Schadenfreude – Taylor Lorenz Version

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You might remember this female apparatchik from her doxxing of the Libs of TikTok lady.  Well, things must be getting lonely out there for La Lorentz at the Washington Post and now she must be feeling the icy chill of an upcoming pink slip because here she moans and groans about how all we plebes will be devastated if the intrepid reporters who provide us with the truth (pravda) are forced onto the bread lines.

I’ve provided a group of right leaning pundits laughing heartily at her warning.

Oh, Taylor, Taylor.  When will you ever learn.  What goes around, comes around.

After the Revolution – Part 1

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One of the ZMan’s favorite phrases during his podcasts seems to be “after the revolution.”  This is usually followed by a comment about some benighted leftist finding out how the guillotine works, up close and personal.  Ouch!

But what seems to be a lot less easy to find is any thoughts about what would be going on after the revolution.  And maybe this is because the more hard-line folks on the Right have truly apocalyptic dreams for the world if things go their own way and it would be unwise to discuss the specifics in the open.  But really it’s because the Right is not a monolithic movement but a coalition of those who want to be free of the Left, there really isn’t one vision of what “after the revolution” would look like.

But I thought it might be interesting to think a little bit about what some of these visions might be and also what I myself would like “after the revolution” to look like.

Let’s start with the wildest visions of the really hard-core cases, something that would closely resemble what the people who made that new movie “Civil War” imagine people on the Right want as the future.

So, in this extreme vision of post-America the country would be divided into a bunch of independent countries that each is based on the regional ethnic make-up and political predilections.  The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic (including Virginia and maybe North Carolina) would be the rump USA nation.  It would be run by the same elite that currently runs the whole country.  I think it would also include the Great Lakes states, the Pacific northwest (with at least a part of California) and Hawaii.  Then the South would be its own country.  The Midwest would be another.  Some people think that Texas and the southwest (with or without all or part of California) would be another.  Maybe Alaska joins up with Canada.

In this setup whole ethnic populations would be swapped between these areas at least partially by force.  What the forms of government for these successor states would be is a subject of wild speculation by those who desire this drastic fate for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  But if such a division of the country and its people occurred it’s possible to imagine multiple forms of government.  Perhaps this time around, the Puritans will decide on something more explicitly oligarchic.  Maybe the Midwest will continue on with a representative democracy.  Maybe the South will get a king and the Southwest will decide to join up with Mexico.  Personally, this particular scenario sounds quite bleak to me.  But I hesitate to say that it is completely impossible.

But I think that reaching this scenario will involve maximal violence and destruction.  Millions of people will die and economic and social upheaval will devastate the whole continent.  And in this weakened condition, attack from external threats doesn’t seem far-fetched.

The next in line from most extreme to least would be a 50/50 split of the country between blue and red states.  Blue America would be similar to the Puritan nation from above.  Let’s say New England, Mid-Atlantic states with Virginia and North Carolina, Great Lakes states also including Michigan and Illinois, the whole West Coast, Nevada, New Mexico, possibly Arizona and Hawaii.  Everything else would be Red America.

As far as political systems, Blue America would be California on steroids.  No fossil fuels, no red meat, lots of cricket burgers and all transgender all the time.  Red America might be like what we had in this country before the 1960s.  Maybe it will include an amendment that allows states to secede at will.  I assume that both nations would be highly antagonistic and constantly sniping at each other about all the compromises that would have to be enacted because of the divorce.  They’d even be fighting over who would keep the name USA.  But since Amerigo Vespucci was part of the whole European colonial plot maybe the blue states can find some obscure native American (there’s that name again) term for the real estate.

I could actually see how this arrangement would be an improvement over our present situation.  Getting to this state doesn’t seem to be something that will happen easily or without copious violence.  So even this less drastic alternative isn’t my favorite scenario.  I’m certain there would be open war before the divorce occurred.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss some other scenarios including the one I favor.

Untruth as Fiction

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Camera Girl loves reading crime fiction and things like crime fiction.  Harry Bosch is one of the characters in her books and lately we started watching some tv series about him.  So today we sat down to an episode and in this story one of Bosch’s associates, a cyber security professional/hacker is being investigated by the FBI to try and get him to become a confidential informant against Bosch.  The FBI uses a woman who is a rising star in hacker circles to entrap this Bosch associate.

So, Camera Girl sees this woman working for the FBI and says, “She’s working for the FBI and trying to entrap him.  That’s awful.”  And I started laughing.  I said, “Hon, if only that were the extent of what they actually do.”  And I was about to go into a diatribe about J6 and the “plot” to kidnap the Michigan governor.  But then I thought, why should I make her depressed about how our country is really run?  It’s bad enough I have to know.  So, I just let it go.

The old saying is that truth is stranger than fiction.  And that’s absolutely true now.  I mean if you think about it, since 1945 our military arsenal contains devices that were the stuff of science fiction right up till Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And in 1968 when “2001: A Space Odyssey” reached the theaters, artificial intelligence was a homicidal computer named HAL that was obviously an impossibility.  And now we have AI stealing our jobs and insulting us in the comments sections.  And just three years ago we probably saw the first large-scale event featuring a bio-weapon.  Granted, it was a pathetic one but it caused a lot of damage to the world economy and destroyed most people’s faith in the honesty of the WHO and the American government.

