Tag: red state – blue state

Choose Carefully

photog Current Events , ,

Each of us has his own “world.”  It’s made up of all the connections we use throughout our day.  We’re connected to our families by each word we pass, every facial expression we use to communicate.  After that the average man is connected to the world by his phone.  It is the nexus for all the calls, texts, e-mails, YouTube videos, news items, tweets, Amazon purchases, Google searches and on and on and on.  After that we have the relationships we have with our job, with the various government entities and the various corporations that we employ to provide us with goods and services to live our lives as consumers.  All of these connections give us a sense of being connected and grounded to the world around us.

But lately more and more of these connections have started to have a disorienting effect.  The head of the United States, Joseph Biden just gave a speech that declared, specifically that people like you and me are dangerous extremists intent on destroying the United States.  And a while ago the top health expert in the federal government told us that unless we shut down our country and hid in our homes wearing masks over our faces, we would all die of a horrible disease.  And around the same time, we were told that mobs of rioters looting and burning down the commercial districts of our largest cities were completely within their rights to do exactly that.  But if anyone tried to resist them with a weapon that would be prosecuted vigorously by law enforcement as assault.

If you read the news and especially if you read the mainstream media you might begin to believe that the whole world has gone insane and that we’ll be headed for a new dark age any day now.  Without a doubt, the people running much of western civilization have lost touch with reality and are trying to push the world in an unhealthy direction.  I won’t go through the whole litany but looking at some of the worst aspects; green energy initiatives, defund the police and transgender affirming treatments for minors, we can see that dangerous ideas have been mainstreamed by people with great power.

All of this can make it seem like there’s no place to turn for a breath of sanity.  Part of the reason it feels so dire is that for most of our lives we never had to worry about most of these institutions becoming unhinged.  Most of the United States was remarkably well run.  And even the bureaucracies, although they might be incompetent, uncaring or inefficient were never working to destroy us.  Now we can see they are.  And in addition, private companies have jumped on board the project to speed up our destruction.  Once you internalize that perspective it becomes easier to deal with the problems.

Once you change your point of view and assume that none of these organizations is necessarily on your side, it frees you up to begin evaluating your environment dispassionately and systematically.  This goes for all of the relationships you have.  From top down you can start with your country, state and town.  And from bottom up you can look at where you buy your coffee, what news you read and where you spend your entertainment dollar.  Each of these is a choice.  And granted, good options are hard to find in a lot of categories.  But that doesn’t excuse us from at least looking at the options and choosing the least bad choice.  And if you put in the work, you might be surprised at the good options you never knew existed.

Some of them are easy.  Looking at movies and tv just read the reviews and you can pretty easily find out what sounds like woke propaganda.  Another tactic is to buy local.  Small stores are more expensive than megastores.  But if you know for a fact that the owner is one of us then that’s got to sweeten the deal quite a lot and might put a small premium in price in perspective.  And get involved in your local community.  That can pay enormous dividends and will make you more aware of problems that may be coming your way.  And finally, it extends all the way up to deciding what state or even country you should live in.  It may seem extreme to contemplate such a huge change.  But if you look at it dispassionately, it might be the best move you’ll ever make.

Give the Left What It Says It Wants

photog Current Events , , ,

The recent bus service from Texas to New York City and Washington DC that Governor Abbott initiated got me thinking.  It sort of aligns with the idea of acceleration that is popular with some on the Dissident Right.  The idea is to accelerate the crazy ideas that the Left favors in order to let reality crash the system sooner.  The thought is that hitting bottom is the only way to convince the stupid that their beliefs are irrational.

I have mixed feelings about the accelerationist theory.  Hitting bottom seems like a particularly dangerous place to be.  I’m not sure some of these “bottom” conditions can be reversed.  For instance, if Biden allows another fifty million illegal aliens to invade the country, I’m not sure it will be possible to repair that kind of damage short of some horrific violence that might finish the country off altogether.

