A Different America, as if Through a Time Machine

15 Saturday Jul 2017

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America, culture, G. Gordon Liddy, Paul Craig Roberts, society, The People

Paul Craig Roberts reminisces from out the tattered remains of the post-modern nation:

…

He could remember riding his horse into the town three miles from his grandparents’ farm with a real pistol strapped to his side and a rifle in the scabbard when he was 12 or 13. No one said a thing. Today a SWAT team would be on the scene. He would be lucky not to be shot dead and never know the fate of his grandparents, who would be guilty of all sorts of offenses, including failure to supervise a minor.

That reminded him of what he had recently read in a newspaper. On a cul-de-sac devoid of car traffic a mother sat in a chair outside the house while her child played in the front lawn. A busybody neighbor, trained to report parental malfeasance, whose view of the mother was blocked by shrubbery, saw an unsupervised child at play and called the police. When the police arrived, they arrested the mother on the basis of the unverified report from the neighbor. The mother was taken to jail. The newspaper did not say what had happened to the child, whether the kid was taken to foster care and whether the husband had to rush home from his job and ply lawyers with money to help put his family back together. These kinds of horrors inflicted on families by public authorities often have worse consequences than the predations of criminals. He wondered if parents and children would be safer if the police were disbanded and outlawed.

Yet, society had accepted these abuses as justified. What, he thought, would have been the public reaction when he was a kid? The policemen would have been fired, the chief disciplined, and the mayor would have lost the next election. It would not have been possible for them to become heroes by destroying a family. The busybody neighbor would have become a pariah in the community.

Just the other day he had seen a grandmother at the supermarket with tattoos and face piercings. A grandmother? How had this come about? At the mountain resort pool and exercise center it wasn’t just the men. He had seen young women who were covered in tattoos. A friend told him that some women not only had face and tongue piercings, but also navel, labia, and clitoris piercings. Piercings were what he remembered from boyhood days of looking through stacks of National Geographic magazines from the 1940s and 1950s. Articles explained with words and photographs facial piercing practices by tribes in “darkest Africa.” Now they were the practices of upper class womyn who played in resorts.

…

Read that one, especially if you’re over 40. It’s a totally different country today, maybe not for the better. Ignorance, sloth, and weakness masquerade as individuality and liberation. And with the dumbing down comes a constant lose of freedom.

For a more in-depth look back, please buy and read the following, which I recalled as I nodded along with Roberts:

When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country

G. Gordon Liddy

517K9TB0QHL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_

Liddy / Amazon.

The lost past.

The sad present.

The better future is at: Patreon, with Perrin.

Demise on Autopilot

01 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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America, cars, culture, Eric Peters, society, tyranny

A few days ago I shocked two friends when I told them I’d never used Uber. I have nothing against the service and will use it should the need ever arise – so far, it hasn’t. I also shun cabs, limos, buses, trains, and commercial flights (Grayhounds in the air). As much as I hate driving down the river of American clover incompetence, I still prefer to use my vehicle. I like to be in control of where and how I go. I like being free.

All this I explained to the gentlemen. If they listened, they didn’t show it, instead competing with each other to show me apps of how many available Uber rides were in the vicinity.

The app showing I remembered when I read this post by Eric Peters on the coming end of automotive freedom in America:

Car ownership will soon be a thing of the past, some say.

Some wish.

Instead of buying a car every so often and driving that car for a period of years – and owning the car – people will simply tap an app and rent a car by the hour or day; whatever their need at the moment happens to be.

It sounds breezy – and oh-so-easy!

This may indeed be our metrosexualized future . . . god help us. But not for those reasons. There are always other reasons. The real reasons.

There is money to be made, naturally. Great huge stacks of it. Someone with a calculator and the instinct of a Don King or Colonel Parker did a little math and figured out that it would be orders of magnitude more profitable to rent people cars than sell people cars.

You can only sell a car to one person at a time, after all.

But rent? By the hour?

