BLM

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Democrats have a Feinstien problem. No, its not her lifetime of corruption or that she employed a Chinese spy for years. For the Democrats, none of that is a problem! Their problem is that she’s 900 years old and is ill – can’t get to the Senate to vote the way she’s told and its holding up Biden’s horrific judicial nominees. Naturally, they want the GOP to get them out of this jam by voting to suspend the rules and allow some other Democrat to temporarily fill her seat. McConnell has come through for us on this and not allowed it – as they can’t get unanimous consent, they’ll need a floor vote and that takes 60 votes to happen. Can they get GOP votes for it? Perhaps some, but I suspect not enough. This does provide some real leverage for the Senate GOP…but one thing McConnell has never liked is using leverage against Democrats. Naked exercises of power are ok with him, but making them pay a price for something never enters into his head. OTOH, McConnell is clearly not in the best of health, himself, and as GOPers start jockeying for position, maybe they can force Mitch’s hand here? With the debt ceiling looming, this is the perfect time to take a pound of Democrat flesh.

There’s several videos of a completely looted Chicago Wal Mart. This isn’t just some high value items – the store is pretty much cleared out. The most heart wrenching was put out by a Chicago mother who was simply shopping for food for the kids and there was none left. And she does blame her fellow black people for it – pointing out that she is not a thief, but now because of them she can’t get what she needs. The bad news: it just gets worse from here. Chicago’s new Mayor is a full-blown Leninist who figures that looting is just “loot the looters”. But you can’t sustain this: businesses can’t remain in business if at any moment their whole stock of goods is to be stolen. And think about it: a whole Wal Mart was cleaned out. Even the neighborhood Wal Mart stores are pretty darn big. Think how long it would take even for a sizeable mob to clean it out…which means the police weren’t even called on a “why bother?” attitude or they didn’t come after being called (and why should they? If they did and tried to make arrests, they’d just be setting themselves up for accusations of racist brutality with the mayor siding with the looters). In a short while, the only retail outlets in Blue cities will be fortresses with only limited goods and high prices to pay the costs of security. And without any easy targets to loot, it isn’t like the mobs will then settle down and get a job…they’ll just start moving out into the rich, white suburbs with their BLM flags (that last bit will be a little funny, tho…)

China appears to be opening police stations in the USA in order to monitor and harass Chinese dissidents residing here. The two cops here were arrested but I have my doubts will really put a stop to this: the PRC has so entirely penetrated the American establishment that this might merely have been the signal for them to keep it more low key.

The latest comic book turned movie has become another in a long string of flops. Get woke, go broke as they say. But really its more “go boring, go broke”. Fun movies are supposed to be fun. Perhaps a bit ridiculous and heavy on special effects and explosions, but that is all part of the fun. But they become a drag if you have to bootstrap social commentary into them. I’m no genius author but I always consider the story before anything else. A character first introduced in Kings and Queen is gay, though not obviously so. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll notice it. But that fact also plays no role in the story. My characters have always appeared to me full grown as soon as I need them: there is character development as time goes on, but the gender, looks and basic motives of them are all there, whammo, as soon as I need them. This character, who shows up in a battle scene, showed up gay. In The Crimson Blade (Book VIII which will be released after Empress) this character becomes a secondary character in the overall story and so I tell more of his backstory – with him remaining gay, but that fact remaining utterly uninteresting in his role. Because something like that is primarily uninteresting. Its like hair color: something that just is. It is what your characters do in the story which makes or breaks them, and decides if the story is interesting. As it turns out, I liked this character so much that in Book IX (Home World), he becomes a main character.

