And in our decaying culture, excellence is not celebrated.
How is it that when Space X had a rocket launch in which a 20 STORY ROCKET BOOSTER was caught after takeoff, our media seemed to just yawn? It was mentioned briefly and then nothing.
How are we supposed to focus on that when Trump stumbled a little bit when reaching for that garbage truck door!? I know news when I see it! Orange man dRuMPH cANt OpEn A DoR!
Of course they had to ignore it. If it was celebrated then the stunning contrast between the dullards (as you aptly call them) clinging to power and the dynamic unity party running against them would be highlighted in a way that would, or should, become so obvious that the brainwashed may start to wake up.
Elon crossed over to the dark side when he bought Twitter and revealed much of the government’s treachery. The media and government are doing their best to shadow ban him.
My lefty sister in law once revered Elon for his success with electric vehicles. Now he’s the scourge of the earth. The NYT and WAPO told her to think that way.
Because it's image over substance, again and again. That is the legacy of two-dimensional screens, starting with television and dropping us here: the place where superficiality is rewarded and celebrated. DOING great things in the real world doesn't hold a candle to cultivating an IMAGE of doing great things. (You taught me that, Chris.)
And we all know that if God is so furious with us The Awful slithers her way into office, the Feds will go after Musk with the same vigor they used to bring to going after guys like Al Capone.
It is shocking that the fantastic SpaceX success, something which twenty years ago no one ever would have imagined we'd live to see, has been sloughed off by the mainsludge media as it has. We shouldn't have been stunned by it, I guess. Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts in the summer, and now, the local weather.
If Kamala wins, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Milei extends an offer and Musk moves all of his enterprises to Argentina. Others would certainly follow suit and Buenos Aires would become the world’s new Silicon Valley.
A Galt's Gulch will form, maybe has already started, somewhere. The Netherland's Thierry Baudet is a Dutch politician and author. He is the founder and leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy, for which he has been a member of the Dutch House of Representatives since 2017. Baudet’s doctoral thesis, which was directed by Roger Scruton, was on European identity and multiculturalism. It's people like this and Milei, Bukele and Trump and his X-Men who will revitalize and unite those who refuse to nihilize themselves.
The shortest interval of time measurable by science was just revised further downward: the interval between the rifle report and the end of the press even mentioning the assassination attempt.
Eve - C’mon, you do have it figured out. It’s because Musk endorsed Trump. Had he been for Kamala, it would’ve been all over the ‘news’. Yet one more blatant demonstration by the Corrupted Corporate Media of how their corruption is total.
Equality & Diversity eclipse all that hateful competency and excellence.
We have more Potemkin Villages to build. It takes a village, after all. That's the choice on offer: a village or hate. Love is love comrade.
Sure, they could throw more B-roll at such accomplishments, but the risk of slipping the slope into a control room full of White men would be too great. Plus rockets are just phallic totems of the Patriarchy. Remember the Bezos boom-boom?
Plus, the last time that happened they publicly hanged some brilliant engineer for his hateful t-shirt. Then had to pay the PR girls overtime to produce metric tons of steaming brochure gloss of just how not-hateful the operation was by literally counting all the non-Whites in the room and doing some differential equations to prove their slope toward Progress was okay.
The tale of two civilizations is playing out in Plato's cave. For all the accomplishments of the Elon Empire there remains to be many unasked questions of just how one reality can exist inside another reality and then outperform in plain view without the corrective nudge of the invisible hand of Progress leveling it to reflect the future they have planned for us.
Those twin taxes of Progress that burns through all the globocorps is somehow not happening to the Elon Empire. Curious. Sure, he gets beat up on the socials, one of which he "owns", for his sperg and now his clockwork Orange, but that's a far cry from the moral thumb on his scales.
Meanwhile NASA is already selecting their Moon2.0 crew for its glorious diversity, while not bothering with the hateful physics. They applied the same technical measures of excellence that would have us pretending that Kamala is qualified for anything above San Fernando Valley studio fluffer, even though Joe told us he was going to pick a womyn of kolor, because that is most important.
The Apollo 13 movie depicts this same kind of cultural decay--"who cares that we're going to the moon again?"--but then the astronauts are imperiled, and the raw drama of space takes over again, and grips the nation.
