The Left’s Last Spasm

Bring it on.

I think the author here, J.r. Dunn, may well be correct. I can think of no other reason, other than perhaps mass delusion, which isn’t all that different. And do read it all, I’ve just excerpted a few of my favorite parts.

As far as anybody knows, the November 4th revolution/tantrum/jamboree planned by Antifa and its associate organizations remains on schedule. The “Opposition” – Antifa, the John Brown Clubs, Refuse Fascism, and assorted other scraps have announced that on that date the revolution will begin with a mass nationwide uprising that will continue until the Trump/Pence regime is overcome. Dozens of hundreds of the people’s vanguard will hit the streets, squatting at intersections and holding their breaths until the fascists are exorcised and the new epoch of light is fully underway. (Further details can be found here.)

Conservatives, as is all too often the case, have overreacted.  Numerous sites, publications, and radio shows have featured rhetoric such as “Antifa Planning Communist Revolution for America on November 4,” “Patriots beware! ANTIFA plans armed uprising on November 4!,” and “The Leftist Chaos Will Be Coming On November 4th.” (Links withheld to protect the guilty.)

But the truth, if anything, is exactly the opposite. What we are experiencing, far from a deadly revolutionary upsurge threatening everything of value, is a historically unique situation where, for the first time on record, a leftist movement is in complete and accelerating collapse within a democratic polity. The upcoming people’s revolt is simply another symptom of this.

The Democrats, America’s de facto leftist party (note how a sworn socialist, Bernie Sanders, is effectively exercising leadership of the party without anyone so much as blinking) have lost over 1,000 offices nationwide in the past year. The GOP controls nearly two-thirds of all governorships and nearly half of state governments. The left’s political presence and influence is negligible across vast areas of the heartland. They have abandoned the working class, the bedrock of any leftist movement, in favor of representing transsexuals, ball club millionaires, and noncitizen criminals, not a strategy with much of a future, on the face of it.

The year since the 2016 electoral debacle has witnessed a number of off-elections to replace cabinet picks, each one hailed by the media as the turning of the progressive tide, each one won by the GOP.

Thus leading many of us to recall Trump’s prediction, “So much winning. You’re going to get tired of winning”. Well, I haven’t, yet. It feels real good.

[…]

Then we have the NFL. The national anthem uproar is the fruit of the latest attempt by the left to turn American workingmen’s institutions – sports and country music in particular – into left-wing systems to shunt the regular Joes into the arms of the commissars, where they belong. Its failure, at the hands of an irate public (not to forget Donald Trump, certainly, here as in many other instances the indispensable man), is one of the most encouraging developments in the wake of 2016. Colin Kaepernick, who attempted to revive a foundering career on the field though political posturing, can serve as an object lesson to all the others attempting to follow in his wake. The NFL, already on the skids, now faces an accelerating and well-deserved financial hemorrhage. (I say that even though my grandfather helped found the organization.)

Finally, we get to Harvey. Harvey Weinstein was a bicoastal combination of Graydon Carter and George Soros, acting as a facilitator between left-wing politics and popular culture while at the same time financing left-wing politicians – including the Clintons, the millennial Borgias – to the tune of millions. All this bought him immunity for decades of sex offenses. The fact that it came to an end in large part due to the efforts of Rose McGowan, onetime inamorata of Marilyn Manson and collaborator with Quentin Tarantino, and Ronan Farrow, a virtual stereotype of the Manhattan liberal, makes his fall even sweeter.

I like many of you, wasted many hours watching the NFL, and like others, I have noticed the quality of play decrease, and then this silliness during the Anthem. Well, I really can’t say I miss it much and see no reason to ever start watching again. Those hours are far better spent now. Buh-Bye NFL!

[…]

Yet all attention on the right seems to be focused on a gang of undergrads in black hoodies and Guy Fawkes masks. How can we correlate the two – black-clad militants brash enough to threaten the government itself while their entire political/social superstructure collapses in ruins around them? On the face of it, it seems paradoxical. But there’s actually no contradiction at all. The one follows the other as sure as Stalin followed Lenin. The left has turned violent because it’s falling apart. They don’t have anything else. No plans, no prospects, no leadership. The left has failed, and violence is all that remains.

Left-wing failure is not arguable. The international record stands for itself, having become a truism without ever quite attaining the status of a cliché. Though the academy and the media have tried their best to bury the record (while earnest and naïve types such as Anne Applebaum scratch their heads as to why it lacks the immediacy of the Nazi crimes), it’s impossible to hide failures so gargantuan as to have left mountainous piles of corpses across the entire landscape of Eurasia. (Every few years the spring thaw in Siberia and the Urals uncovers mass graves, the legacy of the Gulag, sending thousands of mummified, nearly intact corpses drifting down the rivers. This is what Weinstein, Antifa and the rest would wish on us.) The same pattern is occurring at this moment in Venezuela, a wealthy nation reduced first to pauperdom and soon to open massacre.

