First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go out to the young woman’s family and friends.
This is a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place. As we come to understand what happened and why, we must look at the entire situation. While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record, what I have come to understand is that he has long struggled with mental health and appears to have suffered a crisis. This was the unfortunate and tragic outcome. While there are questions about the safety and security of our transit system and our city, I do know there have been significant and sustained efforts to address safety and security within our transit system and across our city.
Charlotte is by and large a safe city. CATS, by and large, is a safe transit system. However, tragic incidents like these should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes. We will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health. I am committed to doing the hard work with Mecklenburg County, community leaders, health care service providers, and the private sector to ensure that Charlotte continues to be one of the best cities in the world, with the highest quality of life for everyone.
I want to be clear that I am not villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused. Mental health disease is just that — a disease like any other that needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer or heart disease. Our community must work to address the underlying issue of access to mental healthcare.
Also, those who are unhoused are more frequently the victim of crimes and not the perpetrators. Too many people who are on the street need a safe place to sleep and wrap around services to lift them up.
We, as a community, must do better for those members of our community who need help and have no place to go.
...but has nothing but erasure of someone savagely murdered in her own city?
I noted in another thread of yours, Chris, the other day, regarding the US Senators' performance in the RFK Jr. circle-shriek, that these creatures are devoid of anything human in their perceptions, reactions, emotions, interactions. They are reading scripts honed by PR agents around pollsters' data, with an eye to reelection.
At the same time there is something worse than vampiric (as you noted about the Senate shriekers) going on in this...utterly psychopathic expression. There is something way far past inhuman in it.
Since I strongly suspect "Vi Lyles" didn't write it, I'd like to know who did.
Anybody else remember how just a couple years ago she approved the boosting of her City Manager's salary to nearly half a million per year? Marcus Jones, look it up.
So true. Warren's face looks like she's demonically oppressed, "utterly psychopathic expression...There is something way far past inhuman in it" describes so many of the "leaders" in today's DNC. In reality they're Socialists and Anarcho-Communists hellbent on destroying America. The DSA's website calls for abolishing police and closing all prisons. Total insanity. VDH is right when he calls them "civilizational arsonists".
I don’t think it was HER PR agents – I think it was Big Pharma’s. They’re calling in their chits from all the campaign cash. Trump/Kennedy are un-raping American patients, and Pharma is striking back.
The comment to which I replied was addressing Liz (“Pocahontas”) Warren in the Senate HHS hearing, not Mayor Lyle’s’ despicable statement on the murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte.
(If I replied to the wrong comment, my apologies.)
Her statement thanking the media for not sharing the video or images merits notice too. The issue apparently is the bad publicity, not the incident itself.
Mayor Lyles is a liar. She wanted a media blackout because the hideous attack by this maniac exposes the insanity of the "progressive" policies that she espouses. Her original unedited comment makes it very clear that her faux compassion is with the "unhoused" killer and not with the victim.
Most jails and prisons have units for the criminally insane. Mental institutions have secure wards too. The DNC Socialist leaders know they're endangering the public but won't modify their agenda because ideology overrides humanity. And they have private armed security to protect them from their anarchic policies.
One sentence devoted to the victim (must get that out of the way first) then five paragraphs of virtue signalling showing what a fine, caring Mayor she is. Statements like this come pre-printed, a copy in every official’s desk drawer, just fill in the blanks.
The politicians in these matters seem to consider the victim to be little more than an inconvenience. Bless their hearts, they have to acknowledge that there actually was a victim, but that little detail distracts from the greater task: blaming capitalist society for all the problems in the world.
Agreed. And it's not just far-left politicians that have hijacked the Democratic Party, it's "activist" judges and pro-criminal Soros funded DAs too. He's bankrolled more than 74 who are unleashing violent repeat offenders in cities across America. He has billions to fund them and he's not the only one. Millions in dark money is funding them.
Just learned that the judge had requested a forensic psych eval on this killer after his previous crime. The judge kicked him loose without it ever being done. He has a violent criminal history going back years. They knew this would happen. Even his mother is saying he should never have been set free.
The DSA want to abolish law enforcement and prisons. They want this mayhem and cruel chaos. Much easier to gain power when you divide and destabilize civil society. Even more troubling is the MSM's avoidance of even covering these events. It's September 8th and this murder happened August 22nd and most U.S. "legacy media" still haven't reported on this. It's not an oversight, it's by design.
Does anyone remember the man in Sydney holding hostages with a stated religiously motivated intent? People were worried Uber riders might reject drivers who appeared to be from majority Muslim nations, so they started the hash tag campaign #illridewithyou...while the terrorist still had hostages!
God that's an awful statement, and I say that as a leftie Brit. Nothing in that statement would give me any sense of safety in her city. Tell me how you ARE going to protect ordinary people from mentally ill people who are violent then? Oh you don't believe in arresting them, even when they are acting violent? You don't want to compel them into treatment? You let obviously mentally unstable men roam free on your public transport because it's mean to keep them off it? You just wait, until their insanity leads them to destroy a fellow human? Then you sadly sweep up the mess and do nothing else? Don't worry people, one day when the "root causes" are gone.......
I have plenty of criticisms of the American right (another time..) but the American left is now unrecognisable to European people who are from the left tradition. We want mentally ill people cared for, and off the streets, and we don't elect politicians who think it's against an insane person's human rights to lock them up to protect the rest of us. Example, no left-wing Mayor here could survive the type of scandalous crime and public squalor that I saw when I visited LA. God help the poor and the ordinary voters, the Democrats are a lost cause.
It's good that you find it awful and are questioning the tenets of leftism, but you need to go further and put away the Eurosnoot. Britain closed its asylums in the 1980s, just like America. Psychosis is treated at home in both countries.
More importantly the British left is prone to redefining violent insanity as a victim identity rather than mental illness. You then don't recognize when it goes untreated.
Here are two examples of this problem.
1. The live fire debate over whether transgenderism is a totally normal identity that's needlessly victimized by right wing haters, or a mental illness. The right see someone claiming they were born as the wrong gender and it sounds to them like this black dude on the subway who claimed he had something "man made" inside him that controlled his thoughts. It sounds like insanity, and transgender people are wildly more violent than average, so it looks like insanity too. But can you imagine the left's reaction if the government re-opened the asylums and straitjacketed all the trans?
2. Islam. The UK has a big problem with random stabbings by mentally ill strangers in cities. Axel Rudakubana's attack was far worse than this one: he killed three children and injured ten others on a random stabbing spree at a dance party. He turned out to be an Islamic terrorist who had stockpiled ricin, had an Al Qaeda training manual, a history of violent behavior and had been referred to the authorities three different times. The left wing government covered all this up, claiming he was just a normal British guy and that they couldn't identify any ideological motive for the attack.
The left relies on Muslim votes for support, so has been extremely reluctant to classify Islamists as mentally ill even when they are constantly being reported by their own families for being violent extremists. Instead they wait until people die and then respond, 100% of the time, exactly like this American mayor: "don't look back in anger".
"...the American left is now unrecognisable to European people who are from the left tradition."
Hardly. The American liberal-progressive left has been the foremost source of inspiration for the European left, including the old communist parties, since Blair was occupying no. 10.
The European left, center and slightly-right-of-center are all perfectly aligned with the US Democratic party or its left wing. You can run down a list of issues and see that they all sing from the same sheet.
Her analogy of treating mental illness akin to Cancer or Heart Disease is flawed at it's core. The more correct analogy might be of the violently mental ill and violent drug users as plague carriers, with open pustules walking around crowds of citizens spreading the diseases they carry and bringing petulance and death to all they encounter. What would Mayor Vi do about that? My guess is, lock them up into isolation wards, treat until death and burn the bodies in pits, certainly not let them run loose and whine about their lack of guilt. This statement is criminal in it's language and outcome. I do not know the victim but she seems innocent and beyond any culpability for the violence delivered upon her. No consequence is too much for the villain who has taken her life and those who enable those sick predicators an escape from their villainy.
“We must take a real hard look at ourselves and ponder vociferously what drove Ed Gein to make human skin lamp shades and to find the root causes of how we as a society failed this poor young man in his education and his up bringing.”
What’s strange is that if the goal of the statement was greater political support among the voters, repudiating the killer and promoting law and order would have been the correct move.
But it clearly wasn’t the goal.
So what is the goal? I will never understand these people, but we’ve made an awful, awful mistake in letting them lead us.
It's not mental health, it's mental illness. Sane people should be arguing that the West needs to reopen the types of mental institutions which dealt with these types of problems in the past.
This is clip from the UK's SAS: Who Dares Wins. The contestant was a father who was working away from home and on the phone to wife, when a nutjob broke into his house:
My older brother was in a mental hospital back in the Seventies and having seen what it did to him, I was in favor of de-institutionalization when it was the hot new policy.
But leaving the addicts and mentally ill to fend for themselves out on the streets has been far far worse and we've all suffered from it. So I've come 180 degrees on this issue.
I worked in a FL state psych hospital for a year while in grad school in the 80s. By then a lot of the worst earlier abuses were cleaned up, and yes it was a depressing place, but the patients were out of harms way to society and protected from themselves too. It was much more “compassionate” for everyone regardless of what the libs of the day said.
JM - you hit the nail on the head. The psychiatric hospitals were protecting these individuals from themselves. And each other, when melded onto the streets without guidance from healthy people.
'Care in the Community' sounded great, didn't it? It fell flat on it's face pretty quickly. I can remember waiting for a bus in London watching a homeless, mentally ill person fish food out of a bin. This was back in the early nineties.
It's also a huge problem for the emergency services. The mentally ill tend to decide to threaten to jump off multistorey carparks at their busiest times of the week.
They were happy to close all those hospitals, but forgot to pay for the community clinics that were to replace them, which meant they just dumped the mentally ill on the streets and into the prisons.
It’s different when it’s family. I guess if you can take care of your own wacko relative, please do so, but if you can’t, it’s off to the nut farm for him
I saw it as it happened in the early 1990s over here. From 1985 to 1995 all insane asylums barring three major ones for the criminally insane and dangerous were shuttered, the staff let go and the inmates transferred to rental apartments.
A lot of them had lived almost their entire lives in open-air institutions, now all of a suddenly they were to handle bills, laundry, shopping, money and economy, rent, et cetera - and their medications! - all on their lonesome.
By 1995, most if not all of the thousands who had been kicked out were homeless. By 2000, they were dead. Cold, hunger, drugs, crime, suicides.