I don't know if the movie's depiction is accurate, though.
brilliant and weirdly agreeable though these days I seem to find most political commentaries disagreeable. This line killed me with its accuracy *”Wars begin, drift in no particular direction, and shamble to an end, replaced by new wars. The fetish for constant war is matched by the decline of warmaking institutions; war becomes an industry and a shabby habit, not a purpose-driven emergency task”*
I watched "JFK" by Oliver Stone tonight. I hadn't seen it since it first came out in 1991 when I thought it was bunk. Now I think Stone knew a lot more than I realized. Chris' paragraph above was everything about the assassination of JFK, the attempts on Trump's life, the ongoing global unrest, because as Eisenhower warned, war is now part of the military industrial complex that each major country depends upon economically. That IS the "purpose-driven" task, continuing the global economy.
The vitality of the Trump Dream Team is contagious.
This may sound odd, but I just realized it myself.
I am absolutely inspired by this team. I want to help them. I want to be apart of something that feels so unique, so important, and so intrinsically good and positive.
I have NEVER EVER NEVER had any kind of similar feeling(s) for a political candidate/team before in my life.
This is completely new ground for me. I’m GenX. Cynicism is our birthright…but I cannot help it. I believe in them.
It feels so good to have hope, faith, and confidence in people again.
Well said. It is a Crusade. Arrayed against us is a death cult celebrating anal sex and proclaiming the evisceration of human life in the womb as a great human right. And now they're trying to destroy families by snatching confusd children from their parents.
A recent survey of Gen Z women disclosed that almost 30% of them identified as being a sexual curiosity.
I am Gen x, too, bsn. Can you believe how quickly our nation descended to this state of decrepitude?
I saw a similar statistic, but wasn't broken down my sex. It was something like 20% of Gen Z identify as somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum--which, when did it become a spectrum?
It works out to an 800% increase. Obviously not a social contagion, this is just because there is no stigma now...(that is what the lefties parrot anyway).
Driving through town today, a row of plain white signs broke through the endless political yard signs cluttering everything. The clutter will be gone Wednesday. But the ten lining the church lawn, which say “Don’t Stop Praying!!”, won’t. Because that’s all that truly matters.
It was our parents generation which really ramped up the decline with the do as I say, not as i do dogma. Along with their sexual liberation and chronic divorce which a great deal of time led to our generation picking up the pieces because we didn't go out and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. When we all started having kids too many mothers decoded that since they grew up pretty much alone with no real friends they were going to be their kid's BFF and live theor lives vicariously through their children. I sure am proud that my ex-wife and I never went that route because my kids and their friends all thanked us for always being the parents as it allowed them to see what the roles were as most of them had parents who would rather be their friend than their parent. One thing mine will tell anyone was Dad was never our friend ad if anything g our antagonistic nemesis as I always pushed them to be their best. They aren't entrepreneurs or wunderkind, just regular adults but I hope I gave them grounding to carry the roles on. Their kids will need it.
To this great column I would add the words of Matt Taibbi, delivered in his Rescue the Republic Speech back in September. Summing up; the decadent, end stage, fagged out "elites" that are demanding a right to rule us. As always, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth in my house that I did not write these words myself:
"America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police.
In prerevolutionary France even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword duel to the death. Our aristocrats pee themselves at the sight of mean tweets. They have no honor, no belief, no poetry, art, or humor, no patriotism, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They’re simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off."
Howard Stern *said that to Kamala’s face* about himself, substituting “wall” for “banana.”
It’s like an Oliver Sachs case study: the dissociation between the ostensible enthusiasm for the required, anti-garbage positions while the unconvinced unconscious keeps asserting itself unbidden.
Preaching to the choir, naturally. I voted so hard for Trump that I sprained my standardized test bubble filling muscle AND ran out of spit sealing the mail-in envelope. Take *THAT!* you double-masked under-worked overweight ballot counter! And now we Pray....even if you aren't a believer, I think it would behoove you to believe in something, anything, The Force or whatever, for at least a few days. It's that or it's off to living in 1984 and Secular BOHICA Gentle Goverment Loving from here to eternity.
I have a fantasy about trimming a hundred miles out of California so that I can drive over the mountains from Pasadena and be in Lone Pine, or turn left and be in Sequoia 30 minutes later. I did 500-mile round-trip drive this week, hugely pleasant and much too hard for just a weekend. "Oh, hey, more suburban Bakersfield."
