Month: July 2021

A Message in a Bottle

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A lot of you have seen the cartoon.  A man shipwrecked on a desert island writes a letter requesting help, seals it in a bottle and throws it into the ocean.  The punch line varies based on the philosophy or the humor of the cartoonist.  Maybe a bottle washes up with a sarcastic reply or maybe he is rescued and one day finds his bottle floating up to his home port or maybe his own bottle returns to him unanswered or maybe some pirates or cannibals find it and come to finish him off.  But the idea of sending out a cry for help to the world is a powerful concept.  It appeals to our feeling of solidarity with humanity.

In a way this blog is somewhat like that.  Trapped in my little corner of blue state America it’s easy to feel isolated and trapped.  Of course, that’s not completely true.  I have my friends and family and acquaintances that align with my way of looking at the world (for the most part).  And I can read the right-wing websites and even watch some of the non-leftist content on a few outlets that still haven’t cancelled it.

But in a lot of ways the world I remember is being erased and my world is contracting.  Thirty years ago public radio used to be fairly entertaining.  Now it would be like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.  I used to like watching a ball game occasionally.  Now it’s just another chance to insult me.  They’ve whittled away the things that made life fun.  Even the movies have become unwatchable.  And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

So, I had to invent my own game, my own fun.  I look at the world and I write out my thoughts and I put it into the bottle and I hit the enter key and it travels around the world and sometimes I get an answer.  It could be a yep or a nope or a pat on the back or even occasionally a middle finger but it’s an answer, it’s a voice, it’s an affirmation that the rest of you are out there.  It means I exist.  You comment, therefore I am.

So that’s the secret of this blog.  You all are the power source that make this blog work for me.  I get my motivation, my validation from your presence.  Even those who don’t comment but come back every week or every day or even several times a day reinforce my reason to write.  Sure, part of it is that I just enjoy the mental exercise of reasoning about the things going on in this crazy time we live in.  There’s value in figuring things out on paper (or pixels) and I think better when I write things down and I enjoy posting my reviews and my photos.  But I mostly enjoy sending out my thoughts and ideas out into the internet ocean and getting some bottles floating back with some replies.

So thanks to all you folks out there who show up and read my notes on the shores of this infinite ocean.  It’s nice knowing you’re out there and don’t be afraid to say hello if you have the urge to do so.  I can always use the company.  It’s an awfully big ocean.

Curtis Yarvin Talks About Regime Change and How it Can be Done

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I’m a non-paying reader of Curtis Yarvin’s substack page Gray Mirror.  His latest article was a response to a journalist named Damon Linker at the The Week becoming upset at the content of a discussion between Yarvin and Michael Anton in an American Mind podcast.  Apparently, the idea of these two men discussing the idea of a monarchical government for the United States is so beyond the pale that Mr. Linker started getting the vapors.  Meanwhile, roving mobs of masked thugs burning down police stations and private businesses is just good old democratic horse trading to him I suppose.

Yarvin uses Linker’s outrage as a jumping off point to go into his hypotheses about what will and won’t work at reforming American government.

I’ll paraphrase these:

  • The only choices with respect to the present regime are leave it alone or replace it completely.
  • To replace the present regime we will have to elect a president and allow him to assume absolute power.
  • The process of making this change can be completely non-violent.
  • That the actions embodied in these hypotheses are just as practical as any other reform program being contemplated.

I recommend reading Yarvin’s essay.  It is worth thinking about.  The present oligarchic regime is extremely powerful and has figured out all the angles for rigging our elections and even ignoring the leaders we do manage to get elected.  Yarvin may be right about the need for a total reset.  The part about it being violence free is the thing I have my doubts about.  Read it for yourself and tell me what you think.

Recall of Gavin Newsom Starting to Look More Likely

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Booting Gavin Newsom out of the California Governor’s Mansion is starting to look much more likely than previously admitted.  Possibly his present policy of restoring the lockdowns on Californians has soured the Democrats at least to the point where they won’t bother to show up to vote for him.

My take on this is that California is a failed state that the inhabitants have earned.  And until cannibalism has had a chance to weed out the hopelessly stupid there is zero hope of reforming the Golden State.

But what this recall can provide is the opportunity for great hilarity.  Gavin Noisome or Gavin Nuisance or whatever Nancy Pelosi’s wretched relative is called deserves to lose his job and suffer the same ignominy that Gray Davis suffered after he was booted from office.  If only every state had this wonderful escape hatch.  Can anyone imagine that Andrew Cuomo wouldn’t have already been handed his walking papers if New York State voters had this same option?

Anyway, I look forward to a fun moment in September when this vote occurs.  If it fails well it still ruined Gavin Gruesome’s summer.  But if he’s kicked to the curb it will be the highlight of the week.

Hat Tip to the Conservative Treehouse on This COVID Story

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So the Conservative Treehouse article reported that  there was an “outbreak” of COVID on Cape Cod where 469 people caught COVID and 74%were already fully vaccinated.  Among this large pool of people four were hospitalized and no one died.

My layman’s reaction to this is:

  1. COVID is very contagious.
  2. The vaccine isn’t good for much.
  3. COVID isn’t that dangerous to healthy people.
  4. The health officials in the US aren’t being very honest with us.