I saw it happpen live, because from 1990-1995 I had lots of different night jobs in the inner city, and you'd see them ambling about at night in some places.
They didn't look threatening, but lost and despondent and terrified. When the ambulatory ER-team working out of the closed ward that had been kept running complained about being overworked, it was dismantled.
I don't want to think it, but I can't shake that ugly suspicion that the dying-off of thousands of mentally ill and retarded people was somehow a part of the plan all along.
'I don't want to think it, but I can't shake that ugly suspicion that the dying-off of thousands of mentally ill and retarded people was somehow a part of the plan all along.'
I don't think it's that. It's more that we still underestimate just how deranged and ideological committed certain ideas can make our fellow humans. In some instances, it really is the case that people don't have ideas, ideas have people.
A while back my brother had a girlfriend who was a care nurse. She was training in mental health care, although she had yet to undertake practical training. I told her that some mental health patients were violent. At first she didn't agree with me, and then she got upset and angry. I was quite placatory about it. I stated that it wasn't all mental health patients, but rather a particular cluster of illnesses and conditions. In the end I had to sit her down and get her to watch a documentary on the subject.
The problem is that everything in her training and education had been aimed at destigmatising mental health. She wasn't even aware there were significant problems with violence. After she watched the documentary, she asked a course tutor, who duly informed her that I was right, but that such conditions were rare, and too much circulation of this information could unduly stereotype the mentally ill more broadly.
Back the late eighties and early nineties the Left really believed that Foucault was right about mental illness being a form of eccentricity which the West had ostracised and institutionalised. Some still do, despite the fact that we now know that 50-70% of cases have a significant physiological brain component (more if we are more selective in what we class as mental illness).
The Right simply wanted to save money. A mistake in my view, given that one of the few core duties of a truly limited government is to protect citizens from the violence of other citizens.
Ideology has been the excuse of the worst evils in human history. I would be more sympathetic of the Left's view that grand narratives should at least be critiqued, if they weren't so set upon creating entirely new and incredibly harmful mass delusions.
The retarded thing is a bit more nuanced. They should be helped to be as independent as possible. Family makes all the difference. Sex is a particular problem as they tend be quite keen. As I wrote that, it made me think of the Shane Gillis clip where he pretends he has Downs just to get close to hot women!
Thank you for such a comprehensive reply, and I agree with what you write (hopefully not just because it's pretty much what I think too).
A personal note:
"... people don't have ideas, ideas have people."
As a retired teacher of among other subjects one the name of which translates as "ideas of history/history of ideas", the truth of that particular sentence hurts. But I can't deny it. In my teens I was involved in the political underground and subculture of that time and place, so I have first-hand experience with precisely that kind of people, left right and center and all over the place.
At some point, the idea becomes identity in the same way many people become their diagnoses or sexual orientation or some other thing that's really just optional toppings on the pizza, so to speak.
In the UK the liberal democrats used to be the centre party. Now they are more woke than anything else. Until recently, I had voted for them in every election. I was a Remainer during Brexit. It was only after the result that I started doing research, and realised that people had perfectly valid reasons for voting Brexit with which I was completely unfamiliar. It helped that I had recently read The Righteous Mind at the time. Most Remainers never bothered- they imagined they already knew the reason why people chose to vote for Brexit, none of them pleasant or kind.
I had always been a little more on the Right economically, but it was only when I was around 50 and people on the Left started acting more openly authoritarian and preachy, that I finally realised that the thing I cared most about in political terms was civic libertarianism.
I agree with you about the fact that the truth hurts. I've loved exploring new ideas all my life and am an enthusiastic reader of history. If you like Sci Fi you should try The Peacemakers Code by Deepak Malhotra. He incorporates a wealth of diplomatic and negotiation expertise drawn from his academic career, with Herodotus a theme throughout the novel.
Talking about ideas that hurt, when it comes to boys the only thing that William Golding got wrong was the age!
The problem with institutionalizing people is WHO makes the decision. Will it be the current brand of mental health professional? Will it be some new breed? Will it be bureaucrats who aren't accountable for their decisions? Will there be incentives tied to the decision?
It sounds simple, but if you dig into the history, you'll find it ripe with abuse. Besides which, we have existing laws to deal with public disorder; it is the refusal to use those laws that characterize the Democratic leadership in cities. What makes you think they'd be down with institutionalization any more than they are with enforcing the laws against public defecation?
No major mental disorder associated with violence is entirely free of physiological roots. All can be detected using various forms of imaging. Using neuroimaging to confirm a diagnosis is a close to infallible safeguard.
I agree with you about the reluctance of Blue States and Blue Cities. One of the things that progressives simply won't access is that places like Spain or Portugal which they admire, actually arrest people who indulge in drug use in public spaces. They give them a choice- rehab or prison. Unsurprisingly, almost all choose the rehab option.
25-45% of the homeless have a mental illness, but only 20-30% have a severe mental illness (SMI). 15% of the SMI population has the propensity towards violence. Using a Pareto distribution approach the numbers shrink even further. If you want to sell it to a city near you that is annoyingly Blue, then cite the fact that the victimisation rates for the severely mentally ill are horrendous. They would be better off in institutions. Then tell them that isolating a small number of violent severely mentally ill and institutionalising them will reduce stigma and hostility towards a far larger mentally ill population, by reducing perceived danger, and thus lowering the number of attacks against the homeless.
The numbers are quite small, the costs are quite modest. It won't do anything about the homeless problem, but it is possible to eliminate 90% of attacks by the violent severely mentally ill at minimal costs. Most Police Departments will already know exactly who they are. Simply send them for neuroimaging and get a diagnosis from a psych the next time they are arrested.
Take the total homeless population of a city x 0.3 (severely mentally ill) x 0.15 (violent severely mentally ill) x 0.3 (percentage to achieve 90% violence reduction using a Pareto distribution focusing on the most violent- the PD will have the data).
Lefties actually don't mind victimization (particularly if the victim isn't part of an oppressed group) - so selling them on reduction is a losing battle. What progressives are obsessed with is oppression. Back in the original Progressive era, public health started going off the rails due to things like eugenics, and reducing defective reproduction. I sure as hell never want them to have anything like that kind of power again.
Of course the source was going to reach those conclusions. There is a basic failure to distinguish between mental health and mental illness. It's a bit like liberals arguing that prisons are filled with the mentally ill. If I was in prison, I would feel anxious and depressed- for good reason!
Bugger! AI has been leading me up the garden path, although to be fair it's partially my fault by giving it very tight prompts. It was feeding back what I wanted to hear. Yes, it's still true that studies using the various scanning technologies have proven the physiological basis for the more violent severe mental illnesses, but using these technologies as a practical diagnostic tool on the ground remains slightly out of reach, even though they're getting closer.
My point about mental health conditions holds. Most mental health problems are within the normal human range of experiences and brain function. They are natural in humans. There is world of difference between mental health problems and mental illness. The one exception is bipolar. It seems to be a specific disorder which encompasses a huge range of possibilities, although some might argue this is because they broadened the diagnostic criteria.
Liberals will argue that a high percentage of criminals in prison have mental health problems. This is disingenuous, because anxiety and depression aren't mental illnesses. Of course, there are some mentally ill people in prisons, but they represent a far smaller percentage than the Left would have you believe, at least according to Theodore Dalrymple. ASPD is another matter.
Overmedicalization is a huge problem. It's why we get articles like the one you linked which conflate serious mental illnesses with mental health. The author actually puts depression and schizophrenia in the same sentence together as psychiatric disorders. It's diagnostic conflation, and something even a well-informed layman like myself can spot.
Let's simplify this a little. The mental health professionals running around today believe they can diagnose and treat all manner of condition. This is a very unproven assertion, abetted by a pharmaceutical industry that has a very vested interest in pushing pills. This is dubious enough to start with, now you want to marry that to the power of the state to coercively confine and/or cure? I might have a question or two about your own sanity!
To the extent that the homeless commit crimes, mental state is irrelevant. Those crimes should be prosecuted and punished. However, we have one party that doesn't want to do that - so let the fine citizens under that governance enjoy the fruits of that. Maybe the voters will wise up, or maybe they are another brand of crazy. In which case, are we really locking the nuts that need to be locked up?
Here I'll rewrite it: "this shocking and disgusting crime has no place in any civilized city and we weep for the victim. May God grant her peace. While we cannot bring her back we can ensure that her killer is brought to justice and work to make sure that something like this never happens again."
SEE JUST DON'T DANCE ON THE GIRL'S GRAVE IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD
thank you for printing this. i tried the link and it just took me to the video of the murder which was pretty horrific, even with all it's warnings, but obviously the mayor is trying to hide her statement. it was pretty stunning to watch those videos and see the caliber- even of liberals before they went collectively insane- of politicians a few decades ago.
as much as i hate to say it, this is what happens when you allow women in positions for which they are not suited. the syrupy compassion for the "unhomed" (anyone who uses that word is automatically disqualified for anything in my book just as if they had announced their pronouns) is a perversion of womens' natural nurturing tendencies.
the screeching of elizabeth warren (i keep expecting to see snakes pouring out of her eyeballs in that picture) is due to the emotional way in which women cat fight.
they make me rue the day women were ever given the right to vote.
have you ever read anything by a NC author Forrest Maready? he is a good friend of RFKjr and a committed anti-vaxxer (from previously being a committed pro-vaxxer once he read the history and the data).
he has said that rules and constitutions are just words on paper. what keeps civilization going is the threat of violence or ostracism enforced by strong men. women (and the current crop of democratic soy boys) cannot provide the necessary strength. they are too physically small and their voices are too high pitched to convey authority. in the UK right now, entire schools of white christian children are being forced to observe muslim fasting holidays because the fathers of the 3 muslim children in the school pose a greater threat of violence unopposed by the mostly female teachers.
antifa and BLM were able to take over cities in defiance of laws written on paper because they were able to threaten violence unopposed by the weak (female) leadership.
we have to put men back where they belong- the builders of civilization, the police, the secret service, the military, the fire department, the heads of households. and if we are to have order in our cities, the men in charge have to be western educated and not from cultures that cannot assimilate with our own, lest we become those cultures.
Among other ugly things, the use of “unhoused” struck me as pretentious and implying that the society is somehow obligated to house them. Why not use simple and habitual “homeless”? Because the proper jargon is more important to this so called public servant than the actual safety of those entrusted to her care.
Thank you for bringing to our attention this flagrant example of the democratic leadership degradation.