But the example of the bus rides points to a different kind of acceleration.  If the damage can be restricted to blue states, then maybe the actions will serve a purpose.  Suppose the bus rides were extended to other groups that aren’t wanted in the Red States.  For instance, imagine if the homeless could be persuaded to move to California.  And the same could extend to prison inmates.  Their sentences could be commuted if they agreed to leave the red states permanently.  After all New York and California have been pioneering the concept of emptying the prisons and eliminating criminal convictions.  It only makes sense to send career criminals where their talents can be put to their best effect.

I haven’t gone through all the accelerationist scenarios that could be handled this way but I’m sure it could be quite interesting to play this thought experiment.  Maybe there could even be some kind of negotiations to get certain corporations to move out of state.  Or more realistically, provide a carrot and stick approach for companies (and universities) based on whether they engage in anti-social behavior like white guilt struggle sessions and EDI propaganda.  Hefty fines for each infraction would quickly make these companies weigh whether their policies were more important than relocating.  As a practical example, Ron DeSantis has recently tweaked Disney by eliminating their self-governing status in Florida.  It will be interesting to see if further “lessons” influence Disney’s propensity for condemning conservative laws and programs in Florida.  Changing their behavior would be a major victory.

Obviously, my poor efforts are woefully insufficient to evaluate just how many similar ideas could be identified.  Governors and legislatures are the right ones to do it.  Imagine if Washington DC could be inundated with a million illegal aliens and a hundred thousand freed felons.  Joe Biden would probably have to roll out the razor wire and call back the National Guard to keep his friends from defecating on his lawn, stealing the catalytic converter on his bomb proof limousine and spray painting, “Let’s Go Brandon” on the side of the West Wing.

Well anyway, that’s what I thought about this evening.  You see, I can be constructive if I try.  It doesn’t always have to be doom and gloom.  We can have fun once in a while too.

Reflecting on Progress

photog Current Events , , ,

Today will be a busy day here.  We’ve got a big high school graduation party happening, with friends and family enjoying a near perfect summer day.  The pool will be full of kids.  Burgers and dogs will be scarfed down and lemonade will flow.  And tomorrow I go to another party for my niece who is also graduating.  After the horror of the COVID lockdowns this summer feels like heaven.  And coming up in a couple of weeks is the big trip to Yellowstone so busy, busy, busy.

But I wanted to reflect a little on the juxtaposition of the Bidencrash and the SCOTUS decisions.  Here is proof that all is not lost.  Even in the grip of the Deep State coup that foisted a doddering idiot on us as the so-called “leader of the free world” we see that large swaths of the country are still ready to take advantage of opportunities to throw off the shackles of leftist control and restore normality to their lives.  Thanks to the courage of those five judges, we have seen incredible change unleashed.  Several states have already outlawed abortion completely.  That’s a stunning change.  The people in those states have taken back control over their lives and redefined what is right and what is wrong.  That is not a trivial thing.

I can only imagine what next year’s Supreme Court docket will include.  And I imagine what it will be like when this country is clearly seen to be two different nations, Blue and Red.  And I welcome this contrast.  Because finally, finally there actually will exist freedom.  It will be freedom of choice.  Freedom to decide which America we want to live in, Blue or Red.

And that will be a revelation.  The people in the Red States will not be upset about the choices that the other side has made.  They will be unconcerned at the abortion, transgender pronoun signaling and all the other manifestations of mental illness on display in the other America.  In fact, they will be glad that these things exist as a cautionary tale to show to children when they ask why it is important to have clear standards of what is healthy and what is diseased.

But the people in the Blue States will be foaming at the mouth and bellowing in rage at the knowledge that there exists a world where their power to sow confusion and misery is excluded and rejected with impunity.  After their decades of growing power and finally complete cultural control over our lives, this transformation will be maddening.  I expect countless acts of vandalism and violence in the coming months and years.  But it will still be a relief to know their control over our lives is over.