Being retired, I joined a PCT Trail Angel group on farcebork and gave several groups of hikers rides around forest fires this past summer, Tahoe, Plumas, Lassen.
One middle age hiker couple from Holland had a lost package home stranded at Grumpy Bears “Resort” in Kennedy Meadows (south) Kern River. After numerous miscommunications I drove over to the east side of the Sierra, down 395 (which I wanted to do anyway) , up Nine Mile Canyon to KMS only to find Grumpy Bears closed during the week since the summer through hikers “bubble” was done. I left a note on paper asking that they forward the package to me in NorCal. Then I drove west over Sherman Pass, which was spectacular, across the main Kern River, up the Great Western Divide to Highway 190, which seemed like the worse length of twisty mountain paved road I’ve ever been on, then past Porterville and out to 99 north. I got a light case of car sickness in the drivers seat (4Runner) , something that never happened when I was younger.
I eventually got the package and then sent it on to the couple in Seattle after they reached the Canadian border. They had some nasty, cold hiking in the Cascades in Washington State, but survived, and are back in Holland safe and sound. Probably doing heavy emotional labor explaining the American wilds.
Hope you didn’t have to wrap your vehicle upside down with a tarp to keep the Sequoia and Kings Canyon Marmots from eating your brake lines!
Thank you Chris. I remember when I first saw the word “incipient” in college and knew what it meant because the Latin derivative, incipio, means “to begin.” All of a sudden having trudged through four years of high school Latin seemed worth the perseverance. After nearly four years of drudgery and disgust, and the current warped ideals are burned beyond recognition, I pray we enter a new era incipient with a fresh return to our stalwart principles. Those would be the ones in the Constitution….and before that, the Bible.
To paraphrase Bismarck, the founder of the modern German state: God watches out for drunks, and the United State. Your sage remarks, and Frei's on voting, point out the very obvious, the almost complete collapse of our Republic, and anyone voting for "D"s is an idiot. But there millions of them and when combined with all the dead people, illegals, multiple ballot casters, and machines that can switch hundreds of thousands of votes in a nano-second, I'm not certain even a tsunami of R voters can overcome the odds. But maybe He will grant us another dispensation, though I don't think many of us deserve it, and we can be saved by Trump and his small band of brothers and sisters. The next 2-3 months is going to be highly problematic and the Unipary is going to pull out all the stops, with nothing being too extreme, to cling to power and overturn any victories by us. So, pray for the Republic, place your faith in God, but keep your powder dry, as Cromwell said.
Highly recommended: Tucker Carlson's latest ( it's on YouTube ) with a man I'd never heard of, Chris Moritz. It's an augury of the nightmare which awaits us if the mannequin wins.
Nayib Bukele could fix things, alas, the world's coolest dictator is constitutionally ineligible, and if he weren't, would be abhorred by America's women and Kamala's manly men types who eat carburetors ( at best ) for breakfast. Let's hope that if God is good to us, Trump/Vance/Kennedy/Gabbard/Musk/Vivek and associates will have the guts to do significant things.
On one side we have as an example “a man who can catch rockets safely from space”.
On the other side we have “we should prosecute and bankrupt the man who can catch rockets safely from space. We don’t need to catch rockets from space and besides nobody should try it makes us look bad. Plus also he’s a threat to democracy. We prefer creeps in women’s spaces to catching rockets safely from space ok?”
Wow. Excellent post. What stood out to be was, (1) "war becomes an industry and a shabby habit, not a purpose-driven emergency task," (2) Camille Paglia called transitioning children abuse and a crime against humanity SEVEN years ago, (3) a barf bag is always necessary when celebrities try to be funny, and 4) "Voting for Kamala Harris feels like cultural necrophilia." I voted for wit, engagement, will, and intent.
Several weeks ago, I pulled back and stopped following the run-up to this election. Several weeks before that, I stopped reading so much of the news and daily events, although I did stay current on the economy. Sadly, our society has become so polarized that following politics became a significant source of stress in my personal life. Isolating myself to people who only follow my own ideology was making my world very small, but opening the door to those who have different opinions has introduced a level of disconnect and hurtful diatribes against me. Granted, I don't share my views, so the diatribes are not intentional digs but hurt all the same.
