The GOWCP
It’s the Grand Old Working Class Party now:
After the 2020 election, Republicans need to rebrand their party as the champions of working-class voters and steer away from its traditional embrace of big business, Sen. Marco Rubio said in an interview with Axios.
Why it matters: Rubio told me he is leaving the door open for a 2024 presidential run — so his comments are some of the earliest signals of how the GOP contenders may try to acknowledge President Trump’s successes while finding their own path.
“The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working class coalition,” said Rubio…
Rubio said Republicans have long believed in and supported the free market, “but the free market exists to serve our people. Our people don’t exist to serve the free market.”…
He added that working class Americans [are] “very suspicious, quite frankly, dismissive of elites at every level. And obviously that’s a powerful sentiment.”
What to make of this?
(1) Rubio thinks Trump has reshaped the Republican Party and given it a clear direction.
(2) Rubio would like to run for president in 2024.
Rubio is an interesting politician – at least, to me. He has a habit of annoying the Republican base by being too cooperative with Democrats, particularly on immigration – at least, he was in the past. But I’ve long felt he’s got some pluses that make him attractive as a politician. The first is that he’s actually pretty smart and can speak quite well. The second is that he’s young and the third is that he’s Hispanic. Hispanics may be a new strength for the Republican Party.
Ted Cruz – whom I prefer – has the same characteristics but is smarter and without the baggage of compromise. But Cruz is (or used to be) personally off-putting to a lot of people. I was not one of them; I’m a Cruz fan. But I recognize that some people just plain don’t like him.
Neither Cruz nor Rubio has forsaken Trump at this point, either. I saw a clip of Cruz saying that Trump has every right to challenge irregularities in the election (can’t find it at the moment), and here’s Rubio on it:
“At the core of our republic, its legitimacy comes from people’s confidence in the elections,” Rubio, a Republican, told Fox News host Sean Hannity Tuesday evening. “Right now, you got half this country that has doubts about the veracity of this election.”…
Rubio appeared to back Trump’s push for recounts in the 2020 election, saying that both Democrats and Republicans “should be welcoming of having this process be open and transparent.”
“That’s why the process that exists in the law, there’s a process in the law that exists, after the election, before the results are certified,” Rubio said.
“That process has to be allowed to move forward. Otherwise, we’re going to have a result here that half the country will harbor significant doubts about.”
Why am I talking about 2024? Well, why not? It’s a very depressing time right now. I’m well aware – very aware – that if massive fraud is really occurring in elections (as may be the case), it really doesn’t matter who runs. I don’t need to be reminded of that.
But I also know that I don’t see the future and I need to also focus on things that don’t bring me down. I try to have a balance here, and in addition that means that I sometimes talk about frivolous things, or history, or art, or the deeper questions of life, or any number of non-political topics.
Neo:
New crop of Cosmic Crisp apples coming in December! A small ray of hope. 🙂
I was a big Rubio fan until he got rolled by McCain and Schumer in the immigration bill. He was too eager to make a mark. He has a strong core of base beliefs that are grounded in populism but he doesn’t execute them. He is too mallable in my opinion thus suspect.
I too like Cruz a lot but he comes across to many as too pedantic. He tends to be in a “lecture” mode vs. an explaining mode. Comes from being a top-notch lawyer. He is trying to change by growing the scruffy beard and being more warm but he reverts when he gets animated. His evisceration of McCabe was merciless as was Kennedy.
Don’t think 2020 if over yet. That data video has grown legs.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/when_computers_cheat_they_inevitably_leave_evidence_behind.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/12/it-contractor-for-dominion-ballot-counting-software-co-exposes-massive-ballot-fraud-in-detroit-michigan/
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2020/11/computer-election-fraud.html
I find Ted Cruz friendlier-looking in a beard. Not sure why.
I agree with you on Cruz. I suspect that he is mostly “off putting” to people who he skewers with facts and logic.