Something to interject here is that the reason that America leads the free world, is because we fought very hard to be free, and we all know hard lessons stick. And then our founder’s had the gumption and foresight to write it all down so that we could refer back to what they had said and done. And they even had the foresight to make their plan the supreme law of the land, subject to change only with great difficulty and with the consent of a supermajority of citizens, and legislators at all levels. It is something that even our near peers, like the UK lack. Their rule, that one Parliament may not bind another, means that it can all be lost in an instant. And finally, our leadership is based on our passionate defense of liberty which hasn’t waned since before 1776. We lead because we tend the flame of freedom, we were the first and if necessary we will be the last, but the flame shall not go out again.

I have Brits tell me every day that demographics will destroy us (and them). My standard answer is (although more politely) “Here, hold my beer”. We were the first, and we have kept the faith. It is nearly 120 years since the first Progressive Teddy Roosevelt, (who actually wasn’t all bad) was elected, and watch us, of all the people in the world, while we’ve been hurt, sometimes badly, by the disease, yet here we still stand, and get this: WE ARE WINNING! Mostly because we have the guts and the means to fight back. Something else the smarter ones tell me often is to never, ever let them take your guns. You’d be surprised how often I hear that from Brits I respect highly.

What I tell them is that it is a long process, and they went much further down the road than we did. They need to get control of the Conservative Party, even as we are starting to do the Republican Party, another place where Trump is proving indispensable. But Corbyn’s Labour party is showing the same signs as our left. They need to quit making excuses and just do it.

It’s best to ignore them, and let the law take its course. We hold all the cards. The thunderous, nationwide shout of “No!” that greeted the NFL “protests” clearly demonstrates that the United States remains solid. The greatest public humiliation endured by the American left in this century proved that the bedrock of this nation still exists, uneroded by ephemeral entities like Obama and the Clintons. The teenage ninjas think they can take that down with a few slingshots and Molotov cocktails. Let them try.

 

I think the best thing to do with the leftists is simply laugh at them, and then use their tears as a mixer in our whiskey. It also reminds me of a bit of graffiti from when I was in college back in the early seventies. Carved on the stall wall in the Union was this,

Workers of the World arise,

So that we may more easily gun you down.

Bring it on, I’m tired of this nonsense, even as my dad was in the sixties.

Advertisements

Making American Football Great Again

I have a confession to make, I didn’t bother watching the Super Bowl, yesterday. In fact, I haven’t watched a pro game all year. I’m not exactly boycotting the NFL although it does tend to offend me. I just don’t care much anymore, maybe I’ve outgrown it. I don’t really know, likely because I haven’t thought about it much. My first love was always the college game (especially the Big 10) anyway. Given Purdue’s performance the last few years, I haven’t watched much of that either.

But it seems that the Patriots started slow and make one heck of a comeback yesterday, as I read Mary Katharine Ham’s article in The Federalist this morning, I rather wished I had. Both for the game, which went into OT and for Lady Gaga’s halftime show. Here’s a bit

Many Americans were bracing themselves for the halftime show of the Super Bowl Sunday. Lady Gaga, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter and left-leaning activist, had a huge stage 13 minutes. Recent precedent suggested such a performance could not take place without some kind of obvious anti-Trump political statement. Some boycotted in anticipation.

Those like myself, who like sports to be an oasis from politics, were skeptical but hoped for the best. She’s a great performer with a great voice. She’s also been inventive in her career, if not subtle, so a run-of-the-mill Trump denunciation would have felt pretty tired. It would have won her plenty of the usual social media plaudits, but she went a different route. I underestimated her.

Gaga opened her performance atop the stadium, clad in iridescent armor, singing “God Bless America” and “This Land is Your Land” against a back drop of the American flag formed by the red, white, and blue head lamps of 300 synchronized drones.

She transitioned to the Pledge of Allegiance, pointing at the sky for “under God” and adding special emphasis to “for all.” Some, seemingly looking for offense, accused Gaga of omitting “under God,” but she did not.

Gaga then tore through a medley of her greatest hits, even teasing the Houston audience by doing a verse of her Beyoncé collaboration “Telephone” but without an appearance by the hometown diva. Power move. She sang a cappella, she played the piano, she said hi to her parents, and she put on a hell of a show.