Now I know I’ve gotten ahead of things.  The events of the last couple of weeks are barely a sliver of daylight peeking through a sky of solid clouds.  But that sliver is so blindingly bright that it lights up the world.  We see what can be.  We know what we want now.  We want to be free of the control of insane ideas and the crazy people who espouse them.  It’s clear how easy it is to reach this goal when the people we choose for leaders aren’t part of the mad house we’re fighting against.  Donald Trump has fully vindicated his value as a leader.  He did what fifty years of Republicans couldn’t, or rather, wouldn’t do.  He gave us an honest Supreme Court.  He gave us back our Constitution.  Say whatever you like about his shortcomings as an individual.  He accomplished something stunning.

He gave us back hope.

Binary America

photog Current Events , ,

America is two almost opposite nations occupying the same geographic space.  Red America is a nation that mostly believes in the civic nationalism that was the official narrative of the United States up until the end of World War II.

Blue America is Woke America.  It rejects, almost compulsively, everything that defines Red America.  This goes so far as to reject normal human biology and common-sense rules of societal survival such as that career criminals must be prevented from continuously harming other citizens.

And in addition to this polar opposite contrast between these two outlooks on life, the two nations are extremely closely balanced in numbers.  So much so that neither nation has been able to dominate over the checks and balances of the American constitutional system and impose its will permanently on the other.

This situation has led to extreme animosity against the opposing citizens by each group.  It is beginning to border on what some have called a cold civil war.  It’s not clear whether a resolution of this struggle for control of the country will happen in the foreseeable future.  If it does, it may involve an actual civil war so bloody and destructive as not to be contemplated.

The idea of the country splitting in two parts by one side declaring its independence seems like a recipe for the nightmare civil war scenario that so many people imagine.  I have been thinking of a different plan to mediate the problem.  Let’s call it a patchwork solution.

Each state has to decide which of the two nations it belongs to.  Once the states have formed these two groups each group will sit down and work out the laws that would pertain to the Blue Nation or the Red Nation.  The two groups would also sit down and work out what functions both nations agree that they could share under an umbrella of cooperation.  Maybe the post office, maybe the military (maybe not), maybe highways and airports, maybe the monetary system (maybe not).

Then the two nations would work to allow citizens to migrate between the two areas for an extended period of time in order to accommodate the separation.  And both nations would bend over backwards to minimize the financial impact to the immigrants.  I could see real estate transactions being facilitated by the states so that no one would be stranded or made destitute.  After the period of immigration, the two countries would be governed by the new laws that each nation had chosen.

And everyone would get what they say they want.  Blue America would be a social justice wonderland.  There would be no police.  There would be no gasoline, heating oil or nuclear power.  So mostly people would be like they were before the introduction of electricity and the automobile.  Everyone would have their own pronouns and white people would be hounded to their graves for being white.

Red America would be … America.  Which, if you think about it, would be basically Heaven.

I’ve been trying to figure out what could be said against this.  From the Blue America side, they would have to be tricked into this by convincing them that they would be far better off without all those terrible rednecks that they mock and hate so much.  This will be a monumental job.  Possibly if things continue to go sideways the way they have for the last two years, it may become an easier sell.

What makes it such a difficult sell is that deep down most of the Left knows that without normal people they could never afford the enormous dysfunction that their unrealistic model of human behavior creates.  And if actually forced to pick between the two Americas millions of Leftists would try to sneak into Red America.  This would require some sort of evaluation process to try and weed out the Leftists.

Maybe the rules of Red America would dissuade the Leftists from coming but somehow, I doubt it.  So, forcing everyone to conform to these basic rules would be a good way to discourage wolves in sheep’s clothing.

What would be important during the formation of Red America is to make the rules irrevocable so that if a particular state changes its mind about certain laws that state would have to leave the group and either go it alone or ask for reintegration with Blue America.  In fact, the law allowing secession is an important change from the current American Constitution.  Constraining states to follow laws they don’t believe in is what has gotten us into the situation we’re in now.

So, there’s my mad plan.  Sure, there are all kinds of objections to making this happen but it’s my vision of what might prevent a war.  What do you think?