Rubio just seems a little smooth to me. If I were around in 2024, and he were the GOP nominee, I would have no trouble voting for him. Then again, I had no problems with Romney or Jeb; and I had big problems with Trump. So, what do I know? Not enough.
If anyone asked me, I would revise that GOPWCP to GOPMCP (middle class). Or maybe GOPAIP (all inclusive). I have been GOP all the time for a long time. I haven’t been what you would call ‘working class’ since I left school, where I toiled every summer in a dirty job on the low end of the scale, In fact the unofficial motto of Naval Aviation is “it beats working for a living”.
Back in 2016, out of the 17 Republican candidates, Cruz was like number 6, 7, 8 or 9 on my list of favorites. Trump was waaaaaaay down the list. For the last couple of years I’ve been saying that Trump has been the best president of my lifetime, and that includes Truman.
My main concerns with Cruz were, compared to the others ahead of him on my list, were lack of charisma and executive experience. As for brains, ability, and agreement with my ideals Cruz was right up there. Would he have the gumption to stand up to Democrats, the media and the Deep State was an open question to me. FYI, Scott Walker (alas, no Mr. Charisma) was atop my list because I was confident he would be a fighter.
Since November 2016 Cruz has demonstrated that he’s a real mensch, and his charisma has grown. He will be at or near the top of my list of 2024 preferences.
Regardless of how the 2020 election turns out, we will have a lot of good choices for 2024. Pence, Cruz, Rubio, and Haley are among them.
If Trump loses the current election, he could easily be at the top of my 2024 preferences. Of course, he would be 78 years old, and since I like him a lot, I’m not sure I would want him to endure the rigors of an election campaign at that age. On the other hand, if the attitude of Americans (remember, over 72,000,000 Americans actually voted for the former (and perhaps current) racist whose dementia frequently flares and his giggly, statist sidekick) sufficiently changes and Trump can be elected without a physically demanding schedule, he’d by my choice.
By far the most important part is for Republicans to remember who the Trump voters are which is no certainty for sure.
They aren’t the party of stupid for no reason.
om:
Apples are currently taking up about 50% of the room in my fridge. I recently made applesauce out of some of the lesser ones, but now the applesauce is pretty well gone. I went to an orchard that sells “heirloom” apples and got a bunch of varieties, including russets, which are very special and sweet/tart.
But for some reason Jazz apples haven’t been in the stores for ages. They are the best supermarket apple IMHO.
Ignore Axios, don’t exercise liberal license to indulge diversity dogma, not limited to social, economic inclusions/exclusions, but rather follow American conservative principles: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Miss those New England apple orchards, though I don’t miss the winters that come along with the apples. I don’t remember how many bushels we picked every year, but we picked a lot. All winter long I could take an apple a day from the unheated room that served as our apple storage room. My favorite orchard apple was Ida Red. Then Macs.
On irony about the political realignment is that the Demos have long billed themselves as the “party of the people,” but now look at the people who don’t march in lockstep with the Demo narrative de jour as ignorant, cave-dwelling deplorables. But this isn’t exactly something discovered yesterday.
n.n.:
I think the point is that conservative principles can appeal to significant percentages of minority groups without pandering to identity politics.
But I’ve long felt he’s got some pluses that make him attractive as a politician. The first is that he’s actually pretty smart and can speak quite well. The second is that he’s young and the third is that he’s Hispanic.
I would add that Rubio has a real hatred of anything that smacks of authoritarian Marxism/Socialism.
I like Cruz best and think his marketability is flawed but improving. And I agree with Spartacus and Ira about the importance of a politician having the courage of their convictions. Too malleable or not enough gumption are deadly traits. Every time I think about that invertebrate John Roberts I damn near have an aneurysm.
Obama 2.0 (though probably not nearly as smart, i.e., devious, not that that’s any solace…):
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/warnocks-spiritual-mentor-called-for-the-destruction-of-everything-white/
That this fellow is currently in a race for the US Senate is truly gobsmacking.
