Crypto Hitlers, Everywhere!
Because I like to bring comfort to those in distress, How To Avoid Tears And Pretentious Agonising:
Well, you’d think that repel invaders and uphold the most basic of laws wouldn’t be too much to ask of a government. And yet.
And at this terribly difficult time, for some, do spare a thought for this tightly-wound progressive gentleman, presumably now trembling at the prospect of some Trumpian Sturmabteilung. Oh, and this madam here, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. The one rendered distraught by a flight attendant’s courtesy and its ominous implications for the future of the world.
Update, via the comments:
Writing in the Guardian, the left-leaning novelist Francine Prose is not, I fear, taking recent developments well:
Following the above, those unhinged leanings really kick into gear, with the inevitable mentions of Hitler, Stalin, dictatorship, people thrown from helicopters, and “the imprisonment and execution of those who disagree.” A feverish, dystopian drama in which, one assumes, Ms Prose anticipates a starring role.
Needless to say, Ms Prose is far from alone in her weird theatre of distress. And as illustrated many times in the comments below, the overlap of progressive politics and mental illness would seem to be quite significant.
And so, we have the round-the-clock delusional ravings of MSNBC, including the repeated claim that Florida is “an extreme right-wing fascist state,” and Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, a once-reputable publication, screeching profanities and insisting, quite emphatically, that anyone who chose to vote differently from herself must be racist, sexist, and “fucking fascists.”
No other possibilities fitting inside her gentle, thoughtful head.
The phenomenon, a competitively uploaded departure from reality, is difficult to explain in terms of mere politics and actual, real-world policies. We appear to be in the realm of… well, something else.
Update 2:
Pst314 brings rumblings from academia, where the clever people gather:
What a sweet guy! Because he cares so deeply.
That would be this chap here:
Assistant Director for Fraternity and Sorority Life at @uoregon tells Trump supporters to kiII themselves
Any comment @uoregon? pic.twitter.com/hwK0qhH9b1
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 7, 2024
Says Mr Serrato,
When they tell you who they are, believe them. As I’m told the kids say.
I mean, if a spiteful, childish, leftist ideologue announces to the world, on camera, that his political fixations are much more important to him than his supposed loved ones, his family and lifelong friends, and that he wishes death on them for daring to disagree with him, then I see no reason to assume that he must mean something other than what he’s actually saying, having thought about it and filmed it, and having then shared it with the world.
Where students might see.
But hey, pronouns in bio.
As seen, for instance, here, these are not things said and done reluctantly, in some momentary fit of anger, or under duress. This is something that’s been considered, chosen, rehearsed, and then willingly shared. Something that Mr Serrato feels emboldened to do, presumably because many of his peers will be saying much the same things. As if it could have no negative repercussions.
Happily, and somewhat surprisingly, he was wrong, on this occasion at least, and has, it seems, been placed on “administrative leave.”
Update 3:
In the comments, a recurring motif is the howling of progressive women who are seemingly unable to comprehend how a society reshaped to accommodate their fever dreams may not appeal to everyone. As if they, and their psychology, weren’t part of the equation.
With the above in mind, readers may find the following instructive, albeit in ways the speaker, Danielle Mann, doesn’t intend:
BREAKING: Danielle Mann, a teacher at @TalawandaHS in Ohio was placed on administrative leave after she filmed an unhinged video of herself on school grounds ranting about the election, suggesting that men who voted for Trump are unsafe to be around.
These are the people… pic.twitter.com/WVsIoZfj51
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 8, 2024
You see, she needs to know where you live. And you have to wear an identifying bracelet. And hey, who could possibly dislike the idea of these bedlamites having the leverage they crave? A world they would find congenial, shaped in their image, according to their compulsions.
Oh, and yes, she’s a high-school teacher. Influencing other people’s children. Every day of the week.
Consider this a post-election open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Just heard the hardest slap-down of a woman, ever… She was complaining in the line at the store about how she’d just lost “her right to choose…”, and the guy behind her said something to the effect of “Does that mean I don’t have to ask you where we’re going to eat from now on…? ‘Cos, if I’d known that, I’d have voted for him…”
I don’t think he’s getting laid any time soon, from the look she gave him.
@Kirk
I put the query to Perplexity.ai as to how many votes are still outstanding and it said 16 million. What you state was bugging me as well. How odd that the 2024 total votes is approximately 155 million which matches (forgive if my sources and/or addition are off) the totals from 2020. I would expect a few million more this time around given that Total Hitler 100% was on the ticket with Total Hitler 150% as his VP. Surely the GOTV efforts would have flushed out more voters this time.
And to the contempt they showed for many more years than that–contempt for our rights, contempt for our dignity, and so on. I can’t count the number of “liberals” who were gratuitously rude to me and others, and who openly dismissed and mocked incidents of conservatives being deplatformed, demoted, fired, and debanked. Their contempt and their embrace of tyranny earns us the moral right to laugh at their anguish.
California misdemeanors now felonies…
Do not tell me I didn’t warn people… The normies are fed the f*ck up.
