yesterday Mode to Today Mode. Not doing so was the death of many a Spaniard.
To get an idea of how rapidly a situation can develop, see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War#Detailed_chronology:_1936
And things had been at a low boil for years leading up to this. How tempting it must have been for many normal relatively decent people to hope that things would just carry on. And then they were up against a wall and game over.
A jewish lawyer in an office that share’s my elevator lobby shares that same opinion. Jared, Ivanka, his jewish grandchildren, Steve Mnuchin, Stephen Miller, Morgan Ortagus, moving embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Height—no matter. Trump’s an anti-semite.
He’s using ‘anti-semite’ as a term of art. I’d be amused to see his reaction if you asked him to define ‘anti semite’.
I feel like a failure. It’s not that she voted Biden. It’s the absolute lack of critical thinking.
Twenty years ago, the distribution of political opinions among the young was similar to that of the general population. You had this large cultural shift between about 2000 and about 2008. My job at the time brought me in contact with college students daily, but I had no clue it was happening while it was happening.
Zaphod,
Hope you enjoy the book. It’s hard to avoid doing business with Mr. Bezos.
The mood of disquiet that Neo posted about a few days ago is a sign that many people are are already transitioning mentally from Yesterday Mode to Today Mode. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst seems like a prudent rule.
Now you know how Democrats felt the past 4 years dealing with Trump and his administration. I’m not kidding. It is just as sharp a pain.
This is an absurd statement. Trump’s program was quite conventional: enforce the immigration laws, adopt a more contentious stance in trade negotiations, and reduce troop levels in the Near East, Central Asia, and North Africa. He also acceded to some Republican standards of a sort that every Republican president since 1980 has favored: reductions in marginal income tax rates, the appointment of originalists to the federal bench, the repeal of a structurally unsound medical insurance scheme, and tearing out a few pages from the voluminous Code of Federal Regulations. You’re suffering because of your adolescent entitlement mentality. You think the government is yours and it’s just intolerable that you suffer even temporary losses in policy disputes. Our political life might be passably congenial if people like you just stopped being head cases and jerks.
I don’t expect agreement here but just wanted to point out even some Republicans simply did not like the way Trump conducted business either.
Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans (94% currently per Gallup) have been similar to those registered by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush the Younger. They’re noticeably higher than those registered by Gerald Ford and George Bush the Elder. The ‘some Republicans’ are shills employed by liberal media outlets, shills on the patronage of Pierre Omidyar, and a clown car full of vain fools who are incensed that Republican voters paid them no mind in 2016. These people have no analogue at ground level. They are all people who lobby for a living, people who write for a living, and people who’ve held public office. Over time, the Republicans antagonistic to Trump in 2016 have generally come around when they realized his policy prescriptions and appointments were in line with what they preferred; they’ve also come ’round in reaction to the grossly abusive behavior of the Democratic Party, the press, and the permanent government. The people who didn’t come around were those who were bought and paid for and those for whom their nasty little egos are their motor.
@Hubert:
Thanks too for the Michael Vlahos blog recommendation.
We could all benefit from reading this one:
https://css.cua.edu/humanitas_journal/church-of-woke/
I’d never thought of it this way, despite having bolted through Gibbon before. Much to digest and another angle from which to study the Elephant.
Funny thing is the Woke made a movie sanctifying Hypatia a few years back. Irony of Ironies.
To go off on a real tangent, the Hypatia thing reminds me I should go back and re-read The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears and see if time passed and life lived have made me like this more or less now.
“…Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans…”
“…see if time passed…”
It’s been said before (more or less) but Trump’s policies are essentially little different front from those of JFKs or any other Henry Jackson Democrat.
True, that was 50-60 years back and things do change (of course); but the Overton Window now looks out over a radically different, and—if this persists—bleak panorama.
P.S. Thanks for the great comments….
Zaphod,
Thanks for highlighting the link to Vlahos’ piece on the “church of woke”. A lot of it was over my head/out of my intellectual wheelhouse (not a new experience with Vlahos–see below), but I think I got the gist of it. James Lindsay has also argued that wokeness is a new religion:
https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-faith-of-social-justice/
Full disclosure: Vlahos was one of my profs at JHU SAIS in D.C. almost forty years ago. He was an entertaining and original lecturer but he did seem to be on a different frequency band than our other profs. IOW, he was intellectually eclectic. I remember reading his book on the development of U.S. Navy warfighting doctrine during the first three decades of the 20th century–“The Blue Sword”, also available from Mr. Bezos’ cozy little shoppe–and making heavy weather of some of the prose. Even then, Vlahos had a knack for investing seemingly straightforward natsec topics with high historical drama and unexpected cultural correspondences. I could usually follow along, but sometimes he lost me as he tore off down this or that rabbit-hole. Some things don’t change.
Had to look up Hypatia and Iain Pears’ “The Dream of Scipio”. The latter sounds like a darn good read. More ka-ching for Mr. Bezos, unless I can get it used through AbeBooks.