As for ‘Demos have long billed themselves as the “party of the people…’, they are now, and have been for some time, the party of mass delusion, the party of personal, municipal, state and national destruction, the party of terror and intimidation.
The party of Orwell’s worst nightmare.
(On the other hand, if that’s what “the people” really want…well, they can always move TO Democratic-Party run jurisdictions. It’s NEVER too late.)
Ah… Those American Conservative Principles:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=21799
Clearly they are not working because they have conserved NOTHING.
Modest Proposals, anyone?
Speaking of the important issues, I hope you will next do a deep dive into the mosquito problem with the same degree of sensitivity and compassion that was evident in your discussion of the almighty fly.
Wizard
Great, not grand.
Neo touched upon a Very Big Thing before she wandered off into the wilderness of cogitation upon whether future salvation might lie in Nasty Alien Hispanic or Baby Gay Face Alien Hispanic ;P.
Class Wars are Back.
It’s Oligarchs + Managerialist Bug People vs. the Rest of Us. They want us crushed, humiliated, and soon enough dead.
Why they want this is a long topic and rather pointless to go into. Oligarchs are what they are. The Managerialist Class have the usual status anxiety and their disgust and contempt for ‘Poor Whites’ has some pretty obvious psychological causes.
This Them/Us dichotomy cuts across *all* the old political and ideological labels.
The really nasty fly in the ointment is that They are using the mass importation of alien races as part of a multi-pronged strategy to subdue Us. Note I didn’t say Alien Cultures. Culture is largely downstream of race.
There is still perhaps (just) time to to win a Class War. If ‘Conservatives’ (OLD LABEL ALERT) allow the can to be kicked down the road *any* further then it’s going to be a Race War.
In a Class War, you can to some degree at least pick your side. In a Race War, your uniform is your skin.
Definitely the Lesser of the Two Weevils.
I agree as to Rubio’s political positives. But he’s demonstrated himself not to be a principled man. His betrayal was too blatant and fundamental not to be dispositive of his character.
I too am an admirer of Cruz, his political negative is his intellectual demeanor. He appeals to people’s intellect, somewhat reminescent of Adlai Stevenson, rather than to their emotions.
If Trump loses, he won’t be back.
The problem the Republican party has is a divided base. In general, it consists of the conservatives + the blue collar class VS the Oligarchs + Managerial class.
However I take issue with Zaphod’s characterization that his “Oligarchs + Managerialist Bug People” “want us crushed, humiliated, and soon enough dead”.
As mathematically, it is problematic at best. His “Oligarchs + Managerialist Bug People” comprise what? 5%? 10%?
They don’t want us dead for whom would serve them? Other than Indian tech industry immigrants, third world immigrants are mostly ignorant and unskilled. They’re fine for entry level jobs but lack the education and skills to act as replacements for the skilled blue collar jobs upon which maintenance of our society rests.
Who would provide the necessities they need and comforts that are their due? No, they want us economically enslaved, as sheep to be regularly sheared. And in order to achieve and maintain that, they need us to be controlled.
Founder Thomas Jefferson, Sen. Daniel Webster and libertarian philosopher Robert A. Heinlein warned and spoke of it in their writings.
I’ve long resisted the proposition of a controlling elite but events have led to a reexamination of that proposition and I can no longer dismiss it. As, where are the moneyed elites willing to publicly support Trump? Cruz? Gov. Abbot? Gov. de Santis?
@Geoffrey Britain:
The remaining ‘Conservatives’ might eventually wake up if their faces are rubbed in it harder and longer. Perhaps. I am not very hopeful.
The present system is dispossessing non-sociopathic White Males. You pretty much have to be a Vicar of Bray type to get ahead these days. If you’re an IQ130 White Male born into anything but the very toppiest top of the Upper Middle Class in say (here we go, Cornflour) Dubuque… you ain’t got SFA chance of making it to the Ivies. It’s off to State for you — or increasingly these guys are self-schooling and making money in Tech or trying their luck as entrepreneurs. You’re not going to end up in Investment Banking or a White Shoe Firm. No endlessly failing upward or at worst sideways in and out of government and think tanks for you either. You’re Cattle. At best there’s a cubicle for you and you get forced to wear a Gay Rainbow Ribbon once a year to show that you are prepared to knuckle under to your overlords. Or you could get hot desked to humiliate you further. Actually the potential for humiliation is endless.