 

What Is Your Opinion of My Solution For Gridlocked America?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

 

Curtis Yarvin Gives an Example of Winning the Battle and Losing the War

photog Current Events , ,

I was reading an article by that highly intellectual critic of the social order we live under, Curtis Yarvin.  If you are unfamiliar with his writing, Yarvin’s analysis of the oligarchic nature of the American power structure is in many ways observably correct.  And although his writing style and his elitist perspective are sometimes maddening, his ideas are very often illuminating.

In this case he was writing about Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter and bring it private.  The gist of the argument was that because, potentially, Musk could completely control Twitter’s policies and actions toward the public it was a rare chance for a pure strategic victory against the Left.

And to contrast it with a tactical victory that eventually led to a strategic defeat he relates the decades long struggle against crime in New York City.  The familiar story relates that under decades long liberal rule New York grew more and more crime-infested until by the late 1980s there were over 2,000 murders a year and the whole city was besieged by petty and serious crime.  People were leaving the city by the hundreds of thousands and public confidence had evaporated.  This set the stage for a law-and-order Republican, Rudy Giuliani, to win the mayor’s office on the strength of a promise to restore law and order through stringent policing methods.

And it worked.  For more than twenty years Giuliani and Bloomberg who came after him, were able to maintain New York City at low levels of crime.  Levels that hadn’t been seen previously even in less chaotic times.  New York became a livable big city and thrived financially and culturally.  But what had not changed was that the majority of New Yorkers were still progressives who deep down in their souls resented the fact that this criminal justice system ended up incarcerating mostly black criminals.  Since their logic told them that somehow this wasn’t fair, they were never happy with the system even if it saved them from a tidal wave of crime.

So, after they became complacent about crime and when the George Floyd moment came New Yorkers were glad to have the excuse to abandon effective policing.  And the rest was inevitable.  Now the city is more dangerous than ever and trying to get back to where they were a few years ago seems politically impossible.

Yarvin’s point was that the tactical victory by Rudy Giuliani allowed for the strategic defeat that came afterward.  In other words, allowing conservatives to do the dirty work for the progressives doesn’t alter the beliefs of the progressives.  It only enables it.  It never leads to permanent change.

And I saw the same thing in Massachusetts during the 1990’s.  The Democrats would crash the state fiscally with bleeding heart programs and corrupt practices and then the Republicans would have to clean it up.  But they would never get any credit for the changes.  And as soon as the ship was righted they would be replaced with another round of dysfunction.  At best the Republicans were a relief valve that kept the whole insane machine from exploding.

Well, this is an old story.  But Yarvin’s emphasis resonated with me.  Winning a battle and losing the war was not something that should be done.  What we can’t afford to do is patch up the Left’s system.  We need to let them utterly fail at what they do.  We need to exclude them from some endeavor as completely as is possible and then make that endeavor an undeniable success.  And then keep them out of it.

Where I see that already happening is at the state level.  Places like Florida and Texas and other states need to change their laws to make them uninviting for progressives fleeing from California and New York.  And they need to protect themselves as completely as possible from the federal government.  In that way they can build their own system and reap the benefits while excluding the Left.

Places like California and New York need to be completely abandoned by the Right.  They need to crash completely.  As I like to portray it, they need to reach the level where cannibalism is the dominant lifestyle of the inhabitants.  Things need to get so bad that eventually the Leftists simply die off completely.  And all that is left are normal human beings.

The point is victory is only victory when it weakens your enemy and strengthens you.

How Do Things Get Better?

photog Current Events , , ,

Even though it’s clear that Biden’s presidency and by extension, the Left’s management of the blue cities and states, and the Left’s social hegemony are all demonstrably crashing and burning around us, it’s not clear to me how we reverse the course we’re on.

For example, the Supreme Court has ruled against Biden’s corporate vaccine mandate.  Okay, but how do we go from there to getting our lives back from all aspects of the COVID regime.  When can we stop pretending that being forced to wear a mask is a normal part of living in a free country?  When will forcing people to have their children injected with an unsafe vaccine be recognized as a crime?  When will we prosecute government doctors for lying about the actual numbers of people being harmed by COVID?  Currently none of those things seem even remotely close to happening.