What I’m saying here is that you can have in your stories non-traditional character roles. In fact, having a few odd balls in there is kinda fun. Anyone who reads my stories knows I favor strong female characters – I’ve never liked shrinking violets and I didn’t marry one. Mousy women have always irritated me. The girls I’ve got are gutsy broads who aren’t afraid of anything…but I’m also not going to please modern absurdity by having one of them take down a 250 pound warrior in hand to hand combat (Rossalyn slicing the unwary up with a sword is another matter entirely, of course). You can have just about anything you want in your story – but its got to be fun, not be boring because you had to shoehorn in the latest social mores as decreed by the ultra-woke. The sooner the movie makers figure this out the sooner they’ll get back to making money.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Heirs is out! Book VI of the series. It picks up about 12 years after Kings and Queen – so, the kids introduced as being between five and seven in the last series are now all growed up…and not at all believing the silly stories mom and dad have related. I very much enjoyed writing it and Book VII: Empress which rounds out this particular adventure…though I’ve already got large amounts written for Books VIII through XIII (with VIII and IX almost completely done: my concentration at the moment is actually on Book X; though I keep filtering over to Book XI because it is turning out to be such a fun story). As you may imagine from the title, Heirs is about, well, the heirs – specifically using Bryce and Rossalyn’s son George, Fred and Celeste’s son James; there is also Tancheri, the Crown Princess of Valcinia (intro’d in Kings and Queen as a six year old) and another girl you get to meet in Heirs. Of course our four main heroes play huge roles, too…but outside the prologue, they don’t show up for a while. I’ve also continued on with some bad guys from the past with judicious additions of new bad guys. Get your copy!

Found out about this thing called the Volkstaat in South Africa. Apparently, just before and after Apartheid came to an end, one Afrikaner pol decided that the Afrikaners – the white descendants of the Dutch who first settled South Africa – should have their own place. So, he and others purchased some land in the middle of the South African nowhere (on the map, South Africa looks small – it is actually huge and while there are thickly populated parts, there are also large swaths of howling wilderness, especially in the west north of Capetown) and set up shop. A few decades later it is a town of about 2,000 people, so far largely ignored by the South African government and it is growing prosperous. Like all Boer towns, it is neat as a pin.

And it is doomed.

I’m sorry to say that, but reality must be faced here. To me, of course, it is people just living their own lives – and so I’d leave them alone. But that won’t happen. Naturally, they are merely put down as racists (even though I, as a white American, would not be allowed to live their, either; they only allow Afrikaners) – and, who knows?, maybe they are racist. Doesn’t matter as they don’t go out and look for black people to harass. The site they picked was chosen precisely because it was horrible…but humans being human and with hard work as the command, their horrible spot is now a nice spot. And the South African Ruling Class won’t be able to tolerate it for long…especially as South Africa decays with rising crime and rolling blackouts, they can’t afford to have any community of regular folks living well (the Ruling Class, behind carefully guarded walls continues to live well, naturally). The whole existence of such a place is a standing challenge to South Africa – which was supposed to usher in a multi-ethnic utopia once Apartheid vanished. You realize how impossible it will be for South Africa to survive under ANC rule if people can point to a community up from literally nothing at the time Apartheid ended while Johannesburg can’t even keep the lights on? On that level, it doesn’t matter what skin color the people are – if they were all black, they’d eventually be targeted. That they are white will just make the targeting easier. And they will be targeted. I wish I was wrong. I hope I prove in error. But as South Africa falls apart the white minority will be subjected to looting and violence as the ANC tries to stay in power.

The people of Portland, OR voted for commie Democrats who let crime run wild. The voters chose this because among all other horrors, the worst would be to thought of as a Republican. Elections do have consequences, though. And one of the consequences of voting for commies who believe that crime is the result of racism is that you then get crime so rampant that even a store like Wal Mart, which moves so much product that in most places the shoplifting doesn’t matter, is closing down all their Portland locations…I feel zero sympathy: they wanted this. Now they’ve got it.