^^^Increasingly, the Saxon begins to know this. Boomers get NONE of the above. They’re mostly retired and out of the game and lolling about on their 401(K)s.. Nobody will ever get the easy ride their generation had. Not ever again.
So there’s a growing cadre of capable young and youngish White Males who have been barred from the Cursus (dis)Honorum and have to make their own way. In time this will bear fruit. Their class enemies think that they will only have to deal with the Fentanyl-addled Lumpenproletariat. They’re in for a surprise. And given a sense of purpose, the Proles might even dare to hope that a small sliver of Tomorrow might belong to them.
Incendiary stuff. When the Ruling Classes wake up to the possibility that some of their enemies possess actual technical, intellectual, and leadership capabilities, then their calculus will switch to immediate Extermination Mode rather than slowly slowly while the proles drowse let drugs and demographic drift do the job.
Zaphod,
I read your linked article. He’s half right and 85% wrong.
The Republicans of whom he speaks and labels as conservatives are not and have never been conservative.
A Party of Lincoln that ignores constitutional principles may be republican in its representation of “country club republicans” but it is not representative of conservatism. As the whole point of conservatism is not reactionary in pursuit of traditional societal status but conservation of constitutional principles. Which BTW are traditional classical liberal values.
The writer is 85% wrong because of a failure in analysis, which invalidates his conclusions.
@Geoffrey Britain:
I would credit the Oligarchy with having some common sense about where stuff comes from and who makes the generators work.
When it comes to Managerialist Bugmen, Zero Credit Given. We’re well into the second generation of over-credentialed symbol-manipulating Glass Bead Game Players who feel physical distaste when it comes to any *details* about the the dirty business of how the real world is run. These are idiots who think that they can wave their hands and make the world ‘Carbon Neutral’. Jaysus @#$^ing wept. Their ‘management’ (it is to laugh) of the Covid-19 Great Fear of 2020 should but won’t be their epitaph.
Nothing would make them feel more disturbed than employing a White Housekeeper or Gardener, so they need to import Eufemia and her brood of car jackers to do it for them.
They *are* smart-stupid and mentally tortured enough to want us dead.
Remember, it’s not Elders of Zion nonsense all the way down. Most tectonic social phenomena are *emergent* and very often the reasons publicly given for them are not the real driving factors — the real ones being things it’s too embarrassing to admit or address. Seriously a large part of the War on Working Class Whites is that when a Managerialist Bugperson has to call a plumber to fix his leaking faucet, he feels a deeply-suppressed inner shame and guilt about his total phonyness and disconnected from reality existence. Therefore it is necessary to destroy the cause of this unease.
I’m just a peasant. Angelo Codevilla expresses himself far better. And you should take his word before mine, that goes without saying.
zapped. Poetic.
Thing about the working class is that they know their jobs and their families’ security is affected by issues over which they have little control. Outsourcing jobs. Environmental panic. Economic downturn means their employer isn’t selling as much as before and….
Thus, they’ll gravitate toward somebody who says this sort of stuff isn’t going to happen any more. No fracking ban. Trade war with China brings jobs back. Conservative monetary policy (whatever that means) so we don’t have wild swings.
Cash for clunkers made the cost of used cars jump, along with used spares. Point was to….tighten the market and force prices up and save union jobs. Last I checked, GM has about 165k employees. That’s not much of a fraction of the number of permanently employed who had to bear at least that part of the cost of the bail out.
This is kind of a slam dunk for the GOP if they choose to discuss it as Trump has.