Cape Cod is where New Englanders go in the summer to vacation with their families and enjoy sun and fun.  Young and old go to parties and music concerts and weddings.  In the short summer season they enjoy life.  And that’s what that 469 people were doing when they caught COVID.  The idea that the solution is to stay away from other people and wear a mask over your face for the rest of your life is plainly insanity.

Enough is enough.

31JUL2021 – OCF Update – Last Day of July

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Tomorrow is the official first day of winter here in New England.  I’ll start up the snow blower and dig out my shovel, close up the storm windows and turn on the heating system.  I’ll put away the shorts and shortsleeve shirts and dig out the thermal underwear and mukluks.  It was a good summer although there was a lot of rain.  But now we have to get down to the serious part of life, surviving the horrors of winter.  We’ll be cheered by some of the winter holidays like Labor Day and Halloween but we’ll be ever conscious of the threat we face from frostbite and cannibalism.  Camera Girl made some veiled hints about there not being enough meat on my bones.  I sleep with one eye open and my right hand trailing onto the floor where the axe handle is there if needed.  Trust but verify.

Actually it’s been very pleasant the last couple of days.  Low eighties, high seventies and sunny except it rains at night, which is fine by me.  I’ve never seen the grass this green at the end of July.  All in all, pretty remarkable.  Camera Girl had a special plant of hers come up and bloom for the first time this year.  She says it’s called a moon flower.  It’s shaped like a giant white trumpet.  Something like an enormous morning glory flower.  Interestingly it blooms at night.  I’ll put up some photos of it soon under a separate post.  She was very excited about it and it was nice to see her so happy about it.

In related news some of the Elecampane seeds I planted may finally be sprouting.  Not sure yet because the sprouts are too small to tell.  I have more seeds and may put some more in dirt just in case but it’s encouraging to see something starting.

All kidding aside, today is the last day of July and that is a milestone around here.  The kids start getting anxious about school and with this nonsense about masking again I can’t blame them.  Maybe people will come to their senses and spare their own flesh and blood this nonsense.

Well, lots going on, more to come here.  Stay tuned.

 

How Much of a Factor Will the Crime Epidemic Be?

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I’m not completely sure how important an issue rampant crime will be in the political situation in America.  It’s already fueling an enormous flight from the major cities and that is having a major impact on everything from used car prices to the pricing and availability of houses in the suburbs to the supply and demand of seats in private schools.  But as much as the big cities are and will remain the uncontested domain of Democrat politicians you have to wonder what will happen as the unchecked crime in theses areas becomes a permanent condition.

Already it has had some impact on the politics in some of the biggest cities.  New York has selected the closest thing to a law-and-order Democrat to be their next mayor.  And the pop-eyed lesbian mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, has hinted that she might not run for re-election in two years.  What she doesn’t mention is that she may be ridden out of town on a rail long before that if the current rate of murders in Chicago continues unabated.

What this is leading up to in my thought here is the question of whether there will be a turning point where the cities pull back from the madness or each just spirals down into a dysfunctional no-man’s land like Detroit or Baltimore.  I think it might not be a uniform decision.  As we see New York is starting to reverse course.  But places like Portland and Minneapolis will probably stay the course and ride this wave right into the ground.  A recent report stated that Minneapolis has seen a 60% increase in murder last year and just yesterday a woman’s headless body was found in a car on the street in one of the neighborhoods of Minneapolis indicating that we are well on the way to abject savagery.

My guess is that the crime epidemic will go a long way to consolidate the Republicans in the red states as fear of the blue city crime will favor no-nonsense candidates who take a pro-police stance and promise to protect the people living in the suburbs and rural areas from the roving gangs of urban thugs that have been unleashed by the cities.  One thing that will be interesting to see is whether states like Georgia and Missouri decide to step in and clean up Atlanta and St. Louis.  If things really spin out of control in those places I wonder if the state will take control of the police in those jurisdictions and override the local control.  It would seem that it would be warranted on a civil rights basis if the people in these cities were shown to be suffering from criminal mismanagement.

I have no illusions about the blue states doing anything similar about their cities.  They will convince themselves that this is all the result of white supremacists selling illegal guns to poor innocent gangbangers who just want to keep up with the fentanyl arms race that free enterprise necessitates.  They can get their constituents to believe anything they tell them so they’ll just let the degeneration of their cities proceed and the elites will move to secured suburbs and everyone else will pay a price.  But no price is too much to pay for equity, diversity and inclusion.

But what about the supposed purple states?  Are there any states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Virginia that could see what’s going on and learn something about what’s wrong with the Left’s vision of the world?  Could watching Philadelphia or Kenosha burned and looted and seeing their fellow citizens without police to protect them from merciless thugs in their own neighborhoods convince the “moderates” that backing the Left is a terrible mistake.  The answer is no, I don’t believe it will.  I think the sorting between the Left and Right has already occurred and those places are lost.  But I could be wrong about that.  I hope I am.

So that’s my take.  The Antifa-BLM riots and the elimination of the urban police departments may very well serve as the object lesson that the red states need to formulate a strategy to protect themselves from the Obama insurrection.  In fact, if it doesn’t then there really isn’t any hope for this country.  Seeing the fate of our greatest cities and then witnessing the daily spectacle of old men and women being brutally beaten and sometimes killed while the police stand down and let it happen is all the warning we’ll ever get.  We’ll soon enough know.