Look for some serious slam-back on Gov. Newsom’s refinery purge coming down, soon. With Trump and Vance in office at the Federal level, I think that the California environazi movement is in for some sad days ahead…
OMG…
Can you say “victory dance”?
Even the goddamn squirrels are tap-dancing on her political grave, now…
I first read “California misdemeanor” as “being a Californian”.
(from here.)
@pst314, who said:
Only in the evolutionary sense… If you still live there, you’re either very unlucky or you’re overdue for a visit from Mr. Consequence. My take on the whole thing is that they’re eventually going to run into some hard stops, and it’ll all come crashing down on them. What comes after? Up to them…
I do see the Feds intervening. Those refineries are a national strategic asset, just like the ports are. Commerce clause and all the rest…
We’re overdue for a legal principle that says you don’t get to make law or regulation that affects other states without their full consent. Californication should stop at California borders… I’d also like to see something done that says that if you drive your state into bankruptcy, then it loses state status, goes back to being a territory, and you have to reapply as a state once you unf*ck yourself. California could do with being broken up, as well… Too many disparate elements, too much space covered.
Many of the western states are quite similar; Eastern Oregon and Washington, for example? Precisely zero common interests or politics with the urban western counties making up the Seattle-Portland corridor. Break them up; split both states down the Cascades, and give each their own government. As it is, those of us in Eastern Washington have to put up with the major stupidities forced on us by just three urban counties: King, Pierce, and Snohomish. Outside the Puget Sound urban region, everyone is pretty conservative, but with the way they’re all run, we have to kowtow to their politics.
Nothing good will come out of this. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that Trump deserved those criminal convictions.
On a political level, he represents a rejection of the sensible right-of-centre politics that have held sway for the better part of five decades – Reaganomics, the conviction that smaller government is better. He appeals to this only on a superficial level with his claim that he will fire bureaucrats. Really. We know how Trump operates. He fires people who disagree with him and installs yes-men. That is what he will do.
On a broader political level, he lied about the results of the 2020 election and corrupted the belief of so many in a fair and free electoral process that he may have done irreparable damage to the US democracy.
I realise this is a different view to that held by many on this page. That’s fine.
For those who didn’t notice, that’s a pastiche of a famous Frazetta painting:
@TimT…
I bet you done real good on all those tests they gave you, didn’t you?
Anyone who is serious knows the ‘criminal’ conviction is bollocks on stilts – Bragg found a compliant, complicit judge to magic paperwork misdemeanors into felonies by claiming they were, post-facto, federal campaign finance violations.
On a political level, he represents a rejection of the sensible right-of-centre politics that have held sway for the better part of five decades…
Ah, a visitor from Wolkenkuckucksheim.
@aelfheld, who rightly pointed out:
Not to mention the ex post facto bullshit required to make the E. Jean Carroll thing even possible. For a rape she said happened exactly as a Law and Order script laid it out, and wearing a dress that wasn’t produced until nearly a decade after the random time she said the rape happened…
Along with everything else they threw at him. While ignoring all the criminal activity of the Clintons and Bidens since for-freaking-ever. Haiti? Ukraine? Any of that ring any bells for you, Timmy? How about Burisma and Uranium One? The bullshit going on in Benghazi?
In order for anyone to believe Trump is a criminal while the rest of the crooks are innocent requires such ignorance and stupidity so as guarantee that the person mouthing it almost certainly graduated from one of our Ivy League indoctrination centers, probably Summa Cum Dumbass.
Yeah yeah, and the Schlaraffenland is calling for you, Herr Muldoon.
TimT delivered witty repartee…
In your case, Herr Tim, there’s a village out there missing its idiot. You ought to call them, let them know how you’re doing. They miss you, and your vacuous humor.
In order for anyone to believe Trump is a criminal while the rest of the crooks are innocent requires such ignorance and stupidity…
I am still marveling (having lived through the last five decades) at the notion that the EPA, DOE (both of them), Homeland Security, Amtrak, Obamacare, and all the similar stuff that has accreted over the last 50 years are apparently exemplars of center right small government.
Hey, I’m all for political figures to be prosecuted for crimes committed in office.
Except that nobody ever gets prosecuted. If the truth about most Beltway types were known, they’d all be in jail several times over.
Utter non sequitur.
Just because.
Timmy,
We can go round and round on matters of degree, perceptions, all sorts of political rabbit holes, etc. on stuff like this. In order to establish a solid basis for any discussion of this nature, let me ask you one simple question. One with a clear, objective yes/no answer. We can work our way up to these other points later. I have asked this simple question to about 30 people now. No one seems to be able to answer it: Did Donald Trump tell people to drink bleach? Simple question, simple yes/no answer. Yes or no?
WTP, it is demonstrably clear that Timmay darling can’t do either clarity or objective. He knows what he knows because an authority figure acceptable to him told him something and provided no actual, y’know… Evidence. But, he believes what he does, really really hard. So it must be true! It must!! He believes in himself, so it is!!!
