Which Way Are You Inclined?

     I know a fair number of people who are utterly confident that President Trump will be re-elected in November, that the Durham investigations will produce massive numbers of indictments of former Obama Administration insiders, that the economic rebound after the Wuhan virus panic will break all records, and that there will be a meaningful World Series this coming October. I also know a fair number or people who are utterly despondent, as they’re convinced that President Trump will lose to Senile Joe Biden, that the Durham investigations will sputter out without meaningful consequences, that the economy will linger in the doldrums for many more months, and that baseball as we have known and loved it is but a memory.

     I belong in neither of these groups. I won’t predict any of the outcomes they foresee. I wait, watch, and wonder whether all is not as it seems.

     What about you, Gentle Reader?

---

     John Wilder opines thus:

     How did the Modern Sporting Lawyer make you feel?

     That’s why he and his wife are condemned. That’s why they have vowed to cancel him, to make an example of them, to find a way to charge them with crime. They are the opposite of demoralization.

     The Modern Sporting Lawyer and his wife drive the Left crazy. Here, their desire to destroy as a senseless mob was turned back by only two people.

     Can you imagine if the Right was united? I can.

     Wilder is cheerfully optimistic, despite his warning that we in the Right must stop fighting amongst ourselves. I like the tone of his piece and the direction of his sentiments, but I can’t fully share his optimism. As a wise man once said:

Confident is how you feel
Just before you get blindsided.

     (Who was that wise man, I hear you ask? I think it was me.)

     To that effect, we have this recent development:

     Law enforcement officials in St. Louis have allegedly served a warrant on the St. Louis couple who recently defended their home when a large mob of angry demonstrators allegedly trespassed onto their private property.

     “5 On Your Side has learned St. Louis police officers executed a search warrant Friday evening at the home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the Central West end couple who confronted protesters with weapons in June,” KSDK News reported. “Sources tell 5 On Your Side police seized one of the weapons, the rifle, from the couple and they told police their attorney has the pistol seen in photos.”

     Fox News host Shannon Bream confirmed the news in a tweet, writing, “BREAKING: Warrant reportedly served on St. Louis couple who stood outside their home with weapons as protesters approached. We’re told weapon(s) seized. We’ve got the warrant and pictures for you at 11p – PLUS, Missouri @AGEricSchmitt joins us LIVE…”

     So the “forces of order” in St. Louis have disarmed a couple targeted by a violent and destructive mob. That couple is the very same one Wilder referred to in his optimistic piece. As this news was broadcast on St. Louis media, the mob now knows that the McCloskeys have been shorn of the power to resist them. What would you predict from these conditions?

• Will the McCloskeys ever get their weapons back?
• Will they face charges for having dared to defend themselves?
• Will other St. Louis residents dare to defend their property with weapons?
• Will the mob attack the McCloskeys’ home now that they’ve been disarmed?
• Will the D.A.s of other riot-torn cities react similarly toward armed defense of private property?

     It doesn’t look good to me – certainly not as rosy a picture as John Wilder has painted.

---

     The central unanswered question throughout the riots has been “Which side is officialdom on?” It must be answered locale by locale, of course. In some areas, the answer has been heartening: no one in Coeur d’Alene has been harassed by the police for having defended that city from the rioters who tore up Spokane. In others, the answer appears to be the reverse: in St. Louis, defending yourself against criminals is being treated as a criminal offense. Here on Long Island, the chips have yet to fall.

     A great rearrangement of regional populations is underway. Large numbers of Americans are departing from long-time homes on the coasts, especially in and around the major cities. They’re moving to less densely populated areas that have not yet been targeted by the Black Lives Matter / AntiFa / Communist coalition. Many are giving up a great deal – careers, neighborhoods they’ve loved, proximity to family and friends – in a quest for greater safety from the rampaging mobs. That constitutes a barometer of popular sentiment: yea, even among those who voted for the very officials who have sided with the mobs and against peaceable citizens.

     As soon as I can manage it, I will be part of that population rearrangement. I want to believe that all will be well, as John Wilder has predicted. However, belief must give way before the evidence – and just now the evidence does not inspire confidence:

• The mass army of the Right John Wilder envisions is not yet in evidence.
• Police forces in riot-torn cities have stood aside before the rioters.
• D.A.s would rather prosecute the peaceful and law-abiding.
• No federal response to the riots is in prospect.

     So: How do you see things working out, Gentle Reader? If you’re a resident of – or proximate to – one of the riot-torn cities, what are your strongest inclinations concerning the safety of your home and family? What conceivable developments would cause you to alter those inclinations?

     Please let me know. What you can tell me about conditions in your district, and how you’re minded to meet them, is information of value to others in similar circumstances. Lives could be at stake.

Self-Study During Lockdown

The extra time available during this time of limited outside activities could be productive. I suggest that you educate yourself - no, not in that pretentious and condescending "Woke" way.

This could be a great opportunity to acquire information about how mobs form, and are used, by the Left. A good place to start is with a documentary on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which students were used to identify dissidents, publicly shame, torture, and humiliate them, and - ultimately - turn them over to the 'authorities' for jail, confiscation of their assets, and even death.

Over the next few weeks, as I have time, I'll add other suggestions to the list. I'll add the tag 'Conservative Self-Education' to each post, to make it easier to find them in a search of this site. Consider sending the links to young people of your acquaintance - they really do need to learn The History That Schools Will Not Teach.

Round-Up Time

In no particular order, some things that caught my eye:

Trump's action to keep online-only foreign students from getting a visa - well played, sir! Foreigners playing the American university systems to get access to jobs is long-standing, and a disgrace. We who are the American public pay a lot for the colleges and universities - either directly, through state subsidies, or indirectly, through the colleges taking advantage of their tax-free status to amass a HUGE endowment, while continuing to charge Americans ridiculous tuitions. Yet, foreigners take up many places in those schools, because they can be charged double for the privilege of attending.

What you see is not always "the truth". This is a lucid and clear explanation of why we need to wait until the trial to make our decisions about the policeman's culpability. Too many people, including some public officials, are arguing for summary execution - what is commonly called lynching. Which, generally, USED to be considered a very bad thing.

I guess it depends on who the lynchee is.

What the hold on Floyd was, apparently, a restraint, that kept him from injuring himself or others, and kept the officers from being in a position where the only way to stop him would be use of a gun. Why do I say that?

Look at the position of his hands while he was restraining Floyd; his hands were in his pockets. That's a position that you would take if you wanted to make sure that you weren't accused of abuse.

That hold is different from a choke hold - explained in full here.

So, was Floyd smothered? Read an explanation of the technique, and others, here. Police Magazine has information about the technique, and when it might be dangerous to use.

I swear, the Zman and I must have been separated at birth. He's wondering some of the strange things I've also been asking about. 

Why is debt reduction suddenly up? 

Why are the media talking about how important the Sports Monopoly is to us, when we can clearly see that attendance in person, and interest in any medium, is WAY down? 

Why are people buying even more guns than when Obama was president? (Well, I have my suspicions, but...)

And, speaking of buying binges, there are a LOT of people stocking their pantries and putting in gardens.

Why is trust in Media, "recognized authorities", and the Important Ones That Tell Us What to Think, so drastically down?

Yeah.

I'm thinking it, too.

Soon, very soon, All Hell is Going to Break Loose. It's already begun. It's reached the point that others - those not normally aware of the oncoming storm, are seeing it.

It's not even necessarily a conscious awareness. But, like the restless birds and animals before a storm, they are showing that they FEEL it coming.

And, the Zman and I are not the only ones to think so.

To HELL with the term "The New Normal".

No. It's the New Abnormal. And, most of us are WAY past heartily sick of it. Expect increasing levels of resistance. And, THAT'S when the Real Revolution starts - not because of these manufactured riots in big cities - ho-hum, same old.

No, it's when the average person gets a load of pissed-off circulating in his system, and begins to think, and act, like an outlaw. Outside of the law. Contemptuous of the law. Ready to toss the law, and it's enforcers, over.

