Maybe It's The Hat

 Because it doesn't work out for the Grand Poobah, either.

H/T to Sardaukar in the comments

Sorry, Not It

This is not the face of American patriotism.

This is not a leader.

This guy would not get through the vetting process to join my gun club.

Dad Joke X

My wife does a great job ironing.  I'm completely impressed. 

(ducks)

Dad Joke IX

Dad, your jokes are hilarious.  I think I have your sense of humor. 

Well, you need to give it back.  Fill up the tank first.

Donald Trump's legacy

Adam Piggott says something that I have been thinking for a while:

Trump was here to draw aside the curtain and calmly show us that everything that we thought was true and good was only a pile of lies. From government, to the media, to world organisations, to modern thinking and philosophies, to everyday people that you meet on the street, all has been revealed for what it is. The purpose of this time is not to return you to a comfortable life. It is to wake you up and force you to make a decision of whether you will continue to be woken up or if you will willingly crawl in bed with those of the grave. You know it’s not steak but it just tastes so damn good.

In regards to this burden Trump has been spectacularly successful. For a few of us, there is no putting the lid back on this box. The force of Trump has forced people to pick a side. Among your own family, friends and colleagues, you now know where they stand. You even know where complete strangers stand; driving alone in your car wearing a mask anyone?

The reference to the steak, of course, is from the iconic film The Matrix.  I have been thinking for a while that Donald Trump has "Red Pilled" millions of Americans.  The Red Pill reference, of course, if from the film The Matrix:

Back in 2014 I wrote about the "Red Pill/Blue Pill" comparison as it applies to government :

The Dark Enlightenment is a topic that is getting more and more attention, even from mainstream publications.  I've touched on it here ("Barack Obama is a communist" is perhaps the best opening line to a post I've ever written), but an old post from Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) gives the best introduction to the topic, phrased in explicitly "Blue Pill"/"Red Pill" terminology:

The nature of the state

• The state is established by citizens to serve their needs. Its actions are generally righteous.
• The state is just another giant corporation. Its actions generally advance its own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide with ours, sometimes they don’t.

The power structure of the West

• Power in the West is held by the people, who have to guard it closely against corrupt politicians and corporations.
• Power in the West is held by the civil service, that is, the permanent employees of the state. In any struggle between the civil service and politicians or corporations, the civil service wins.

The extent of the state

• The state consists of elected officials and their appointees.
• The state consists of all those whose interests are aligned with the state. This includes NGOs, universities, and the press, all of whose employees are effectively civil servants, and side with the civil service in almost all conflicts.

The last one in particular is a concise description of what is called the "Cathedral" - social institutions not directly subject to the Throne but which work in explicit or implicit ways to support it.

You should click through the link to Isegoria's post which discusses ten specific comparisons.  Isegoria picked these up from Mencious Moldbug, who is typically wordy:

Have you ever considered the possibility that democracy is bunk?

I grew up believing in democracy. I’ll bet you did too. I spent 20 years of my life in democratic schools. I’ll bet you did too.

Suppose you were a Catholic in 16th-century Spain. Imagine how hard it would be for you to stop believing in Catholicism.

You are a Catholic. Your parents were Catholics. You were educated by Catholics. You are governed by Catholics. All your friends are Catholics. All the books you’ve ever read were written by Catholics.

Sure, you’re aware that not everyone in the world is a Catholic.You’re also aware that this is the cause of all the violence, death and destruction in the world.

Look at what Protestants do when they get into power. They nail genitals to the city gates. They behead their own wives. Crazy stuff!And let’s not even start on the Turks…

Now suppose you’re you. But you have a time machine that lets you talk to this 16th-century Spanish Catholic version of you.

How do you convince this guy or gal that the answer to all the world’s problems is not “more Catholicism”? How do you say, um, dude, this Trinity thing—the virgin birth—transsubstantiation… ya know…

So you see how hard it is to explain that democracy is bunk.

And along came Donald Trump and showed millions of Americans what is going on behind the curtain.  That toothpaste isn't going back in the tube.  I expect that's why they hate him so much.

The Purge

 If you can silence a sitting President, who else can you silence? I expect to see the blog hosting platforms eliminate the voices they don't like. Like ours. It will happen in a purge. There will be no recourse. We will just disappear from the internet and our voices will be heard no more.

"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots". -- Barbara Ehrenreich

“I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”

-- Hillary Clinton

Dad Joke VIII

What do you call an iguana in a snowstorm?  A blizzard. 

And watch out!  They may be falling.

Dad Joke VII

Some people think my Dad Jokes are childish, which is crazy.  They are obviously full groan jokes.

