I’m back in West Marin to talk to ranchers, ahead of the closure of the Point Reyes ranches, and I’m thinking about the Zelenskyy-Trump-Vance cagefight in terms that are shaped by what I’m seeing.
Really like that last picture. Maybe it's like Barry once said (more or less): "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to their electric cars or yoga or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-cow sentiment or anti-farming sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Absolutely spot on. Barry's original quote set my mind against him, as a resident of both the Rust Belt and Appalachia. His and Biden's presidencys proved my initial reaction correct.
1) California is the Hunger Games in real time. 2) JD Vance is a litmus test, if you are a decent person you love him and vice versa. 3) I would like to see the pictures of the cows.
And one more thing, those of us who have kids on active duty are out back sharpening the tines on our pitchforks.
The most inauthentic people of course loathe an authentic person like JD Vance. (And btw am I the only one who was rubbed the wrong way by Zelenskyy’s disrespectful way of addressing vice president Vance as JD, while Vance consistently addressed the little pest as Mr President?)
Periodically, our neighbor’s cows break thru his rusty 50 yr old barbed wire fence and munch in our hayfield. My wife has nicknamed them Pot Roast, Sirloin, Short Rib, etc. 🤣
Based on what we now know about USAID and the grifting NGO infrastructure, I’m wondering how many of these affluent folks in Marin running cattle ranchers off their land are on the USAID/NGO dole. How much off the cattle-banning effort was actually funded with taxes paid by cattle ranchers?
When I read about the husband/wife team that led the cattle banning drive, and that the husband chairs a climate strategy group, my absolute first thought was, “Is he being funded by USAID?”
Regarding the Regime’s dislike of JD Vance… I suspect the dislike stems from the fact JD went to the same Ivy League schools, worked for the same law firms, and was successful in the same sort of tech ventures the Regime elites did… and he REJECTED their catechisms, refused to be a pretender, and chose to speak truth - always with a calm and logical demeanor - amidst their culture of lies.
This is similar to the Pharisees hating Jesus. He knew their profession, the scriptures, better than they did. With their haughty superiority they attempted to trick him & he always outsmarted them with his wisdom. Ultimately, he was a threat to their power and they feared the common people finding out.
He also knew how much of their words and behavior was actually about protecting their institutional power and wealth. Reading the Gospels now feels like they could have been written today.
I used to be like that too. ;) Then I realized there was peace and comfort in finding others agreeing with you. It's one of the best signs you are near to the truth.
That’s the reason (among others) they detest the Munich speech. From a “public speaking” perspective, it was perfect. They detest it and him BECAUSE it was so clear. Having someone of such clarity of thought, logic, clearness of speech and youth in opposition is a nightmare for the Dems.
Drake's Beach was my favorite place when I lived in Marin (San Rafael) in the late seventies and early eighties.
Point Reyes and the surrounding area were rural in a way that reminded me of my native Iowa. Pleasant but not quaint.
It looks now like that area is becoming a hipster playground. The process is probably unstoppable.
Your article shows how wealthy, politically connected elites wield the myth of "climate change" as a hammer to beat down those below them on the pyramid.
It's a pity. We used to go out there all the time, all of us in my dad's little car, and hang out with the other hippie families. We'd stop at a farm stand and pick up carob raisins from the bulk bins and no this wasn't a whole foods type of place. Lots of bugs on the windshield when we parked on any wide spot on the shoulder, and no sense of what was coming at us in the 80s.
Not to be an AH, but those “hippies” and their peers voted for this. They pushed the initial “rocks” over the edge… They also went to college, became disciples of the Post-Modernists, and produced exemplars like Scott Wiener. They were the “camel’s nose”…
No they didn't all. Some took other paths entirely. Hippie was a way of saying something else about the north bay coast anyway; iykyk and I'm not going to get into it.
And I was making more of a general statement about young kids who went off to Calif all starry-eyed about “If it feels good, do it” and the 1971 song “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing”, and now with long gray hair, still haven’t given up the perspective that the world works best as a commune.
When I think about where Calif was right after WWII, and the subsequent influx of unrealistic young people and where it’s wound up, I’m reminded of this parable entitled “Boss”:
When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss.
The brain said, "I should be Boss because I control the whole body's responses and functions."
The feet said, "We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him to where he wants to go."
The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money."
And so it went on and on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally the asshole spoke up.
All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So the asshole went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work.
Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered.
Eventually they all decided that the asshole should be the Boss, so the motion was passed. All the other parts did all the work while the Boss just sat and passed out the shit!