The teachers - elementary, middle, and high school - had better stop talking on FakeBook, and start listening to regular people. Most people are not so afraid of C-19 as to consider keeping their kids out of school for another year, or even part of one. And, they will NOT see why the teachers should keep collecting their full pay for not being in the classroom with those kids.

Right now, many are 'sharing' their concerns, and talking bravely about refusing to return. Like that's gonna stop the schools from opening. Or, the parents in those few systems that don't from coming into the school board meeting, pitchforks in hand.

I do realize that many teachers have valid reasons for not wanting to return to the classroom:

• Personal concerns about health; family members who are at high risk for complications
• Pregnancy
• Old age/being in that group that, if infected, is more likely to die
• A realistic assessment that their life, if they return, is likely to be more difficult, loaded down with a huge number of tasks that HAVE to be done properly, or else, and including covering for classes without teachers (and no subs - many of them are in the critical age range)

For those folks, taking time off - a year or two, or even leaving permanently, might be best for them.

But, the actual risk for most is low, the procedures they will be using should reduce even that risk, and the exposure to others will likely result in a sweep of illness for a few weeks, then - nothing.

Followed by the protection of the herd having become immunized. End of problem.

In Vino Gravitas

     You’ve seen the phrase In vino veritas before, right? “In wine, there is truth.” Well, there might also be a measure of Constitutional insight:

     (Shamelessly stolen from Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane.)

     It recalls to mind an Independence Day piece I wrote long ago, which first appeared at Eternity Road. The meat of it follows.

---

     Today is, of course, Independence Day, the quintessentially American holiday. In a way, it's misplaced, for independence was ratified by a unanimous vote taken on the Second of July, 1776; the final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved on the Fourth, and the signatures of the majority of the delegates were affixed to it on the Second of August. Down the decades that have passed since then, historians and others have speculated as to why the delegates waited nearly a full month to sign Thomas Jefferson's immortal document.

     Actually, people "in the know" have simply refrained from letting the information get around. It was too embarrassing. It would abrade too many sensibilities. The national psyche could be mortally wounded. Nevertheless, the time has come for full disclosure. The delegates to the Continental Congress refrained from signing the document on the Fourth for the best of all reasons.

     They were drunk.

     You've been drunk at least once, haven't you? So you know what it's like to awaken gummy-eyed and dry-mouthed, feeling as if you've been knocked down by a dog and run over by a truck. There's this pain somewhere behind your eyes that suggests that your sinuses have been invaded by a regiment of Desiccators from Death Valley. Your joints feel as if someone opened each one up and poured in a handful of sand. When you first sit up, you get a distinct feeling that the world ended during the night, and for your sins you've been named to the cleanup crew. Coffee doesn't really help; it only awakens you still further to the magnitude of your self-inflicted agonies.

     And that's if you remember the night before.

     Anyway, the ratifiers of our Declaration of Independence surely understood the gravity of their decision. At that time, Britain was the preeminent military power in the Western world, while the American colonies could barely muster an army. To sign the Declaration, putting one's public stamp of approval on a win-or-die rebellion against so powerful an empire, must have evoked intense fears...especially among those delegates who'd have to explain their decisions to their wives. Beyond all question, after the Declaration was approved, the delegates trooped in a body into the nearest watering hole and did their damnedest to drown their anxieties in ale.

     (You didn't really think Samuel Adams's name was famous for his insurrectionist activities, did you?)

     And a mighty drunk it must have been. For whenever a delegate returned to partial sobriety, he needed only to glance at his partners in rebellion, snoring around him, to remember why he'd embraced Bacchus so fervently the night before. That was more than enough impetus to call for another round.

     That classic binge gave rise to one of the most important features of the new republic: the national debt. For the delegates had been sent to Philadelphia by the state legislatures; they were on expense accounts. And when was a politician's claim of "entertainment expenses" ever put to serious scrutiny? Of course, eventually the tab exceeded the delegates' means, at which point the innkeeper rousted them all out. That allowed them to sober up sufficiently to sign the Declaration a mere twenty-nine days after actually ratifying it.

     That wasn't quite the end of the affair. The innkeeper harried the delegates from place to place, demanding compensation for their multifarious uses of his establishment. Their frequent relocations owed as much to his wrath as to the danger from the Redcoats. Ultimately, the imperative of national unity compelled a Second Continental Congress in 1777, where their gargantuan bar bill was appended to the war liabilities of the federal government in a "closed" session. They proceeded to draft the Articles of Confederation and, still being hung over, guaranteed national insolvency by neglecting to give the newly formed federal government the power to tax. Thus was the Constitutional Convention of 1787 made inevitable, and the phrase "not worth a Continental Congressman," unfortunately shorn by overprotective historians of its last word, coined.

     Happy Independence Day, America. Hoist one or two or six for me, would you please? I'll be sure to do the same for you. For we are all truly blessed...and in my case, in more ways than I can count, but one meriting special mention today: the friendship of a certain brilliant and extremely well shod American-by-choice, whose contributions to the maintenance of my mental health are greater than I could ever say.

---

     And from such persons and their bibulosity, we got the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Doesn’t that lend a bit of support to H. L. Mencken’s recommendation that, for maximum social harmony, it would be best to keep the entire population of the world “gently stewed?” Give it some thought. I have – and I believe I’ll have another drink. The Pinot Noir this time, sweetie.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Dept.

     Anyone who’s been paying attention is aware that since Bill de Blasio was elected New York City’s mayor, the Big Apple has been on an accelerating dive toward shithole status. Indeed, de Blasio has worked hard to destroy New York. He’s left no stone unturned in his efforts to undo the critical reforms of the previous twenty years, especially the law-enforcement practices Giuliani put in place that were continued by Michael Bloomberg. In consequence, New York is headed back toward the chaos of the Nineties, when decent persons were unsafe at all hours and the worst elements in the city controlled the streets.

     Of course, de Blasio is aware of all this. So apart from his ridiculous run for the Democrat presidential nomination, how has he been spending his days?

     Murders and crime are at an all time high in New York, but this ignorant and arrogant stupido sucks up salary from the citizens of New York to indulge in petty photo-ops with fake "Reverend" Sharpton, and his bi-sexual wife (aka I'll have sex with anyone or anything.)

     Fairly strange behavior from a man who’s simultaneously seeking billions in “bailout money” from the Trump Administration, eh what? But de Blasio is a committed hard-Leftist, and this is the behavior of the Left in our time.

     If you aren’t already biting your tongue in the hope that this is just a bad dream, have a little more:

     Later Thursday afternoon, the Commie mayor told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he is banning all large gatherings such as parades, fairs and concerts except for Black Lives Matter riots through September.

     Summer is cancelled in New York City.

     Yes, really:

     A Communist totalitarian commands the administration over what was once the greatest city in the world: the Mecca to which ambitious men and visionary executives all aspired. Is it any wonder that people and businesses that can flee the city are doing so as swiftly as they can?

     Any bets on whether de Blasio will win a third term as mayor?

This is the economy.

It's hard to see where the following is wrong. Who would take the position that some devilishly clever master plan by the intellectual giants of our precious political "elite" will make all this come out fragrant, clean, and shiny?

[The stock market did very well in 2Q 2020, but the] economy, on the other hand, was severely scorched. Decades of debt had built up like dead wood amongst a forest understory. Then, at the worst possible time, government lockdown orders sparked a match and set it ablaze.

The results were predictable to everyone but the experts. Supply chain disruptions followed by retail disruptions, followed by declining sales, followed by disappearing cash flow, followed by layoffs, followed by business closures, followed by shrinking tax receipts, followed by unserviceable public and private debt, followed by mass bankruptcies, followed by riots, followed by full societal breakdown. The economic wildfire raged through so fast most people don’t comprehend what has happened.