I won’t even go into the crime wave engulfing the blue cities.  With leftists firmly entrenched in the city governments, there is not even a possibility of those places returning to normalcy in the foreseeable future.  Those areas will become no-go zones for normal people who don’t want to risk life and limb.

I’m afraid the answer to my question is they don’t anytime soon.  We will have to wait until November of this year to see the first chapter to the road to recovery.  When the Dems lose control of the Senate and House that will deprive Dementia Joe of one of his levers of power.  We will no longer have to depend on Joe Manchin to protect us from unlimited looting of the treasury by pork-filled trillion-dollar bills that line the pockets of “green” lobbyists and their Congressional clients.  And it should put an end to corrupt judges that Biden has been seating on the federal judiciary.  But think of it.  We have three more years of this nightmare.

So, what that tells me is the only way things get better is when we make them better ourselves.  And that begins when we stop pretending that we can depend on the federal government and their woke cronies for anything.  Lies and betrayal are their stock in trade.  Look over your assumptions on how you live your life.  For instance, if you live in or near a blue city do you assume that the police department in your area will keep you, your family and your possessions safe?  In the wake of the 2020 riots and looting is that a realistic assumption?  And if not, what is your smartest realistic option?  Should you move?  Should you buy a gun?  Should you make changes in the way you live your life?

These same questions should be asked about the state you live in.  If you’re tired of wearing a mask and being injected with unsafe medicines maybe living in a place like Florida might make more sense.  And that goes for other problems with blue states.  The high cost of living and the restrictions on freedoms are quite oppressive for some people’s tastes.

Look at who your friends are.  Can you depend on them?  Do they believe in what you do?  If not, maybe you need to find some people who do.  Seek out like minded people and get to know them.

And how about the way you spend your money?  Are you supporting the worst corporate offenders when it comes to Woke capitalism?  Coca Cola, Nike, and a whole host of corporations spit in your face every day.  Don’t you think you should go out of your way to seek out the few companies that at least stay neutral on the culture wars and reward them with your patronage.  Maybe you can make it a goal of finding one good company or website or movie every year and spending your money with that thing.  Here’s something easy.  Stop using Google for your search engine.  Use DuckDuckGo.  That will be helping them, hurting Google (infinitesimally) and helping yourself by avoiding Google’s prying eyes.  And most importantly tell ten conservative friends to check out Orion’s Cold Fire.  What better way is there to stick it to Dementia Joe?

My takeaway is things only get better when you act to make them better.  I’m not saying don’t vote for the better candidate.  You must.  But it’s not enough.  Your life has to reflect the things you believe in and that may mean making some changes.  And then maybe things will get better.  At least for you.

You Can’t Save Everyone

photog Current Events ,

Not everyone can be saved.  Not everyone wants to be saved.  Not everyone should be saved because some people are part of the problem.

I was talking to an old friend and he was very excited about all the problems that the Democrats are having right now and the prospects for Republican success in the midterms and beyond.  And it was fun.  But I had to remind him that we’ve seen this play before.  Unless there is someone with a plan that includes capitalizing on these opportunities in the form of meaningful change to the status quo then it will be just part of familiar Democrat/Republican Two Step.  They take a giant step forward; we take a tiny step sideways, then repeat ad infinitum.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear a word I said.  Now this way of thinking isn’t the primary problem but it sure as hell isn’t a solution.

Somebody who definitely is part of the problem is Mitt Romney, the quintessential RINO.  Imagine anyone who could be Governor of Massachusetts and US Senator for Utah.  Think of how supple a spine you would have to possess to bend into the pretzel needed to accommodate those two elected offices.  He is an example of who can’t be saved.  In fact, I claim that ejecting him from the Republican party should be one of, if not the highest priority of the Right.  The man is a poison in the body politic.  And if the people of Utah can’t see that then they’re doomed to become just another Colorado.  People like Romney, Cheney and Murkowski need to be targeted for primary challenges and never permitted back in the party.  Let them become Democrats and peddle their brand of poison to their rightful customers.  In this endeavor it’s instructive to see just how sound Donald Trump’s instincts are when he goes after the back stabbers and advocates for their replacement.  Even if the replacement politician is almost as bad, hell, even if he’s worse, the important effect is teaching the snakes that they won’t benefit from their treachery.  It’s a simple feedback loop.