Moral of the story: You don't need brains to be a Boss - any asshole will do!
I suspect you can infer which body part I consider to represent the statewide aging hippies/liberals based on their decades-long influence on the governance of the state…
I spent a lot of summers visiting family friends who had a getaway up in the hills outside of San Geronimo. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Nicasio was a wide spot in the road. West Marin was a bucolic paradise for a city kid like me, and unpretentious.
VRBOs there for north of $10K a week make me want to weep.
…and as long as the thousands of dead bodies didn’t go to Columbia, or grow up in Brentwood, well, we’re okay with the war, ‘cause it’s theirs dying, not ours. And if the smart people who run Europe think we need to, those icky low-income clods from Alabama should go over there, too. It’s not like any of them is gonna cure cancer…
Just a reminder...The democratic party is behind ALL institutional racism, from slavery, to the KKK, to Jim Crow, to school segregation, to anti-MLK rhetoric, to DEI, to today's black ghettos. It's all democrat, all the time. Never forget.
I will never forget. "We'll have the niggers voting for us for 200 years." - Lyndon Baynes Johnson. I think I got that quote right. It's been awhile since I heard it. I have never understood why blacks became left after he said that, bought the votes I guess.
LBJ created an entire fatherless generation with his so-called great society. Before it happened, blacks were trending to be normal middle-class people by 1980. I'd love to see a class action lawsuit filed against the DNC on that basis, even if it's just a stunt.
Having been a product or rather better said an inmate for 6 years in the preparatory school penal system of the USA, watching the people that this writer “grew up” around perpetuate their myths and carrying on as if they are “good” represent “good” to do “good” and all others are the peasant class and evil has been interesting to say the least.
The United State Marine Corps saved my life. It took the writer from a world of class distinction and wealth and penis envy to a world where no one gave a good God Damn who you were or where you came from. Leading Infantry Marines at the Rifle Platoon level and being part of a fabric of men and women that were joined in common cause changed every thing. These rich spoiled near do well’s are actually terrified of life and the world around them. So they hide. Living in enclaves of themselves for themselves and by themselves allows a myopic view that any one else can see is total BS. When as a young Marine Officer you are working to get Lance Corporal Jones on the state of federal welfare roles so he can afford his young already too big family, humility is an operative word.
Having recently passed up the opportunity to return to one of the scenes of the educational crime to see classmates from 50 years ago, scratching their balding heads, paunchy bellies, mottled hands clutching glasses of Chardonnay staring in wonderment at a wayward classmate who didn’t found a private equity firm on family wealth, but instead heard his country calling, while perhaps interesting wasn’t worth wasting oxygen in doing. Watching the last several months and their sheer panic at being outed sure has been fun. The thought of having to explain America to them was too much and besides I basically hated the place and them so why bother.
Which is exactly what Trump and Vance and this gang of 40/50 year olds are doing. They could care less what this nattering bunch of rich and spoiled midwits thinks. Isn’t it good to see youthful hard charging smart people rather than a load of fossilized old geezers, dueling with legacy media at a cabinet meeting? Yea it is.
As to the 28 February 2025 dust up in the Oval Office, “hey Europe! See ya wouldn’t want to be ya!” After saturating themselves in self admiration for the last 50 plus years the party music has changed. America is poised to do a hot salsa rhumba and they some sort of funeral dirge music set to three count waltz time. What an iconic pose of King “fing” Charles III making nice with the “President” of Ukraine in his family estates in Sandringham, UK. Yes everyone we are all in this together! To the end! To the last Ukrainian! To the last USA Dollar! Send in the troops as long as they ain’t UK or EU troops!
The draw bridges on the east and west coasts are being slowly being raised. Hey Europe we are taking a breather here, gonna get our own act together for a while. If nothing else sh*t is about to get real and the rich and famous are about to find out that reality sucks for them.
Yeah, those old European colonial power elites have run out of colonies to exploit, and they are getting desperate to get their grimey paws on Russia's riches. Problem is, they got nothing to fight with. They're broke, and they have no manufacturing. Now that there's a new sheriff in the USA who is not playing ball and not going to fund or fight their wars for them, they're up a creek without a paddle! Lord willing, we will watch the bastards crash and burn. I'm loving the show so far!