Theoretically – and probably, actually – you could keep a given car working like a Filipino Lady Boy, almost 24-7. Pimping the ride to one “John” after the next. With carpet vacuuming and Febreze in between.

Almost no down time.

The car that brings in say $400/month as a sale brings in that much – or more – in a week – as a rental. No wonder the stampede toward “transportation as a service.” GM especially – which is already implementing this via its Maven app in the New York City area.

It is the equivalent of discovering a new Ghawar oil field under Brooklyn. The price of real estate just went up.

It also gives the manufacturers – the GM corporate – direct access to your wallet (via revolving credit) which must be giving multiple orgasms to the people in GM’s accounting department. Dealers will be cut out of the picture – at best, reduced to parking lot attendants and service depots, the business side of that between them and the manufacturers, all costs of course folded into the rental fee charged to you.

In ten to twenty years – as I hear it from more people than just Peters – those app taxis will all be self-driving models. No need to waste profits paying drivers. In ten years, most (all?) cars, owned, rented, whatever, will have autopilot features. In twenty years, they will likely lack any manual controls, period. No need as actually driving yourself will be illegal.

This will have some upsides, merely riding in a self-driving auto, owned by someone else. No need for a driver’s license (look for mandated ID cards [or chip implants] instead). No need to auto insurance – someone else’s liability. You will, conceivably, be able to drink and ride to your drunk’s content – no harm if you cannot operate the car. Tort suits and obnoxious TV lawyer ads will dry up – no fault for any mishaps as all the cars will be controlled by the same computer system (likely operated by or for the government, with included immunity).

The downsides? Most people won’t see any. They’ll be happy as cattle in the hauler, off to wherever the state decides they need to go. The free won’t be so fortunate. Some of us actually hate the idea of being at someone else’s mercy. The thought that a far-away robot decides when, where, and how fast we travel, rubs some the wrong way. Then there’s the costs. The lack of ownership. The joy of checking the oil. The privacy deficit. The loss of freedom itself.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I have a soft spot for the heretofore mythical flying car. Want one badly. Not too long ago I read that some tech billionaire was intent on ruining those too by making them self-flying. Is there no escape? Probably not.

More laws to break, I suppose. The good news, if there is any, is that after a few years of everyone riding along like compliant, complacent fools, the police will begin to abandon traffic patrols. That should make it easier to circumvent the cattle drive.

HAL-MC2_400x400

Kubrick / MGM.

So, in the near future, having tapped the app and comfortably drunk texting while HAL 9000 takes you to the chutes, just be mindful that we are out there too. We may be in a 1975 F250 or an old M923 zipping past you and HAL (pray HAL stays out of the way). We may be in the sky above (if or when we look down, we’ll laugh). We may just be on foot or horseback, slowly meandering through the woods.

You probably won’t notice and that’s a good thing.

We’ll Always Have Frankfurt: Shun Global; Love National

29 Thursday Jun 2017

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Christendom, Europe, Frankfurt, free trade, Germany, globalists, immigration, society

I just saw and read this article: “Frankfurt Becomes First German City Where Natives Are Minority.”

On the surface it’s a scare piece designed to show Muslim immigrants or some other group taking over Christendom. That may be the long-term plan but it’s not quite accurate – yet.

Native Germans have dropped to just below 50% of the population. However, the Turkish immigrants, far and away the most numerous non-European group, comprise only 13% of the total. The majority of the new transplants are from other EU countries. Thus, Frankfurt is still roughly 70% white European. It still looks and feels European, even German.

The globalist scum no doubt want to change that. And the article raises several points about their operations.

Economically, the report shows big disparities between foreigners and Germans, with the income of 49 per cent of people with roots outside Germany falling below the poverty line compared to 23 per cent amongst natives.

In terms of employment rates, 83 per cent of German men and 78 per cent of German women are in work, figures which drop to 73 per cent and 59 per cent amongst men and women with foreign backgrounds, respectively.