But what’s in it for a republican if, hypothetically, he pretends to believe the envirofreaks and works to ban fracking? Depending on his supporters and voters, he’s decreased his chances of being re elected. The upside for him is what? The greenies relent and acknowledge he’s probably an okay guy after all? He’s likely not dumb enough to believe the schtick but…..
@Geoffrey Britain:
Is there a way you could demonstrate that ‘Classical Liberal Values’ do not in every case eventually degenerate into the @#$@show we have now?
At what point in the last 200 years would you have applied the brakes or the bayonet or the liquid nitrogen deep freeze to make things better today?
The Founding Fathers had a far better grasp of the human condition and the ways in which Athenian Democracy and Roman Republicanism went wrong than 99.9% of our ignorant political and pundit classes today sure. But they were creatures of their own time and we must try to distill lessons from what has happened all over the Liberal West since then.
I don’t claim to have any answer.
I *am* currently reading Pepys’ Diary — the early parts of which make for very interesting reading. A few hangings, drawings, and quarterings can bring the Fanatics (for they have always been with us) into line stat. And yet, only ~25ish years later the Whiggish Bugmen were back slightly milder but to stay forever.
Zaphod,
Given the amount of genuflecting to the secular dogma in corporate America, I agree that nonconformist white males face institutional barriers.
However, most employment has been in the small business sector, which though the left has done its best to decimate, nevertheless the factors that give rise to small businesses cannot be dismissed from reality. A reality that requires small businesses.
Let the elite try to get by without the blue collar professions upon which their ediface rests. If push comes to shove, the Broombergs will find that food does not magically grow in restaurants and grocery stores. Gasoline does not magically appear in their limosines.
Initiative, persistence and brains will tell in the long run and those are traits in abundance in noncorporate America. It takes persistance to get up and go to a job every morning. Corporate america is not the source of entreprenuerial spirit.
Nor are free thinking men and women “cattle” no matter how much leftist elites attempt to impose that upon the public.
Consider this; 73+ MILLION free thinking individuals just voted not for Trump the man but for the liberty that man represents.
America is not finished.
What the left has yet to realize is that our restraint is out of loyalty to constitutional principles and maintenance of societal stability.
Should that prove unsustainable, they will be reacquainted with a early expression in our fight for independence; “Sir, I have not yet begun to fight…”
They have hate, hubris, arrogance and ignorance upon their side. We have reason, logic, common sense and principled honesty on our side.
We are armed and other than their goons, they are not. We have military training, they despise the military that protects them. They seek to impose an injustice disguised as equality, we stand for justice for all within a framework of individual merit.
Hopefully not but if it should come to it, they reside in enclaves in which the necessities which sustain their lives are imported from us.
Logistics win wars not ideology. An in essense totalitarian ideology can only succeed if we acquiese to it.
I’ve got to say of all the 2016 candidates I met in Iowa, Marco had the highest Q factor. Just very likable. Also smart but not in a show off way.
That being said, I think he is too establishment for today’s populist GOP. If DJT does lose, I’m thinking Don, Jr., Cotton, Noem and Santos as the leading contenders.
Zaphod,
It is not our Classical Liberal Values that have degenerated into the mess we see today but the abandonment of those values as a result of Marxism’s “March Through the [our] Institutions”. Every societal ill at play in America is the result of the embrace of the premises that underlie collectivist ideologies.
How about Marx and Engels? Joe McCarthy? Advocation for and support of totalitarian collectivist ideologies have no legitimate place in America. They are a cancer no less than the Serpent in the Garden’s “you will not surely die”. Collectivist ideologies rest upon rejection of key aspects of human nature and rejection of basic animating principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist. They rely upon deceit and are unsustainable without eventual recourse to tyranny.
I entirely agree that we need new constitutional provisions that fully nuetralize the left’s machinations. I see no alternative to an Article V Constitutional Convention in the aftermath of either Trump truly draining the swamp or a civil war no sane person wants.