He’s sadly typical of every college graduate I’ve worked with over the last fifty years, and a perfect example of why an “education” is wasted on most of the people they give diplomas. No contravening thought can be accepted, lest his carefully constructed fantasy worldview is questioned.
See, despite Mueller spending millions of dollars with a hand-picked team of Democrat Party-affiliated expert lawyers and 3+ years of effort, they labored and manifested a puff of smoke…
Which, no doubt, our brave Timmay will inform us shortly, was somehow corruptly manipulated so as to let his bete noir Donald Trump go scot-free. The idea that Trump might have been lily-white and cleanly innocent of the charges as the finest snow is anathema, not to be acknowledged… Somehow, Mueller et al were coerced into finding… Nothing. The fact that they couldn’t produce anything to charge him with is actually proof of his, ya know… Guilt. Of what? No idea; he’s Donald Trump, Timmay doesn’t like him, so he must be guilty of something, right? Right…?
I could go on for another few dozen similar “gotcha” cases with Trump that nobody actually managed to make stick, but our brilliant Timmay will no doubt refute one and all through the power of… What? Sheer credulity and belief in the Democratic Party? Dunno. No idea how you penetrate a skull of that thickness, and I’ve no desire to break any tools finding out.
The really darkly humorous thing about TimmayT and his rav… Ah… Assertions?
He completely misses the sad fact that the sort of justice he wants for Trump and any person of a MAGA persuasion is precisely that of Judge-President Roland Freisler and his People’s Court. He will no doubt completely miss who that is, and the parallels existing there, certain of his own probity and wisdom.
Reality? When he looks in the mirror, he ought to be seeing Freisler’s face, not his own.
He knows what he knows because an authority figure acceptable to him told him something and provided no actual, y’know… Evidence.
Indeed, and unless his spelling of center is an affectation, likely repeating pablum fed by local media that think anyone a micron to the right of Corbyn, Trudeau, Ardern, et al. is “center right”.
I’ve been reading European news sources for decades, now.
I’ve yet to find a one of them that presented either accurate or undistorted news about the United States. They approach the hinterlands of this country like they’re synonymous with deepest, dankest Africa where cannibal tribes and lions roam at night, eating decent people. They actually know nothing, and project their own prejudices more than anything else.
TimmayT is morally certain he has the right of it, see, ‘cos he’s so smart and so, so sophisticated, and he’s here to lecture the rubes about what he knows to be true.
Thing is, he’s got zero personal knowledge of anything here in the actual real United States, and he’s entirely reliant on “sources” whose veracity he knows even less about. Who was that German “correspondent” for the US who was proven never to have even actually visited the sites he wrote about?
Claas Relotius
An amusing example, and one indicative of certain truths to be seen. Europe has been getting the US wrong for a very long time, and listening to itself. I’ve met European tourists over here that actually expected to have to deal with Indian attacks as described in Karl May’s fantasies, and they had no idea at all that May had never visited the US until well after most of his popular western tales were published…
Ah, Europe… Your ignorance is matched only by your arrogance.
Well, you’d think that repel invaders and uphold the most basic laws wouldn’t be too much to ask of a government.
Yet here we are.
It occurs to me that this tightly-wound chappie may spend his time watching MSNBC.
That can’t be good for you.
The overlap of progressive politics and mental illness is quite significant.
Farnsworth, Kirk, re Legos etc at Georgetown, which has long fancied itself as the ultimate talent pool for the diplomatic corps… Long ago my parents and I toured DC and I was treated to a view at the State Department of a wall honoring fallen diplomats who had died on duty, One I found striking was a mid-ranker whose station had been overtaken by a murderous uprising, and who was described as having worked with heroism to preserve the lives of those sheltering at his post and who had died of exhaustion in the midst of the chaos. Seemingly the larval diplomats of today aren’t made of quite the same stuff.
[ Chomps toast, compiles tomorrow’s Ephemera. ]
Meanwhile, over at Scientific American, all is not well:
Ms Helmuth, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, has been mentioned here before.
I now have so many saved Tweets from yesterday my plans for a ‘Tweet of the Month Election Special’ for November have had to be converted into something else…
“It looks like Trump Derangement Syndrome will have to be added to the DSM and/or the ICD soon.“
Well, there’s room, Man in the Maze, since they seem to have taken out autogynephilia….
It’s difficult to explain the phenomenon in terms of mere politics and actual policies. We’re in the realm of… well, something else.
And so, we get the editor-in-chief of Scientific American screeching profanities and insisting, quite emphatically, that anyone who chose to vote differently must be racist, sexist, and “fucking fascists.” No other possibilities fit inside her head.
It’s quite a thing.
Meanwhile, in the NHS, the march of the ‘Half built penises’*:
“Some remain ‘in limbo’ between surgeries – leaving them with ‘indeterminate genitalia’ – while others are still waiting to undergo their first operation.“
Could always take up boxing….
*Not the new ‘Harry Potter’ we were all awaiting
@Megaera,
I would have to say that the State Department of today ain’t what it was, once upon a time, long ago.