And in a similar but less extreme case are the “allies” we’ve picked up.  People Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are honest men.  They are liberals.  They believe in left wing causes.  They want the same ends that our enemies want.  The only difference is that they are also committed to the constitutional freedoms that all Americans used to subscribe to.  In other words, they don’t believe that the ends justify the means.  At least now that they’ve seen how it translates into their profession.  I applaud their honesty and scruples.  But I am not so foolish to let them become my voice in the media world.  I think of them as an honest foe.  Honorable and to be respected but not an ally.  I can see situations where some kind of support for them could produce positive results for our side.  But my formulation is, “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy and no more than that.”

In the end, the only way we will make progress will be to make common cause with those who agree with us on a relatively broad set of principles and social norms.  It won’t require us to become Puritans.  But we will have to eject all sorts of extremists and nonconformists.  Luckily, we won’t have to burn anyone at the stake.  We can just banish them to Blue State America.  In fact, with something like thirty states to choose from I could see even the Red States presenting more than one vision of what a conservative republic should look like.  After all, Alabama isn’t Alaska and Utah isn’t West Virginia.  I won’t use the awful expression a big tent.  Let’s say there are a bunch of small tents that make up our federation.

So, I’ve made my peace with living under a smaller tent.  I’m a live and let live kind of guy as long as I don’t have to live by rules that I find abhorrent.  I’d rather see small communities living by rules that everyone there believes in.  How that ends up happening is dependent on how the macropolitical situation evolves.  Under the present system the only way we can do this is under a chartered community that regulates many communal functions like law enforcement, education, drug policy, even social activities.  But if the states obtain greater autonomy these things can be enshrined in the state constitutions and reinforced by the powers of the state.

So, you can’t say everyone.  Not everyone can live together.  To contradict Rodney King, “No, we can’t all just get along.”

But we can agree to disagree.  And that’s what we should do.  After the revolution we’ll pack Crazy Aunt Alice off to San Francisco and when the deadbeats stop receiving welfare checks they’ll be happy to take a bus trip to live in New York City (assuming there still is a New York after the cannibal reset).  And we’ll all be better off for it.

The Dispossessed Taking Stock

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family ,

If something that always seemed substantial and even indestructible unravels then those that have always depended on its existence for making decisions in their lives suddenly find themselves adrift in uncharted territory.  And that’s where a lot of us are right now.  The United States of America was this behemoth of stability and an engine of prosperity.  It was also a place where people truly were free to say and do what they pleased as long as it didn’t involve robbing someone else.

Now with all of those things shattered what do we do?  How do we make a living?  How and where do we raise a family?  How will our children get an education?  How will they make a living?  Who will we have to swear allegiance to in order to avoid persecution?  Who must we be afraid to offend to avoid being a victim?  Essentially, all bets are off.

When a stable system receives a shock there are several possible outcomes.  If the system is elastic enough and the shock isn’t too large then things can return to a stability that might even be pretty close to the initial condition.  If the shock is a little stronger then perhaps a large chunk of the system will be ejected leaving a remainder that can then produce a diminished but stable system.  And finally, if the shock is cataclysmic the whole system is pulverized and scattered, never to coalesce into a whole again.

I think it’s too soon to tell how great a disruption there has been to America.  It feels like we’ve been irreparably fractured into several fragments that can’t be put back together again.  But maybe our enemies will be able to overcome all resistance and establish a new country in the image they have in mind for it.  Maybe we’ll win and fix the place back to close to what it was.  Or maybe we’ll split it in two.  All these questions aren’t going to be answered in a day or even a year.  Maybe a decade will decide things.