I’m beginning to understand assassinations better than I used to. “Things will continue until they can’t” kind of guides you toward bringing about the “can’t.”
meanwhile, let RFKjr say that school shooters (and the mentally ill) may get their brains messed up on psychotropic drugs that have black box warnings of suicidal and homicidal ideation and all hell breaks loss, the harpies screech and point their bony fingers in your face, the nags nag, the scolds scold, as they demand the overturn of the 2nd amendment
Writing up an article on the flabbergasting statement from Tim Kaine that rights come from government, and it's amazing how the QUALITY of politician has nosedived. I think once it became a special interest-pushing position, "anybody" could do it, so the theater kids did it. They're the best at lying directly to your face.
But theater kids can't actually lead, they just read the cue cards.
I think Tim Kaine knows EXACTLY what he is saying about “rights coming from government.” He is saying the quiet part out loud. That concept is what the current democrat party wants to put in place. As long as rights are inalienable, given to us at birth by our Creator, the current crop of Democrats are stymied in their plan to tell us what rights we can have. It’s also why they love “gun control” so much… because they have plans for us they know would get them shot.
The worst part, to Chris’ point, is that Kaine’s thought process is evil AND widely held by utterly stupid people. Evil and stupid is no way to go through life.
Yes, it was surprising he said it, not that he thinks it. As you say, Democrats NEED rights to come from government so they can take those rights away.
We're also dealing with broken brains and mental illness at every level, not just autistic kids but adults gone off the rails into extremes of ideology untethered from reality. But to them it IS reality, their reality. When they lie, we see that, we hear it, but I don't think they do. They actually believe what comes out of their mouths, the distorted neuropathology which they believe is clear thinking.
Yes, but these theater kids pre-selected and sponsored by very intelligent and highly motivated sociopaths who have endless applicants for the casting call and can switch them out quickly if needed.
I really hate to say it but the quality of the politicians who lord it over us is reflective of the US voting population in general. People get the government they deserve.
We're in the midst of a cultural decline that's at least 50 years in the making. Too many Americans have taken for granted the system bequeathed us by the blood, sweat, and tears of the generations who came before us. And just like a kid who inherits great wealth without ever working for it, too many Americans take what they have for granted and think what they have today will always be there, no matter what they do. We're the victims of our own success.
The Founders warned us that a Constitutional Republic requires citizens who are civically literate. That's not what we have in this Country today. Not even close.
You are right. No one reads anymore. Kids CAN’T read. College students turn in essays crafted by AI. Is it any wonder then, that fifty years ago, mayors and governors could speak intelligently, in complete sentences, about things like family and productive lives? God save us. Nothing else is working.
Oratory used to be much more complex, and people were able to handle it just fine. Orations used complex sentences a paragraph long, developed and elaborated argument on for many pages, made, references without explaining them to a shared cultural knowledge that included the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and political histories, and so on.
Reading was why this was possible and also what they were reading.
The cultural revolution maniacs trashed Western Traditions the 2 semester college course on grounds it wasn't inclusive, and now the generations since then know nothing. Basket weaving in Indonesia may be interesting, but it doesn't tell us how today's power attained its power, and for that reason alone the course should be brought back. The course wouldn't teach a student enough to understand every allusion in every mid 18th century political speech, but it would at least lay a foundation.
That isn't the cause. There have always been illiterates and idiots. The cause is the changing demographics of who is going into politics, especially on the left.
It may be easier to see in a foreign country. The British Labour party is going through a "reshuffle". The cause is that yet another minister turned out to be an awful person. Labour politicians are of atrocious quality. In 2025 alone there have been a constant string of scandals, like
1. The Deputy Prime Minister who railed against the rich demanding they pay more taxes, then turned out to be an inexplicably rich tax evader.
2. The anti-corruption minister from Bangladesh who was credibly accused by the Bangladeshi government of corruption.
3. The homelessness minister who evicted her own tenants so she could hike the rent, at a time when her party was planning to outlaw such evictions.
4. The transport secretary who turned out to have a fraud conviction she'd been hiding.
5. The chancellor of the exchequer whose CV was full of lies like claiming to have been a senior economist at a commercial bank when she actually ran a complaints department, who had a history of embezzlement and who is constantly accepting expensive "gifts" from political donors.
This kind of squalor isn't normal for British politics. The gap in quality can be measured. In 2012 politicians were asked what the probability was of flipping two heads in a row. Only a quarter of Labour MPs got it right (vs half for the Conservatives, itself very poor but the Conservatives have been a center left party for a long time). The numbers would surely be much worse 13 years later.
The quality problem arises because Labour attracts stupid people to begin with then doubles down by discriminating against white men. Every single one of the scandals above involves a woman, many of them immigrants, which isn't a surprise because Labour runs all-female shortlists. They only allow women to apply for jobs and accept whoever turns up in the name of equity. The result is a raging human trash fire of stupidity, lying, hypocrisy and outright corruption. Kier Starmer may be an authoritarian weakling, but he himself seems to live an honorable life. His problem is a party that has been wrecked by decades of feminism and anti-white racism.
I taught at a community college for several years during the past decade- even before the emergence of AI - and these 18,19,20 year old students take zero responsibility (expect A’s for doing nothing, including not even showing up..), they, with vanishingly few exceptions, could not read, could not think for themselves and could not write. Their level of work was more like 5th grade level when I was growing up in the 80s. These are the people taking over. All they know is indoctrination and tik tok
Combine this with the power-seeking behavior of incompetent people seeking office to benefit themselves, and you have a system where voters elect corrupt idiots who then ruin the system.
Americans are (stupidly and ignorantly) taking freedom and our constitution for granted - they won’t know what we have until they lose it.
Politicians, who ought to be concerned over that fact, don’t care due to the easy wealth they acquire by playing into it. Greed, media, and laziness has only added to the ease with which America lives “successfully” and to your point, is failing due to that success.
It is sickening and maddening to see. I want to fight it and for our beautiful, amazing, and one of a kind country- but, the left has no room for any words but their own. Proof and truth be damned.
Western culture was constructed out of the gospel, in the expectation of Christ’s return. Absent the personality / spirit of Christ, all grace, justice, blessing vanishes from the realms of men.
Remember Obama got elected in 2008 and 2012. In both cases, his opponents (McCain and Romney) were articulate and intelligent. The voting population hasn't changed *that* fast.
“While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record,… “ Guess what bozo? I don’t care about the man and his medical issues! I care about the young woman, now dead, killed with a slashed throat WHILE RIDING PUBLIC TRANSPORT! Going to or from work? School? To see a friend? To buy new shoes? Who knows? We should know. And care! I just can’t absorb how wrong the world has become.
The Democrats of yore (like most humans of yore) lived in a tangible world where they had tangible families, communities, traditions etc and, as this meant they were rooted in a specific place and people, they understood that the first purpose of politics was focused on these things and securing and bettering them...what else would be the point?
The Democrats of today represent (and incarnate) various symbol manipulators, teachers and managers, algorithm crafters and culture/media creators—a globalist postnational ruling class—which means they inhabit an almost entirely virtual and symbolic realm where, as they and everyone they know live at the apex of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, politics floats up into Cloud Cukoo Land and melts into a virtual reality built on imaginary virtue points, where whoever posits the loveliest, most "empathetic" utopia wins clicks, plaudits, and name recognition.
The problem for our progressive clerisy is that their heads are so deep in the clouds and their eyes are so focused on the Right Side of History™ where their pure beautiful souls will usher in a Golden Age of Social Justice, that they have completely lost sight of the ground beneath their feet. And in this case the ground beneath their feet is the connection between the rulers and the ruled, the consent of the governed. They might as well be colonial governors sent here from a very sentimental and sanctimonious planet who imagine they've been sent to morally instruct us and who can't quite figure out why we hate them and refuse to listen.
Once you sever your connection to your place and people, you stop being a representative and become an unwanted occupier. Until our progressive overlords decide they want to be OF us and not just ABOVE us, they will keep banging their heads against the wall, raging against reality, and mistaking tantrums for discourse.
Don't romanticize the past. Political parties once attracted smarter people due to the lack of sexual and racial discrimination, but the left were never rooted in families, communities and traditions. Democrats "of yore" spied for the USSR, corrupted voting, ran heavily corrupt city governments, took bribes and banged their interns. All of these were directly toxic to their own families and communities. The fact that they maybe sounded fancier whilst doing it is not all that important and only reflects demographic changes in the party (see my other comment).
Agree. Take LBJ. His former associate, Billy Sol Estes, wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice that Johnson was behind at least eight murders, the victims including both his own sister and President Kennedy.
It’s not that they were morally better or any less ignorant of historical realities. It’s not even that they were “fancier.” (I actually agree with Mr. Bray that - at least during the Cold War - more of them seemed patriotic, though.) The problem is that they are now utterly incoherent and functionally insane. And I don’t think it’s just their changing demographics, although that certainly is a factor, I agree. I think what happened is what has happened to the Left since 1789: they succeeded in winning the culture wars. Since Leftism is by definition incoherent, they are now - as they historically always have been - faced with the reality of having to defend their irrational and anti-human policies. These are, in turn, failing - as they historically always have - at a blistering pace. If they were in control, the next step would be that they form a circular firing squad and bust out the gulags. After that, some tinpot strongman creates a bullshit utopia and then, after many corpses, they collapse.
Trump just ended all that midstream. The sad and tragic part is that they won’t just roll over and die so innocent victims like that poor girl are still being sacrificed to their soulless god…
I think of the present administration as being a mixture of a few responsible Democrats and a few responsible Republicans. Trump, Gabbard, and Kennedy are Democrats, they just had to change parties.
It used to be possible to watch -- no, actually: to *enjoy* watching -- the "Sunday shows" with family members who disagreed on all sorts of issues. There was only one (McLaughlin?) with yelling; we could never watch more than a few minutes of that one.
Try watching some William F Buckley episodes of The Firing Line.
Childishness. Infantilization. We have become a nation of toddlers in adult bodies, id-centric, prone to fits of narcissistic rage, and this is reflected in our political “leadership”. It won’t get better until WE become better…don’t hold your breath.
For Heaven's sake, just look at the way so many people dress in public.
So help me, this is true, and it happened a quarter century ago in a large church which relatives of mine were members of: it was a Christmas Eve service, the church was packed, but there was enough room in the pew in front of the one my aunt and uncle were sitting in to accommodate a family. They were carrying sacks in which were cheeseburgers, fries, and probably milkshakes, and they ate their supper during the service.