It seems clear that the events of Friday 28 February in the Oval Office were orchestrated by the midwits of the old European “order”, and whilst they all talk of the “New rules based world order” (what does that mean anyway, more censorship, more dumb energy plans that don’t work, etc. etc.?). Macron visits Trump and gets nothing but a meeting that Trump doesn’t want with Zelensky. Then Starmer arrives, same story, nothing of merit for the UK and the prospect of further USA support hinging on an odd rare earth minerals deal. (BTW the rare minerals are all located in the contested region of the eastern Oblasts. Currently under the control mostly by Russian Federation forces.) The little puppet shows up at the White House sans coat and tie as he was advised to wear and starts a fight. He hadn’t even been kicked out the door to his limo when the sycophants of the UK and EU started tweeting their “we’re with the little guy who used to do phallic tricks on a piano. Ukraine to the end, to the last, to the …..!!!” This whole thing was planned, but, they didn’t count on the fact that Donald J Trump doesn’t care what they all think. The whole effort is going the other way than they expected. Sort of like Bug Bunny always outwitting Elmer Fuud. In fact if we look close we might see that PM Starmer looks a lot like Elmer. Sh*t is getting real for Europe and they have no clue how bad it is going to get for them without their big brother stepping into the bar fight they have started.
I often wonder if the de facto genocide of ethnic Ukrainians by killing all of their young men is actually what the globalist "ruling class" wants out of all of this. Kill all the poor whites and replace them with left end of the bell curve Third Worlders who historically don't effectively resist tyranny the way the US founding fathers did.
The rare earths deal makes sense as far as it goes; due to the environmental lobby almost none of that is mined in the US even when it exists, so that stuff is all imported from Chy-nuh. And opposing Xi is (correctly) a major policy pillar for Trump.
Thinking about the late, great Gene Hackman this weekend, and that first instalment in Superman, where he as Lex Luthor outlines his plot to send half of California into the ocean with that well-aimed nuclear missile at the San Andreas fault. And his sneering dismissal of Otisburg. OTISBURG?!?!
In comparison to this place and its residents, I'd take Otisburg.
Not everyone in California makes a multiple of six figures. Do you think the rank and file will start to rebel more strongly against this seemingly statewide Democrat stranglehold?
It’s frustrating to see Gavin Newsom strutting around and starting his tone deaf podcast, while initiating the removal of sleep inducing Delta 9 derived products from retail shelves and pushing a bill that will criminalize self defense, in your own home?
Agriculture is a cornerstone of the broader California economy, isn’t it? Dismantling it will only make food prices higher, while drastically reducing the quality and quantity of nutritious food.
Do these wealthy folks not understand economics, despite a likely concentration of economics degrees amongst them?
People who eat vegan burgers may want to be skeletal in presentation, but some of us still want to eat non bug, non Impossible (ie Possible) burgers and Marin cheese, which isn’t some polymer derived in a factory from almonds and whatever.
This is the antithesis of free market to an extreme many of us never even imagined. It’s the kind of policy that has led to famine under autocratic regimes that are more focused on politics than objective reality.
Under Stalin, consolidation of small farms into large collectives led to famine, while we are watching them turn rich agricultural land into tourist destinations.
Using the bird flu to crush small organic farms by culling their stock, even when healthy, seems coordinated with this.
All of these policies, though seemingly disparate, ie ‘restoring ecosystems’ vs ‘fighting bird flu’, have the same intended result, ie consolidation of farmland into corporate megafarms.
It’s confusing and disingenuous though, isn’t it, to claim to be leftist, yet in practice promote a two tiered society? I always thought leftism was supposed to be about egalitarianism?
And so what if the birds or cows are infected? You are cooking them or the eggs and eating them. If the virus isn’t killed by cooking. Your stomach acid will.
Hedges recently had UC Professor Catherine Liu on his podcast. Professor Liu cut right through the Gramscian hidden grammar: culture war is and always has been class war.
Now that they are losing they are doubling down with their only weapon: more digital virtue signaling.
Regarding the transformation of the agriculturally rich California countryside into playgrounds for the affluent:
Chris, you're in California, that's what they do. That's what they've always done. That's what they'll continue to do. They only care about poor, struggling farmers if they're in another country and they can be used to virtue signal to their friends just how caring they are. I mean, after all, they have to be able to spend their money somewhere and they can't go into that hellhole that was once downtown San Francisco any more...C'mon man, think!
PS, nice pic...what kind of lens did you use...the bottom of a coke bottle?