But none of us can wait ten years to answer that list of questions I asked above.  Our lives are ticking by right now.  Our kids and grandkids are growing and need direction.  So, we have no choice but to make decisions based on what we see happening around us and what we know about the policies being pushed by the federal and state governments.

And there are plenty of hints for anyone who is paying attention.  Living in California is being at the epicenter of all things woke.  It’s so dysfunctional and constrained that even the woke can’t stand it and are leaving in droves.  Places like New York and Washington and Oregon are pretty close to the California model.  In any of those deep blue states you’ll find problems trying to raise a family or even to just live your life the way you want to.  But even in purple states like Wisconsin or Colorado the Left is in charge and they will tell you what you can and can’t do.  And if you happen to be white, they’ll let you know that your turn is done and you better get used to humiliation and deprivation.

And even among red states not all of them are equal.  And not all areas in red states are equal.  Utah is considered a deep red state but Salt Lake City is a stronghold of California transplants that vote Left and control lots of the levers of power.  So, where you live is one of the ways you can control how free you will be.

With respect to employment there are decisions that will have to be made there too.  For instance, if you want to work in an industry that is heavily regulated by the federal government then you will find that the management of the companies working in that industry are aligned with the values that the federal government espouses.  So, for instance, the banking industry adheres to the equity, diversity and inclusion mantra pushed on them by the bank regulators.  In the same way the pharma companies follow these same precepts based on the FDA’s guidance.  None of this nonsense has any real bearing on sound banking principles or safe drug production but it’s how the system is rigged.  And even companies that aren’t themselves regulated by Washington may find that in order to get contracts with companies that are regulated they will have to parrot these same noises.  Hopefully, if they are small enough companies most of the noise is just that and nothing else.  But you can see how this starts to reduce your options.

And with respect to schools and colleges it’s even worse.  The percentage of colleges that aren’t woke is tiny.  It’s barely a handful.  And they won’t have all the programs you children may be looking for.  If your kids want to go to a woke college just prepare them for what it will be like and keep your fingers crossed that they can avoid being absorbed by the Borg.

And that brings us to the last part of our lives, the personal life.  We need to find enough people like ourselves to ensure that we have a rich personal life.  We have family but we need friends.  Our children need friends.  We need people who believe in the same things we do.  In the past you would have found these people in your church and in the school committee and among the parents of the kids on your kids’ sports teams.  And depending where you live you still might.  But you’ll definitely have to do some homework to find out if your neighbors are free Americans or part of the woke collective.  So don’t think that everybody is normal.  It’s easier to be careful at first and avoid the woke.  It’s much more painful to get rid of them once they’ve gotten close.  You owe it to your kids to protect them from bad influences and you owe it to your own sanity.

So, unless you live in the deepest red area of the country and work in a trade that has no connection to the government regulators and send your kids to Hillsdale College you will have to sort through these realities for the foreseeable future.  Either that or join the pod people.  I mean how bad could it be?

What Have We Learned from Kyle Rittenhouse?

photog Current Events , , ,

The verdict just came in for this 18-year-old kid and like most everyone on our side I am greatly relieved that at least for now, this kid’s life has been given back to him.  It’s still possible that Merrick Garland and the rest of the vampires in the Biden Justice Department may still decide to persecute him under some bogus civil rights charade but maybe their plate is full right now persecuting the poor bastards from Jan. 6th and the school parents in Virginia.  But if he is free and clear what is the takeaway we have from this incident?

Well, for me the takeaway is that the Antifa/BLM organization is a paramilitary group that has weapons and tactics that can only be resisted by individuals armed and trained to do so.  Which tells me that the only way to avoid being subject to their attacks and harassment is to live in a jurisdiction where the police will arrest them if they riot.  That was Kyle Rittenhouse’s mistake.  He assumed that because he was heavily armed and fairly proficient with his weapon that he would be immune from harassment by the protestors.  That mistake could have cost him his life either at the scene or later in a court of law.  He was only saved by luck,  the copious video evidence of his actions being self-defense, the skill of his attorney to portray this evidence clearly and convincingly and the fact that he had an honest judge.