The interim solutions from Washington, in concert with the Federal Reserve, have been to add more fuel. That is, the solutions have centered around mega efforts to paper over the economic depression with massive amounts of fake money.^[1]

And for some really depressing news, Mr. or Ms. Gordon writes:

Indeed, the systematic destruction of the dollar, as a matter of policy, has grave consequences. Something big and ugly is coming.^[2]

As one recovering alcoholic put it after recounting the utter disaster his life had become when he was an active alcoholic, "And my best thinking got me there." It is tempting to think that all of this is mere misjudgment, a series of honest judgment calls that went sideways. But that kind of thinking is for naifs and the addle-brained. This was avoidable a long time ago but every last opportunity that presented itself along the way to reverse course and re-embrace sanity was firmly declined like an invitation to a Nancy Pelosi pole dance.

Returning to sobriety left town on a rail to cries of "neo-liberalism!!!" and "austerity!!!"

We are so screwed with, inter alia, a corrupt Supreme Court, a hollow shell of a Constitution, vote fraud as astra, a predatory and hostile political elite, stifling monopolies, lunatic feminists, homosexuals and their corrosive agenda, a corrupt press, and half the population determined to recreate the Bolshevik catastrophe and turn the country over to millions of parasitic, hostile, non-assimilating foreigners and minorities in the process until their usefulness evaporates and firing squads can be organized. "Thank you for your service."

Notes
^[1]  "'Something Big & Ugly Is Coming' - Game Over Spending." By M.N. Gordon, ZeroHedge, 7/10/20 (emphasis removed and added).
^[2] Id. (Emphasis removed.)

How the GOP Could Use The Language of the Left

I got up, started the coffee, and read this post.

And, suddenly, Just Like That, I was Awake (in contrast to Woke).

From now on, the GOP and their candidates, in their ads, need to argue, not to reduce the expenses of government, but to Defund them.

Think about it - the main complaint we have about government spending (other than not wanting to break the budget) is that the programs don't work.

If the programs are ineffective, and don't truly help those who 'need' them, then why should we keep spending on them?

Defund them:

• EPA doesn't work, hasn't cleaned up the cities, still spends most of its time working on keeping business out of Elite Enclaves, the wilderness (where the White People are the ones taking advantage of the scenery), and the beaches (again, largely a White people thing). So, Defund it. Let the local government take over the function.
• The Dept. of Education doesn't work. The kids are not learning, the paperwork takes away from the teacher's time, and it forces schools to pay more administrators, just to handle all the testing and reporting. So, Defund it.
• The CDC is not doing its job - they release tests that didn't work, give out advice that turns out to be wrong, and is not managing the most simple jobs - managing PPE supply and distribution to hot spots. So, Defund it, return those employed to the Army Medical Corps to be re-assigned (Hey! Maybe the VA Health System could use some trained doctors who speak English!), and outsource the activities to private vendors. The CDC was started at a time when there were few doctors/medical personnel educated and trained on dealing with outbreaks of infectious diseases. There are MANY of them now, working for private companies, along with private labs with researchers. Keep a core group, working under direction of HHS, to oversee reports, and send in the outsourced troops.
• Public Housing. Expensive, dirty, gang-infested. Obviously not better than private housing. Demolish the aging buildings. Eliminate Section 8. Instead, use publicly available resources - the market. Allow a 2-year bump in the size of the check for those currently in housing - but, no rent subsidy. They can use that bump to:
• Rent an affordable apartment - in cities today, they are getting concerned about housing oversupply, as those in the top tiers leave. As those apartment become vacant, the next tier down will move, freeing up cheaper apartments. I would expect the free market to bring downward pressure on housing costs, making affordable housing widely available.
• Move to another city. Continue using that money to get their lives back on track, including getting a job. Whatever. When their time is up, they're off the dole.
• Move in with family or friends, and use most of that money to prepare to live independently, including paying old debts, saving the leftover (bank saving accounts should be permitted, without penalty, for the duration of this experiment). Take advantage of the situation to get a job, get an education (up to a 2-year college degree), and get OUT of that lifestyle.

Anyway, it will sound better in a commercial/debate this fall to say, "I want to Defund the programs that are not making our citizens lives better". Use any of the examples above, or ones like Asset Seizure before trial - widely abused in many states, including my own - South Carolina.

Nice of the Never-Trump RINOs to Out Themselves

Those that don't go? MAYBE for health concerns - some of them are quite elderly (a good argument to stepping down and having their replacement take their place), but most are just - well, baby kitties.

Cesar Rodney would be whirling in his grave at the thought. He already was suffering from the cancer he died of, a few years later, when he rode a horse 70 miles through a storm to be in Philadelphia for the Declaration vote.

BTW, when I dissed baby kitties, I was not serious. I've known those furry little guys to stand up to large animals and - with the assistance of those razor blades, run them off.

Sow Wind Reap Whirlwind Dept.

     There’s an attempt in progress to perpetuate the “lockdown psychology” the media and the CDC bureaucracy inflicted on us over the Wuhan coronavirus. It’s a multi-pronged thing, with components derived from the Wuhan virus (“there could be a second wave!”), the possibility of a new strain of the infamous “swine flu,” and a general drive to inculcate Americans with mutual fear as the default social condition. It’s made little headway so far, thank God, in part because of the blatant hypocrisy of the political elite and the media in tarring religious gatherings and Trump rallies as unspeakably dangerous, while Leftist “protests” – i.e., violence, vandalism, and looting – are deemed quite safe. That having been said, don’t expect the Establishment and its media annex to give up easily. The WuFlu lockdowns gave them a taste of the totalitarian power they dream of each night, and they want more of it.

     But there are signs that the reaction to their gambit might refute it utterly:

     Like it? I do. I’d advise spreading it around. You might garner some useful new acquaintances. You might also get a few nasty comments, but that’s part and parcel of anything pro-freedom or pro-American today.

     The point, of course, is that private citizens have also had their taste of totalitarianism, and they’ve been revulsed by it. They want their country back the way it was. If this was a deliberate attack by Red China – a possibility I refuse to discount – that makes it especially galling that our political elite and media should have fallen in line with it. If it was a collaboration between Red China’s masters and ours – another possibility I refuse to discount – the hour for action is upon us: it’s time to break out the muskets and march.

     In either case, it must be tolerated no longer. Further rationales for the reimposition of the lockdown regime must be rejected with prejudice. States where it hasn’t actually ended – New York is one – must experience a full course of “Irish democracy:” that state of affairs in which the government can decree and orate to its heart’s content, while ordinary folk ignore it and go placidly along with their affairs.

     I say this despite being a member of the “high risk group” according to the CDC. It’s important enough for those of us who understand and love freedom to take the risks involved.

     Approximately 88,000 governments ride Americans’ backs. If the laws, regulations, taxes, and fees they impose upon us don’t produce measurable improvements in our society, our environment, and our nation’s prospects, why submit to them? Especially when some persons are openly defying those laws, including the most serious of them, and getting away with it with official connivance. What else can it mean that the BLM / AntiFa “protests” are winked at while the rest of us are sternly counseled to keep our masks on and stay at least six feet apart?

     One good rebellion deserves another. In the face of officialdom’s attempts at tyrannizing decent Americans, while they look the other way as anti-Americans pledged to our destruction loot, burn, and kill, the rebellion we commemorated just this past Saturday deserves a rerun.

     Buy guns and ammo. Verbum sat sapienti.

Time for an Executive-Judicial Showdown

It may have to wait until after the election, but - yeah, it's time.

The Atlantic pipeline people, Dominion Energy, have dropped further work on the pipeline, as Obama-appointed Federal judges have - once again - ruled with the Sierra Club and their allies in court.

Two thing have to happen here - Trump's DOJ needs to go to the Supremes, asking for a sweeping order forbidding these decisions, based on it being a clear Restraint of Trade Between the States - a clear act against a Red Letter Prohibition in the Constitution.

Not a 'penumbra' - an actual clearly stated refusal to permit actions by the Federal government that interfere with intrastate trade and commerce.