I was reminded of something by the recent death of the young Sergeant that was injured at that idiotic pier in Gaza.
Couple of points about that… One is that, back in ye darke ages of the Clinton administration, I was working at an Army Corps Headquarters. Enlightening tour, that was… Seems that during the period I was there, a bunch of capital-H History happened; among the events was the whole Rwanda nightmare. Madeleine Albright’s State Department wanted us to Do Something(TM) about that, of course. At that time, the Army officer corps hadn’t been fully purged, so unlike with that pier-in-Gaza idiocy, the Army basically told the State Department that while they’d love to comply with that whole thing, there were… Issues. Like, the minor problem of getting enough troops into Rwanda and then sustaining them. There simply wasn’t any logistically feasible means of doing that, period. They could have air-dropped the 82nd Airborne into Rwanda, true, but that basically meant that they’d be left out there hanging without food, fuel, or much of any support. At. All. The only practical method of doing anything at all meant taking over a port somewhere on the coast, and then establishing lines of communications inland to Rwanda, which meant likely starting a war with one or two African nations, and then at least a six-month campaign to clear, repair, and likely build the roads to get into Rwanda from those ports. Which weren’t all that great to begin with, so we’d likely have to spend time building those up, as well… The whole thing was an epic non-starter.
Which made the Clintons, the State Department, and sundry other idiots angry that the Army hadn’t fallen in with their brilliant ideas. We did many command-post exercises trying to wargame some way of making an intervention in Rwanda possible, but the reality was, Central Africa+landlocked=lots of dead American soldiers and little real effect on the mess created by French and Belgian machinations dating back to the days of the Belgian Congo. Just was not possible, even with the best will in the world.
Later on, the same set of idiots wanted us to “intervene” in the former Yugoslavia, and we did a bunch of command post exercises designed to work that out. State Department sent out a bunch of their “area experts”, and we got the signal experience of working with them, and I suddenly discovered why so many “issues” seem to happen to the US. It’s mostly because the people running these things are f*cking morons.
First, I have to tell you this: I grew up in and among the expat Yugoslavian community here in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. My stepdad was Slovenian, and that was back when it was still a province of Yugoslavia and Tito was sitting on top of everyone to make sure they at least acted civil towards each other. I speak a little of each of the major languages, I know the culture about as well as any outsider with my exposure should.
You have no ‘effing idea how little the State Department “experts” they sent out to us actually knew. I sat in their “area briefings”, and they were both short and delusionally wrong. So far as these “experts” were concerned, Yugoslav history began with the end of WWII and Tito; there wasn’t anything before. They had no idea what the hell was going on with the various ethnic groups, or even why they were at each other’s throats. I found myself having to explain the significance of the Bosnian Muslim resurgence, and how that triggered Serbian nationalism.
The main “area expert” had spent something like 20 years in Yugoslavia. He’d never gotten out of Belgrade, didn’t speak any of the languages fluently, and the extent of his travels outside of Belgrade basically consisted of going to the nude beaches around Split. I had to explain the whole “Turk” thing to him, and it was apparently a revelation to him that the Turks had ever been in that part of the world, and he just could not understand why the Serbs hated the Bosniak Muslims. No clue; didn’t think the history was relevant. Didn’t know the history, couldn’t grasp that the US State Department’s backing/protection of Izetbegović basically triggered the Serb reaction because to them, “Muslim revival” meant “They’re gonna sell our kids in Istanbul, again…”
The US State Department had not clue one how the Balkan mind works, period. They couldn’t get the necessity for the internecine faction wars, couldn’t understand the careful balancing act that Tito had put in place, and failed completely to grasp what they were doing by protecting Izetbegović at the behest of the Saudis.
Swear to God, the level of outright feckless ignorance I saw in those assholes was so monumental that it flatly boggled my mind. I don’t know if they’d sent out second-string personnel to brief us and participate in the war games that we did or not, but I do know that what I saw of the State Department left me deeply cynical about their competence and ability at doing much of anything. I think we’d do better outsourcing the the Mormon Church, or something… At least, they bother to learn the local languages most of the time.
That whole thing with the Gaza pier is quintessential Obama/Biden incompetence. Milley and some others were the key decision-makers behind shutting the Army’s over-the-shore capabilities down; they sold the equipment and boats, let most of the people go, and what is left is barely capable of functioning here in the continental US, let alone somewhere in the Eastern Med. Total travesty; had they tried that crap back in the 1990s, with the current state of capacity? The leadership would have been looking out for the troops, and told them to piss off. These days? LOL… The incompetent pig-f*cking swine just left the troops out to hang. And, predictably, die.
I do not have sufficient expressive words to fully describe my loathing for these so-called “officers”. They’ve betrayed their trust; they should all be tried and hung for their treason, if found guilty.
Oh, yeah… And, another damn thing about the idiotic cabal running the State Department and foreign policy.