My significant other is a kind and wonderful person who, thankfully, doesn't talk about politics and other issues much. However, our viewpoints are quite different, and if I shared my views vociferously, I suspect it would create significant problems in my relationship. At worst, this feels like living inauthentically. At best, I must be careful of what I say and how I phrase things. However, like most of us, we share far more in common than not. Whether I believe climate change is human-caused or not doesn't change what I or anyone else do daily. Regarding most of the other social issues of the day, I am on the extreme edge of "live and let live."
Listening to those with different opinions on vaccines and who should be president is an emotionally painful experience. I believe in people having the autonomy to do and think whatever they feel. But we have crossed a line where "agree to disagree" is no longer valid for many. Many on the left believe the health and safety of women are on the line in this election, just like the health and safety of the general public is on the line with vaccines. I have my suspicions about whether those statements are factual. Still, people I like and care for sincerely believe that not being on their side of these issues makes me a reprehensible troll not worth associating with, even though, without knowing my opinion, we get along great. I have proven myself over and over again to be kind, caring, and supportive of them in every way.
I am finding these times to be incredibly trying. The number of close friends who have drifted away based on perceptions of what I may or may not think, not the way I treated them as friends, is discouraging and sad. Is there any hope to turn the temperature down on societal polarity?
1) Non-discussion of political issues with a partner: We’ve been married 45 yrs, and I only found out 3 yrs ago that my wife is virulently opposed to elective abortion (as am I). I never asked, because the answer would have had no upside and all downside.
2) “Is there any hope to turn the temperature down on societal polarity?” Not until we have widespread (preferably national) adoption of school choice. The schools are indoctrinating our kids and the quality of our collective voting will not improve until children are taught to think for themselves. (I have no illusions – the Hastert/DeLay/Frist Congress & Bush Admin of the mid-2000’s was just as corrupt as the Democrats today.) It remains to be seen whether people who vote based on “Joy” or “Vibe” are born intellectually defective, or it’s an acquired weakness. An informed, perceptive and demanding electorate is the best guarantor of freedom.
Ah, Sequoia National Park. Spent a very interesting night there while a brown bear and her two cubs were traipsing outside, debating whether to invite themselves in.
And in our decaying culture, excellence is not celebrated.
How is it that when Space X had a rocket launch in which a 20 STORY ROCKET BOOSTER was caught after takeoff, our media seemed to just yawn? It was mentioned briefly and then nothing.
I'm still trying to figure that out.
A very very very telling moment. A stunning achievement with astonishing implications, ignored.
How are we supposed to focus on that when Trump stumbled a little bit when reaching for that garbage truck door!? I know news when I see it! Orange man dRuMPH cANt OpEn A DoR!
"He's not even a real garbage man!!" the newspapers inform us.
Of course they had to ignore it. If it was celebrated then the stunning contrast between the dullards (as you aptly call them) clinging to power and the dynamic unity party running against them would be highlighted in a way that would, or should, become so obvious that the brainwashed may start to wake up.
Elon crossed over to the dark side when he bought Twitter and revealed much of the government’s treachery. The media and government are doing their best to shadow ban him.
My lefty sister in law once revered Elon for his success with electric vehicles. Now he’s the scourge of the earth. The NYT and WAPO told her to think that way.
And she’s just following orders. How sad. Draining, really.
Because it's image over substance, again and again. That is the legacy of two-dimensional screens, starting with television and dropping us here: the place where superficiality is rewarded and celebrated. DOING great things in the real world doesn't hold a candle to cultivating an IMAGE of doing great things. (You taught me that, Chris.)
Very Marshall McLuhan (the medium is the message).
Will do. Good idea.
And we all know that if God is so furious with us The Awful slithers her way into office, the Feds will go after Musk with the same vigor they used to bring to going after guys like Al Capone.
It is shocking that the fantastic SpaceX success, something which twenty years ago no one ever would have imagined we'd live to see, has been sloughed off by the mainsludge media as it has. We shouldn't have been stunned by it, I guess. Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts in the summer, and now, the local weather.
If Kamala wins, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Milei extends an offer and Musk moves all of his enterprises to Argentina. Others would certainly follow suit and Buenos Aires would become the world’s new Silicon Valley.