It's time. Trump may want to see if Ginsberg croaks first, but, failing that, he also needs to have a quiet investigation of ANY Justices that appear to be forced, by blackmail, into certain positions.

It's POSSIBLE that other factors are involved in otherwise inexplicable events/rulings, but - ensuring a pressure-free judiciary is paramount.

Second part - the EPA needs to be informed that they are subordinate to the Constitution, and may NOT engage in restraint of trade that is not clearly necessary to handle an EMERGENCY situation.

Which the pipelines are not.

So, yeah, anyone not on board with that Executive directive needs to turn in their resignation. Trump may not be able to change their minds, but he doesn't have to let them keep their jobs and undermine his orders. If a staff member is working with some of these enviro-Nazis, wasting time working on plans to sue the government, or otherwise acting in an insubordinate manner, they need to be directed to find other employment - NOT in government.

We should not be funding workers for the other side.

If the USA gets out of the business of transporting oil, other countries will jump in with producing energy - and, not the Unicorn-like "clean energy" kind. Other countries, known for being: massive polluters - Russia, China, and/or horribly corrupt and tyrannical - Russia, China, and the Mideast, or headlessly causing massive environmental damage to the air, water, and land, should not be a fallback for our citizens. Off-shoring the damage doesn't stop it.

The states that will be affected by this - the producers of energy, as well as those that need to import it - need to vote against Biden, who has vowed to stop ALL pipelines. That's a recipe for a long, cold winter to come, and a lot of economic chaos and collapse.

Kurt, you need to write another Kelly Turnbull book.

The New Abnormality

     New York Post columnist Bob McManus has penned a piercing indictment of the de Blasio and Cuomo Administrations:

     You say you didn’t like stop-and-frisk? Well, how do you like duck-and-cover?

     Stop-and-frisk was a front-line NYPD safe-streets policy for two decades. So was broken-windows policing. As were the flying squads of anti-crime cops. They’re all gone now. Perhaps you think New York is better off without them?...

     This new darkness isn’t a random, natural malevolence — unpredictable, unavoidable and thus demanding no accountability. It’s the result of a deliberate unstitching of arguably the most sophisticated and successful anti-crime strategy ever implemented in this nation....

     All that is history now. The de Blasio administration dismantled a winning strategy, one element at a time, and the results are clear: New York is not Chicago — 77 shot, 14 dead over the holiday — but it’s careering in that direction.

     New York, city and state, has been hard at work disassociating crime and punishment for some time now — and bragging on it.

     Please read it all. McManus allows that the policing practice of stop-and-frisk was “Imperfect and prone to overzealous application.” Indeed, it was Constitutionally dubious, but made mandatory by other Constitutionally dubious ordinances that infringe on the law-abiding citizen’s right to go armed. Those ordinances guaranteed that the law-abiding citizen would be unarmed, whereas one already minded to break the law would carry whatever armament he thought he could get away with. Stop-and-frisk was the response to that imbalance...and in the context of New York City, it worked.

     The rash of shootings and other felonious crimes has been made possible by the termination of stop-and-frisk, in combination with New York’s hostility to private firearms and the Cuomo Administration’s removal of bail requirements for those accused of “non-violent” offenses.

     Chessplayers will tell you: a bad decision will often give rise to other bad decisions...to “justify” them. In the argot of the game, “one lemon leads to another.”

     The deep thinkers who hailed de Blasio’s and Cuomo’s moves are strangely silent just now. Regret for the policies that have elicited such carnage? None. Expressions of responsibility for the deaths and other losses? None. As Glenn Reynolds has observed, “The left is always blaming its enemies for people’s deaths, but never takes responsibility for the people it kills.” Nor is there much chance that the pernicious policies will be reversed; politicians don’t often allow that they’ve erred.

     Extortionate taxes and fees, stifling regulations, intrusive state and local governments, a welcome mat for illegal aliens...and a complete lack of citizen security. This is the Empire State in the year of Our Lord 2020. It’s why I’m preparing to get out.

     Yet Andrew Cuomo has been mentioned in connection with the presidency. It is to laugh.

---

     The Declaration of Independence states explicitly that governments exist to secure the people’s rights: “to effect their happiness and safety.” Maybe the political elite tried to squelch our celebration of the Independence Day just behind us because there was too great a danger that we would remember that passage. It’s worth a spot of thought. Why pay taxes or observe a plethora of laws and regulations if there is no increment to our happiness and safety – indeed, if the net consequence is both less happiness and less safety? Not too long ago, the worthy Ace of Spades had a few thoughts of that sort:

     The cops have decided to make us each fight for our own lives.
     There is no help coming but self-help.
     So what the fuck do you expect us to do? Just... go along with any street vigilante who decides to subject us to an involuntary, physically-coerced struggle session?
     Just say, "Ah well, the permanent brain damage I suffer from this savage gang-assault is a small price to pay for the cause of ending White Supremacy?"
     Fuck you. That's false imprisonment -- and people are allowed to use a reasonable amount of force to free themselves from it.
     This is getting very dangerous. People have no choice but to resort to self-help -- force -- to defend themselves, and they're going to start doing so.
     And don't count on having a lot of SJWs on the jury to convict them for defending their lives.

     I’ve been saying this – typically with regard to the ongoing race war – for some time. If the Big Apple precedes the rest of the country in this manner, I suppose it will just be another “first” for the City That Never Sleeps. But I don’t expect New York City to be alone in this for long.

     If you reside in a major American city, this is reality for you right now. If a major American city is within an hour’s driving distance of you, you don’t have long to wait. Prepare yourselves.

Quickies: The Centrality Of Story

     This one is for the “writers” who think all that matters is a profusion of the trappings of their selected genre: ray guns and rocket ships in SF, elves and magic items in fantasy, werewolves, vampires, and zombies in horror, and so forth:

     I do see a lot of scripts where the “message” of the movie is given more importance than the story, and those scripts are predictable and boring. The heart of movie-making is story, no matter the issue you are attempting to address, and if you don’t make the story work, your message will flop anyway. -- Nick Searcy

     Bravo, Mr. Searcy. That needed to be said. But it isn’t just “message” that can deflect the creator from his proper aim.

     I recall a missive I received long ago from an agent. He described a novel he’d been sent in which protagonist “Bart Preston” had holstered his “proton blaster” and set forth in his rocket ship to head the villain off at the Horsehead Nebula. There was more (and equally ludicrous) detail, but that should be enough to clue my Gentle Readers into how that tale had emerged. The writer had taken a piece of inane Western drivel and substituted space-opera paraphernalia for those of the Western genre, hoping to get a foot in the door his Western had previously been denied. Needless to say, it didn’t have the desired effect.

     A worthwhile story is about people changing in response to some problem or problems. It’s why a good book takes time to conceive and to write: The author must live with his protagonists, and often with his antagonists, long enough to feel how they’ll develop in response to the stresses he plans to impose on them. There is no eluding this requirement, or the time it takes to meet it.

     The just-churn-‘em-out types that simply keep pushing mountains of genre gingerbread, without bothering to address character development in a setting that features significant challenges for those characters to surmount, are nothing but hacks. No matter how many books they sell to semi-adolescent readers of whatever age, I will never respect them.

A foolish consistency

This started as a comment on Francis' excellent post, but got a bit too long.)

So, these things happened over the weekend:

1. President Trump gave a pre-Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore.

2.      CNN described him as “standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans.”

3.      Bloggers on the right fell over themselves pointing out that the media had thought it was just peachy when Bernie Sanders visited Mount Rushmore in 2016, when Obama did so in 2008, etc., etc.

4. CNN blushed and slunk off in shame.

Just kidding, #4 didn’t happen and what’s more, it never will happen. What we on the right fail to grasp is that for the left, inconsistency isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The whole point of their attacks is to keep insisting that we apologize for statements and opinions that were perfectly okay four years ago. Or two weeks ago. Or yesterday morning.