Juvat, you wanted me to schedule a daily groan for you ...

Cale Moon - She's Got My Heart

If you like real country music - as opposed to the current country "Bro Pop" nonsense - then Cale Moon may be just the guy for you.  I ran across him by accident: he was giving a street concert as I was walking Wolfgang.  He's good.

He also likes Wolfgang (I assume his "Hello, beautiful" was aimed at Wolfgang, not me).   

It's hard to find much information about his music (not sure if he writes his own music, and I can't find lyrics).  But like I said if you like country music like George Straight serves it up, you'll like Moon.

The Queen Of The World suggested this song, and because she's got my heart it's today's musical selection.  Enjoy.

Another Vignette of Old America

This comes from 1930, when logging was crosscut saws, logging camps, horses and sleds, and logs sent down river when the ice let out.

 The mill is steam power and a lot of manual labor in conditions that would give an OSHA rep the vapors.

 The ship they send the laths to New York on is a three masted schooner, although even then things were passing into history. It is mentioned that the ship leaving is the last load the schooner will carry and the ship has no value because no one will buy it.

It's Old America described by someone who was there.  Originally a silent film, the narration was written by the mill manager to read aloud to the audience as the movie played. Here it read by a Maine native, so the accent fits well with the words.

Dad Joke VI

I used to be addicted to the Hokey-Pokey but I turned myself around.

Slouching towards the abyss

The Political Class combines cluelessness and rapaciousness in a way that would have 18th Century French aristocrats scribbling notes:

For decades now, across the board, nearly every policy that’s been pushed by the establishment here in the US and in most other industrial nations has benefited the middle classes at the expense of the working classes. That’s why we’ve gone from the situation in 1960, when one working class income could support a family comfortably, to the situation in 2020, when one working class income won’t keep a family off the street.  Those changes weren’t accidental, nor were they inevitable; they were the results of readily identifiable policies pushed by a bipartisan consensus, and defended by government, corporate, and media flacks with a disingenuousness that borders on the pathological.

The difficulty we’re in now, of course, is that a very large number of people are aware of this, and they’re far from happy about it. Here in the United States, a vast number of citizens—quite probably a majority—believe that they live under a senile kleptocracy propped up by rigged elections and breathtakingly dishonest media, in which their votes do not count and their needs will not be addressed by those in power. What’s more, they have more than a little evidence to support these beliefs, and strange to say, another round of patronizing putdowns by the mouthpieces of the well-to-do is unlikely to change their minds. The resulting crisis of legitimacy has become a political fact of immense importance.

A few years back, my fellow blogger and more than occasional debating partner Dmitry Orlov wrote a series of essays (later collected into his book Reinventing Collapse) pointing out that the United States is vulnerable to the same sort of sudden political implosion that overtook the Warsaw Pact nations of eastern Europe in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991. His point has lost none of its sharpness since then. When political theorists of an earlier generation noted that governments exist by the consent of the governed, they were stating a simple fact, not proposing an ideal; a government, any government, survives solely because most of the people it rules play along, obeying its laws and edicts no matter how absurd those happen to be.  If they withdraw that consent, the existing order of things comes tumbling down.

As we saw some thirty years ago, the most effective way to get people to withdraw their consent from the government that claims to rule them is to show them, over and over again, that their needs and concerns are of no interest to a self-aggrandizing elite, and that they have nothing to hope for from the continuation of the present system and nothing to lose if it falls. A very substantial share of Americans, and a significant number of people in other Western industrial countries, have already had that experience and come to those conclusions—and the enthusiasm displayed by the comfortable classes for shoving off the costs of change on the impoverished majority while seizing the benefits for themselves has played a huge role in that state of affairs.

As a result, it’s entirely possible that at some point in the near future, when next the United States faces a serious crisis, most Americans will shrug and let it fall, as most Soviet citizens did when the Soviet Union hit its final crisis in 1991. Keep in mind that the vast majority of active duty US police and military personnel—the final bulwark of any regime in crisis—voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and might not be in any hurry to come to the rescue of a system that treats them with the same casual contempt it turns on everyone outside the circles of privilege. It’s entirely possible, in other words, that ten years from now people will talk about the former United States the way they talk about the former Soviet Union.

A number of folks have pointed out that most cops and military will follow orders, because of the paycheck.  History shows that unpopular orders are followed without enthusiasm, and often without rigor.  We'll see.  But there's very little doubt that there's a Bad Moon rising, and political leadership to slow this is in very short supply.

Dad Joke V

What did the windmill say when it met the celebrity?

"OMG, I'm such a big fan!"