Here's another Democrat who got nowhere when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s: the former governor of Florida, Reuben Askew. I don't know much about him, but remember that he had a good reputation and was adult.
Those of us who are of a venerable age remember when George McGovern was the Democratic nominee against Richard Nixon in 1972. Nixon was a tough guy and I am sure would have done his duty if he'd been under fire in World War II., but McGovern, who was ridiculed as a wimp, had been among the bravest of bomber pilots in the Yossarian theater of war. With one exception he behaved with unfailing grace during a humiliating campaign. Things got so bad that the Democrats, in their last act of economic responsibility, took McGovern's plane away from him in October. He was forced to fly commercial for the remainder of the campaign.
He boarded one such flight and a fat mouthed kid sitting near the front started jeering, "Hey, it's George McGovern!! Hey, McGovern, how's it going, loser?! Yeah, McGovern, you're gonna lose big time!! Yeah, McGovern!! Loser! Loser! Loser!"
McGovern said nothing, passed the kid, stopped, turned around, went back to the kid's aisle, and leaning in close to the kid's face, said, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?"
That man should have been President of the United States.
My dad once encountered George McGovern coming in to or off an elevator and as a huge admirer in his excitement he manfully stepped forward, stuck out a friendly paw, and said “Hi, I’m George McGovern”
It was a funny story when he told it but he said it was incandescently embarrassing in the moment. Apparently McGovern laughed and was nice about it.
Great experiment. It's truly astonishing to watch some of these videos. Overton window has shifted so far it's hard to see any similarities between the dems of old and the dems of now. Would be fun to show teens or early 20's folks snippets of these videos and make them guess the political party.
I accidentally fell onto the leftist side of SubStack the other day. I clicked on the 'best sellers' tab. It was what I imagine BlueSky to feel like.
The irony was the mirror image of RFK Jr's Senate hearing. On the sane side of the universe, we saw highlights of Harpie Liz Warren losing her shit, Senators Low-T shaking their fists--and a freaking buffed 70 year old stud make light of them.
On the Blue Sky side--it was all "RFK gets his ass handed to him by brilliant Senator..."
There were at least 4 authors with similar article headlines.
We do not see the same world. We do not speak the same language.
Sadly, many of these people were otherwise smart, responsible adults with whom I worked, befriended, knew all of my life. When I have tried to frame a leftist issue that Kamala supported and would have continued to shove down our throats: DEI, trans ideology full-tilt, no respect overseas, defund police...they will either choose to ignore my question and say something like " BUT YOU SUPPORT A CONVICTED FELON!!!!!!!!! SCREEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!" (This is from the male leftists I know...you should hear the women!)
I don't know what it will take for the fever to break.
Right now, I honestly don't give a shit. I'd prefer they wander into the desert for another 40 years and NEVER make it to the promised land. I hope they are out of power until I hit the dirt...hopefully 40 some years from now.
Well, some of these old bought-and-paid-for loons may move themselves down the conveyor belt of a life a bit faster (or a lot faster) should they continue to get their precious boosters... which, as I understand, they still can if they want to pay for them.
I think you are correct. For good or bad JFK ,LBJ,Carter and Bill weren’t phony like all the ones since Obama. I really miss Tip O’ Neil. I really think future historians will look back and realize things really deteriorated under Obama.
It's the network. Everything has scaled too big. Local politics, local trade & local markets are all gone and we all have gone mad. The family is no longer the center of the economy. Almost no one owns his farm, inn, shop, practice, store or tools. We are all working for wages. Or despairing and on drugs.
With AI everyone cheats their way through school. The University is dead. Who needs school with AI? The network is the center of our lives. It is our deity. We can no longer live without it.
Which are being undercut by immigrants; some legal, some not. In particular they've come to dominate many of the blue-collar trades, so most of the natives have never learned those skills -- while a lot of the white-collar jobs the natives went for instead are in danger of being replaced by AI.
So yeah, despairing and on drugs is what happens to many people when they discover that they're no longer employable and don't have much chance of getting through the DEI barriers to entering what careers still remain viable.
Anyway, that's the story I've been hearing and I have no reason to doubt it.
I'm old enough to remember when that would have been a natural, obvious constituency for the labor union Democrats. One of the biggest surprises of my lifetime is that they've ceded it to the Republicans (who until Trump had no idea what to do with it.)
we could live without it and will probably after going through the muck. we cannot give up any possibility for the whole thing to collapse and newer structures,currently being grown and nurtured,become our focus again. we tend to,as american's respond pretty humanely in crisis.
Jimmy Carter made some serious foreign policy blunders, but he also got the ball rolling in demanding better human rights from our client states -- a policy continued by Reagan.
Also, Jimmy Carter was the biggest price control deregulator in American history. He not only began the phaseout of Nixon's ridiculous price controls on energy, he also got rid of price controls left over from the Progressive Era and the New Deal. It was Jimmy Carter who got rid of the price controls on trucking, rail freight, and air travel. And he appointed Paul Volker to be Fed Chair. The resulting high interest rates triggered the recession that put Reagan in office.
But the main reason Carter lost to Reagan is that he was way too conservative for the evolving Democrat base. Carter was more conservative than Nixon or either Bush.
To a significant degree the first Trump term was Jimmy Carter all over again but with Attitude. And, by the way, Trump's Peace Through Dirty Energy policy was also Jimmy Carter's policy. Unfortunately for Carter, the technology to economically tap our immense oil shale reserves wasn't ready for prime time yet -- even with multi billion dollar government subsidies. But the private sector eventually figured out how to implement Carter's dream, and Trump simply had to allow it.
Actually the vast oil shale reserves of the Inter-mountain Western US remain untouched (Jimmy Carter's oil shale). It takes too much energy to get the kerogen to release from the oil shale.
Our current oil boom is in 'shale oil' or 'tight oil'. Shale oil is regular oil. The kerogen locked up in oil shale is thought to be the precursor of virtually all oil.
A quick network tour of the two terms 'oil shale' and 'shale oil' clears up the difference quickly. The US is the Saudi Arabia of both.
Volcker's high interest rates also ended the stagflation which had been plaguing the economy during the 70's and early 80's. An achievement the Reaganites took credit for, but as you rightly point out, it was the appointment of Volcker that got the ball rolling, even though it cost Carter his re-election.
The rail freight price controls were eliminated under Ford. Work on legislation for eliminating rail, truck, and air freight price controls had been going on for years. Implying that this legislation was spearheaded by Carter is misleading.
Dereg efforts had been underway since the end of WWII. The Reed-Bulwinkle Act was an attempt to get around the ICC but even that wound up having the opposite effect of its intent.
Thanks for posting this. I couldn’t find the original, and what is out there now seems fairly anodyne and didn’t mention the unhoused. Wow, this one is actually much worse than
Thoughts and prayers??!! Does that still mean that one lacks all compassion, and is complicit in the crime by not supporting a particular course of action, or is this case (D)ifferent?
Bradly’s delivery is so measured, his pronunciation and vocabulary so standard, that he sounds like a white man in black face. His facial features even look rather white. He seems like a serious, responsible person trying to do his job. There is absolutely none of the mush-mouthed Ebonics or the ridiculous posturing that we get from current black leaders. Isn’t the entire democrat party bought off? They don’t need to write bills or even read them, or even (in some cases) vote on them. All that messy, boring policy stuff is for aids, lobbyists, and other hidden figures. Politicians just put on a big act as they scoop up boatloads of money, getting filthy rich on modest salaries.
“That clip is just under fifty years old, chronologically, but it’s culturally closer to the moment Eve started eyeing the apple.” Another jarring reminder of how far we have traveled from shared reality and decent, normal, civilized behavior. Also, if I were that young woman’s family, I would be extremely angry right now with that truly disgusting almost inhuman response.
Full statement from Mayor Vi Lyles:
First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go out to the young woman’s family and friends.
This is a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place. As we come to understand what happened and why, we must look at the entire situation. While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record, what I have come to understand is that he has long struggled with mental health and appears to have suffered a crisis. This was the unfortunate and tragic outcome. While there are questions about the safety and security of our transit system and our city, I do know there have been significant and sustained efforts to address safety and security within our transit system and across our city.
Charlotte is by and large a safe city. CATS, by and large, is a safe transit system. However, tragic incidents like these should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes. We will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health. I am committed to doing the hard work with Mecklenburg County, community leaders, health care service providers, and the private sector to ensure that Charlotte continues to be one of the best cities in the world, with the highest quality of life for everyone.
I want to be clear that I am not villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused. Mental health disease is just that — a disease like any other that needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer or heart disease. Our community must work to address the underlying issue of access to mental healthcare.
Also, those who are unhoused are more frequently the victim of crimes and not the perpetrators. Too many people who are on the street need a safe place to sleep and wrap around services to lift them up.
We, as a community, must do better for those members of our community who need help and have no place to go.
Why didn't she just come out and say, "HA HA white girl bleed a lot!"??
That is absolutely...gob-smacking.
This broad once knelt for nine minutes for George Floyd, dead of a drug overdose in a city 1,000 miles away...
https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/mayor-lyles-city-council-join-protesters-for-peaceful-demonstration
...but has nothing but erasure of someone savagely murdered in her own city?
I noted in another thread of yours, Chris, the other day, regarding the US Senators' performance in the RFK Jr. circle-shriek, that these creatures are devoid of anything human in their perceptions, reactions, emotions, interactions. They are reading scripts honed by PR agents around pollsters' data, with an eye to reelection.
At the same time there is something worse than vampiric (as you noted about the Senate shriekers) going on in this...utterly psychopathic expression. There is something way far past inhuman in it.
Since I strongly suspect "Vi Lyles" didn't write it, I'd like to know who did.
Anybody else remember how just a couple years ago she approved the boosting of her City Manager's salary to nearly half a million per year? Marcus Jones, look it up.
So true. Warren's face looks like she's demonically oppressed, "utterly psychopathic expression...There is something way far past inhuman in it" describes so many of the "leaders" in today's DNC. In reality they're Socialists and Anarcho-Communists hellbent on destroying America. The DSA's website calls for abolishing police and closing all prisons. Total insanity. VDH is right when he calls them "civilizational arsonists".
Fake Indian Big mad.
Heap big chief Warren buries hatchet. "I go to find my opinions among the dead. From where the sun now stands I will think no more forever."
How, Squaw Squawk Like Crow! She heap big loony!
