Month: November 2023

What Could Be Achieved in the Netherlands

photog Current Events , , ,

In yesterday’s election, Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) were able to get the largest number of seats in the Dutch House of Representatives.  Current estimate with 94% of the vote counted is 37 out of 150 seats.  Of course, they’ll need at least 76 seats to form a governing coalition.  So where does that leave them?

The PVV is at heart an anti-immigrant party.  Their stated goal is to prevent the influx of Islamic immigrants and their culture and religion.  But in general, they are a nationalist party.  Wilders would love to pull the Netherlands out of the EU but knows that isn’t going to happen in his lifetime.  In terms of domestic policy, they are not libertarian but sort of average euro-socialist.  And from what I’ve read they don’t buy into the green agenda.

I went on-line and did some check into the orientation of the various parties that were likely to share at least some agenda with the PVV and found these numbers.

Party Orientation Seats
PVV Center-right 37
VVD center-right 24
CDA far-right 5
BBB Right-wing 7
FvD far-right 3
SGP Right-wing 3
JA21 Right-wing 1
BVNL Right-wing 0
Total 80

So, there is a bare minimum for a coalition on the “right.”

 

Up until the election the next largest party on “the right” VVD had expressly ruled out working with the PVV.  Of course, after the results of yesterday’s election, the leader of that party, Dilan Yeşilgöz has backed off that sentiment and sounds like there might be something to talk about.

Now this is interesting.  Up until now, major European political organizations have been consistent in refusing to form coalitions with “far-right” parties.  Specifically, France and Germany have been adamant on this point.  But the PVV is now the largest party in terms of representation in the Dutch House of Representatives.  We may finally have reached the tipping point, where ostracizing the right no longer works.  That’s what’s about to come out.  If Wilders can convince the other non-leftist parties that he is pragmatic he might just break the blockade that has kept the “far-right” out of the kitchen.

Well, well, well.  Seems to me that if Wilders is willing to rule by only reaching for what everyone in his coalition can agree to, he can at least prevent any more damage from being done.  And I’m guessing if he is shrewd and willing to do a lot of horse-trading, he can reverse some of the craziest things that have been done lately.  The greatest good would be to reverse all this insane attack on the farming industry in the name of not offending the gods of greenhouse gas emissions.

From what I know of the Dutch, which isn’t much, they have a goodly share of crazed enviro-warriors who are willing to empty the world of human beings in order to please Gaia.  So, I assume Wilders has his work cut out for him.  But between the immigration problems and the green nightmare it’s good to see that a goodly 25% of the Dutch are starting to wake up from the woke trance and realize they need to start facing reality.

So, it wouldn’t be realistic to think that this election is some kind of panacea for all the ills that this small European nation suffers from.  Like our election of Donald Trump in 2016 it’s just the first spasm of the drowning body politic in its attempt to reach the surface and breath fresh air.  It will take a lot more to finally swim back to dry land.  How’s that for a tortured metaphor!

Thanksgiving 2023

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

So, we’re hosting most of the family this year.  Camera Girl has outdone herself with five different pies and a twenty-five-pound turkey.  I predict that by the end of the feast I’ll be almost immobile.  But I’ll try to keep the grandkids amused with various holiday traditions.  At some point I will break out the “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and maybe “Gulliver’s Travels.”  Of course, both of these are 1930s vintage versions.

Hopefully we’ll head down to the first floor to play some pool and later on will come the pie and ice cream and coffee and some penny ante poker.  And I’ll ask my grandsons what’s going on at school and what’s happening around town.  I’m sure I’ll be brought up to date on whatever Pokémon acquisitions the youngest one has negotiated.  I’ve never really figured out what Pokémon actually is.  I assume it’s similar in intent to how we collected baseball cards as kids.  All I know is that there are thousands of different cards and some are “worth” thousands of dollars.  But to whom?

We’ve had our first dusting of snow.  It changed into rain in the morning and I went out with the shovel and cleared the slop off of the driveway.  And that’s necessary.  It freezes at night now and that slushy mess would have turned my driveways into skating rinks by tomorrow morning and that is something I don’t need on Thanksgiving.  So, we’ve broken the ice, so to speak, and have now transitioned into winter.  Of course, I’m way behind on my yard work.  And this makes it worse.  But it’s Thanksgiving so I’ve absolved myself of all blame and won’t think about it until Monday (or Tuesday).

It’s interesting.  Two recent international elections seem to be indicating a deep dissatisfaction with the Left’s incompetent economic and social programs.  Maybe 2024 will be more than just an American protest year.  Maybe the genie is out of the bottle and a whole lot of people are fed up with dysfunctional, incompetent, delusional Leftist ideas in general.  If it is we’ll see much more in the way of signs in the coming months.

Biden’s minions keep popping up in the Times and the Post announcing how the economy is turning a corner and how wonderful everything is becoming.  The latest hype is that inflation is reversing and now they have to be careful not to cause deflation.  The delusional nature of this nonsense is absurd.  It flies in the face of everyone’s knowledge of the cost of commodities in the recent past.  Everyone who has to run a household knows that everything is now vastly more expensive.  Things like cold-cuts have now become prohibitively expensive for many families.  Even staples like bread and vegetables have to be purchased with an eye out for sales.  But the Biden evangelists keep up the happy talk hoping that the stupid will buy into the lie.  As jaded as I’ve become with fraudulent elections, I’m still curious to see if a point might be reached where even the people faking the elections might think it was in their interest to get the Democrats out of power, if only out of fear that the economy might completely collapse under the weight of complete incompetence.

Well, for one day we won’t worry about the cost of food.  There are going to be pumpkin, apple, coconut custard, sweet potato and chocolate pudding pies with whipped cream and ice cream and who knows what other desserts.  There’s going to be turkey and sausage stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy.  And another whole list of side dishes that I can’t even remember, but I know there will be candied yams and two kinds of buttered rolls.  So, I have a lot to be thankful for.  I hope your holiday goes well and I will check in from time to time.

23NOV2023 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

Nobody is at liberty to attack several property and to say at the same time that he values civilisation. The history of the two cannot be disentangled. Civilisation is nothing more than a name for the old order of the Aryan world, dissolved but perpetually re-constituting itself under a vast variety of solvent influences, of which infinitely the most powerful have been those which have, slowly, and in some parts of the world much less perfectly than others, substituted several property for collective ownership.

Henry Sumner Maine

 

Note: several property refers to what we call private property.