She hugged someone briefly during her song “Stay,” and the Internet is trying to figure out if that had any political significance. “This Land Is Your Land” was written by folk singer Woody Guthrie as a response to “God Bless America,” with critical lyrics and a chorus of “God blessed America for me,” so, the performance was not without its messages.

That sounds pretty damned good to me. Mary Katharine is right, she’s a talented lady, who works hard at her craft, she’s just not really my cup of tea, but then I’m an old fogey anyway. But it’s definitely time for America to begin to pull together again, and I like This Land is your Land as well as God Bless America. And you know, we really are all in this together, whatever we think about Hillary Clinton and/or Donald Trump, and all our other controversies. Nor do I especially mind watching a beautiful woman dance, and leap, and such. I’m old, but not that old. 🙂

She also talked a bit about the game

Down 21-3 in the first half thanks to an authoritative performance from Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan and the Falcons defense, Brady looked uncharacteristically rattled at times. Down 28-3 in the third quarter, he looked uncharacteristically cornered. But the Patriots made the best of a flubbed fourth-quarter Falcons pass on third and 1, recovering and later scoring to bring the game to within 8, and a couple more bad pass play calls that took the Birds out of range of the field goal that might have put the game out of reach.

In the end, Brady’s performance wasn’t without his customary dominance and grit. But it was different. It was unexpected. Brady no doubt earned new fans—or, at the very least, grudging respect from skeptics—who will be interested in his game, no matter his politics. He won dramatically and he won graciously, though not without knocking NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell obliquely in his acceptance speech, which is something we can all get behind. He orchestrated the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, was named MVP in the only overtime the Super Bowl has ever seen, and he accepted the giant trophy from his nemesis while acknowledging his sick mother, in the crowd to watch her son win.

via Lady Gaga And Tom Brady Made America Great Again Sunday

And that too sounds like TV worth watching. It’s been a very long year, and I for one would be very pleased if we all just quit yelling so much at each other, and got on with the game.

Now if only Purdue could finally put together a winning team

Objective Reality and Useless Mouths

If you’re younger than me by more than a couple of years, actually it might be more accurate to say unless you’re ten years older than me, you’re not like me. Why? Pretty simple really.

You see, my parents worked all the way through the depression, there aren’t any handcarts of apples in my history. That wasn’t much of a surprise, really, given that my dad held his dad in his arms while he died. He was a junior in high school, and now he was responsible for feeding his 6 younger brothers and sisters, and his mom. This would have been in the 20s and there was no government help, likely there was a bit of short-term help from the church. Grampa was a musician and a mechanic, he ran the light plant and the town band (of the 9-11 members, 7 were his sons by the way). Neither of those are going to make you a rich man, and he wasn’t. I have doubts he ever saw the inside of the bank, although he might have, he did try manufacturing bicycles, and failed.

But, anyway, Dad took over and kept them all fed and clothed, that was the end of schooling of course. Although I can remember the owner of a fabrication company that did our work telling me after he died, that dad was the best engineer he ever worked with. I believe it, I saw his work and I saw the respect from his sons-in-law, both professional engineers, one civil, and one mechanical.

But think about that, for a bit. from the time he was 17 about, in the 1920s; until he retired in the late 1960s he was never out of work, and was nearly always respected. But some of those days were spent loading 100 pound bags of potatoes into boxcars by hand for 18 or so hours.I met people at his funeral that he hadn’t seen since 1938, they remembered and cared enough to drive 200 miles to his funeral.

And that was how I was raised as well, although I haven’t had the challenges he did. But you know, the one thing I never heard dad do? He never complained about his life, or the curveballs it threw at him, and there were some. He worked his way through it, with  (a little, sometimes very little) humor. hard work and intelligence. And his last job started on 1 August 1939 with a shoebox of paper, and when he retired in 1969, it was a functioning power company with a physical plant worth something like $2 million dollars. Real dollars, worth close to a 20th of an ounce of gold each, not the devalued scrip we have now.

And here’s the lesson of the day, and dad’s life.

Personal responsibility is the key to it all. I watch the fools in Washington a goodly bit, as do many of you. It sickens me but it is important. What’s the most sickening about it? The constant striving to shift the blame around and the complete unwillingness to take the blame for anything. At some point it will fail, and badly.

Where does that start? With our kids. While I don’t happen to have any, I have had a bunch of young employees over the years. So I tend to see them as they’re entering the workforce. I am not impressed. In fact, I am appalled. These precious snowflakes that you have spent years worrying about and defending when they screwed up (and they did often) are absolutely worthless. It’s pretty much a lost generation, if America can even survive it.