So, stranger than fiction isn’t really surprising.  What is surprising is how wrong fiction gets it.  When Hollywood scripts the United States being threatened with a military coup it was always a crazy general who wanted to go to war with the Russians and blow up the world.  But he was always a right-wing religious zealot played by Burt Lancaster.  Instead, we get General Milley who wants to conquer Russia with drag queen special forces.  And now there is this Civil War movie and currently they’re keeping the plot details under wraps but it’s pretty obvious that the president who is serving his third term will be a dead-ringer for Donald Trump.  So once again they’ll trot out the old right-wing president who becomes new Hitler.  That one was already old when Heinlein had the “Prophet” seize control of the United States and turn it into a Christian theocracy.  And a while ago there was “The Handmaid’s Tale” which once again was an America as dystopian theocracy but added in the ever-popular sexual subjugation of the last few fertile females in the world.  Sheesh, those feminists really do worry an awful lot about being forced to have sex.  Just from a cursory analysis I think their problem tends to run in the opposite direction.  Sexual offers seem to be few and far between for most of those gals.

Well, all this is leading up to a question.  Does anyone think there will ever be a motion picture that accurately portrays the political and social dynamic that actually exists in the modern world?  To make it interesting, I think it should be a dark comedy but with a redemptive ending.  Lots of people are always saying that there is a large market for entertainment that doesn’t have a social bias.  But I’m advocating for a right-leaning bias.  I’d love to see characters that I can sympathize with.  I remember when Tim Allen’s show “Last Man Standing” first came out.  It was obvious that his character was a right-wing individual and it was very enjoyable and very funny.  But then Disney put a stop to that and neutered the character and the show.  Well, there’s a proof of concept.  All anyone has to do is copy what was done in that show.  They could even hire Tim Allen to star in it and as long as the writing is funny it would make money hand over fist.

And finally, how about a civil war movie where we win?  The outcome is we let them live the way they want to and we live the way we want.  We could have a postscript where we get to see what the two Americas look like in 2124.  Blue America would look like Idiocracy with broken down wind generators and disheveled poor people dressed in rags and eating crickets.  Red America would have nuclear power plants providing almost limitless energy, a thriving society based on meritocracy and well-maintained borders complete with 100-foot-tall fences.

Mittromneyplex

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So, Mitch McConnell is a monstrosity.  This senile fossil of a crooked politician is a millstone around the necks of Senate Republicans.  His highest priority (so he said) is sending as many billions of dollars to Ukraine as is humanly possible.  Or even as is inhumanly possible.  Why that should be his highest priority, has absolutely nothing to do with American national defense or NATO or even geopolitical strategy.  It’s just naked greed.  Mitch McConnell gets his money from the defense contractors and the other vested interests that get their money from government contracts.  He’s so deep in the pocket of these people that nothing else matters at all but keeping them happy.

So regardless of how many millions of illegal aliens Joe Biden lets into the country or however else the administration punishes normal Americans, McConnell’s highest priority is sending money to Ukraine.  Therefore, if the House of Representatives is unwilling to give Biden that money then McConnell has no qualms about announcing publicly that the lack of a deal is Donald Trump’s fault because he’s afraid the deal will also solve the immigration problem.

Now the magnitude of stupidity necessary to believe that Joe Biden suddenly wants to close the border is so enormous that there isn’t even a number yet invented to cover it.  A googol is one with a hundred zeroes after it.  And a googolplex is ten raised to the googol power.  That is:

1010,000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000,​000,000,000

That’s a really big number.  But a googolplex worth of stupid pales into insignificance compared to how moronic you’d have to be to believe in such a thing.  And when you find out that the “border deal” hasn’t even been written down anywhere and just has to be approved sight unseen by the Republicans.  Well, what can I say?  The only thing stupider than that would be the mittromneyplex (10MITTROMNEY), a stupid so large that it would a tear a hole in the very fabric of space-time, the absolute black hole of stupid.

So far, the House Republicans have managed to resist being sucked into this monstrous farce of a sell-out.  I don’t know if Mike Johnson is doing the right thing or the MAGA wing is holding his feet to the fire.  But I think if we witness the Republicans refusing to give the Biden administration the Ukraine money altogether then we will have witnessed an actual Republican victory.  Because let’s face it.  Even if Joe Biden closed the southern border tighter than a drum that would just be a temporary cosmetic action.  He would be doing it during an election year when he knows his immigration policy is as popular as Ebola.  On November 6th the border would just open up again regardless of whether Joe or Trump wins.  And of course, Joe wouldn’t do anything to remove the millions upon millions of illegals he’s let in during the last three years.  It’s strictly cosmetic.  And you can bet that the “deal” will also include amnesty.  What a surprise!

But if the Republicans manage to withhold the Ukraine money, that foreign policy defeat will reverberate around the world.  The Ukrainians will be forced to negotiate with the Russians and the European Union will have to come to terms with the reality that Russia is a country that doesn’t bend the knee to Washington.  And once Russia doesn’t invade Poland, the EU may start rethinking exactly what their relationship is with Washington and Moscow and why.

Meanwhile, the Texans and the twenty-five red states that approve of what Texas is doing are breaking new ground on standing up to the malfeasance that Washington practices.  And if they’re brave enough to continue on this road, we may see that a hell of a lot of our problems with federal unconstitutional overreach may be at least partially fixable.  But either way, the days of buckling under when Mitch McConnell says mean things about you may be behind us for good.  Let’s hope that old fossil sinks into a tar pit as soon as possible.