As far as I know, Florida is the only state that has passed laws to protect its citizens against municipal governments that decide to empower BLM rioters by handcuffing the police.  But that is the only way to prevent places like Atlanta, St. Louis, Houston and all the other blue cities in red states from harming red state citizens.  So, short of moving to Florida the strategy is living far enough from a blue city in a red state to avoid a barbarian invasion.

And honestly that’s the only lesson.  Anyone who attempts to do what Rittenhouse did will end up no better than he did and most probably a whole lot worse.  This problem can only be addressed by the united front of a whole community.  And that doesn’t exist in places like Wisconsin or Virginia and certainly not in New York or California.  In places like that BLM is the legitimate militia.  They are recognized to have the right to burn, loot and kill people who happen to be in the path of their swarm.  Maybe someday a counterforce will emerge on its own and challenge BLM and its protectors but that is far in the future.  That won’t happen until the people being attacked have nothing to lose and just rise up against their tormentors.  Maybe that’ll be in California.  Probably it’ll be the Hispanic people living in areas adjacent to the inner-city no-go zones.  When no one else will help them, they’ll pay protection money to the gangs and the gangs will handle the swarm by fighting fire with fire.

But that won’t be of any help to us.  Our lives are wrapped up in the fabric of civilized society and so we will have to live where that society still exists.  So that’s my takeaway from the Rittenhouse story.  Live where the majority of people will support the police protecting citizens from barbarians.  It’s a cautionary tale and an object lesson about where not to live.

More Motes and Oxen

photog Current Events , , , ,

I was on a zoom call with a couple of friends who live in central Massachusetts and they were telling me that the pot business is a howling success.  There are billboards on all the state highways.  The “dispensaries” as the pot shops are known are doing a land office business.  And we discussed how exactly the “growers” managed to protect their crop.  The theory was that although there were probably some crops outdoors, hidden from the view of the populace, mostly the stuff is being grown in locked greenhouses.  And we assumed this means that the “farmers” must have fairly robust security and probably a few guns thrown in for good measure.  One of the guys said that the biggest problem that’s become apparent is that the stuff being sold today is many times more potent than the stuff that used to be sold before legalization.  He mentioned THC levels that were near 90%.  And the upshot of this is psychological symptoms among the users are much worse and much more prevalent than in the past.  Anxiety and paranoia manifest at levels that render the users incapable of normal life.  They can’t keep a job or maintain relationships.

And it just struck me that here is a blue state policy to contrast with their alleged commitment to safety on the COVID front.  They’ll force you to be vaccinated and wear a mask against your will supposedly for your own good but they’ll allow a practice that they know is a mental and physical health threat and also a public safety hazard from the consideration of people driving under the influence and walking among us in a mentally unbalanced state.  In addition, since the FDA still considers marijuana illegal, they won’t get involved in regulating the safety of the pot that’s being sold and so any terrible mistake involving pesticides or other toxins finding its way into the drug cannot be prevented or adjudicated.

So here is the double standard.  They get to decide when freedom is important and when it’s not.  Freedom for me but not for thee.  But this definitely opens up the model for how the red states can change things in their favor.  Pick and choose the places where they will obey or defy federal law.  As an example, Texas needs to close their border with Mexico.  They should build their own wall a mile inside the federal wall.  They should arrest all illegal aliens and jail them until they agree to leave the country and if they come back make their next stay in jail very uncomfortable.  They should force all employers to obey immigration laws under the penalty of massive fines.  If the federal government squawks flip them the bird and continue on with real life.  And there are other things that make sense.  Welfare needs to be tightened up to the point where those who refuse to work should be so hard-up that they decide to leave and go to a blue state like California on their own.  Hell, that could be part of the policy to offer them bus or plane tickets to the blue state of their choice.

So that was what I was thinking about today.  Instead of freedom for thee but not for me let’s make it you live your life your way and I’ll live my life mine.