If any of you observing the mess in Ukraine think that Bidenco is actually supporting Ukraine? LOL… You, my friend, are a credulous fool that believes whatever the huckster is telling you. You’re a living, breathing expression of the word “Prey animal”, and you’ve been suckered.
The incremental drip of supplies into Ukraine is the thing you should be looking at; the assclowns in the administration have been slow-walking everything, and stopping actual support that would benefit the Ukrainians, like all those Bradleys they refused to ship. They’re actively demilitarizing functional assets that could go to Ukraine, rather than sending them. They’re blocking things like the Swedish AWACs.
Watch their hands, don’t listen to them. What are they doing?
They’re actively f*cking the Ukrainians over. Between Biden and Scholz, they’ve prevented more military aid than they’ve actually provided. There are Patriot batteries that could be defending Ukraine available, but they won’t send them. Biden could have cut the Iranians off from the money he gave them, which was promptly turned into drones and missiles sent into Ukraine, but… He did not. He gave Iran billions; we got, in turn, October 7th and all that military material sent into Russia.
Biden is not on Ukraine’s side. Based on the open-source intel that showed up there at the mid-point of 2022, there were plans and agreements about who was getting what in Ukraine, for all the Russian oligarchs. I remain convinced that the deal was supposed to be that Russia invaded, with Biden’s silent acquiescence, and then the US would help Zelensky get out, and Russia would quietly rape Ukraine and Moldova, with certain Burisma-affiliated parties getting their cut.
I also surmise that when Zelensky refused the evacuation, he blackmailed the Biden administration with what the Ukrainians know about Biden’s family business. This explains the lip service, and the slow-rolling, because Biden really wants to screw Ukraine over, and has been doing so since day one.
We shall see what happens when Trump gets into office. I think he’s going to make a good-faith attempt at a negotiated peace, and then when the Russians blow that up, he’s going to drop the hammer on them, same as he did in Iran and Afghanistan. Watch and observe; no doubt, the Democrats will keep right on claiming he’s in Putin’s pocket, but the reality is that Putin has had the Democrats there since Hillary and her Reset/Uranium One days.
I mean, think about it: If Putin really was working with Trump and supporting him, wouldn’t he have done a lot of things differently? As in, y’know… Not telling CENTCOM that there weren’t any Russian troops with those poor slob Wagner guys that got whacked in Syria? I mean, how the hell does that square with the idea that Trump is Putin’s patsy, anyway? Ya think Putin wanted a few hundred Wagner guys killed? His personal Blackwater outfit? Wouldn’t he have chosen some other outfit to die, if the stories were true? Wouldn’t Trump have blocked the commanders in Syria, instead of greenlighting it all?
Total dumbassery, on all fronts.
In the Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is once again venturing into the realm of fantasy and performative woe. Apparently, she and women everywhere are “experiencing the visceral, second-hand body horror of another Trump administration.” There follows the standard, clueless hyperbole and some accidental self-refutation.
So, fairly typical Guardian fare.
I will note that the reality here is that most of Ms. Cosslet’s ilk are totally dysfunctional human beings.
Have a look around the whole Democrat-leaning sphere; you can’t find any of them that seem to grasp why they lost, or how to get out of this situation. It’s all just “We wuz robbed…” and plans for totally ineffectual doubling-down on the things that lost them this election. They’re reality-blind.
A couple of people are making some sensible suggestions, but they’re getting shouted down. Others are calling for Trump’s assassination, thinking that will “fix” their issues… The reality? If that happens? You’re probably looking at Yugoslavia, redux. They don’t grasp that, at all; they’re fixated on Trump, and completely miss that there’s a vast reservoir of “other” out there that actually put Trump into office. They take him out, the results are going to be far from what they project.
This is a basic problem for the Democrats and the left here in the US. You can observe it in how they fixate on the NRA, thinking that the whole “gun” issue is something that the NRA created, nurtured, and keeps going. The model in their heads is that something like that has to be organized top-down, just like all their “grass-roots” movements. They utterly fail to comprehend that the NRA is actually an expression of its members and the general gun-owning public. Say they were successful in taking out the NRA and all the other gun advocacy groups. In their model, that would solve the problem because those entities are what keep this “gun thing” going. The reality that were they to succeed? That they’d then create a huge and likely far more pervasive and effective gun advocacy ecosphere because they’d destroyed the NRA? They don’t get that, at all. In their worldview, all the enthusiasm for gun ownership and the ability to self-defend is an artificial thing, created by the NRA and others. They can’t grasp that the average citizen has agency, and will refuse to be disarmed by their flying monkeys.
This is an essential flaw in the whole of the left. They’re so wrapped up in their little clubs and organizations that they can’t comprehend that other people don’t think like that and do not have to have that sort of “guidance” in their lives… Not to mention, would likely actively resist anyone trying to impose such a thing.
What we have going on here in the US is essentially a conflict between the sort of person that joins things seeking affirmation, and the other sort of person who actively rejects and avoids such activities. Our second sort just wants to be left the hell alone.
And, since the first sort can’t possibly tolerate leaving the second sort to their own devices, they constantly set up areas of conflict and then get surprised when it blows up in their faces.