Antifa/BLM domestic terrorists have been trying to shut down construction of a new police training facility in Atlanta. And I don’t mean by holding protests marches and filing lawsuits…they been vandalizing and assaulting people connected to it. Nearly everyone connected with the Antifa/BLM actions are from out of State and almost all of them are white (and upper class white). You’d think the FBI would take a glance at this, but they aren’t. They’re too busy tracking down granny who took a selfie outside Pelosi’s office on 1/6. But the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is on it – and they made 23 arrests. Including a lawyer who works for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The kicker: guess who the FBI asks to determine if you are a terrorist? The Southern Poverty Law Center. The Antifa/BLM types do what they do because they are protected by the FBI…and part of what the Antifa/BLM types do is denounce you to the police for wearing a MAGA hat. We really do have an American Gestapo…and they’ve got plenty of stool pigeons.

I love Mexico – place, people, food: all awesome. But I’ve stayed out for years and I won’t be going back any time soon: Four Americans were kidnapped after they drove into northern Mexico. The Cartels are simply bloodthirsty – you could be killed on a lark by them. Not worth the risk.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

One of the arguments made against term limits is that by thrusting inexperienced people into legislatures every few years, we’d really be turning over power to the un-elected legislative staffers. These staffers, with their years of legislative experience, would simply buffalo the legislator’s into voting for whatever the staff wanted. Ok, fair enough.

How is this different from what we have now?

Do you think any of the career politicians in Congress actually read and understand the bills they vote on?

What this thought has led me to is a wonder as to whether or not institutions actually work? Outside of dogmatic governed religious bodies (most notably, of course, the Catholic Church – though you’ll note various problems there), I don’t think they really do. The only one I can think of which had at least some long-term track record of success was the German General Staff. And it cost Germany two World Wars. But you do have to hand it to them – over those two World Wars they squeezed out the maximum amount of military power Germany could provide and applied it to Germany’s enemies in the most effective way possible – thus accounting for the rather lopsided Kraut to Non-Kraut casualty ratio (not counting Holocaust, it is like 5 non-Krauts killed for every Kraut they killed). But if that is our standard of “working”, I’d rather have more failures.

I’m not quite sure what we do here – but there has to be turnover, of that I am sure. As we can’t apply dogma to non-religious bodies (we have no one who would be universally respected to define dogma and thus heresy), the only defense mechanism I can think of is term limits. And to answer the charge that this would leave the permanent officials in charge – they have to have term limits, too.

It is one thing when a corporate bureaucracy becomes ossified, quite another when a government bureaucracy does. Because the government bureaucracy can jail and kill us; so, lots more serious. Just as we must find a means of ejecting politicians from office, so we’ll have to find a way to eject bureaucrats from office. Maybe we’ll eventually have to enact an amendment which says that you can’t serve, elected or appointed, in the federal government for more than 20 years?

Here’s a story saying that NYC cops may be opting for retirement at the first opportunity. I’ve seen other stories like this. Bottom line, if I was a cop in a blue jurisdiction, I’d be out, pension or no pension. You know for certain that the police and government officials will not back you up and if something you do winds up in a viral video then regardless of the facts of the case, you will be fired and very likely prosecuted. Just not worth it. And even if you think you’ll just turn a blind eye in certain areas of town (as is happening – in “George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis, it is getting very wild west), you still run the risk of having to make an arrest of someone non-white and each time you do that, you are at risk of being the next viral video. I can’t see any pension being worth that risk. And I don’t see a real way out of this – the blue city officials have staked out the position that BLM/Antifa are right and the cops are wrong. I don’t think you can re-cork that bottle and now say that the cops are right.

Joe’s first speech to Congress will be to empty seats. GOPers should place cardboard cutouts of themselves in the seats just to highlight the absurdity of this corrupt, senile, old fool being installed in the White House.

The children of Chernobyl aren’t showing any significant damage. Not really surprised – the radiation levels are probably set much higher than public safety really requires.

The Washington Post would like you to know that Senator Scott (R-SC) isn’t black enough.

Stop Reacting. Start Thinking.