A Galt's Gulch will form, maybe has already started, somewhere. The Netherland's Thierry Baudet is a Dutch politician and author. He is the founder and leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy, for which he has been a member of the Dutch House of Representatives since 2017. Baudet’s doctoral thesis, which was directed by Roger Scruton, was on European identity and multiculturalism. It's people like this and Milei, Bukele and Trump and his X-Men who will revitalize and unite those who refuse to nihilize themselves.
🎯
I might be able to do Argentina.
Trump inexplicably falls over at rally....
the guy just starts bleeding spontaneously, what a loser!
Get up! Get off the floor red haired looser!
the weather report took longer than the assassination investigation
The shortest interval of time measurable by science was just revised further downward: the interval between the rifle report and the end of the press even mentioning the assassination attempt.
the media can't say/do anything that might "help" their enemies....
Eve - C’mon, you do have it figured out. It’s because Musk endorsed Trump. Had he been for Kamala, it would’ve been all over the ‘news’. Yet one more blatant demonstration by the Corrupted Corporate Media of how their corruption is total.
Equality & Diversity eclipse all that hateful competency and excellence.
We have more Potemkin Villages to build. It takes a village, after all. That's the choice on offer: a village or hate. Love is love comrade.
Sure, they could throw more B-roll at such accomplishments, but the risk of slipping the slope into a control room full of White men would be too great. Plus rockets are just phallic totems of the Patriarchy. Remember the Bezos boom-boom?
Plus, the last time that happened they publicly hanged some brilliant engineer for his hateful t-shirt. Then had to pay the PR girls overtime to produce metric tons of steaming brochure gloss of just how not-hateful the operation was by literally counting all the non-Whites in the room and doing some differential equations to prove their slope toward Progress was okay.
The tale of two civilizations is playing out in Plato's cave. For all the accomplishments of the Elon Empire there remains to be many unasked questions of just how one reality can exist inside another reality and then outperform in plain view without the corrective nudge of the invisible hand of Progress leveling it to reflect the future they have planned for us.
Those twin taxes of Progress that burns through all the globocorps is somehow not happening to the Elon Empire. Curious. Sure, he gets beat up on the socials, one of which he "owns", for his sperg and now his clockwork Orange, but that's a far cry from the moral thumb on his scales.
Meanwhile NASA is already selecting their Moon2.0 crew for its glorious diversity, while not bothering with the hateful physics. They applied the same technical measures of excellence that would have us pretending that Kamala is qualified for anything above San Fernando Valley studio fluffer, even though Joe told us he was going to pick a womyn of kolor, because that is most important.
Losing the culture war has consequences.
Weimar Amerika!
Like x 1000!
The Apollo 13 movie depicts this same kind of cultural decay--"who cares that we're going to the moon again?"--but then the astronauts are imperiled, and the raw drama of space takes over again, and grips the nation.
I don't know if the movie's depiction is accurate, though.
brilliant and weirdly agreeable though these days I seem to find most political commentaries disagreeable. This line killed me with its accuracy *”Wars begin, drift in no particular direction, and shamble to an end, replaced by new wars. The fetish for constant war is matched by the decline of warmaking institutions; war becomes an industry and a shabby habit, not a purpose-driven emergency task”*
I'm putting "weirdly agreeable" on my gravestone.
Chris, that is just great writing.
"a shabby habit" -- might go on mine....
Hahaha, go for it!! You’re welcome 😇
I'm naming my imaginary band, "Shabby Habit."
Are you going to dress like grubby monks wearing shabby habits?
LOLOL! I’m putting: “The grass sure looks good today” on mine.
At least the roots do, from my vantage point…. Go on mine
I watched "JFK" by Oliver Stone tonight. I hadn't seen it since it first came out in 1991 when I thought it was bunk. Now I think Stone knew a lot more than I realized. Chris' paragraph above was everything about the assassination of JFK, the attempts on Trump's life, the ongoing global unrest, because as Eisenhower warned, war is now part of the military industrial complex that each major country depends upon economically. That IS the "purpose-driven" task, continuing the global economy.
We have always been at war with East Biden.
❤️
Well done Chris. Spot on. As usual.
The vitality of the Trump Dream Team is contagious.
This may sound odd, but I just realized it myself.