Speaking of apples (well, Neo and om were), we have a couple of unidentified antique apple trees in our yard. There are a few more across the road — apparently, our house sits on land that used to be an orchard. I don’t spray them or fertilize them or even prune them, and some years they don’t produce much, but this year they both went absolutely nuts, so covered with apples that the branches sagged near the ground.
One of the trees makes little red apples that are tasty but very small, so we leave them for the birds and the deer. But the other tree produces lovely yellow apples that ripen in August. My sister thinks it’s a Yellow Transparent , and that looks right to me. I’ve gotten in the habit of making apple butter from this tree’s apples for Christmas gifts every year. This year, there were so many apples that I also made applesauce, using a recipe where you leave the peels on and blend it with an immersion blender at the end, and it’s the most amazing applesauce I’ve ever tasted. I’ve got enough apples left in the fridge to can another batch on the next rainy weekend. It was a good year for apples!
@Geoffrey Britain:
The things which have destroyed ‘Classical’ Liberal Civilization arose from within ‘Classical’ Liberal Civilization. Which was utterly impotent and incapable of developing antibodies to those things.
Or are you saying that the likes of Rousseau and Marx are somehow Ex Machina? Rather slippery ground making that argument about Marx and his ilk because then the nasty monkey on my shoulder might have a few things to say about Moses Mendelssohn and Napoleon letting cats out of bags. It’s kind of fortunate that Rousseau and plenty other like him have lived — they make it clear to all but the blind that the fault lies *within* human nature (and I posit the Dream of Liberalism) rather than malign influence of some outsider scapegoats (not all of whom have been or are saints either).
I put ‘Classical’ in quotes because the thing to which you refer is a product of the ‘Enlightenment’ which has nothing remotely Classical about it.
I’m not sitting here plugging for the Fuehrerprinzip, but to keep wishing that there is some Big Rock Candy Mountain of Liberalism which we can attain to if we just get the Constitutional Machinery and Legal Furniture arrange just right seems to me to go against the direct evidence of history.
Like I said, I don’t know the answer. But more of the same old fife and marching bands and stuff is not it. Like it or not, 1776 was another 1688 with more powder and shot. We may or may not live in a simulation, but sure as hell we do inhabit a pervasive Whigiverse — it permeates all our written history, everything we learned in school, everything we imbibe from media. Breaking out of that is the trick. I have no idea how.
PS: An Article V Convention will with absolute certainty precipitate a Civil War. There won’t be anywhere for the rats to hide and do their stuff in the dark.
Additionally, the thing with conventions and their like is you never know where you’re going to end up. Tennis Court Oath, anyone?
Such a Convention would at least have the advantage of dragging everything out into the light of day. And Civil War is coming regardless, so I guess why not.
Apples: My favorite fruit, when fresh, I used to pick when I was a kid and probably ate my weight in apples every season. I was in a Central Market in Dallas a couple of weeks ago (snooty marketplaces run by HEB in Texas) and spied some freshly-arrived Macouns. Yum! loaded up, needless to say, and have been enjoying them since.
@Geoffrey Britain:
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your points and I don’t want to sound totally Black Pilled. It may be that the Founding Fathers do have the last laugh via the Second Amendment.
How about ‘GOWCASP’? (‘and sympathizers’ tucked in) After all, I feel I’m somewhat far removed from real ‘working-class’ at this point, but wouldn’t want to cut ties.
Moldbug makes the point that the problem with just about every ‘ism’ that has been tried is that they always run aground on the rocks of the Human Condition not conforming to any ideal system. Once that happens, ‘it would have worked except for X’ — and in the end after a range of tweaks have been tried and have inevitably failed X is always finally some defined group of people. We know what happens then.
There is nothing magical and God-given about the US Constitution and any possible tweaks that have been or might be applied to it.
Inevitably we end up at Who Whom?
Humanity is irredeemable. So we must work with that. Seems to me that Absolute Monarchies and Oligarchic Republics (Genoa / Venice) killed fewer of their own citizenry or even foreigners than the alternatives. Not keen on Oligarchic Republics at all but have to put all the potential Whigs somewhere where they have genuine life and death skin in the game and *must* therefore become Reactionary like all good and proper human beings 😛
Inevitably we end up at Who Whom?