Politics is similar in the UK, except both right (Tory) and left are welded to our broken system and institutions. Only Reform dares to speculate on a different way. We've watched both the cringefest that was Starmer Farmer Harmer and Trump, and the coke sniffing dwarf vs Trump/Vance - did he really call JD an effing bitch in Russian? Some commentators here have been brave enough to score that Dwarf 0 Trump 10. Starmer of course has reassured the CSD that "the whole of the UK is behind him" - yeah, I'd be behind him at the top of a flight of stairs to push him down them, maybe. Sick of my tax money being spaffed up the wall on a war nobody wants to end. Hoping the commies in charge don't bring back national service, my boys are NOT going to Ukraine to be ground into the dust so Starmer can polish his fucking ego. 😤
The Idiot Elites (but I repeat myself) are destroying rural America. It’s happening here in the central Colorado Rockies. They are very much smarter than we are. You can ask them.
What occurred to me as I’m reading your piece is: what about counter-suits. Or, maybe a RICO approach angle with the newly-friendly DOJ?
There's a new lawsuit, filed by ranch workers who live on the ranches. Not sure how successful it will be. I think a counter-suit is probably doomed because the settlement is signed, and was signed before January 20. I asked around until I found a journalist friend who had Doug Burgum's personal cellphone number, and I texted him about Point Reyes, then got a terse email from the press office at Interior saying that there will be no comment. I'd like to be wrong, but I think it's over.
Once I had a ranch worker here on our little ranch in Bela Vista de Goiás, who asked me to buy him a school notebook, which I did, and which he then proceeded to tear the pages out to roll up tobacco and smoke it. He dropped out of school at the age of ten, which is when I suppose he discovered his tobacco habit.
I lived in Marin County for 19 years. Back during the 1960s-70s it was a hippie enclave with the likes of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, David Crosby and other rock stars making homes there as well as director Frances Ford Coppola (in Ross no less) and of course, George Lucas, his Skywalker Ranch and ILM effects shop. In the 1990s-2010s folks like Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt (and still Crosby and Bob Weir) were to be seen in the normal walks of life. Robin Williams testing out material at the local Mill Valley theater.
As time progressed, Marin became more and more a rich white hippie left-leaning affluent paradise where the elitism and entitlement were taken for granted as... elitism and entitlement. Latinos ran all the service industries (and still do) as the imported slave-race. Marin even has its token black ghetto in Marin City, the southern part of Mill Valley.
Even when I was there, you couldn't buy a shoebox for under $1m.
Needless to say, I had to get out. Its elitist monoculture was suffocating in its liberal high-mindedness and superiority. So I moved back to the UK to be with my then-new granddaughter (who just turned 14).
I've been out to Point Reyes numerous times and enjoyed the local cafe and bookstore you mention, as well as hikes out in the trails and to the lighthouse. It's stunning and beautiful and the ranches and dairies are part of it and its history. To see them getting turfed out this way is heartbreaking. I wonder if Trump could intervene in some way. The establishment applecart is getting so upturned, you'd think something could happen.
Really like that last picture. Maybe it's like Barry once said (more or less): "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to their electric cars or yoga or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-cow sentiment or anti-farming sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Absolutely spot on. Barry's original quote set my mind against him, as a resident of both the Rust Belt and Appalachia. His and Biden's presidencys proved my initial reaction correct.
Speaking for myself, that 12 years proved my initial highly negative impression totally inadequate. The parade of horrible developments never ended.
Love the paraphrasing, my friend.
Bitter Yogis?
Bitterness knows no boundaries...
Genius 😎
Your comment left me with absolutely nothing to add… 🎯🎯
Sorry about that.
1) California is the Hunger Games in real time. 2) JD Vance is a litmus test, if you are a decent person you love him and vice versa. 3) I would like to see the pictures of the cows.
And one more thing, those of us who have kids on active duty are out back sharpening the tines on our pitchforks.
The most inauthentic people of course loathe an authentic person like JD Vance. (And btw am I the only one who was rubbed the wrong way by Zelenskyy’s disrespectful way of addressing vice president Vance as JD, while Vance consistently addressed the little pest as Mr President?)
Remarkable self control. Me, at some point I would have picked him up by his T shirt and thrown him across the room or through the window.
Agreed! He is poise personified. One of the few politicians that seem genuine.
No, you’re not the only one.
“Little Pest.” Perfect.
Vance really is. He demonstrates that people who claim to have standards other than partisan alignment are lying.
We need cows, give me more cows! (Not to be confused with cow bells)
We need more cow bells, too! 😉😊😋
LOL
I love cows and want to save them.
I also want to save them... For a snack later.
Periodically, our neighbor’s cows break thru his rusty 50 yr old barbed wire fence and munch in our hayfield. My wife has nicknamed them Pot Roast, Sirloin, Short Rib, etc. 🤣
Those of us who have grandchildren that will be at risk from the Forever Wars agree.