I am absolutely inspired by this team. I want to help them. I want to be apart of something that feels so unique, so important, and so intrinsically good and positive.
I have NEVER EVER NEVER had any kind of similar feeling(s) for a political candidate/team before in my life.
This is completely new ground for me. I’m GenX. Cynicism is our birthright…but I cannot help it. I believe in them.
It feels so good to have hope, faith, and confidence in people again.
bsn
Well said. It is a Crusade. Arrayed against us is a death cult celebrating anal sex and proclaiming the evisceration of human life in the womb as a great human right. And now they're trying to destroy families by snatching confusd children from their parents.
A recent survey of Gen Z women disclosed that almost 30% of them identified as being a sexual curiosity.
I am Gen x, too, bsn. Can you believe how quickly our nation descended to this state of decrepitude?
John,
I saw a similar statistic, but wasn't broken down my sex. It was something like 20% of Gen Z identify as somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum--which, when did it become a spectrum?
It works out to an 800% increase. Obviously not a social contagion, this is just because there is no stigma now...(that is what the lefties parrot anyway).
Slowly, slowly, then suddenly.
We need to pray for our nation, and act like men.
bsn
Yes, I read the breakdown over the weekend.
Prayer is a powerful weapon. I wield it daily.
This dangerous, evil movement shaking the pillars of Western Civilization needs to be destroyed.
May God give us the strength to accomplish what needs to be done.
Driving through town today, a row of plain white signs broke through the endless political yard signs cluttering everything. The clutter will be gone Wednesday. But the ten lining the church lawn, which say “Don’t Stop Praying!!”, won’t. Because that’s all that truly matters.
Amen.
Children they themselves confused
Exactly. The people doing it are beyond evil.
It was our parents generation which really ramped up the decline with the do as I say, not as i do dogma. Along with their sexual liberation and chronic divorce which a great deal of time led to our generation picking up the pieces because we didn't go out and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. When we all started having kids too many mothers decoded that since they grew up pretty much alone with no real friends they were going to be their kid's BFF and live theor lives vicariously through their children. I sure am proud that my ex-wife and I never went that route because my kids and their friends all thanked us for always being the parents as it allowed them to see what the roles were as most of them had parents who would rather be their friend than their parent. One thing mine will tell anyone was Dad was never our friend ad if anything g our antagonistic nemesis as I always pushed them to be their best. They aren't entrepreneurs or wunderkind, just regular adults but I hope I gave them grounding to carry the roles on. Their kids will need it.
Yes Brian! Too many people feel the same way…but are afraid to admit it.
Oops. It's 30% of Gen Z women, not Gen X.
I hope you can talk to a few of your friends. And I hope your friends will listen. 🙏🏻
Amen
Bless you Brian! I feel some needed hope.
To this great column I would add the words of Matt Taibbi, delivered in his Rescue the Republic Speech back in September. Summing up; the decadent, end stage, fagged out "elites" that are demanding a right to rule us. As always, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth in my house that I did not write these words myself:
"America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police.
In prerevolutionary France even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword duel to the death. Our aristocrats pee themselves at the sight of mean tweets. They have no honor, no belief, no poetry, art, or humor, no patriotism, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They’re simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off."
I am thoroughly convinced that if a banana were running , democrats would vote for it if declared a democrat.
"democrats would vote for it if declared a democrat."
They would also vote for a lump of frozen shit!
We began our descent into terminal apathy very shortly after the last war we were allowed to actually win.
And now we, or many of us, seem absolutely determined to commit societal, cultural, and, at the rate we are going, physical, suicide.
Isn't that what's been running your country this past four years? A lump of frozen 💩
Howard Stern *said that to Kamala’s face* about himself, substituting “wall” for “banana.”
It’s like an Oliver Sachs case study: the dissociation between the ostensible enthusiasm for the required, anti-garbage positions while the unconvinced unconscious keeps asserting itself unbidden.
Banana…
As in “Banana Republic”?
Especially a blue banana!
Preaching to the choir, naturally. I voted so hard for Trump that I sprained my standardized test bubble filling muscle AND ran out of spit sealing the mail-in envelope. Take *THAT!* you double-masked under-worked overweight ballot counter! And now we Pray....even if you aren't a believer, I think it would behoove you to believe in something, anything, The Force or whatever, for at least a few days. It's that or it's off to living in 1984 and Secular BOHICA Gentle Goverment Loving from here to eternity.