The United States started out as a refuge for rebels and troublemakers from England. It continued on in that vein, attracting the same sort from around the world. The idea that you’re going to somehow put that rootstock into domestication? It is to laugh, and laugh hard; we’ve got rebellion coded into our genes. Good ‘effing luck, you stupid statist f*cks… The whole thing will wind up looking like trying to domesticate hippos or polar bears as pets.
[ Chomps toast, compiles tomorrow’s Ephemera. ]
[Checks off a box on her usual Thursday to-do list]
Good and practical advice to those having meltdowns now.
That the meltdowns are very often performative, and by implication competitive and status-seeking, is a large part of what makes it seem unhinged.
Functional, well-adjusted people do not as a rule behave in this way.
@David, who pointed out:
No, they do not. And, from that we may take that the majority of the left is neither functional nor well-adjusted…
The major deficiency in these people would be self-regulation, defined as follows:
Self-regulation is the ability to manage one’s reactions and behavior, enabling individuals to adapt to changing situations, achieve goals, and maintain emotional well-being. It is a complex process that involves four psychological components:
Any time you run into one of these histrionic freaks, use this as a checklist. If any of the four components are missing from their demonstrated behavior, treat them accordingly and be prepared for anything up to and including a physical attack from them.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that more than a few of them are government-run.
Speaking of foreign policy, as we have been assured Trumphitler will start WWIII, it’s already happening.
In other election news, this just in from the [cleans glasses] National Women’s History Museum.
Positive feedback loops. Echo chambers. Self-reinforcing thought patterns. Leftist politics inherently tends towards paranoia.
I know a number of “progressive” women, all with college degrees, who have become steadily more deranged over the last two decades. Or else they have been letting the mask slip–an interpretation I have tended to favor. Or both.
And I’ve only a few links. Please forgive me. I’ve been…busy.
Try sitting here, matey.
[ Awaits applause, medals, enormous statue. ]
You’d have a bit more free time if you didn’t burn anybody’s coats.
Don’t forget that $50 I’ll probably owe you soon.
From that same link:
Nor do they do anything to reward such behavior. Quite the opposite. And yet here we are with endless examples.
Heh. The ring light is a nice touch.
Meanwhile, in the NHS, the march of the ‘Half built penises’*:
The March of the Half Built Penises was a tune from the first album by Indeterminate Genitalia.
A couple of things Trump should do:
1) Sue the sanctuary cities/states. This is blatant interference with national interests/laws.
2) Remove ban on sale of LNG/oil overseas
3) Replace Garland on day 1.
4) Get someone to investigate Bragg over illegal use of his office.
5) Close border
6) WTF with these Patriot Front false flag ops?
Foreign news: a few years ago I got RT (Russia Today, a russia propaganda channel) on cable. Their editorials were uninterpretable. They simply had no idea about american culture or politics. Ditto the few russian media posts back in 2016.
Here is my list of things that tipped various voters to Trump. Not all things did it for all voters.
Open borders & crime (and gov actually flying in illegals)
Boys in girls sports/locker rooms
Inflation
Hurricane Helene poor response
That squirrel
Being called Nazi & garbage one too many times
Blacks being lectured by Obama
Note that Trump increased his % in every demographic, every minority group. He won counties that had not gone repub in 100 yrs.
Kirk: even in my salad days a certain level of cynicism (and close attention to a reasonably wide-ranging reading list) left me deeply unimpressed with the “expertise” of diplomats, but I was a bit impressed by the notion that one of them had actually died of overwork and undersleep,
As I was telling my wife this morning, she needs to start eating better and taking better care of herself, no more alcohol, etc. because if I need a kidney or liver…well…
Kinda like how Iran got tired of housing and feeding their American hostages right around January 20th of 1981. Weird, huh?
I was wondering the same thing. So Trump won. Has anyone seen The Patriot Front since? Shouldn’t they be celebrating, waving their tiki torches around as they dance in their khakis and golf shirts? Feds got their tongues?
[ Post updated again. ]
Well, alrighty then, a room at St. Mary Bethlehem awaits.
I have a hankering for sesame prawn toast.
Just sayin’.
When Colbert talks about democracy, he means Democratic Centralism.
[ Writes list, waits for Chinese takeaway to open. ]
[ Imagines David in a cowboy hat ]
If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m upping the price of the drinks.
@Megaera, who said:
That is a shocking idea, but not nearly as unlikely as one dying from overthinking…
April Gillespie, anyone…? Or, any of the other myriad idiots involved in making Ukraine what it is today?
I could go on, but boredom would set in for all of us. The silly bugger who got himself killed in Benghazi was apparently one of the halfway honest ones, but I’ll be damned if I can say the same about the idiots in the higher levels of the State Department that consigned him to his fate, knowing how Islamic countries see open homosexuals.
Two comments, not unrelated.