The monster in the movie Alien comes to mind…🤔
I don’t think it was HER PR agents – I think it was Big Pharma’s. They’re calling in their chits from all the campaign cash. Trump/Kennedy are un-raping American patients, and Pharma is striking back.
That's not what I'm seeing.
What I'm seeing is that most of her donations appear to have come from the construction and finance industries.
https://www.transparencyusa.org/nc/payee/viola-alexander-lyles-campaign/payments?cycle=2017-to-now
HNTB Holdings PAC...
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00386029/summary/2022
...is an engineering, architecture, and construction PAC.
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00386029/?tab=filings
Just one such PAC.
The comment to which I replied was addressing Liz (“Pocahontas”) Warren in the Senate HHS hearing, not Mayor Lyle’s’ despicable statement on the murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte.
(If I replied to the wrong comment, my apologies.)
Got it, John. No problem.
Here ya go.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/elizabeth-warren/summary?cid=N00033492
"Health" industry donations are ample, but under 10% of donations from the "retired" (?), "education," and "Dem/liberal" donor sectors.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/elizabeth-warren/industries?cid=N00033492&cycle=2024
Her statement thanking the media for not sharing the video or images merits notice too. The issue apparently is the bad publicity, not the incident itself.
https://www.wbtv.com/2025/09/06/mayor-lyles-issues-statement-deadly-charlotte-light-rail-stabbing/
I suspect the issue is also the race of the perpetrator. She is not requesting it out of respect for the victim’s family.
She can almost disguise herself as white, but she has the stain of Cain
Mayor Lyles is a liar. She wanted a media blackout because the hideous attack by this maniac exposes the insanity of the "progressive" policies that she espouses. Her original unedited comment makes it very clear that her faux compassion is with the "unhoused" killer and not with the victim.
Most jails and prisons have units for the criminally insane. Mental institutions have secure wards too. The DNC Socialist leaders know they're endangering the public but won't modify their agenda because ideology overrides humanity. And they have private armed security to protect them from their anarchic policies.
One sentence devoted to the victim (must get that out of the way first) then five paragraphs of virtue signalling showing what a fine, caring Mayor she is. Statements like this come pre-printed, a copy in every official’s desk drawer, just fill in the blanks.
The politicians in these matters seem to consider the victim to be little more than an inconvenience. Bless their hearts, they have to acknowledge that there actually was a victim, but that little detail distracts from the greater task: blaming capitalist society for all the problems in the world.
Agreed. And it's not just far-left politicians that have hijacked the Democratic Party, it's "activist" judges and pro-criminal Soros funded DAs too. He's bankrolled more than 74 who are unleashing violent repeat offenders in cities across America. He has billions to fund them and he's not the only one. Millions in dark money is funding them.
Just learned that the judge had requested a forensic psych eval on this killer after his previous crime. The judge kicked him loose without it ever being done. He has a violent criminal history going back years. They knew this would happen. Even his mother is saying he should never have been set free.
The DSA want to abolish law enforcement and prisons. They want this mayhem and cruel chaos. Much easier to gain power when you divide and destabilize civil society. Even more troubling is the MSM's avoidance of even covering these events. It's September 8th and this murder happened August 22nd and most U.S. "legacy media" still haven't reported on this. It's not an oversight, it's by design.
Great comment.
Thanks!
Yours too! Thank you.
Does anyone remember the man in Sydney holding hostages with a stated religiously motivated intent? People were worried Uber riders might reject drivers who appeared to be from majority Muslim nations, so they started the hash tag campaign #illridewithyou...while the terrorist still had hostages!
Yes, I remember. Suicidal empathy.
God that's an awful statement, and I say that as a leftie Brit. Nothing in that statement would give me any sense of safety in her city. Tell me how you ARE going to protect ordinary people from mentally ill people who are violent then? Oh you don't believe in arresting them, even when they are acting violent? You don't want to compel them into treatment? You let obviously mentally unstable men roam free on your public transport because it's mean to keep them off it? You just wait, until their insanity leads them to destroy a fellow human? Then you sadly sweep up the mess and do nothing else? Don't worry people, one day when the "root causes" are gone.......
I have plenty of criticisms of the American right (another time..) but the American left is now unrecognisable to European people who are from the left tradition. We want mentally ill people cared for, and off the streets, and we don't elect politicians who think it's against an insane person's human rights to lock them up to protect the rest of us. Example, no left-wing Mayor here could survive the type of scandalous crime and public squalor that I saw when I visited LA. God help the poor and the ordinary voters, the Democrats are a lost cause.
> We want mentally ill people cared for
It's good that you find it awful and are questioning the tenets of leftism, but you need to go further and put away the Eurosnoot. Britain closed its asylums in the 1980s, just like America. Psychosis is treated at home in both countries.
More importantly the British left is prone to redefining violent insanity as a victim identity rather than mental illness. You then don't recognize when it goes untreated.
Here are two examples of this problem.
1. The live fire debate over whether transgenderism is a totally normal identity that's needlessly victimized by right wing haters, or a mental illness. The right see someone claiming they were born as the wrong gender and it sounds to them like this black dude on the subway who claimed he had something "man made" inside him that controlled his thoughts. It sounds like insanity, and transgender people are wildly more violent than average, so it looks like insanity too. But can you imagine the left's reaction if the government re-opened the asylums and straitjacketed all the trans?
2. Islam. The UK has a big problem with random stabbings by mentally ill strangers in cities. Axel Rudakubana's attack was far worse than this one: he killed three children and injured ten others on a random stabbing spree at a dance party. He turned out to be an Islamic terrorist who had stockpiled ricin, had an Al Qaeda training manual, a history of violent behavior and had been referred to the authorities three different times. The left wing government covered all this up, claiming he was just a normal British guy and that they couldn't identify any ideological motive for the attack.
The left relies on Muslim votes for support, so has been extremely reluctant to classify Islamists as mentally ill even when they are constantly being reported by their own families for being violent extremists. Instead they wait until people die and then respond, 100% of the time, exactly like this American mayor: "don't look back in anger".
"...the American left is now unrecognisable to European people who are from the left tradition."
Hardly. The American liberal-progressive left has been the foremost source of inspiration for the European left, including the old communist parties, since Blair was occupying no. 10.
The European left, center and slightly-right-of-center are all perfectly aligned with the US Democratic party or its left wing. You can run down a list of issues and see that they all sing from the same sheet.
Her analogy of treating mental illness akin to Cancer or Heart Disease is flawed at it's core. The more correct analogy might be of the violently mental ill and violent drug users as plague carriers, with open pustules walking around crowds of citizens spreading the diseases they carry and bringing petulance and death to all they encounter. What would Mayor Vi do about that? My guess is, lock them up into isolation wards, treat until death and burn the bodies in pits, certainly not let them run loose and whine about their lack of guilt. This statement is criminal in it's language and outcome. I do not know the victim but she seems innocent and beyond any culpability for the violence delivered upon her. No consequence is too much for the villain who has taken her life and those who enable those sick predicators an escape from their villainy.
Yes .... This!
“We must take a real hard look at ourselves and ponder vociferously what drove Ed Gein to make human skin lamp shades and to find the root causes of how we as a society failed this poor young man in his education and his up bringing.”
What’s strange is that if the goal of the statement was greater political support among the voters, repudiating the killer and promoting law and order would have been the correct move.
But it clearly wasn’t the goal.
So what is the goal? I will never understand these people, but we’ve made an awful, awful mistake in letting them lead us.
the goal is to associate all problems with the solution of bigger government funding, hence more grift and patronage.
Sympathy for the family was "first," sure, but definitely not "foremost" by any stretch of the imagination.
It's not mental health, it's mental illness. Sane people should be arguing that the West needs to reopen the types of mental institutions which dealt with these types of problems in the past.
This is clip from the UK's SAS: Who Dares Wins. The contestant was a father who was working away from home and on the phone to wife, when a nutjob broke into his house:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8mNhlLplwc
It's a moving clip and pretty short, well worth a worth.
My older brother was in a mental hospital back in the Seventies and having seen what it did to him, I was in favor of de-institutionalization when it was the hot new policy.
But leaving the addicts and mentally ill to fend for themselves out on the streets has been far far worse and we've all suffered from it. So I've come 180 degrees on this issue.
I worked in a FL state psych hospital for a year while in grad school in the 80s. By then a lot of the worst earlier abuses were cleaned up, and yes it was a depressing place, but the patients were out of harms way to society and protected from themselves too. It was much more “compassionate” for everyone regardless of what the libs of the day said.
JM - you hit the nail on the head. The psychiatric hospitals were protecting these individuals from themselves. And each other, when melded onto the streets without guidance from healthy people.
'Care in the Community' sounded great, didn't it? It fell flat on it's face pretty quickly. I can remember waiting for a bus in London watching a homeless, mentally ill person fish food out of a bin. This was back in the early nineties.
It's also a huge problem for the emergency services. The mentally ill tend to decide to threaten to jump off multistorey carparks at their busiest times of the week.
They were happy to close all those hospitals, but forgot to pay for the community clinics that were to replace them, which meant they just dumped the mentally ill on the streets and into the prisons.
The extent of de-institutionalization we now have has failed. The truly crazed need to be safely and humanely confined.
Will Warren get a fridge in her room, at least? What if one day she thinks 'I'll get me a beer' and cant?
Too true.
It's THE SAME in England,in Britain and they call it Care in the Community. The Community doesn't care. The Community is where they burn Witches.
Yours is a very astute and blunt observation regarding the Community. After all, burning witches "has a kind of ritual significance":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JepSFaEWvfs
It’s different when it’s family. I guess if you can take care of your own wacko relative, please do so, but if you can’t, it’s off to the nut farm for him
Yep.
I saw it as it happened in the early 1990s over here. From 1985 to 1995 all insane asylums barring three major ones for the criminally insane and dangerous were shuttered, the staff let go and the inmates transferred to rental apartments.
A lot of them had lived almost their entire lives in open-air institutions, now all of a suddenly they were to handle bills, laundry, shopping, money and economy, rent, et cetera - and their medications! - all on their lonesome.
By 1995, most if not all of the thousands who had been kicked out were homeless. By 2000, they were dead. Cold, hunger, drugs, crime, suicides.
I saw it happpen live, because from 1990-1995 I had lots of different night jobs in the inner city, and you'd see them ambling about at night in some places.
They didn't look threatening, but lost and despondent and terrified. When the ambulatory ER-team working out of the closed ward that had been kept running complained about being overworked, it was dismantled.