There is absolutely no point in trying to embarrass them by showing their inconsistency. It’s about as useful as mud wrestling with a pig.

I think we should forget about the consistency argument and go straight for the real problem. “So you hate the fact that Mount Rushmore honors Washington and Jefferson? You hate America. FOAD.”

Don’t waste time and energy trying to call them out for hypocrisy and inconsistency. Don’t address them at all. Talk to their audience. Point out that the people mounting the attack clearly hate America and want to destroy it, and ask everybody you can reach why they would ever, ever be so suicidal as to put these idiots in charge of as much as a lemonade stand. 

Methods Other Than Argument

     President Trump, who has come to seem a Godsend to this beleaguered nation, delivered a rousing, pitch-perfect speech at the Mount Rushmore monument on July 3. Here’s a full transcript. The passage that struck me as most important was this one:

     These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom. Our Founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights — given [to] us by our Creator in Heaven. And that which God has given us, we will allow no one, ever, to take away — ever.

     Seventeen seventy-six represented the culmination of thousands of years of western civilization and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.

     And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

     Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them. (Applause.)

     One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. (Applause.) This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. (Applause.)

     In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.

     Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.

     To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

     This is a concise and entirely accurate description of the Left’s agenda and current operations. Not one word of it exaggerates in the slightest. Yet this is how the Mainstream Media commented on the speech:

     The media’s influence may have diminished these past couple of decades, but they remain capable of swaying significant numbers of people. Never forget that. Meanwhile, the “21st Century town square” of the World Wide Web is “progressively” barring access to persons of pro-freedom, pro-Christian, and pro-American sentiments. Little has been done to counter this neo-censorship. Whether anything more will be done is unclear.

---

     The nation is tottering. It’s been badly shaken by rioting, wanton destruction and looting, and an unending barrage of attacks upon its founding principles, its history, and the morals and ethics of the majority of its people. However, police power is being marshaled against the violence and vandalism. In some parts of the country, private citizens are forming armed cadres to protect businesses, institutions, and objects of historical significance. Yet little has been done, to this point at least, about the ceaseless verbal attacks on American history, American principles, American institutions, and decent Americans generally...and those attacks are having more of an effect than many would care to admit.

     It has begun to seem that despite our majority status, we in the Right have tied our own hands in responding to the Left’s denunciations of our legal and political systems, assaults on our institutions, and imputations about our motives and character.

     There are many who believe that we are obliged to argue with the Left: to persuade them out of their convictions and away from their disruptions with facts and logic. Most of these persons are good-hearted souls, who deplore conflict and wish all men well. They want to believe that those attempting to tear down the country are equally good at heart, and are therefore susceptible to reason. Herein lies their fatal error.

     The convictions that underlie affiliation with the Left are not rational by our standards. To the extent that they’re sincere, they’re essentially religious, and therefore impenetrable by evidence or reasoning. The insincere ones, who merely seek power, prestige, pelf, or some combination thereof, have no convictions at all. Indeed. they’re immune to their acquisition. Yet many in the Right continue to grant them the assumption of moral integrity compatible with the precepts on which Western morality is founded.

     A phrase from Atlas Shrugged comes to mind: The sanction of the victim. By attempting to defeat our would-be destroyers by argument, we have granted, by implication, moral standing to the thrusts and those who make them.

     That standing is undeserved. Their thrusts are lies from top to bottom and first to last. Lies have no moral standing. You cannot defeat lies except by calling them out as lies and showering contempt on those who proffer them. Yet decent Americans continue to try to argue with their promulgators, a losing strategy from the very first word.

     The time has come to abandon argument.

---

     What methods other than argument are available to us?

     It’s a good question, given the state of the law and the depressing left-wing colonization of major Internet institutions. Violence, for the moment, is off the table – but not necessarily so forever. However, three measures that don’t involve violence – always in the proper meaning of the word, never in the meaning attributed to it by the special snowflakes among us — have hardly even been tried:

• Unconcealed contempt;
• Open derision and mockery;
• Ostracism.

     All three of these things are quite legal, along with another that’s seldom even contemplated: refusal to hire on the grounds of political-ethical posture. (Cf. Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics.) However, they all require a hardening of mindsets and attitudes that will challenge many in the Right.

     As I’ve written before, we’re too eager to be taken as “nice guys,” even by those who would see us subjugated. Yet a willingness to be hated is essential in a combat of this sort. Besides, the Left already hates us for not kowtowing to them.

     Once the hardening of attitudes has occurred, decent Americans will discover something they desperately need to know:

The majority of those on the Left are consumed by a need for the approbation of others.
It’s how the Left’s strategists and tacticians hook them.

     A sufficient intensity of rejection, especially by better, more accomplished, and more admired persons, can counteract that attachment. As I’ve said more than once, people tend to emulate those they deem more successful – where “successful” includes success at winning the approval and admiration of others. Making it plain that our best and brightest despise those on the Left as beneath their notice – which must include refusing to argue with them as if there were something to argue – is our best chance to detoxify this poison without actually going to the flying-lead stage.

     And with that I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Uncle Sugar and his other international incarnations.

Americans believe government solutions not the free market system is what causes economic growth. This misguided approach is the cause of the severe depression the global economy is entering into. Widespread prosperity or even well being is not possible when the system that completely causes prosperity is eliminated. That is what has happened. The state of being in a depression will be impossible for the economy to recover from given that the only path to recovery is being rejected.

This is another way of calling attention to the insanity of endlessly tearing into "capitalism." But it's beyond clear that the "capitalism" so reviled by any moron with access to a keyboard is a far cry from the real deal.

True capitalism does not have monopolies, stock market manipulation, monetary lunacy, fiscal diarrhea, off-shoring, cronyism, or mass immigration as any of its goals or treasured features. It's simply a type of economic organization that rewards enterprise, innovation, efficiency, and realistic thinking and which relies at its core on the innate human desire to build and improve one's own life. And on a considerable amount of government non-interference.

It is not intended that monopolies, plutocracy, worker exploitation, excessive taxation, welfare state profligacy and stupidity, organized crime, identity politics, poisonous feminism, reckless foreign wars, fraud, sky-high debt, or non-prosecution of fraud and crime are necessary parts. These are, in fact, wait for it . . . cancerous growths ON capitalism, just as they are growths on any other system that purports to seek justice, liberty, normality, and rationality. Even autocratic governments can seek the same thing and succeed if they take salus populi suprema lex esto as their watchword. "Autocratic" does not necessarily mean "repressive" though, admittedly, residents and citizens of Singapore must forego their God-given right to spit on the sidewalk or key cars. Is life possible without it? Or genital reassignment surgery?

Not all autocratic governments escape descending into repression, however. Some, like the U.S.S.R., did not pass "Go" and went straight to ghastly criminality and irrationality. A moral vacuum in the leadership of any nation, even our own, is a guarantee of industrial-scale criminality. And industrial-scale criminality is what we ARE witnessing right now, of course. If what we see is not the deliberate, criminal destruction of a decent civilization that will bring misery and death to millions then I beg to know just how it is the expression of anything decent or rational.

But, these are political problems about which no little discussion has been had over the millennia and they are distinct from the issue of what is the best ENGINE to build and power up to efficiently find and exploit resources to meet the needs and whims of fellow citizens and make a decent living for producers in the process. The engine in my car has no destination in mind and no concern for who rides in the seats. All it requires is fuel, fluids, a battery, wiring, a computer, and regular maintenance.

It also requires some outside entity to punish mechanics who tell me there's plenty of oil in it when there isn't. That's the aspect of true capitalism that requires outside (government) oversight to punish fraud and breach of contract and to unwind monopoly, among many other kinds of healthy, necessary maintenance. Economic systems require maintenance just as engines do but Western governments insist on active destruction.

The leftist/moron/parasite class beats their breasts and weeps copious tears because that efficient capitalist engine can't pull a flatbed trailer loaded with an Abrams tank or deliver a life of luxury and ease when governments waive their magic wands. Capitalism has failed them.