Zaphod: Not everyone picks up your allusions… This one is a good one to know.
_________________________________________
The fact is, we live according to Lenin’s formula: Kto–kogo? [Who–whom?]: will we knock them, the capitalists, flat and give them (as Lenin expresses it) the final, decisive battle, or will they knock us flat?
–Joseph Stalin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom%3F
Tennis Court Oath, anyone?
Zaphod: Likewise…
_________________________________________
The Tennis Court Oath was a pledge that was signed in the early days of the French Revolution and was an important revolutionary act that displayed the belief that political authority came from the nation’s people and not from the monarchy.
The pledge thanks its name to the place where it was signed. On June 20, 1789, the Third Estate, representing the commoners in the Estates General, found themselves locked out of their regular meeting place and saw it as a ploy from the King to disband them. The 576 members moved their meeting to a tennis court in Saint-Louis, Versailles and signed an oath that they would not stop meeting up until they have written a new constitution for France. As the Third Estate didn’t have the right to act as a National Assembly, this pledge is seen as a revolutionary act.
“What is The Tennis Court Oath?”
https://www.historyonthenet.com/what-is-the-tennis-court-oath
_________________________________________
I learned about the Oath because John Ashbery wrote one of his more impenetrable books of experimental poetry titled “The Tennis Court Oath.” I was rather surprised that it referred to a real event instead of a surrealist juxtaposition.
@Huxley:
Thanks!
Zaphod: Pozhaluysta!
Barry, you wrote about a “deus ex machina” incident with HRC in 2016. That was a rather insightful post, for a…
However, what caused them to glitch out is that Q classification level hackers counter hacked the machines and made them show the real numbers. By the time they realized this had happened in blue states, it was already too late for them to do anything about it on election night.
Which is why they came EXTRA EXTRa prepared in 2020. And which is why Trump or Q’s sting, stung them so hard.
Zaphod,
“The things which have destroyed ‘Classical’ Liberal Civilization arose from within ‘Classical’ Liberal Civilization.
Not so. That’s an erroneous understanding of where the problem lies. In order for Classical liberal values to be inherently at fault, the principles of which they consist would have to be inherently flawed.
Instead, it is human nature itself which is flawed. Specifically, more than half a century ago, libertarian philosopher R.A. Heinlein placed his metaphorical finger firmly upon the flaw;
Today, the barbarians are the ideological collectivists.
However, Heinlein leaves out a few bits, in that democrats have long been agitating for a “warm body democracy” in which every vote counts. Today, there are efforts to upon release, grant those convicted of felonies the franchise. Lowering the voting age to 16 and even 14.
And it’s unethical politicians who, in order to gain votes, offer “bread and circuses” i.e. entitlements to people whose flawed human nature eagerly welcomes undeserved entitlements.
Rousseau and Marx were not advocates of classical values. I find Mendelssohn to be tangentially in alignment with Classical values and Napoleon not at all. And classical values spring from Greece and Rome and were the mother and father of the Enlightenment.
” It’s kind of fortunate that Rousseau and plenty other like him have lived — they make it clear to all but the blind that the fault lies *within* human nature”
That is somewhat incorrect. Rousseau posited that “natural” man’s nature was inherently good and separate from any formal set of values. He laid civilization’s faults solely upon culture not flaws inherent to human nature. The fault does lie *within* human nature” but… as in an ‘overlay’.
“Humanity is irredeemable.”
You do know that “irredeemable” is a religious term connotating that a soul is beyond even God’s power to redeem and save? So to say that humanity is irredeemable asserts that Jesus was both a fool and deluded…
On a nonreligious level, stating that humanity is irredeemable flies in the face of history.