Let's see the cows!
And then there is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI
Based on what we now know about USAID and the grifting NGO infrastructure, I’m wondering how many of these affluent folks in Marin running cattle ranchers off their land are on the USAID/NGO dole. How much off the cattle-banning effort was actually funded with taxes paid by cattle ranchers?
When I read about the husband/wife team that led the cattle banning drive, and that the husband chairs a climate strategy group, my absolute first thought was, “Is he being funded by USAID?”
THat's my first thought upon hearing about every kind of malfeasance these days
He's probably putting up windmills all over CA with government $$ laundered through his wife's private equity firm.
No doubt he’s been on the Fed/NGO gravy train….
Agreed
Regarding the Regime’s dislike of JD Vance… I suspect the dislike stems from the fact JD went to the same Ivy League schools, worked for the same law firms, and was successful in the same sort of tech ventures the Regime elites did… and he REJECTED their catechisms, refused to be a pretender, and chose to speak truth - always with a calm and logical demeanor - amidst their culture of lies.
There's nothing the religious hate more than apostates. (and I am a religious person - so I know how it can feel)
This is similar to the Pharisees hating Jesus. He knew their profession, the scriptures, better than they did. With their haughty superiority they attempted to trick him & he always outsmarted them with his wisdom. Ultimately, he was a threat to their power and they feared the common people finding out.
Great analogy. I think I will store that away for later, at after church coffee hour at my Episcopal church. 😂
He also knew how much of their words and behavior was actually about protecting their institutional power and wealth. Reading the Gospels now feels like they could have been written today.
Great analogy!
Was INRI an early version of FAFO? This haunts me.
That’s funny and insightful. JD is an apostate to the Regime. Perfect.
He’s also a hillbilly and Marine and true to his roots.
I’m getting really tired of having an insightful thought, scanning the replies and seeing someone beat me to it (apostate)… 🎯🎯
I used to be like that too. ;) Then I realized there was peace and comfort in finding others agreeing with you. It's one of the best signs you are near to the truth.
That, and I suspect they see him as representing the logical (almost unbeatable) continuation of the MAGA movement.
That’s the reason (among others) they detest the Munich speech. From a “public speaking” perspective, it was perfect. They detest it and him BECAUSE it was so clear. Having someone of such clarity of thought, logic, clearness of speech and youth in opposition is a nightmare for the Dems.
Indeed.
I can totally see that.
Drake's Beach was my favorite place when I lived in Marin (San Rafael) in the late seventies and early eighties.
Point Reyes and the surrounding area were rural in a way that reminded me of my native Iowa. Pleasant but not quaint.
It looks now like that area is becoming a hipster playground. The process is probably unstoppable.
Your article shows how wealthy, politically connected elites wield the myth of "climate change" as a hammer to beat down those below them on the pyramid.
It's a pity. We used to go out there all the time, all of us in my dad's little car, and hang out with the other hippie families. We'd stop at a farm stand and pick up carob raisins from the bulk bins and no this wasn't a whole foods type of place. Lots of bugs on the windshield when we parked on any wide spot on the shoulder, and no sense of what was coming at us in the 80s.
I'd rent a car in San Rafael and drive up to Drake's Beach, letting the tension ease with every mile.
Sometimes I just sat in the car and watched the waves.
Absolutely beautiful. We sure were lucky.
Yes, we were.
“Don't it always seems to go that you don't know what you’ve got till it's gone.”
🎵 Hey, non-ee non-ee, put up a parking lot. 🎶
😞😢
Bugs on the windshield. Never thought I'd miss them, but you know something is grievously wrong when the insects disappear. God help us.
Not to be an AH, but those “hippies” and their peers voted for this. They pushed the initial “rocks” over the edge… They also went to college, became disciples of the Post-Modernists, and produced exemplars like Scott Wiener. They were the “camel’s nose”…
No they didn't all. Some took other paths entirely. Hippie was a way of saying something else about the north bay coast anyway; iykyk and I'm not going to get into it.
Fair enough.
That wasn't so fair of me and I remembered there are a lot of subcultures up there. I'll just say, some people really like the beach
And I was making more of a general statement about young kids who went off to Calif all starry-eyed about “If it feels good, do it” and the 1971 song “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing”, and now with long gray hair, still haven’t given up the perspective that the world works best as a commune.
When I think about where Calif was right after WWII, and the subsequent influx of unrealistic young people and where it’s wound up, I’m reminded of this parable entitled “Boss”:
When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss.