"The Central Planning Depression." By James Quillian, Fantasy Free Economics, 7/2/20 (emphasis added).

Things To REALLY Be Afraid Of

     Are you feeling a little too...secure? Have you begun to suspect that there are things to fear – things to which you should pay a little attention? Does it bother you that while everyone around you is consumed with worry over the environment, global warming, loss of species, income inequality, and the perennially impending demolition and replacement of Fenway Park, you’ve been strolling through life with a song in your heart? And so you keep telling yourself that that crap has enough people to worry about it?

     We here at Liberty’s Torch have sensed a need for some stuff to fear that isn’t already getting more than enough attention. Herewith, have a few things to fear. It’s all stuff you can’t do anything about, which frees you from having to take any sort of action. However, having a few fears will get you admitted to the circles of the fashionable, where being perpetually fearful is the one thing the members can all agree on.

---

The Air.

     The C.S.O. just expressed a desire to get out for some “fresh air,” to which I replied “Where are you gonna go for it?”

     In her characteristically erudite fashion, she parried with “Huh?”

     And so I explained to her that the Earth’s atmosphere is about three and a half billion years old. Its youngest component is its oxygen supply, which comes from a chemical transition no one can date exactly, but is nevertheless hundreds of millions of years in the past. Hardly fresh by any standard. And then there’s this: It’s already been breathed and exhaled many, many times over. That’s right: no matter where you are, you’re breathing used air!

     How many times can the Earth’s air be reused that way, moving in and out and in and out of billions of lungs, gills, plant pores, before it’s been worn out? And what will we do when that fateful day arrives?

---

Our Canine Friends.

     There’s no question about it: dogs are getting smarter. That has disturbing implications for our alliance with them.

     I have a particularly smart German Shepherd mix named Sophie who has an extensive vocabulary, can tell time better than most humans, and a particularly shrewd comprehension of what her humans like, dislike, and can and can’t tolerate. When Precious, our Pit Bull Terrier mix, escapes the yard – she’s an expert tunneler who could have taught the art to the cast of The Great Escape — Sophie immediately comes to us to alert us of it and leads us directly to the site of Precious’s latest excavation. (As she knows she can’t bring Precious back single-pawed, she doesn’t attempt the retrieval herself.)

     Sophie is demonstrably smarter than the majority of high-school students, most marriage counselors, and anyone in the federal bureaucracy. She could easily look after herself, if she were equipped with opposable thumbs and decent Internet access. And herein lies the danger.

     They will eventually be smart enough to ask one another, “What do we need humans for? Let’s evolve some thumbs, start a GoFundMe, and set up housekeeping on our own. Freedom, my friends! Freedom!”

     On their way out they’re guaranteed to grab our wallets. That will be goodbye to our credit cards – and just imagine trying to persuade MasterCard or Visa that “My dog stole it. No, not ate it; stole it.” The mind reels!

---

Nature’s Abhorrence.

     I was in the middle of explaining the Johansson Effect to the C.S.O., when she cited the old saw that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” But does it? There appears to be an awful lot of vacuum and near-vacuum in the universe. If Nature dislikes it so, what’s the old gal doing about it?

     A vacuum, of course, is a volume of space with no matter in it. The intergalactic medium is a close approach to a perfect vacuum: less than one hydrogen atom per cubic meter. If Nature is trying to fill them out of sheer dislike of emptiness, it must be drawing matter from the nearby galaxies – and not even all the matter stored in all the galaxies in the universe could raise the average density above a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter!

     Therefore the Milky Way, where we live, is slowly being dissipated into the intergalactic medium. Little by little, we’re losing mass at the edges – and our solar system is very near the edge of the Milky Way. Eventually the erosive process will get to us.

     Now there’s something to worry about. Afflict your local enviro-weenie with it.

---

The Andromeda Galaxy.

     It’s headed our way. While close-order estimates of its speed have large error bars attached – the current estimate is about 110 kilometers per second – there is absolutely no question that at some unknown future time, Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide. As Andromeda is about twenty percent more massive than the Milky Way, we’re going to be on the losing end of that collision. It will mess us up.

     What’s that you say? As the two galaxies are currently 2,500,000 light years apart, we’ve got a while to prepare? Oh, great. Prepare how? What preparations do you intend to make?

     For my part, I’m making sure the pantry is kept full. You only have 2.5 quintillion years to think about it, so get cracking!

---

     There you have it: four things to fear that virtually no one has addressed yet. Don’t they make you feel silly for worrying about whether you’re getting enough fiber?

     Have a nice day.

Understanding Trump

It's not easy for Washington, and the Media and academics that advise them, to 'get' Trump's modus operandi.

He's a business owner.

That's one of the rarest Washington inhabitants. Oh, sure, they have some corporate executive types - University-trained CEOs, MBAs working to administer think tanks and NGOs.

But, actual working owners - the guys who started/took over the day-to-day operations of a business - one that has to get out there and hustle for contracts - is a rare bird, indeed.

Think about what distinguishes Trump from most university grads. He had to get out there, in the early days of learning about his dad's business, and collect rents. NOTHING taught in business classes is going to approach that experience for teaching you about how distant the cases presented in class are from the actuality.

Like this clip:

Reality, in every endeavor, is far separated from what is learned in school. And, having your own money on the line teaches you to question EVERY line in the budget. No sense spending money on fancy offices, if you aren't bringing in the cash. Which, is not the same as putting on a front for the lenders, that supports your profitability facade. You can't get cash for your business, unless the surroundings convince the lenders that you don't really NEED the guilders.

So, yeah, Trump lives in a fancy high-rise - but, I'll bet a lot of his life is filled with leased luxuries - the kind that you can return without a problem, should the business go bust. That's just good sense - don't tie yourself down with a lot of expensive stuff that isn't liquid.

Business owners also delegate - but also ask a lot of questions and keep up on performance of subordinates. They aren't that quick to fire - it costs a lot to go through that process - easier, and cheaper, to make that person so uncomfortable that they quit. That, and not crash ignorance, is what drives his rough handling of employees.

Unlike his reputation as enjoying saying "You're Fired!" - Trump actually keeps most of his employees for years. If anything, Trump exhibited more patience than he should have with recalcitrant underlings. And, he probably underestimated just how much abuse a government employee would take for the paycheck.

He also cut Jared too much slack - didn't want to run him down in public. He has reached the point when it's time to ease Jared into the background, and encourage him to look for another job.

One thing that I've seen criticism about is the Stimulus package that he rammed through. Although generous (perhaps more than it needed to be), it kept a lid on complaints about money loss for the time needed to manage this, and - perhaps more importantly, it is definitely time-limited, rather than a general universal income scheme.

Sometimes, you've got to spread around money - quick - to be able to work your way through a crisis. The federal debt is already huge - the stimulus just adds to it - and, IF Trump is re-elected, and the economy improves, he'll have breathing room to bring that down.

The Weirdest Transference

     Blame this one on my memory.

     I’ve always been a mouthy sort, free with my convictions and opinions. It’s gotten me into a fair number of battles over every subject under the Sun. Moreover, I’ve never been a “respecter of persons;” I didn’t care about the supposedly greater knowledge or credentials of whoever I’d decided to dispute.

     The Sixties were a tumultuous time in many ways, including for the inception of a distinctly anti-military current of belief that infected persons from every walk of life. Contrary to what most might imagine, it didn’t start with Vietnam. The tempest over that affair came second to another campaign that was orchestrated by America’s enemies, especially the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

     The expansion of the Soviet Union’s satellite empire in eastern Europe, formally known as the Warsaw Pact, was checked by NATO, especially America’s “nuclear umbrella” over the NATO nations. Our ground forces in Europe, even at their largest (approximately 330,00 troops), would not have been sufficient to defeat the enormous Red Army. They were there to slow its advance long enough for the U.S. to mobilize and dispatch its nuclear deterrent forces, especially the long-range bomber fleet. At that time Our European containment strategy depended totally on those forces, and on the specter of complete devastation they posed the U.S.S.R.