I don't want to think it, but I can't shake that ugly suspicion that the dying-off of thousands of mentally ill and retarded people was somehow a part of the plan all along.
'I don't want to think it, but I can't shake that ugly suspicion that the dying-off of thousands of mentally ill and retarded people was somehow a part of the plan all along.'
I don't think it's that. It's more that we still underestimate just how deranged and ideological committed certain ideas can make our fellow humans. In some instances, it really is the case that people don't have ideas, ideas have people.
A while back my brother had a girlfriend who was a care nurse. She was training in mental health care, although she had yet to undertake practical training. I told her that some mental health patients were violent. At first she didn't agree with me, and then she got upset and angry. I was quite placatory about it. I stated that it wasn't all mental health patients, but rather a particular cluster of illnesses and conditions. In the end I had to sit her down and get her to watch a documentary on the subject.
The problem is that everything in her training and education had been aimed at destigmatising mental health. She wasn't even aware there were significant problems with violence. After she watched the documentary, she asked a course tutor, who duly informed her that I was right, but that such conditions were rare, and too much circulation of this information could unduly stereotype the mentally ill more broadly.
Back the late eighties and early nineties the Left really believed that Foucault was right about mental illness being a form of eccentricity which the West had ostracised and institutionalised. Some still do, despite the fact that we now know that 50-70% of cases have a significant physiological brain component (more if we are more selective in what we class as mental illness).
The Right simply wanted to save money. A mistake in my view, given that one of the few core duties of a truly limited government is to protect citizens from the violence of other citizens.
Ideology has been the excuse of the worst evils in human history. I would be more sympathetic of the Left's view that grand narratives should at least be critiqued, if they weren't so set upon creating entirely new and incredibly harmful mass delusions.
The retarded thing is a bit more nuanced. They should be helped to be as independent as possible. Family makes all the difference. Sex is a particular problem as they tend be quite keen. As I wrote that, it made me think of the Shane Gillis clip where he pretends he has Downs just to get close to hot women!
Thank you for such a comprehensive reply, and I agree with what you write (hopefully not just because it's pretty much what I think too).
A personal note:
"... people don't have ideas, ideas have people."
As a retired teacher of among other subjects one the name of which translates as "ideas of history/history of ideas", the truth of that particular sentence hurts. But I can't deny it. In my teens I was involved in the political underground and subculture of that time and place, so I have first-hand experience with precisely that kind of people, left right and center and all over the place.
At some point, the idea becomes identity in the same way many people become their diagnoses or sexual orientation or some other thing that's really just optional toppings on the pizza, so to speak.
In the UK the liberal democrats used to be the centre party. Now they are more woke than anything else. Until recently, I had voted for them in every election. I was a Remainer during Brexit. It was only after the result that I started doing research, and realised that people had perfectly valid reasons for voting Brexit with which I was completely unfamiliar. It helped that I had recently read The Righteous Mind at the time. Most Remainers never bothered- they imagined they already knew the reason why people chose to vote for Brexit, none of them pleasant or kind.
I had always been a little more on the Right economically, but it was only when I was around 50 and people on the Left started acting more openly authoritarian and preachy, that I finally realised that the thing I cared most about in political terms was civic libertarianism.
I agree with you about the fact that the truth hurts. I've loved exploring new ideas all my life and am an enthusiastic reader of history. If you like Sci Fi you should try The Peacemakers Code by Deepak Malhotra. He incorporates a wealth of diplomatic and negotiation expertise drawn from his academic career, with Herodotus a theme throughout the novel.
Talking about ideas that hurt, when it comes to boys the only thing that William Golding got wrong was the age!
The problem with institutionalizing people is WHO makes the decision. Will it be the current brand of mental health professional? Will it be some new breed? Will it be bureaucrats who aren't accountable for their decisions? Will there be incentives tied to the decision?
It sounds simple, but if you dig into the history, you'll find it ripe with abuse. Besides which, we have existing laws to deal with public disorder; it is the refusal to use those laws that characterize the Democratic leadership in cities. What makes you think they'd be down with institutionalization any more than they are with enforcing the laws against public defecation?
" the current brand of mental health professionals"
....are a HUGE part of the problem.
No major mental disorder associated with violence is entirely free of physiological roots. All can be detected using various forms of imaging. Using neuroimaging to confirm a diagnosis is a close to infallible safeguard.
I agree with you about the reluctance of Blue States and Blue Cities. One of the things that progressives simply won't access is that places like Spain or Portugal which they admire, actually arrest people who indulge in drug use in public spaces. They give them a choice- rehab or prison. Unsurprisingly, almost all choose the rehab option.
25-45% of the homeless have a mental illness, but only 20-30% have a severe mental illness (SMI). 15% of the SMI population has the propensity towards violence. Using a Pareto distribution approach the numbers shrink even further. If you want to sell it to a city near you that is annoyingly Blue, then cite the fact that the victimisation rates for the severely mentally ill are horrendous. They would be better off in institutions. Then tell them that isolating a small number of violent severely mentally ill and institutionalising them will reduce stigma and hostility towards a far larger mentally ill population, by reducing perceived danger, and thus lowering the number of attacks against the homeless.
The numbers are quite small, the costs are quite modest. It won't do anything about the homeless problem, but it is possible to eliminate 90% of attacks by the violent severely mentally ill at minimal costs. Most Police Departments will already know exactly who they are. Simply send them for neuroimaging and get a diagnosis from a psych the next time they are arrested.
Take the total homeless population of a city x 0.3 (severely mentally ill) x 0.15 (violent severely mentally ill) x 0.3 (percentage to achieve 90% violence reduction using a Pareto distribution focusing on the most violent- the PD will have the data).
Neuroimaging doesn't sound as foolproof as you declare it to be.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2023/april/brain-imaging-failed-to-crack-the-code-on-mental-illness--can-th.html
Lefties actually don't mind victimization (particularly if the victim isn't part of an oppressed group) - so selling them on reduction is a losing battle. What progressives are obsessed with is oppression. Back in the original Progressive era, public health started going off the rails due to things like eugenics, and reducing defective reproduction. I sure as hell never want them to have anything like that kind of power again.
Of course the source was going to reach those conclusions. There is a basic failure to distinguish between mental health and mental illness. It's a bit like liberals arguing that prisons are filled with the mentally ill. If I was in prison, I would feel anxious and depressed- for good reason!
Bugger! AI has been leading me up the garden path, although to be fair it's partially my fault by giving it very tight prompts. It was feeding back what I wanted to hear. Yes, it's still true that studies using the various scanning technologies have proven the physiological basis for the more violent severe mental illnesses, but using these technologies as a practical diagnostic tool on the ground remains slightly out of reach, even though they're getting closer.
My point about mental health conditions holds. Most mental health problems are within the normal human range of experiences and brain function. They are natural in humans. There is world of difference between mental health problems and mental illness. The one exception is bipolar. It seems to be a specific disorder which encompasses a huge range of possibilities, although some might argue this is because they broadened the diagnostic criteria.
Liberals will argue that a high percentage of criminals in prison have mental health problems. This is disingenuous, because anxiety and depression aren't mental illnesses. Of course, there are some mentally ill people in prisons, but they represent a far smaller percentage than the Left would have you believe, at least according to Theodore Dalrymple. ASPD is another matter.
Overmedicalization is a huge problem. It's why we get articles like the one you linked which conflate serious mental illnesses with mental health. The author actually puts depression and schizophrenia in the same sentence together as psychiatric disorders. It's diagnostic conflation, and something even a well-informed layman like myself can spot.
Let's simplify this a little. The mental health professionals running around today believe they can diagnose and treat all manner of condition. This is a very unproven assertion, abetted by a pharmaceutical industry that has a very vested interest in pushing pills. This is dubious enough to start with, now you want to marry that to the power of the state to coercively confine and/or cure? I might have a question or two about your own sanity!
To the extent that the homeless commit crimes, mental state is irrelevant. Those crimes should be prosecuted and punished. However, we have one party that doesn't want to do that - so let the fine citizens under that governance enjoy the fruits of that. Maybe the voters will wise up, or maybe they are another brand of crazy. In which case, are we really locking the nuts that need to be locked up?
Here I'll rewrite it: "this shocking and disgusting crime has no place in any civilized city and we weep for the victim. May God grant her peace. While we cannot bring her back we can ensure that her killer is brought to justice and work to make sure that something like this never happens again."
SEE JUST DON'T DANCE ON THE GIRL'S GRAVE IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD
thank you for printing this. i tried the link and it just took me to the video of the murder which was pretty horrific, even with all it's warnings, but obviously the mayor is trying to hide her statement. it was pretty stunning to watch those videos and see the caliber- even of liberals before they went collectively insane- of politicians a few decades ago.
as much as i hate to say it, this is what happens when you allow women in positions for which they are not suited. the syrupy compassion for the "unhomed" (anyone who uses that word is automatically disqualified for anything in my book just as if they had announced their pronouns) is a perversion of womens' natural nurturing tendencies.
the screeching of elizabeth warren (i keep expecting to see snakes pouring out of her eyeballs in that picture) is due to the emotional way in which women cat fight.
they make me rue the day women were ever given the right to vote.
have you ever read anything by a NC author Forrest Maready? he is a good friend of RFKjr and a committed anti-vaxxer (from previously being a committed pro-vaxxer once he read the history and the data).
he has said that rules and constitutions are just words on paper. what keeps civilization going is the threat of violence or ostracism enforced by strong men. women (and the current crop of democratic soy boys) cannot provide the necessary strength. they are too physically small and their voices are too high pitched to convey authority. in the UK right now, entire schools of white christian children are being forced to observe muslim fasting holidays because the fathers of the 3 muslim children in the school pose a greater threat of violence unopposed by the mostly female teachers.
antifa and BLM were able to take over cities in defiance of laws written on paper because they were able to threaten violence unopposed by the weak (female) leadership.
we have to put men back where they belong- the builders of civilization, the police, the secret service, the military, the fire department, the heads of households. and if we are to have order in our cities, the men in charge have to be western educated and not from cultures that cannot assimilate with our own, lest we become those cultures.
Astoundingly tone deaf.
Not to the constituents who voted for this
In the cause of suicidal empathy, those constituents r b insane.
Among other ugly things, the use of “unhoused” struck me as pretentious and implying that the society is somehow obligated to house them. Why not use simple and habitual “homeless”? Because the proper jargon is more important to this so called public servant than the actual safety of those entrusted to her care.