The brain said, "I should be Boss because I control the whole body's responses and functions."
The feet said, "We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him to where he wants to go."
The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money."
And so it went on and on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally the asshole spoke up.
All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So the asshole went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work.
Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered.
Eventually they all decided that the asshole should be the Boss, so the motion was passed. All the other parts did all the work while the Boss just sat and passed out the shit!
Moral of the story: You don't need brains to be a Boss - any asshole will do!
I suspect you can infer which body part I consider to represent the statewide aging hippies/liberals based on their decades-long influence on the governance of the state…
I spent a lot of summers visiting family friends who had a getaway up in the hills outside of San Geronimo. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Nicasio was a wide spot in the road. West Marin was a bucolic paradise for a city kid like me, and unpretentious.
VRBOs there for north of $10K a week make me want to weep.
That last photo just about says it all…
…and as long as the thousands of dead bodies didn’t go to Columbia, or grow up in Brentwood, well, we’re okay with the war, ‘cause it’s theirs dying, not ours. And if the smart people who run Europe think we need to, those icky low-income clods from Alabama should go over there, too. It’s not like any of them is gonna cure cancer…
Unlike the poor Haitian immigrant who will
Just a reminder...The democratic party is behind ALL institutional racism, from slavery, to the KKK, to Jim Crow, to school segregation, to anti-MLK rhetoric, to DEI, to today's black ghettos. It's all democrat, all the time. Never forget.
p.s. Hitler was a progressive.
I will never forget. "We'll have the niggers voting for us for 200 years." - Lyndon Baynes Johnson. I think I got that quote right. It's been awhile since I heard it. I have never understood why blacks became left after he said that, bought the votes I guess.
LBJ created an entire fatherless generation with his so-called great society. Before it happened, blacks were trending to be normal middle-class people by 1980. I'd love to see a class action lawsuit filed against the DNC on that basis, even if it's just a stunt.
It´s called ghetto politics.
Having been a product or rather better said an inmate for 6 years in the preparatory school penal system of the USA, watching the people that this writer “grew up” around perpetuate their myths and carrying on as if they are “good” represent “good” to do “good” and all others are the peasant class and evil has been interesting to say the least.
The United State Marine Corps saved my life. It took the writer from a world of class distinction and wealth and penis envy to a world where no one gave a good God Damn who you were or where you came from. Leading Infantry Marines at the Rifle Platoon level and being part of a fabric of men and women that were joined in common cause changed every thing. These rich spoiled near do well’s are actually terrified of life and the world around them. So they hide. Living in enclaves of themselves for themselves and by themselves allows a myopic view that any one else can see is total BS. When as a young Marine Officer you are working to get Lance Corporal Jones on the state of federal welfare roles so he can afford his young already too big family, humility is an operative word.
Having recently passed up the opportunity to return to one of the scenes of the educational crime to see classmates from 50 years ago, scratching their balding heads, paunchy bellies, mottled hands clutching glasses of Chardonnay staring in wonderment at a wayward classmate who didn’t found a private equity firm on family wealth, but instead heard his country calling, while perhaps interesting wasn’t worth wasting oxygen in doing. Watching the last several months and their sheer panic at being outed sure has been fun. The thought of having to explain America to them was too much and besides I basically hated the place and them so why bother.
Which is exactly what Trump and Vance and this gang of 40/50 year olds are doing. They could care less what this nattering bunch of rich and spoiled midwits thinks. Isn’t it good to see youthful hard charging smart people rather than a load of fossilized old geezers, dueling with legacy media at a cabinet meeting? Yea it is.
As to the 28 February 2025 dust up in the Oval Office, “hey Europe! See ya wouldn’t want to be ya!” After saturating themselves in self admiration for the last 50 plus years the party music has changed. America is poised to do a hot salsa rhumba and they some sort of funeral dirge music set to three count waltz time. What an iconic pose of King “fing” Charles III making nice with the “President” of Ukraine in his family estates in Sandringham, UK. Yes everyone we are all in this together! To the end! To the last Ukrainian! To the last USA Dollar! Send in the troops as long as they ain’t UK or EU troops!
The draw bridges on the east and west coasts are being slowly being raised. Hey Europe we are taking a breather here, gonna get our own act together for a while. If nothing else sh*t is about to get real and the rich and famous are about to find out that reality sucks for them.
And the Europeans have put together a Ukrainian plan, WITHOUT Trump, which has the US providing security. WTH.
The Chutzpah.