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Earlier today, I got myself into trouble on Twitter: I had suggested that we shouldn’t immediately dismiss an idea because it conforms in some to what BLM might want. I got a pretty consistent explosion of outrage directed my way. And, I understand it and am sympathetic to it. But it was difficult to try and explain myself in a series of Tweets…so, here is a larger exposition of my ideas.

Our opponents aren’t a rag-tag bunch of Bolshevik wannabees: they are a well-funded and tightly organized Ruling Class which is determined to have its way. The rag-tag rioters out there shouting to kill the police and such are just the bought and paid for operatives of this Ruling Class. And the key is that the rioters don’t know it.

Some of them don’t know, simply: in other words, they are just ignorant fools following along with whatever seems cool at the moment. But others have a level of sincerity against injustice and simply think they are fighting the Establishment when what they are doing is the Establishment’s bidding. You’ll note how quickly “Defund the Police” got discarded…and even when it has advanced a bit, as in Minneapolis, the big shots are merely hiring private security details (on the taxpayer dime, of course). The target of the mob is, what? It is Trump. It is religion. It is you and me. It isn’t Nike and Hollywood. It isn’t Pelosi. It isn’t Yale’s gigantic endowment. It isn’t the actual system of control: the government bureaucracies; the intelligence agencies; the megacorporations; popular culture manufacturers.

My idea is that there is, indeed, a great deal of injustice out there – and a great deal of this is visited on the poorest Americans, who are disproportionately minority. I’ve talked about this before: poor people simply ground up in a legal system they can’t navigate their way out of. Some times, of course, because they are incompetent…but some times simply because once you get caught in it, there’s no way out unless you have a bucket of money. From the perspective of such a person, it seems at times like things are stacked against them…and then they see us, on our side, backing the blue…the same blue which the Establishment set up and which goes lightly where it can get burned (ie, rich and middle class neighborhoods) and drops like a hammer where it can (ie, poor neighborhoods). It can seem to such a person that you and I are the problem…that we set this up.

We know we didn’t. We back the blue not because we’re bastards, but because we know that law is a must. But even our side has been a little blind here: what if the laws, themselves, are insane? Shouldn’t the blue we back have gone, at some point, and said “I won’t enforce this insane law. Fire me if you want, but I became a cop to make sure justice and peace prevail.” Never a peep like that – and, finally, we got our taste of it with the lockdowns: we were finally the people being targeted for the enforcement of insane decrees of government. And the ground shifted and we were prepared for deep reforms of the police…which also entailed a willingness for deep reforms of all government and how it interacts with the people. Hey, presto!, riots…and we’re all back to “back the blue” and lets crack some heads. We’re forgetting that the same people who sent the cops out to arrest kids in a playground also let the rioters run wild…and in both the arresting of kids and the allowing of riots the police did as they were told.

How about we stop being suckers, at least for a bit?

We really have to start thinking and stop reacting. The riots do need to stop. The police do need to enforce the laws. But the laws have to be sane – and we can’t get sane laws until we get power and we won’t get power until the overwhelming mass of the people swing in line behind us. 51% won’t do it. That’ll just lead to our eventual political defeat or civil war…or both. We need 60 and 65%. We need to convince huge masses of people who ostensibly hate us to come over to us. This means we must talk to them – and talk to them about what they think is important. And do things they would like to have done. Not the Bolshevik stuff (the Establishment tolerates the odd Bolshy in the realms of power…but keeps them on a leash: eg, Bernie). But stuff like reforming the police. Instituting neighborhood militia for routine patrols. Pouring in buckets of money confiscated from liberal moneybags (Yale’s endowment would be a good place to start).

It comes down to this: what are you trying to conserve? A theory, or a civilization? The institutions are corrupt to the bone. Our Ruling Class is un-American and merely interested in keeping its wealth and privilege; and to do so it feels it must destroy family, property and religion. I think it is time we thought anew and acted anew…that we cease to fall into the categories the Ruling Class has provided for us and start to reach out to all. Some will spit on us. That’s ok. But some will come over if we show that we want justice…and if we show them who their real enemies are.