The second paragraph is slightly telling but not so much as the first – if you know what to look for. This isn’t about the “refugees” – the globalists don’t want them working. They get welfare from the natives’ taxes so they can concentrate on the jihad and killing the natives who pay them. Thankfully they’re really a small fraction.

Anti-PKK-protest-in-Frankfurt-Germany-on-Zeil-640x480

Not your father’s Europe. Breitbart / Wiki.

The real story is with the wage disparity between the natives and the newcomers (mostly other Europeans, remember). That’s how the globalist’s free markets work, internationally. Jobs are killed in one area, sending the young and the employable scrabbling wherever they can go to take whatever they can get. It’s either move and work for peanuts or stay at home and starve.

They want to do this with the U.S. too. They’re trying hard. I read somewhere (I’ll credit Vox Day) that if the system is fully implemented in America, 50% of the people under the age of 35 will have to go abroad to find work. And they will work for much less. Debilitating serfdom.

The following is especially telling and alarming:

Weber hailed the rate of single motherhood amongst women of foreign origin, which the report showed was significantly higher than that of native Germans in the city, as “a possible sign that female migrants are emancipating themselves”, and called for more research into the subject.

The more single mothers, the better? Single motherhood is emancipation? From what? Logic, tradition, and civilization itself?

These hellish ghouls want to destroy the various nations and peoples as well as the family unit. They don’t want the world to resemble NYC. They want it their own big plantation – a place where you, me, and the single moms have to turn to either Massa Brussels or Boss Banker for the bare essentials of life.

It’s getting to be time to put these “elites” in their place. Somebody grab a shovel.

America’s Crisis of Confidence

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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America, culture, poll, society, trust

The story is entitled “Americans’ Confidence in Institutions Edges Up” but there’s still not much trust. And, I think, what little is there is mostly misplaced. Read the article. Here are my answers to the different trust subjects, my percentages, contrasted with those of the general public, with brief explanation.

Overall trust in “the big” is up only a little. It still lags well behind that from before the financial crisis. It’s even down versus a generation ago:

ukkhtnljaucq_wvkfgwi3g

Gallop.

Perrin and the people (with explanations):

Institution People % Perrin %

Newspapers 27 2

Lies, lies, and more lies. They do however cover the comics pretty well. Sometimes they get happy local stories right.

Public schools 36 2

A few are decent and provide a real education – exactly 2%. Close them.

Banks 32 1

Organized theft gangs. Trust them to rob you. Your personal local banker may still be a nice person.

Organized labor 28 33

I’m over here. These clubs do sometimes serve a worthy purpose, representing the little guy against the corrupt, government-connected corporate giants. Sometimes.

U.S. Supreme Court 40 2

“The most important kind of nothing.”

Criminal justice system 27 0

There is no “justice” in the American system; acquittals are statistical flukes. No due process. No equal protection. No logic. Frequently, no evidence and no authority.

Congress 12 -12

How could??! I think I’m on the same page with everyone here – Gallop just overlooked the (negative) for the public.

Television news 24 1

See the papers, above, minus Garfield and Dilbert.

Big business 21 5

See organized labor, above.

Small business 70 85

The actual drivers of both national employment and business civility. Try hard to support Mom and Pop when you can.

Police 57 14

My 20% is a composite breakdown: Feds: 0; State: 10; Local cops: 33. This is based on my interactions with the same.

Church or organized religion 41 55

Another breakdown based on the “or”: God’s ordained, universal, eternal, and infallible Church: 100%; man’s rapidly declining “Organized” religious attempt at the same: 10 (when and if I can find it).

Military 72 0

America long ago won its last war. The new military can’t even defend its own HQ (see the morning of 9/11/2001), can’t win easy wars against primitives, costs waaaaay too much, does not protect your freedom, the English language, or anything else other than certain corporate profits. A politically correct, make-work, welfare jobs program and worse than useless.

Medical system 37 2

A complete joke of pitiful quackery and profiteering. Don’t get sick.

Presidency 32 2

The chosen lesser loser of the Great Quadrennial Black Mass. At least gives sometimes rhetorically stirring, if pointless, speeches. Cool plane.