Yeah, those old European colonial power elites have run out of colonies to exploit, and they are getting desperate to get their grimey paws on Russia's riches. Problem is, they got nothing to fight with. They're broke, and they have no manufacturing. Now that there's a new sheriff in the USA who is not playing ball and not going to fund or fight their wars for them, they're up a creek without a paddle! Lord willing, we will watch the bastards crash and burn. I'm loving the show so far!
It seems clear that the events of Friday 28 February in the Oval Office were orchestrated by the midwits of the old European “order”, and whilst they all talk of the “New rules based world order” (what does that mean anyway, more censorship, more dumb energy plans that don’t work, etc. etc.?). Macron visits Trump and gets nothing but a meeting that Trump doesn’t want with Zelensky. Then Starmer arrives, same story, nothing of merit for the UK and the prospect of further USA support hinging on an odd rare earth minerals deal. (BTW the rare minerals are all located in the contested region of the eastern Oblasts. Currently under the control mostly by Russian Federation forces.) The little puppet shows up at the White House sans coat and tie as he was advised to wear and starts a fight. He hadn’t even been kicked out the door to his limo when the sycophants of the UK and EU started tweeting their “we’re with the little guy who used to do phallic tricks on a piano. Ukraine to the end, to the last, to the …..!!!” This whole thing was planned, but, they didn’t count on the fact that Donald J Trump doesn’t care what they all think. The whole effort is going the other way than they expected. Sort of like Bug Bunny always outwitting Elmer Fuud. In fact if we look close we might see that PM Starmer looks a lot like Elmer. Sh*t is getting real for Europe and they have no clue how bad it is going to get for them without their big brother stepping into the bar fight they have started.
I often wonder if the de facto genocide of ethnic Ukrainians by killing all of their young men is actually what the globalist "ruling class" wants out of all of this. Kill all the poor whites and replace them with left end of the bell curve Third Worlders who historically don't effectively resist tyranny the way the US founding fathers did.
The rare earths deal makes sense as far as it goes; due to the environmental lobby almost none of that is mined in the US even when it exists, so that stuff is all imported from Chy-nuh. And opposing Xi is (correctly) a major policy pillar for Trump.
Thinking about the late, great Gene Hackman this weekend, and that first instalment in Superman, where he as Lex Luthor outlines his plot to send half of California into the ocean with that well-aimed nuclear missile at the San Andreas fault. And his sneering dismissal of Otisburg. OTISBURG?!?!
In comparison to this place and its residents, I'd take Otisburg.
I'd take some one blowing Killifornia off into the ocean. 😒😑
Just give it back to Mexico. Or Spain or Russia or the tribes. Anyone but us.
Not everyone in California makes a multiple of six figures. Do you think the rank and file will start to rebel more strongly against this seemingly statewide Democrat stranglehold?
It’s frustrating to see Gavin Newsom strutting around and starting his tone deaf podcast, while initiating the removal of sleep inducing Delta 9 derived products from retail shelves and pushing a bill that will criminalize self defense, in your own home?
Agriculture is a cornerstone of the broader California economy, isn’t it? Dismantling it will only make food prices higher, while drastically reducing the quality and quantity of nutritious food.
Do these wealthy folks not understand economics, despite a likely concentration of economics degrees amongst them?
People who eat vegan burgers may want to be skeletal in presentation, but some of us still want to eat non bug, non Impossible (ie Possible) burgers and Marin cheese, which isn’t some polymer derived in a factory from almonds and whatever.
This is the antithesis of free market to an extreme many of us never even imagined. It’s the kind of policy that has led to famine under autocratic regimes that are more focused on politics than objective reality.
Under Stalin, consolidation of small farms into large collectives led to famine, while we are watching them turn rich agricultural land into tourist destinations.
Using the bird flu to crush small organic farms by culling their stock, even when healthy, seems coordinated with this.
All of these policies, though seemingly disparate, ie ‘restoring ecosystems’ vs ‘fighting bird flu’, have the same intended result, ie consolidation of farmland into corporate megafarms.
CA is where the left wants to go. Evolution of our society to one of
Lords and serfs. Hence all the whining about who will pick our crops, mow our lawns and clean our toilets.
It’s confusing and disingenuous though, isn’t it, to claim to be leftist, yet in practice promote a two tiered society? I always thought leftism was supposed to be about egalitarianism?
Liberalism is about egalitarianism. Leftism is not.
Except for those @ the top, & they all expect to be at the top. Too bad for them that they didn’t read up on the French & Russian Revolutions.
That's what they SAY, NOT what they BELIEVE.