@David,
A lot of these people have never actually met or realized that they’ve met “Trump voters…”, mostly because most sane Americans don’t eat, breathe, and sleep politically. The Democrat self-proclaimed “elite” doesn’t understand that the people they’re constantly insulting don’t actually share their beliefs, nor wear their politics on their sleeves. I’ve been there standing while gratuitous insults flowed, and then they looked around for affirmation, only to see multiple pairs of stony eyes and turned backs.
Which they then promptly fail to process correctly.
Most Americans treat their politics about the way they treat their religion; it’s your own damn business, and you believe what you believe. I don’t care; I’m not going to try and silence you, although I will argue the points you make that I think are insane. At least, when it appears you might be open to sane discussion.
Most Democrats are about the equivalent of Jehovah’s Witnesses or really persistent Mormon missionaries; they won’t leave you alone, they follow you home, and they will not stop arguing their points. This really pisses off a lot of actual Americans, who do not treat politics like their religion.
I mean, hell… I’m open to argument; show me a Democrat policy or position that works, and doesn’t break the bank? I’d vote for it.
Hasn’t been one of those in my lifetime, soooooo…
This came to mind.
@David, who reiterated:
It’s why they can’t comprehend losing an election; they have made themselves and their positions so toxic and intolerable that nobody will engage with them on their terms, and from that, they’ve extrapolated that they’re in the majority.
Most of the left is blind to consequence, because they don’t have the capacity to recognize it when it happens.
One of the reasons that “the Left” is so highly educated is that the sort of person who takes up those beliefs is at least somewhere along the autism scale; they’re educated because our system of education and selection has focused itself on their sort of mentation over everything else, and the entire environment from testing to matriculation is set up to benefit these purblind functional idiots. It’s a self-reinforcing circle of failure; they look out for each other, reinforce each other, and when they really f*ck something up bigly, they protect each other.
See what the EPA did to a few thousand miles of river, here in the US. In a rational world, the responsible parties would be fired and never hired to work in that field ever again. In our oh-so-smart tested and selected existence, the EPA actually promoted them and issued performance bonuses…
Another sign of the essential obtuseness of this sort of people? You, as a normal and reasonably intelligent person that hasn’t been indoctrinated with the cult of credentialed intellectual supremacy, ask the reasonable question of one of that tribe about whether maybe some consequences should have flowed forth from the vaunted “system”… They just stare at you as though you were quite mad; consequence is not for the anointed, nor is accountability.
The majority of these people are insane, and they’ve captured our government. Examine the whole “Spotted Owl” fiasco, here in the Pacific Northwest. Starting in the early 1990s, they started shutting down our timber industry to “protect” said owl.
How’d that work out? Well, after bankrupting innumerable small towns and businesses, the Spotted Owl is still endangered, and going down fast. Why? They’re being outcompeted by a better owl, the Barred Owl. Goddamn owls are virtually indistinguishable, fill the same roles, but it’s just that the Spotted variety is rather less good at owling than the Barred.
The “brights” in charge of all this? They’ve now begun contracting with hunters to cull and eliminate the Barred Owl across the Northwest.
Nobody questions any of this, within the bureaucracy. Because “credentials”.
For instance.
They approach the hinterlands of this country like they’re synonymous with deepest, dankest Africa where cannibal tribes and lions roam at night, eating decent people. They actually know nothing, and project their own prejudices more than anything else
Canadians here will remember Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans. For the Americans in the audience, Mercer travelled to small and mid-sized towns in the US and did man-on-the-street interviews, asking everyday Americans what they thought about fictional events in Canada that were disguised puns.
Right-Thinking Canadians loved the bit, because it showed that Americans, by and large, don’t know who the Canadian Minister of Finance is and are therefore unforgivably ignorant about Canada.
Clean the smug off your glasses and a very different picture emerges: a country of gregarious, friendly people who despite knowing nothing about the place are happy to congratulate Canada on building its first National Igloo or whatever. And whose default assumption is that strangers are basically good and would have no reason to make you look foolish in public.
(In interviews years later, Mercer would admit that they had to do an awful lot of editing to get the few scenes they aired, because many of the people they interviewed knew enough about Canada to see through the joke)
[ Finishes drink. The posts link. ]
If you go over to X/Twitter, all the leftoid types are going nuts calling anyone who voted for Trump all sorts of nasty names, and vowing violence and revenge against those inchaote “Trump Voter MAGA Extremists”.
What they don’t understand is how that comes across to the rest of us. I see what they’re saying, and all I can do is heave a sigh of relief that they’ve lost, won’t be in charge going forward, and I am just completely reinforced to never, ever vote for their causes going forward… Let alone, them.
They think they’re on the side of right; I (and a lot of others…) think they’re actually demonstrably insane. There won’t be a place for them going forward, because they’ve so thoroughly poisoned the well.
I don’t think this election is going to work out how anyone is thinking; I’m seeing a more centrist sane anti-insider situation happening, going forward. Presuming that Trump and his people are better than the current lot of autistic morons.