Thank you for bringing to our attention this flagrant example of the democratic leadership degradation.
i bet she also calls illegal aliens "undocumented refugees"
I’m beginning to understand assassinations better than I used to. “Things will continue until they can’t” kind of guides you toward bringing about the “can’t.”
meanwhile, let RFKjr say that school shooters (and the mentally ill) may get their brains messed up on psychotropic drugs that have black box warnings of suicidal and homicidal ideation and all hell breaks loss, the harpies screech and point their bony fingers in your face, the nags nag, the scolds scold, as they demand the overturn of the 2nd amendment
Writing up an article on the flabbergasting statement from Tim Kaine that rights come from government, and it's amazing how the QUALITY of politician has nosedived. I think once it became a special interest-pushing position, "anybody" could do it, so the theater kids did it. They're the best at lying directly to your face.
But theater kids can't actually lead, they just read the cue cards.
I think Tim Kaine knows EXACTLY what he is saying about “rights coming from government.” He is saying the quiet part out loud. That concept is what the current democrat party wants to put in place. As long as rights are inalienable, given to us at birth by our Creator, the current crop of Democrats are stymied in their plan to tell us what rights we can have. It’s also why they love “gun control” so much… because they have plans for us they know would get them shot.
The worst part, to Chris’ point, is that Kaine’s thought process is evil AND widely held by utterly stupid people. Evil and stupid is no way to go through life.
Yes, it was surprising he said it, not that he thinks it. As you say, Democrats NEED rights to come from government so they can take those rights away.
This is why they practice lawfare ... it is about what they can get away with, not inalienable rights.
It's lawyers that are the problem.
We're also dealing with broken brains and mental illness at every level, not just autistic kids but adults gone off the rails into extremes of ideology untethered from reality. But to them it IS reality, their reality. When they lie, we see that, we hear it, but I don't think they do. They actually believe what comes out of their mouths, the distorted neuropathology which they believe is clear thinking.
NAILED IT!
Yes, but these theater kids pre-selected and sponsored by very intelligent and highly motivated sociopaths who have endless applicants for the casting call and can switch them out quickly if needed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXHlCC0WIAA_WKd?format=jpg&name=medium
its been a steady creep. henry clay’s “american system” and the welfare clause. huge loopholes in expanding government invasiveness.
I really hate to say it but the quality of the politicians who lord it over us is reflective of the US voting population in general. People get the government they deserve.
We're in the midst of a cultural decline that's at least 50 years in the making. Too many Americans have taken for granted the system bequeathed us by the blood, sweat, and tears of the generations who came before us. And just like a kid who inherits great wealth without ever working for it, too many Americans take what they have for granted and think what they have today will always be there, no matter what they do. We're the victims of our own success.
The Founders warned us that a Constitutional Republic requires citizens who are civically literate. That's not what we have in this Country today. Not even close.
You are right. No one reads anymore. Kids CAN’T read. College students turn in essays crafted by AI. Is it any wonder then, that fifty years ago, mayors and governors could speak intelligently, in complete sentences, about things like family and productive lives? God save us. Nothing else is working.
Oratory used to be much more complex, and people were able to handle it just fine. Orations used complex sentences a paragraph long, developed and elaborated argument on for many pages, made, references without explaining them to a shared cultural knowledge that included the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and political histories, and so on.
Reading was why this was possible and also what they were reading.
The cultural revolution maniacs trashed Western Traditions the 2 semester college course on grounds it wasn't inclusive, and now the generations since then know nothing. Basket weaving in Indonesia may be interesting, but it doesn't tell us how today's power attained its power, and for that reason alone the course should be brought back. The course wouldn't teach a student enough to understand every allusion in every mid 18th century political speech, but it would at least lay a foundation.
That isn't the cause. There have always been illiterates and idiots. The cause is the changing demographics of who is going into politics, especially on the left.
It may be easier to see in a foreign country. The British Labour party is going through a "reshuffle". The cause is that yet another minister turned out to be an awful person. Labour politicians are of atrocious quality. In 2025 alone there have been a constant string of scandals, like
1. The Deputy Prime Minister who railed against the rich demanding they pay more taxes, then turned out to be an inexplicably rich tax evader.
2. The anti-corruption minister from Bangladesh who was credibly accused by the Bangladeshi government of corruption.
3. The homelessness minister who evicted her own tenants so she could hike the rent, at a time when her party was planning to outlaw such evictions.
4. The transport secretary who turned out to have a fraud conviction she'd been hiding.
5. The chancellor of the exchequer whose CV was full of lies like claiming to have been a senior economist at a commercial bank when she actually ran a complaints department, who had a history of embezzlement and who is constantly accepting expensive "gifts" from political donors.
This kind of squalor isn't normal for British politics. The gap in quality can be measured. In 2012 politicians were asked what the probability was of flipping two heads in a row. Only a quarter of Labour MPs got it right (vs half for the Conservatives, itself very poor but the Conservatives have been a center left party for a long time). The numbers would surely be much worse 13 years later.
The quality problem arises because Labour attracts stupid people to begin with then doubles down by discriminating against white men. Every single one of the scandals above involves a woman, many of them immigrants, which isn't a surprise because Labour runs all-female shortlists. They only allow women to apply for jobs and accept whoever turns up in the name of equity. The result is a raging human trash fire of stupidity, lying, hypocrisy and outright corruption. Kier Starmer may be an authoritarian weakling, but he himself seems to live an honorable life. His problem is a party that has been wrecked by decades of feminism and anti-white racism.
When the Jerry Springer show got popular, that was a warning
Jerry was a Democrat mayor of Cincinnati for awhile.
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
I taught at a community college for several years during the past decade- even before the emergence of AI - and these 18,19,20 year old students take zero responsibility (expect A’s for doing nothing, including not even showing up..), they, with vanishingly few exceptions, could not read, could not think for themselves and could not write. Their level of work was more like 5th grade level when I was growing up in the 80s. These are the people taking over. All they know is indoctrination and tik tok
And they’re probably inclined to turn sadistic bully if given a tiny amount of power.
This. Well stated.
Combine this with the power-seeking behavior of incompetent people seeking office to benefit themselves, and you have a system where voters elect corrupt idiots who then ruin the system.
Beautifully put and absolutely correct!
Americans are (stupidly and ignorantly) taking freedom and our constitution for granted - they won’t know what we have until they lose it.
Politicians, who ought to be concerned over that fact, don’t care due to the easy wealth they acquire by playing into it. Greed, media, and laziness has only added to the ease with which America lives “successfully” and to your point, is failing due to that success.
It is sickening and maddening to see. I want to fight it and for our beautiful, amazing, and one of a kind country- but, the left has no room for any words but their own. Proof and truth be damned.
Western culture was constructed out of the gospel, in the expectation of Christ’s return. Absent the personality / spirit of Christ, all grace, justice, blessing vanishes from the realms of men.
But it's EXACTLY the same mindset here.
Remember Obama got elected in 2008 and 2012. In both cases, his opponents (McCain and Romney) were articulate and intelligent. The voting population hasn't changed *that* fast.
“While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record,… “ Guess what bozo? I don’t care about the man and his medical issues! I care about the young woman, now dead, killed with a slashed throat WHILE RIDING PUBLIC TRANSPORT! Going to or from work? School? To see a friend? To buy new shoes? Who knows? We should know. And care! I just can’t absorb how wrong the world has become.
Yes, exactly. You said it perfectly.
Yup. If the mayor were on that car at the time of the incident, she would have run up to the killer and asked if he was okay and given him a hug.
I think she would have run or hidden. The BS only comes later, when she's in her "safe space."
He was an excellent break dancer! Oh my, could he moonwalk...!
The Democrats of yore (like most humans of yore) lived in a tangible world where they had tangible families, communities, traditions etc and, as this meant they were rooted in a specific place and people, they understood that the first purpose of politics was focused on these things and securing and bettering them...what else would be the point?
The Democrats of today represent (and incarnate) various symbol manipulators, teachers and managers, algorithm crafters and culture/media creators—a globalist postnational ruling class—which means they inhabit an almost entirely virtual and symbolic realm where, as they and everyone they know live at the apex of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, politics floats up into Cloud Cukoo Land and melts into a virtual reality built on imaginary virtue points, where whoever posits the loveliest, most "empathetic" utopia wins clicks, plaudits, and name recognition.
The problem for our progressive clerisy is that their heads are so deep in the clouds and their eyes are so focused on the Right Side of History™ where their pure beautiful souls will usher in a Golden Age of Social Justice, that they have completely lost sight of the ground beneath their feet. And in this case the ground beneath their feet is the connection between the rulers and the ruled, the consent of the governed. They might as well be colonial governors sent here from a very sentimental and sanctimonious planet who imagine they've been sent to morally instruct us and who can't quite figure out why we hate them and refuse to listen.
Once you sever your connection to your place and people, you stop being a representative and become an unwanted occupier. Until our progressive overlords decide they want to be OF us and not just ABOVE us, they will keep banging their heads against the wall, raging against reality, and mistaking tantrums for discourse.
"...a globalist postnational ruling class"
Yes
It’s The Jews.
"Once you sever your connection to your place and people, you stop being a representative and become an unwanted occupier."
That right there is the crux, the nub and fulcrum all in one go.
Hat off to you!
thanks!
Don't romanticize the past. Political parties once attracted smarter people due to the lack of sexual and racial discrimination, but the left were never rooted in families, communities and traditions. Democrats "of yore" spied for the USSR, corrupted voting, ran heavily corrupt city governments, took bribes and banged their interns. All of these were directly toxic to their own families and communities. The fact that they maybe sounded fancier whilst doing it is not all that important and only reflects demographic changes in the party (see my other comment).
Agree. Take LBJ. His former associate, Billy Sol Estes, wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice that Johnson was behind at least eight murders, the victims including both his own sister and President Kennedy.
Madeline Brown had a few things to say about that, in “Texas in the Morning “.
It’s not that they were morally better or any less ignorant of historical realities. It’s not even that they were “fancier.” (I actually agree with Mr. Bray that - at least during the Cold War - more of them seemed patriotic, though.) The problem is that they are now utterly incoherent and functionally insane. And I don’t think it’s just their changing demographics, although that certainly is a factor, I agree. I think what happened is what has happened to the Left since 1789: they succeeded in winning the culture wars. Since Leftism is by definition incoherent, they are now - as they historically always have been - faced with the reality of having to defend their irrational and anti-human policies. These are, in turn, failing - as they historically always have - at a blistering pace. If they were in control, the next step would be that they form a circular firing squad and bust out the gulags. After that, some tinpot strongman creates a bullshit utopia and then, after many corpses, they collapse.