     Naturally, the Communists wanted to see those forces vanish. But the masters of the Soviet Union could make no progress in their “disarmament” initiatives at that time. The Cuban Missile Crisis alerted America’s strategists to the Communists’ intent to expand in the Western Hemisphere. The analysts at RAND, Hudson, and other strategy-oriented think tanks saw the situation too clearly: in the absence of our nuclear deterrent, the Soviets would continue their military advance wherever they had or could establish a beachhead. They had a huge number of men at arms, and were willing to pauperize their subjects to whatever degree was required to provision them.

     So the Communists and their fellow travelers attacked America’s nuclear warfighting power “from underneath:” i.e., by striving to turn ordinary Americans against it. Their propaganda campaign emphasized the horror of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. And as has so often been the case with left-wing propaganda efforts, theirs included a strong thrust into the schools. After all, it’s easier to frighten impressionable youngsters than adults with greater knowledge of facts and conditions.

     In high school, seldom did a day go by that I failed to hear some sort of anti-nuclear slogan or diatribe. Mostly they came from the teachers. Whenever I had the opportunity, I would argue against them. But of course, a high school student’s views don’t count for much in an argument with a credentialed adult.

     Then as now, the most striking aspect of such exchanges was their horror of nuclear weapons themselves. They were “dangerous beyond measure,” “instruments of mass death” that could “poison the whole world.” The prospect was “too terrible even to contemplate.” They simply “had to go,” lest some “warmongers” in the Pentagon decide that there was no point to having them but not using them.

     None of the people spouting such drivel ever mentioned the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal, which was growing even faster than America’s. Their focus was always on America’s nuclear forces and the absolute, immediate, imperative necessity of eliminating them.

     Perhaps some of them were sincerely afraid of the possibility of a nuclear exchange and what it would do to the United States. Some were definitely pacifists, who opposed the existence of conventional armed forces with equal fervor. But some were enemies of the United States...and not all of them bothered to hide their convictions.

---

     The propaganda campaigns against America’s nuclear forces always focused on the weapons themselves: their massive destructive power and the supposed after-effects of their use. The propagandists strove to inculcate fear of the devices themselves in whoever would listen to them. The mere existence of the weapons, they proclaimed, “puts the whole world at risk.” The weapons’ role in preserving the peace of Europe and checking Soviet expansionism was never mentioned.

     Ironically, to this date no one has ever been harmed by an H-Bomb. Even liberal New York Times columnist Russell Baker, himself no great fan of the military, admitted it:

     Although I don’t exactly love the H-bomb, it comes close to my idea of what a bomb should be. First, it fulfills the human need to have a bomb. Second, of all the bombs in circulation these days, it is the one you are least likely to be assaulted with.
     In the more than thirty years since it became popular, it has never been used against anybody. A person could get fond of a bomb like that. There is no other bomb with a comparable safety record.

     [From “Son of H-Bomb,” published on July 31, 1977.]

     Compare Baker’s clarity in the above to the hysteria of the anti-nuclear-weapons types and decide which you prefer. I’ve made my choice, and not solely for Baker’s semi-facetious reasons.

     The campaign against nuclear weapons foreshadowed the efforts of today’s Left to make young Americans fear guns: not their use but their very existence. That effort moved into high gear only much later. Yet its psychology was exactly the same: Make them fear the inanimate object. Never mention the men who control it.

     I could go into all sorts of rhapsodies about the civilizing power of weapons, but there’s no need for that here. What came into sharp focus this morning, as I was contemplating various aspects of our milieu, was this: If you’re focused on A, you’re not looking at B – or anything else.

     The propagandists who harped on the unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons knew this. Whether or not they did so consciously, in compelling attention to the weapons themselves they succeeded in deflecting attention away from other important matters. They never addressed the humans who control the weapons, who pondered why and how to use them, and the weapons’ other “merely by existing” effects on international relations.

     Nuclear weapons, I’ve argued in other places and at other times, have “democratized” warfare. For some time before them, national “leaders” felt immunized against the personal consequences of war. The H-Bomb and the intercontinental delivery system ruined that for them; they can no longer be certain of surviving an all-out war. Deep bunkers provide only superficial reassurance, as there’s no theoretical upper limit to how large an H-Bomb can be. If detonated at ground level, the Soviets’ 50 Megaton “Tsar Bomba” could destroy any bunker in existence. Larger H-Bombs can be built without straining the physics involved. If any such superbombs exist, they’re a closely guarded secret.

     In a world partitioned into States of varying rapacity, the ability to threaten the inescapable annihilation of any would-be warmaker is precious beyond price.

     I could go on, but I think the point has been made. Remember always that he who wants you to obsess over one thing is keeping you from giving serious attention to other things. Keep in mind the possibility that getting you to focus on A isn’t his true aim – that what he really cares about is preventing you from thinking about B. Ask yourself: Is this person’s desire that I should become absorbed with his issue really about keeping me from addressing other things of equal or greater importance?

     Don’t be satisfied with any easy answers.

Tweeter in Chief.

President Trump responded to the [February 2017) Berkeley riots by sending in the National Guard to protect free speech at a public university. JUST KIDDING! He tweeted: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” … and then of course did nothing. Positively Churchillian!^[1]

The amazing Ann Coulter. Her whole article is an evisceration of our gutless conservatives and our craven officials, chief among whom is Donald Trump who left his troops to twist in the prosecutorial wind in the midst of an obvious attempted coup d'etat. But, to be fair, we know it was Sessions' fault. That cur.

Notes
^[1] "Antifa’s a Laugh Riot – Until It Comes for You." By Ann Coulter, 7/1/20.

Public Spaces And The Current Crisis

     The ongoing violence and disruption in Democrat-controlled cities has evoked an optimistic piece from Bookworm, who deposeth and sayeth:

     The media are lying to us: Outside of the media’s Democrat-run communities, Americans are getting along fine and are well aware of what’s really going on.

     Believe it or not, things in America are better than you think. In a way, America is the equivalent of a fundamentally healthy plant under attack from hard-left aphids. If we can rid ourselves of that parasite, we will be fine.

     I’m not entirely in agreement with that assessment, on the grounds of the presence of the first (and most important) word in the last sentence: if. Getting rid of a parasite without simply uprooting all the affected plants is no small nor simple undertaking. In this case, the parasite has a support system comprising the educational system, the entertainment industry, and the journalism and communications giants. Those supports can sustain it for quite a long time – possibly long enough to compel the use of violent purgative measures from which the country would emerge in a quite different form.

     Atop that, there’s been a transformation of the way we see public spaces, including where we see them and what rules apply to conduct in them.

     For a society to maintain public spaces of any sort, there must be rules about how they can be used, and what individuals are allowed to do in them. Moreover, those rules must command the willing compliance of 98% (or more) of the populace, as a rule that would lack that degree of popular consent could not be enforced by measures a peaceful society would tolerate. When a significant fraction of those who use a public space disregard the rules or blatantly flout them, the space becomes chaotic. A chaotic space cannot serve any reasonable interest.

     I trust I needn’t present a detailed argument about why this is so. Experience alone provides ample confirmation. It’s one of the reasons libertarians argue for the minimization of public spaces, but that’s a subject for another time.

     Just now, we have the following happening as we watch:

• A radical group has seized public spaces in many urban districts.
• That group aims at inflicting as much disruption on normal American life as possible.
• Within the spaces it has seized, enforcement efforts have been inadequate – in some cases, nonexistent.
• As the group has fattened on its gains, it has encroached on the surrounding private spaces in an attempt to add them to its demesne.
• In some cases those private spaces have been defended; however, the media, which has decided to support the radical group, has done its best to vilify the defenders.
• The “authorities” with nominal responsibility for the afflicted spaces have almost unanimously thrown up their hands and said something to the effect that “It’s their right to protest.” In one ironic example, the mayor of Seattle decided to act against the radicals only after they threatened her own home.