I’d probably be among the elect, were I of a mind. I have all the tools to be of their sort, in that I do really well on standardized tests and I am the sort of pedantic overthinker that they love to promote. The problem is I have actual self-awareness, and a full sense of what I don’t share with them… Which I’d define as a certain sort of common sense. I observe; I seek clarity in my observations, and I’m brutally honest about what I see to myself. This means I could never function in their sort of rarefied “elite” society; I’d wind up going out on a murder spree one fine morning, when I couldn’t take any more of the bullshit.
I’ve never suffered idiocy gladly; I know I’d probably eventually be driven into situational psychosis, not being able to do anything about the stupidity. This would lead, in turn, to some epic moment of large-scale violent nuttery that would likely make the record books.
Again?
A veritable Nostradamus, but he got the last line right.
Morgoth gets this one dead-on…
I have a hankering for sesame prawn toast.
I had to look that up to see how to make it, and that does sound good! I have not seen it in Chinese/Asian restaurants here (that may be because I already know what I want and rarely look at a menu in a Chinese restaurant anymore…)
[ Rummages under bar, puts on cowboy hat. ]
Is it working?
Update. I am now full of Chinese food, practically immobilised by gluttony.
But there are some triple chocolate cookies in the fridge. And a pot of double cream.
You can see the bind I’m in.
“I’m going to get drunk and cause a problem.”
They all seem to drink Tito’s Vodka. I’m going to stay away from that sh!t.
I would guess the election result is a pretext for a pre-existing inclination.
[ Chomping. ]
[ Innocent face. ]
Read it all the way through…
She makes some very perceptive points and expresses them well.
Were the multiple piercings a clue?
@pst314, who asked…
The one thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that the number of piercings and tattoos present in an individual has an almost perfect correlation to the level of batshit crazy they’re going to demonstrate. The more, the crazier…
Also, the more visible they make them? Highly correlational. If you run into someone with facial tattoos and piercings, watch the f*ck out; the sex may be amazing, but you’ll likely wake up tied to the bed and missing key and essential bits of your anatomy. Which they’ll be feeding on, in view of said bed…
You’re not from Texas.
Huh. Someone that agrees with me…
Obviously, another genius.
I recall a discussion from my younger years re which was worse, cats or tats? Later the dilemma was of more cats than tats or more tats than cats? This was back in the day when the tats were less prominent. How that would play for young men today is a mystery.
I think I’d take cats over tats… Especially if the cat in question was well-behaved and properly cared for.
There’s a strong association between being able to care for a pet and being a decent human being. If the pet is feral and ill-behaved? Usually, the owner is also feral and ill-behaved.
Not sure how to appraise tattoos, these days. I find them weird, the more of them, the weirder to me. I know a girl that’s basically the tattooed lady from the circus, and while she otherwise presents as nice, I can’t get past “tattoo”.
They all seem to drink Tito’s Vodka. I’m going to stay away from that sh!t.
Good choice, it is made from corn which means it is either unaged bourbon or a gasoline additive, and by the taste, probably the latter.
Here’s a thing about that. It was only about a dozen years or so ago that people were saying that the woke shit would meet a firewall when it got to STEM. Maybe 20 years ago I believed that myself. Starting about a dozen years ago I was noticing slippage in STEM. I tried and tried and tried to tell smug STEM-sters, especially when I saw it leeching into places like MIT and the medical schools, etc. that things in STEM were fixing to go sideways. But oh, I was told how ridiculous that was.
Well, that kinda was the thing. As it was, at the time, a highly hypothetical* and abstract discussion. More of a relative merits discussion.
*Though at the time, unbeknownst to others in discussion, I had an ex gf who had had a tat. One. She also had a dog that she took good care of…so…?
Added:
I met her at the World’s Fair in 1900…
@WTP, who said:
I don’t think the people within the institution can really tell what is going on; it’s too gradual, too immersive. Outsiders can say; they’re seeing snapshots of it all, that they can compare.
I warned all my acquaintances on the Seattle PD what was coming if they didn’t do something about their internal problems of racism and so forth; the department had a real problem with that crap going back to the 1980s. I was told that they had no such problem; all my Hispanic and black troops were telling me the diametric opposite when they went up there from Fort Lewis.
I warned them back then, that they were going to wake up one morning and it’d all be different. George Floyd happened, and… It was different, almost overnight. Now the SPD is bleeding manpower out, and they’re all working double shifts because they can’t get new officers while everyone else is transferring out or retiring. Exactly what I warned them about…
They couldn’t see it then, but they damn sure do now.
Our betters, intellectual titans all, tell us what lies ahead.
What’s amusing as hell is watching the various left-wing genius types try to work out where all the 2020 voters went, and claiming their disappearance as proof Trump cheated in 2024… Ignoring all the work that the Republicans did to enforce the election laws in the swing states.
It’s like trying to argue with a dementia patient.
Projection.
Ignoring all the work that the Republicans did to enforce the election laws in the swing states.
Indeed, also ignoring the only outlier in vote total over the last four presidential elections was 2020.
Of course the real problem was the Latinos who didn’t do their part, that would no doubt explain the “missing votes”.