The mountains was a good idea.
I’m not sure I can do 2 more days of this. I live in LA , so if Wednesday I wake up happy , it will also probably be too terrifying to leave my house.
Probably too late to go to the mountains. Wish I had thought of it
I have a fantasy about trimming a hundred miles out of California so that I can drive over the mountains from Pasadena and be in Lone Pine, or turn left and be in Sequoia 30 minutes later. I did 500-mile round-trip drive this week, hugely pleasant and much too hard for just a weekend. "Oh, hey, more suburban Bakersfield."
You need to move inland – FAR inland. That way I can have a clear conscience as I hope for the Big One to shave 50 miles off the CA coast.
I just need a week's notice
Your recent ocean-side tent photo suggests you doubt the effectiveness of my earthquake entreaties to the Almighty. 🤣
Let's see what happens today and tomorrow, but it wouldn't hurt to have a go-bag ready ;)
My sister went to high school with Merle Haggard. Sort of. He almost never came to school. It wasn't just record company P.R. He really was a hoodlum.
He was literally in prison, in the audience, for Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison show.
👍
Being retired, I joined a PCT Trail Angel group on farcebork and gave several groups of hikers rides around forest fires this past summer, Tahoe, Plumas, Lassen.
One middle age hiker couple from Holland had a lost package home stranded at Grumpy Bears “Resort” in Kennedy Meadows (south) Kern River. After numerous miscommunications I drove over to the east side of the Sierra, down 395 (which I wanted to do anyway) , up Nine Mile Canyon to KMS only to find Grumpy Bears closed during the week since the summer through hikers “bubble” was done. I left a note on paper asking that they forward the package to me in NorCal. Then I drove west over Sherman Pass, which was spectacular, across the main Kern River, up the Great Western Divide to Highway 190, which seemed like the worse length of twisty mountain paved road I’ve ever been on, then past Porterville and out to 99 north. I got a light case of car sickness in the drivers seat (4Runner) , something that never happened when I was younger.
I eventually got the package and then sent it on to the couple in Seattle after they reached the Canadian border. They had some nasty, cold hiking in the Cascades in Washington State, but survived, and are back in Holland safe and sound. Probably doing heavy emotional labor explaining the American wilds.
Hope you didn’t have to wrap your vehicle upside down with a tarp to keep the Sequoia and Kings Canyon Marmots from eating your brake lines!
The marmots were well to my south, but they're my favorite feature of the High Sierra. Drunk on antifreeze.
And PCT trail angels are such an important group of people -- thanks for doing that. Lots of good people out on that trail.
That the antifreeze doesn't kill them is a Great Mystery. Once they get taste they are true addicts. I think it is the "saltiness" that they crave.
Thank you Chris. I remember when I first saw the word “incipient” in college and knew what it meant because the Latin derivative, incipio, means “to begin.” All of a sudden having trudged through four years of high school Latin seemed worth the perseverance. After nearly four years of drudgery and disgust, and the current warped ideals are burned beyond recognition, I pray we enter a new era incipient with a fresh return to our stalwart principles. Those would be the ones in the Constitution….and before that, the Bible.
To paraphrase Bismarck, the founder of the modern German state: God watches out for drunks, and the United State. Your sage remarks, and Frei's on voting, point out the very obvious, the almost complete collapse of our Republic, and anyone voting for "D"s is an idiot. But there millions of them and when combined with all the dead people, illegals, multiple ballot casters, and machines that can switch hundreds of thousands of votes in a nano-second, I'm not certain even a tsunami of R voters can overcome the odds. But maybe He will grant us another dispensation, though I don't think many of us deserve it, and we can be saved by Trump and his small band of brothers and sisters. The next 2-3 months is going to be highly problematic and the Unipary is going to pull out all the stops, with nothing being too extreme, to cling to power and overturn any victories by us. So, pray for the Republic, place your faith in God, but keep your powder dry, as Cromwell said.
Danny Huckabee
Highly recommended: Tucker Carlson's latest ( it's on YouTube ) with a man I'd never heard of, Chris Moritz. It's an augury of the nightmare which awaits us if the mannequin wins.