And so what if the birds or cows are infected? You are cooking them or the eggs and eating them. If the virus isn’t killed by cooking. Your stomach acid will.
Collectivism in action.
Hedges recently had UC Professor Catherine Liu on his podcast. Professor Liu cut right through the Gramscian hidden grammar: culture war is and always has been class war.
Now that they are losing they are doubling down with their only weapon: more digital virtue signaling.
'Virtue Hoarders' a great little book.
Regarding the transformation of the agriculturally rich California countryside into playgrounds for the affluent:
Chris, you're in California, that's what they do. That's what they've always done. That's what they'll continue to do. They only care about poor, struggling farmers if they're in another country and they can be used to virtue signal to their friends just how caring they are. I mean, after all, they have to be able to spend their money somewhere and they can't go into that hellhole that was once downtown San Francisco any more...C'mon man, think!
PS, nice pic...what kind of lens did you use...the bottom of a coke bottle?
As a professional, I primarily shoot with a potato
Politics is similar in the UK, except both right (Tory) and left are welded to our broken system and institutions. Only Reform dares to speculate on a different way. We've watched both the cringefest that was Starmer Farmer Harmer and Trump, and the coke sniffing dwarf vs Trump/Vance - did he really call JD an effing bitch in Russian? Some commentators here have been brave enough to score that Dwarf 0 Trump 10. Starmer of course has reassured the CSD that "the whole of the UK is behind him" - yeah, I'd be behind him at the top of a flight of stairs to push him down them, maybe. Sick of my tax money being spaffed up the wall on a war nobody wants to end. Hoping the commies in charge don't bring back national service, my boys are NOT going to Ukraine to be ground into the dust so Starmer can polish his fucking ego. 😤
I think Starmer will probably be polishing something else.
Yeah, something belonging to Lord Ali no doubt 😉
Dwarf tossing should be resurrected as a sport.
The Idiot Elites (but I repeat myself) are destroying rural America. It’s happening here in the central Colorado Rockies. They are very much smarter than we are. You can ask them.
What occurred to me as I’m reading your piece is: what about counter-suits. Or, maybe a RICO approach angle with the newly-friendly DOJ?
There's a new lawsuit, filed by ranch workers who live on the ranches. Not sure how successful it will be. I think a counter-suit is probably doomed because the settlement is signed, and was signed before January 20. I asked around until I found a journalist friend who had Doug Burgum's personal cellphone number, and I texted him about Point Reyes, then got a terse email from the press office at Interior saying that there will be no comment. I'd like to be wrong, but I think it's over.
Once I had a ranch worker here on our little ranch in Bela Vista de Goiás, who asked me to buy him a school notebook, which I did, and which he then proceeded to tear the pages out to roll up tobacco and smoke it. He dropped out of school at the age of ten, which is when I suppose he discovered his tobacco habit.
😩🤬
They love the rural, just not the hicks.
Sue and settle. The Left does this constantly and we need to up our game.
The dirty secrets are as follows:
The Dems and the Omnicause have become what marketeers call a "lifestyle brand", and a luxury brand at that.
The Dems have become the Party of the Rich. Look it up.
It's all dons and peons in California.
I lived in Marin County for 19 years. Back during the 1960s-70s it was a hippie enclave with the likes of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, David Crosby and other rock stars making homes there as well as director Frances Ford Coppola (in Ross no less) and of course, George Lucas, his Skywalker Ranch and ILM effects shop. In the 1990s-2010s folks like Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt (and still Crosby and Bob Weir) were to be seen in the normal walks of life. Robin Williams testing out material at the local Mill Valley theater.
As time progressed, Marin became more and more a rich white hippie left-leaning affluent paradise where the elitism and entitlement were taken for granted as... elitism and entitlement. Latinos ran all the service industries (and still do) as the imported slave-race. Marin even has its token black ghetto in Marin City, the southern part of Mill Valley.
Even when I was there, you couldn't buy a shoebox for under $1m.
Needless to say, I had to get out. Its elitist monoculture was suffocating in its liberal high-mindedness and superiority. So I moved back to the UK to be with my then-new granddaughter (who just turned 14).
I've been out to Point Reyes numerous times and enjoyed the local cafe and bookstore you mention, as well as hikes out in the trails and to the lighthouse. It's stunning and beautiful and the ranches and dairies are part of it and its history. To see them getting turfed out this way is heartbreaking. I wonder if Trump could intervene in some way. The establishment applecart is getting so upturned, you'd think something could happen.
Pt. Reyes is part of the NPS empire so perhaps.