Trump just ended all that midstream. The sad and tragic part is that they won’t just roll over and die so innocent victims like that poor girl are still being sacrificed to their soulless god…
Communism: first seen in the French Revolution, then Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution etc. A disease based on lies.
Yesssss brilliant
thanks!
"They might as well be colonial governors sent here from a very sentimental and sanctimonious planet . . ."
This.
Beautifully said......bravo!!
Thanks!
Their actual physical reality is secured by ill gotten gain due to selling out the masses, whom they subsequently fear & loathe.
I think of the present administration as being a mixture of a few responsible Democrats and a few responsible Republicans. Trump, Gabbard, and Kennedy are Democrats, they just had to change parties.
It used to be possible to watch -- no, actually: to *enjoy* watching -- the "Sunday shows" with family members who disagreed on all sorts of issues. There was only one (McLaughlin?) with yelling; we could never watch more than a few minutes of that one.
Try watching some William F Buckley episodes of The Firing Line.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=william+buckley+firing+line
Like watching a different species of animal
Childishness. Infantilization. We have become a nation of toddlers in adult bodies, id-centric, prone to fits of narcissistic rage, and this is reflected in our political “leadership”. It won’t get better until WE become better…don’t hold your breath.
For Heaven's sake, just look at the way so many people dress in public.
So help me, this is true, and it happened a quarter century ago in a large church which relatives of mine were members of: it was a Christmas Eve service, the church was packed, but there was enough room in the pew in front of the one my aunt and uncle were sitting in to accommodate a family. They were carrying sacks in which were cheeseburgers, fries, and probably milkshakes, and they ate their supper during the service.
Here's another Democrat who got nowhere when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s: the former governor of Florida, Reuben Askew. I don't know much about him, but remember that he had a good reputation and was adult.
Those of us who are of a venerable age remember when George McGovern was the Democratic nominee against Richard Nixon in 1972. Nixon was a tough guy and I am sure would have done his duty if he'd been under fire in World War II., but McGovern, who was ridiculed as a wimp, had been among the bravest of bomber pilots in the Yossarian theater of war. With one exception he behaved with unfailing grace during a humiliating campaign. Things got so bad that the Democrats, in their last act of economic responsibility, took McGovern's plane away from him in October. He was forced to fly commercial for the remainder of the campaign.
He boarded one such flight and a fat mouthed kid sitting near the front started jeering, "Hey, it's George McGovern!! Hey, McGovern, how's it going, loser?! Yeah, McGovern, you're gonna lose big time!! Yeah, McGovern!! Loser! Loser! Loser!"
McGovern said nothing, passed the kid, stopped, turned around, went back to the kid's aisle, and leaning in close to the kid's face, said, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?"
That man should have been President of the United States.
My dad once encountered George McGovern coming in to or off an elevator and as a huge admirer in his excitement he manfully stepped forward, stuck out a friendly paw, and said “Hi, I’m George McGovern”
It was a funny story when he told it but he said it was incandescently embarrassing in the moment. Apparently McGovern laughed and was nice about it.
Back to the Bible: only the Lord can change the heart of man.
Some of the best stuff on YouTube.
Buckley to Muhammad Ali: "Let's not fight about it."
Great experiment. It's truly astonishing to watch some of these videos. Overton window has shifted so far it's hard to see any similarities between the dems of old and the dems of now. Would be fun to show teens or early 20's folks snippets of these videos and make them guess the political party.
I accidentally fell onto the leftist side of SubStack the other day. I clicked on the 'best sellers' tab. It was what I imagine BlueSky to feel like.
The irony was the mirror image of RFK Jr's Senate hearing. On the sane side of the universe, we saw highlights of Harpie Liz Warren losing her shit, Senators Low-T shaking their fists--and a freaking buffed 70 year old stud make light of them.
On the Blue Sky side--it was all "RFK gets his ass handed to him by brilliant Senator..."
There were at least 4 authors with similar article headlines.
We do not see the same world. We do not speak the same language.
Sadly, many of these people were otherwise smart, responsible adults with whom I worked, befriended, knew all of my life. When I have tried to frame a leftist issue that Kamala supported and would have continued to shove down our throats: DEI, trans ideology full-tilt, no respect overseas, defund police...they will either choose to ignore my question and say something like " BUT YOU SUPPORT A CONVICTED FELON!!!!!!!!! SCREEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!" (This is from the male leftists I know...you should hear the women!)
I don't know what it will take for the fever to break.
Right now, I honestly don't give a shit. I'd prefer they wander into the desert for another 40 years and NEVER make it to the promised land. I hope they are out of power until I hit the dirt...hopefully 40 some years from now.
bsn
Well, some of these old bought-and-paid-for loons may move themselves down the conveyor belt of a life a bit faster (or a lot faster) should they continue to get their precious boosters... which, as I understand, they still can if they want to pay for them.
I believe those boosters are poison as well.
bsn
I think you are correct. For good or bad JFK ,LBJ,Carter and Bill weren’t phony like all the ones since Obama. I really miss Tip O’ Neil. I really think future historians will look back and realize things really deteriorated under Obama.
I miss Tip O'Neil also. Boy, does that really date us two!
It's the network. Everything has scaled too big. Local politics, local trade & local markets are all gone and we all have gone mad. The family is no longer the center of the economy. Almost no one owns his farm, inn, shop, practice, store or tools. We are all working for wages. Or despairing and on drugs.
With AI everyone cheats their way through school. The University is dead. Who needs school with AI? The network is the center of our lives. It is our deity. We can no longer live without it.
"We're all working for wages."
Which are being undercut by immigrants; some legal, some not. In particular they've come to dominate many of the blue-collar trades, so most of the natives have never learned those skills -- while a lot of the white-collar jobs the natives went for instead are in danger of being replaced by AI.
So yeah, despairing and on drugs is what happens to many people when they discover that they're no longer employable and don't have much chance of getting through the DEI barriers to entering what careers still remain viable.
Anyway, that's the story I've been hearing and I have no reason to doubt it.
I'm old enough to remember when that would have been a natural, obvious constituency for the labor union Democrats. One of the biggest surprises of my lifetime is that they've ceded it to the Republicans (who until Trump had no idea what to do with it.)
we could live without it and will probably after going through the muck. we cannot give up any possibility for the whole thing to collapse and newer structures,currently being grown and nurtured,become our focus again. we tend to,as american's respond pretty humanely in crisis.
Jimmy Carter made some serious foreign policy blunders, but he also got the ball rolling in demanding better human rights from our client states -- a policy continued by Reagan.
Also, Jimmy Carter was the biggest price control deregulator in American history. He not only began the phaseout of Nixon's ridiculous price controls on energy, he also got rid of price controls left over from the Progressive Era and the New Deal. It was Jimmy Carter who got rid of the price controls on trucking, rail freight, and air travel. And he appointed Paul Volker to be Fed Chair. The resulting high interest rates triggered the recession that put Reagan in office.
But the main reason Carter lost to Reagan is that he was way too conservative for the evolving Democrat base. Carter was more conservative than Nixon or either Bush.
To a significant degree the first Trump term was Jimmy Carter all over again but with Attitude. And, by the way, Trump's Peace Through Dirty Energy policy was also Jimmy Carter's policy. Unfortunately for Carter, the technology to economically tap our immense oil shale reserves wasn't ready for prime time yet -- even with multi billion dollar government subsidies. But the private sector eventually figured out how to implement Carter's dream, and Trump simply had to allow it.
Interesting, and thanks for this.
Actually the vast oil shale reserves of the Inter-mountain Western US remain untouched (Jimmy Carter's oil shale). It takes too much energy to get the kerogen to release from the oil shale.
Our current oil boom is in 'shale oil' or 'tight oil'. Shale oil is regular oil. The kerogen locked up in oil shale is thought to be the precursor of virtually all oil.
A quick network tour of the two terms 'oil shale' and 'shale oil' clears up the difference quickly. The US is the Saudi Arabia of both.
Volcker's high interest rates also ended the stagflation which had been plaguing the economy during the 70's and early 80's. An achievement the Reaganites took credit for, but as you rightly point out, it was the appointment of Volcker that got the ball rolling, even though it cost Carter his re-election.
The rail freight price controls were eliminated under Ford. Work on legislation for eliminating rail, truck, and air freight price controls had been going on for years. Implying that this legislation was spearheaded by Carter is misleading.
Dereg efforts had been underway since the end of WWII. The Reed-Bulwinkle Act was an attempt to get around the ICC but even that wound up having the opposite effect of its intent.
Here is the mayor's original statement. It is typical liberal garbage, totally offensive to the victim but what progressive idiots want to hear:
https://www.wfae.org/crime-justice/2025-08-27/charlotte-mayor-responds-to-deadly-light-rail-stabbing-in-south-end
Thanks for posting this. I couldn’t find the original, and what is out there now seems fairly anodyne and didn’t mention the unhoused. Wow, this one is actually much worse than
Chris described!
Thoughts and prayers??!! Does that still mean that one lacks all compassion, and is complicit in the crime by not supporting a particular course of action, or is this case (D)ifferent?
Bradly’s delivery is so measured, his pronunciation and vocabulary so standard, that he sounds like a white man in black face. His facial features even look rather white. He seems like a serious, responsible person trying to do his job. There is absolutely none of the mush-mouthed Ebonics or the ridiculous posturing that we get from current black leaders. Isn’t the entire democrat party bought off? They don’t need to write bills or even read them, or even (in some cases) vote on them. All that messy, boring policy stuff is for aids, lobbyists, and other hidden figures. Politicians just put on a big act as they scoop up boatloads of money, getting filthy rich on modest salaries.
Pre-Trump, Democrats, including Obama, Diane Feinstein, the Clintons and Chuck U. Schumer sounded like Stephen Miller on illegal immigration: https://youtu.be/U0o3u9xtFVE?si=zsE9SrbJaDP4hYOX
“That clip is just under fifty years old, chronologically, but it’s culturally closer to the moment Eve started eyeing the apple.” Another jarring reminder of how far we have traveled from shared reality and decent, normal, civilized behavior. Also, if I were that young woman’s family, I would be extremely angry right now with that truly disgusting almost inhuman response.
Not almost. It WAS inhumanly disgusting.