Civilization, which rests upon a foundation of cooperation, (ideally within a field of ordered competition) itself refutes the assertion that mankind cannot embrace the “better angels of our nature”. America itself, for all its admitted flaws has far surpassed in both generosity and moral correctness any prior civilization. That, in spite of all the flaws within our nature. Even now after 100 years of infiltration by totalitarian Marxism, more than half of American voters reject the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens.
Its not the evil within human nature that defines us but the good and the proof is easy to see; even a man as evil as Hitler loved his children.
God don’t create no junk. But mankind imbibed the virus of the knowledge of good and evil before we were ready. We lack the ability to rightly choose the good, which is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s our ‘software’ that’s corrupted and only a clean install by a non-corrupted operating system can redeem mankind. That’s why we are not irredeemable but have always been gravely in need of redemption. Humanity’s ‘glass’ is neither half empty or half full. It’s both.
Mrs Whatsit,
Might you see your way clear to share that recipe? I’ve found most store bought applesauce to be sadly lacking. Pretty please with sugar on top?
neo–
Sounds like your fridge is very healthful! 🙂
I like Jazz apples too but they’re not in my grocery either.
Last year they had some Ginger Gold which had a unique taste.
Haven’t seen Cosmic Crisp here.
If the trees are more than sixty years old and true to form you are probably right about the yellow apples. Russians, aka Yellow Transparent. Families in the north looking to get something going on their plots would often include one or two as part of a stage ripening planting. I had one on my property that just died a few years back and produced in late July.. The apples when caught at peak were pretty good. But left on the tree – which one tended to do initially thinking that they could not possibly be ripe- they quickly became mealy. They were nothing like the Golden Delicious which are heavier and keep better.
The small apples you describe, if they are not small because they are stunted and deformed or from a decorative crab pollinator, might be crab apples for canning or pickling. If so, they should be uniformly about golf ball sized or a little smaller, not marble sized and not knobby 2 inch plus things.
I never knew such trees existed until stumbling upon them on old farmsteads while still-hunting. (Actually lazily wandering the woods with gun and license on one of those nearly too warm and sunny fall afternoons.) The feral offspring trees had picture perfect, perfectly tasteless apples. The originals, which looked more upright than the normal apple tree, had relatively perfect fruit with a red and white inside and a sweet-tart taste. I think 9 to 12 would fit in a mason jar topped off with brandy.
Years later it occured to me that I had been served just such apples spiced, in restaurants when a small child. I think they came with filet mignon, for some reason. Or at least some other beef cut.
Florida here – worked for Rubio when he was speaker of the Florida House, with the other Tea Party people worked to get him into the Senate against Charlie Crist. He has no principles that are not tied to his own advancement and nothing but ambition. Having hired (just after his election) a Democratic lobbying firm, he proceeded to screw himself into the ground with his supporters relying on their advice. He is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney, which I figure is why he is mildly lambasting China, to cover up. I suspect the Deep State may have something on him more than the ridiculous boat thing. He may lose his seat next time to Debbi Wasserman-Shultz, unless he has an agreement with the Demos to have someone else beatable run. I look forward to primarying him, even if not sucessfully, then watching him run scared and possibly lose. Florida has a lot better candidate in Gov. DeSantis.
Apples mutate wildly. The seeds of a tree do not produce the fruits of the progenitor. That is why grafting is the only way of continuing a good apple line.
Apple trees do not live forever, only about 80 years tops. They must be cut down and replaced in apple orchards. Which is why we see Applewood-smoked bacon.
Black pilll… new one for me
Philip Sells:
“How about ‘GOWCASP’? (‘and sympathizers’ tucked in)”
I think we need to use ‘allies’ instead . Take one of their words from them.
Faith, a good idea. I just wanted something readily pronounceable.
Cruz seems to have principles.
Rubio has none. He is a slimeball politician, pure and simple. Rubio reminds me of the character on the TV series, “The Shield” (about corrupt LAPD cops) played by Benito Martinez, “LAPD Captain David Aceveda”, who later runs for the county commission. Utterly there for the power.