Nayib Bukele could fix things, alas, the world's coolest dictator is constitutionally ineligible, and if he weren't, would be abhorred by America's women and Kamala's manly men types who eat carburetors ( at best ) for breakfast. Let's hope that if God is good to us, Trump/Vance/Kennedy/Gabbard/Musk/Vivek and associates will have the guts to do significant things.
Mannequin = worn out inflatable sex doll?
On one side we have as an example “a man who can catch rockets safely from space”.
On the other side we have “we should prosecute and bankrupt the man who can catch rockets safely from space. We don’t need to catch rockets from space and besides nobody should try it makes us look bad. Plus also he’s a threat to democracy. We prefer creeps in women’s spaces to catching rockets safely from space ok?”
Wow. Excellent post. What stood out to be was, (1) "war becomes an industry and a shabby habit, not a purpose-driven emergency task," (2) Camille Paglia called transitioning children abuse and a crime against humanity SEVEN years ago, (3) a barf bag is always necessary when celebrities try to be funny, and 4) "Voting for Kamala Harris feels like cultural necrophilia." I voted for wit, engagement, will, and intent.
Several weeks ago, I pulled back and stopped following the run-up to this election. Several weeks before that, I stopped reading so much of the news and daily events, although I did stay current on the economy. Sadly, our society has become so polarized that following politics became a significant source of stress in my personal life. Isolating myself to people who only follow my own ideology was making my world very small, but opening the door to those who have different opinions has introduced a level of disconnect and hurtful diatribes against me. Granted, I don't share my views, so the diatribes are not intentional digs but hurt all the same.
My significant other is a kind and wonderful person who, thankfully, doesn't talk about politics and other issues much. However, our viewpoints are quite different, and if I shared my views vociferously, I suspect it would create significant problems in my relationship. At worst, this feels like living inauthentically. At best, I must be careful of what I say and how I phrase things. However, like most of us, we share far more in common than not. Whether I believe climate change is human-caused or not doesn't change what I or anyone else do daily. Regarding most of the other social issues of the day, I am on the extreme edge of "live and let live."
Listening to those with different opinions on vaccines and who should be president is an emotionally painful experience. I believe in people having the autonomy to do and think whatever they feel. But we have crossed a line where "agree to disagree" is no longer valid for many. Many on the left believe the health and safety of women are on the line in this election, just like the health and safety of the general public is on the line with vaccines. I have my suspicions about whether those statements are factual. Still, people I like and care for sincerely believe that not being on their side of these issues makes me a reprehensible troll not worth associating with, even though, without knowing my opinion, we get along great. I have proven myself over and over again to be kind, caring, and supportive of them in every way.
I am finding these times to be incredibly trying. The number of close friends who have drifted away based on perceptions of what I may or may not think, not the way I treated them as friends, is discouraging and sad. Is there any hope to turn the temperature down on societal polarity?
Stay true to yourself even if you don't vocalise it. These insane times will eventually burn themselves out.
1) Non-discussion of political issues with a partner: We’ve been married 45 yrs, and I only found out 3 yrs ago that my wife is virulently opposed to elective abortion (as am I). I never asked, because the answer would have had no upside and all downside.
2) “Is there any hope to turn the temperature down on societal polarity?” Not until we have widespread (preferably national) adoption of school choice. The schools are indoctrinating our kids and the quality of our collective voting will not improve until children are taught to think for themselves. (I have no illusions – the Hastert/DeLay/Frist Congress & Bush Admin of the mid-2000’s was just as corrupt as the Democrats today.) It remains to be seen whether people who vote based on “Joy” or “Vibe” are born intellectually defective, or it’s an acquired weakness. An informed, perceptive and demanding electorate is the best guarantor of freedom.
Can the temperature be turned down? Politically, I mostly want to left in peace. It seems to drive them "Nuts".
I accommodate my wife. She returns the favor. Sometimes it leads to silences, but we are worth it.
I am Left culturally but right politically. Some of my friends and family are confused about who I am.
Ah, Sequoia National Park. Spent a very interesting night there while a brown bear and her two cubs were traipsing outside, debating whether to invite themselves in.
Edit: in a tent, of course.
"Down with Democracy! Vote Kamala Harris!"????
Freudian slip detected.
In a future I hope to see one day celebrities and journalists will stop giving me their opinions 24/7. Please limit it to incompetent politicians.