What do I mean? Here read about the reprobates, and their delinquent parents, from Cassy Fiano at Victory Girls

In Plano, Texas, a girl named Shea Shawhan has become the victim of bullying. It’s not a new story — indeed, the rise of bullying over the past few years has been covered to death in the media — but Shea’s story is a little more despicable than usual. Shea is a special needs student. She was born with a brain injury that causes her to suffer seizures. She is 18-years-old, but possesses the mental capacity of an eight-year-old. Yet she has been targeted by vicious bullies urging her to kill herself and threatening her with rape.

One of the texts read: ‘Why are u still here. Clearly no one wants you. U only have special needs friends. And ur ugly and have a horrible fashion sense. Honestly ur clothes suck.’

… Some of the missives addressed to the student were even more explicit and menacing, including one that stated: ‘Shea is so annoying but cute I want to do more than just kiss her I want to rape her then kill her. That will finally make sure she goes away for good.’

… A message sent in late September even boasted that Shea and her mother would never be able to figure out who has been tormenting her.

‘I am many because we are a group and a union of people who dislike u,’ the missive stated.

The texts were sent from a web application that generates fake phone numbers, making the identities of the perpetrators difficult to trace. But what will happen when they are caught? Several recent similar cases can give us an idea.

Consider the case of Brian Holloway. The former NFL player found his house trashed after a party took place with over 300 teenagers present. Many of the teenagers took photos of the party, including the vandalism, and posted them online. Holloway shared those same photos online in a plea to help save the 300 teens. Rather than pressing charges against them for the $20,000 in damages the teens caused, he invited them to his house for a picnic for veterans, where they would also spend the day helping to clean up the mess they made. One teenager showed up.

Other parents of the 300 criminals? They found lawyers and threatened to sue Holloway. And so instead of spending a day righting their wrongs, these teens are finding out that arrests are going to be made — for felony charges, too.

 Continue reading How to End Teenage Bullying

Those kids in any objective society are dead. They are unemployable, good job parents.

The old rules will come back, and when they do, again it will hold that “If you would eat: work”.

And remember these guys as well

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Personally I think we would be wise to heed The Gods of the Copybook Headings. For as I’ve said before:

“If you break the laws of reality; Reality will break you.”

Related articles

• Plano Teen Bullied By Text Messages (kvil.cbslocal.com)
• Fla. sheriff on why he charged dead teen’s alleged bullies (cbsnews.com)
• 6 Arrests In Vandalism Of Former Patriot Brian Holloway’s Home (boston.cbslocal.com)
• Teen arrested after bragging she bullied suicide girl (stuff.co.nz)
• Nightmare in Maryville, Mo.: Teens’ sexual encounter ignites a firestorm against family (stltoday.com)

Will Ralston’s Lingerie Football League Have Better Officials than the NFL?

 

I wasn’t going to address the mess in the game on Monday since nearly everybody else has but, this is just too ridiculous for words, the NFL would be well advised to get this settled before somebody gets badly hurt, they’ve already hurt the credibility of the league badly. From The Objective Conservative.

We couldn’t pass up a relevant article from the Daily Caller given the controversy over the Packers Seahawk game the other night.    Apparently some of the replacement officials in the NFL aren’t competent enough to officiate in the Lingerie League…..

Refs fired from Lingerie Football League still officiating NFL games
 by Sarah Hofmann

“If you think getting fired as a referee for the Lingerie Football League means you’ve lost the best job imaginable, have no fear — you can always get a job officiating NFLgames.

The LFL had been keeping silent about the replacement referees in the NFL until early Tuesday morning.

In August, Deadspin reached out to the league for comment about a rumor that some of the refs had been fired. After the controversial Packers versus Seahawks outcome Monday night, the league responded and took the opportunity to jab the NFL as well:
“Because of the LFL’s perception it is that much more critical for us to hire officiating crews that are competent, not only for the credibility of our game but to keep our athletes safer. Due to several on-field incompetent officiating we chose to part ways with with a couple crews which apparently are now officiating in the NFL. We have a lot of respect for our officials but we felt the officiating was not in line with our expectations……….”

Objective Conservative: Will Ralston’s Lingerie Football League Have Better Officials than the NFL?.

Related articles

• Some replacement refs fired from Lingerie Football League for incompetence (radio.woai.com)
• Some NFL replacement refs had been fired from the Lingerie Football League, says Lingerie Football League (offthebench.nbcsports.com)
• After Seahawks game, Lingerie Football League says it fired refs now in NFL (seattlepi.com)