     The genesis of this goes back several decades. We’ve seen precursor elements in the Watts and Detroit riots, the 1968 street disturbances in Chicago, the Weatherman incidents, violence aimed at such gatherings as the G20 conferences, and most recently before the BLM / AntiFa obscenities, the Occupy “movement” that first manifested itself in lower Manhattan. In each case, a group flouted the rules for conduct in public spaces, sometimes with violence and destruction of property. In each case, by refusing to enforce those rules, local “authorities” gave the disruptors de facto sanction for their deeds. They whose aim is to create chaos that would eventuate in the collapse of the American order have built on each such cession of legitimate authority.

     Do the disruptors constitute a sufficiently large fraction of the populace to make public-conduct laws unenforceable? I can’t say definitely, though I incline to doubt it. But remember always that people naturally emulate the successful. To the extent that the disruptors succeed in attaining their goals, they will inspire emulators. There will be a further decline in respect for public-conduct laws, and therefore in persons with an ugly agenda who will defy those laws when it suits their purposes.

     It might be too late to apply sufficient enforcement power to the problem. I hope it isn’t; travel and routine commerce are tough enough under normal circumstances. But unless the “forces of order,” which have been doing very little to promote and maintain order up to now, assert themselves in defense of public-conduct rules, the phenomenon will metastasize and spill into semi-urban, suburban, and ever more rural districts. And that’s to say nothing of the importance of the laws that “should” protect individuals and their legitimate property.

Errata-tatta-tatta

     These are just a few personal notes. I’ve been getting a lot of email lately from readers piqued by certain comments I’ve made. As the political garbage is even more garbagy than usual, and Linda and the Colonel are doing a fine job of addressing it all, I decided that this might be an acceptable time to answer some of the questions I’ve been asked.

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Joy The Corvette.

     The day I sold her was a sad day, really. But there comes a time when one must admit to one’s limitations, and my physical limitations have worsened considerably since I acquired Joy. Inasmuch as the time is drawing near when I wouldn’t be able to get out of a vehicle that low-slung without external assistance, I decided the time had come for us to part company, that Joy might bring a little joy to some younger and more limber owner.

     Joy was fun to drive. I hoped to get more use out of her than I did: in part because of the Wuhan Virus and the associated shutdowns; in part because the C.S.O. didn’t like driving her; and in part because I have another fine car that’s more versatile and needs exercise just as much.

     But I shall remember her fondly.

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Joy the Newfoundland Puppy.

     I should never have agreed to this. I don’t think I’ll be getting a lot of sleep between now and the grave. But some decisions, once made, cannot be unmade.

     Joy is, in many ways, a joy. She’s already bonded to us both, very affectionate, and endlessly playful. But she seems to need to pee and poop about once an hour. You should see my back yard...no, strike that, perhaps you shouldn’t. Anyway, she gets us up in the middle of the night just about every night for that reason. The consequences of not responding to her cries are severe.

     The C.S.O. keeps saying that “she’ll get used to it.” (“She” meaning Joy.) I don’t know that I ever will. Does anyone have any advice about how to get a 12-week-old puppy to sleep through the night?

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Idaho.

     Yes, we really are preparing for a grand relocation. Our current target destination is North Idaho, the region around Coeur D’Alene. It will be my first move in more than forty years – but it’s not going to happen right away. Among other things, we have a house to sell, possessions and animals to make provisions for transporting, and finances to arrange for a major purchase. In all probability, it will be a year or more before we can pull the trigger. Moreover, events over that interval might change any or all of our intentions.

     Why North Idaho? Well, I have a long-distance friend there – Adrienne, who runs her own little corner of the Web — who’s spoken so glowingly about the area that I had to look into it for myself. I’ve liked everything I’ve learned about it:

• It’s a conservative sort of area;
• It has seasons much like New York’s;
• There are lots of Catholics and Catholic institutions;
• There’s plenty of space despite the recent surge in relocations to the area;
• The cost of living is less than here on Long Island;
• The homes for sale in my price band are quite impressive;
• And the folks there know what it will take to protect what they love.

     For a wonder, the C.S.O., who’s been adamantly opposed to relocating ever since we got involved with one another, likes it too. But as I’ve already said, it’s not going to happen this week. Stay tuned for developments.

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The Fiction.

     I recently decided that Amazon was not a sufficient retail channel for my fiction. Accordingly, as their current KDP Select intervals have expired, I’ve been moving my books to Draft2Digital, a publisher / redistributor that places books with all the significant online retailers, not just Amazon. If you prefer a retail outlet other than Amazon, chances are you’ll be able to find my fiction there fairly soon, if not right now.

     Amazon was instrumental in making the eBook a force to be reckoned with, and bless it for that. But the eBook can now stand on its own as a respectable medium, so it’s time to “go wide,” and thus to promote a greater degree of competition in that marketplace. Hopefully this move will also bring me a wider readership, though given my abysmal promotional skills, I can only wait and hope.

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Commentary.

     Yes, my op-ed stuff has been getting both shorter and less frequent. I’ve been doing this since 1997, and it’s begun to pall on me. How many times can I say essentially the same thing? How long can I keep doing it, seeing the country proceed on its wobbling, intermittently self-destructive course, and not become too frustrated to continue? The sense of futility, especially in light of the events of this year of Our Lord 2020, has become difficult to dispel.

     I’m not going to toss in my cards just yet. But don’t be surprised if my op-ed emissions dwindle still further. What’s the use? is a hard obstacle to surmount, especially for an old man with a seemingly endless list of tasks before him.

     At any rate, Liberty’s Torch will go on for a while longer, at least. I’ll keep writing. So will Linda, the Colonel, Margaret, Historian, and Dystopic. Hopefully our aggregated efforts will manage to keep you entertained.

     Enjoy your day, and Independence Day weekend.

They’re Going To Try It Again

     That was my immediate conclusion upon reading this piece:

     Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified Tuesday that an emerging virus found in pigs in China shares traits with the 2009 Swine Flu and 1918 Pandemic Flu, and U.S. public health officials are monitoring the disease.

     Fauci, a White House coronavirus task force member, explained before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that the virus — known as “G4 EA H1N1,” — doesn’t appear to infect humans, however, it has shown “reassortment capabilities.”...

     Fauci warned lawmakers of the “possibility that you might have another swine flu type outbreak as we had in 2009.”

     “It’s something that still is in the stage of examination,” he added.

     We’ve had Nancy Pelosi and Sleepy Joe Biden nattering about a national mask mandate lately, and getting approximately zero interest from sane Americans. Several state governors are also trying their damnedest to perpetuate their lockdown and mask mandates. But decent people are tired of it all. More, they’re beginning to realize that if a virus as low-mortality as the Wuhan virus can be used as a rationale for the shutdown / mask mandates, then anything more dangerous – e.g., ordinary influenza – would serve even better. The implication is that we’d be “social distancing” and wearing masks for the rest of time.

     Ironically, cloth masks accomplish nothing positive. They’re moderately effective against the transmission of bacterial diseases, but viruses easily penetrate them in either direction. Worse, if worn for a protracted period, they can concentrate bacteria, compel the wearer to rebreathe them...and thus make him sick. Are you at all surprised that the media has said nothing about that, Gentle Reader?

     It’s possible that Red China is ginning up a new threat to us. It’s also possible that Anthony Fauci, who purely loves the spotlight, is using this new swine flu scare to retain public attention and the deference of officialdom. But it’s not very likely, given that travel between the U.S. and China is now tightly restricted, that we’re in danger of disease sufficient to justify any of the measures foisted upon us on the basis of the Chinese coronavirus a.k.a. COVID-19. Our fortunes have sunk too low to justify another wholesale stoppage of American life and commerce of the sort from which we’re only now slowly emerging.

     That doesn’t mean the power elite won’t try to foist it on us, of course.