News on the internet 16 50

It’s a 50/50 proposition. Half is factual. Half is click bait and BS. Choose wisely. You did: you’re here…

bd149d40076458d428ceef5d4c3a55d105c6d94cb9a4adad2bb65fe504775f9f

Quick Meme.

The Rats Begin to Rhetorically Abandon the Ship

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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banksters, depression, Economic collapse, economics, economy, recession, society

It always starts with a change of tone. Somewhere a guilty admission creeps in as the creeps creep out.

Then: “Things are great! Never better.”

Next: “Recovery in full swing. Economy strong. Never stronger.”

And: “Strong enough to weather another recession.”

Finally: “Global recession coming with a vengeance.”

A new financial crisis is brewing in the emerging economies and it could hit “with a vengeance”, an influential group of central bankers has warned.

Emerging markets such as China are showing the same signs that their economies are overheating as the US and the UK demonstrated before the financial crisis of 2007-08, according to the annual report of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Claudio Borio, the head of the BIS monetary and economic department, said a new recession could come “with a vengeance” and “the end may come to resemble more closely a financial boom gone wrong”.

China sees surprise boost to exports but concerns remain over economy
The BIS, which is sometimes known as the central bank for central banks and counts Bank of England Governor Mark Carney among its members, warned of trouble ahead for the world economy.

It predicted that central banks would be forced to raise interest rates after years of record lows in order to combat inflation which will “smother” growth.

If things are so great, better, and strong, why the vengeance? And, no, it won’t be limited to China and developing nations; the “global” part means everyone.

People from CNBC to the layman on the street conflate the stock market with the economy. It’s a part but not the whole – more of a barometer. Sensing the storm, Charles Hugh Smith proposes a crash scenario (with possible profit opportunities):

After 8+ years of phenomenal gains, it’s pretty obvious the global stock market rally is overdue for a credit-cycle downturn, and many research services of Wall Street heavyweights are sounding the alarm about the auto industry’s slump, the slowing of new credit and other fundamental indicators that a recession is becoming more likely.

Few have taken the risk of projecting a date for the crash, this gent being a gutsy outlier: Hedge Fund CIO Sets The Day When The Next Crash Begins.

Next February is a good guess, as recessions and market downturns tend to lag the credit market by about 9 months.

My own scenario is based not on cycles or technicals or fundamentals, but on the psychology of the topping process, which tends to follow this basic script:

…

All economies move in cycles. They always have and always will. Any period of growth or stability, real or imagined, is always followed by a period of correction, sometimes painful. We’re now due, statistically. Maybe overdue.

This time around may be different, of a rarer breed. Like economies, societies move in cycles. See Plato’s essays. America and most of the West have undergone a sea change the past generation. They’re far less Western than they were. And that is brewing some major systemic problems, problems that are likely to be displayed prominently during the coming downturn.

Today Pat Buchanan offers a preview of what we may all look forward to: the examples of Puerto Rico and Illinois.

Across the West, social welfare states are threatened by falling revenues, taxpayer flight, rising debt as a share of GDP, sinking bond ratings and proliferating defaults.

Record high social welfare spending is among the reasons that Western nations skimp on defense. Even the Americans, who spent 9 percent of GDP on defense under President Kennedy and 6 percent under President Reagan, are now well below that, though U.S. security commitments are as great as they were in the Cold War.

Among NATO nations, the U.S. is among the least socialist, with less than 40 percent of GDP consumed by government at all levels. France, with 57 percent of GDP siphoned off, is at the opposite pole.

Yet even here in America we no longer grow at 4 percent a year, or even 3 percent. We seem to be nearing a point of government consumption beyond the capacity of the private sector to provide the necessary funds.

Some Democrats are discovering there are limits to how much the government can consume of the nation’s wealth without adversely affecting their own fortunes. And in the Obamacare debate this week, Republicans are running head-on into the reality that clawing back social welfare benefits already voted may be political suicide.

Patrick BuchananHas democratic socialism passed its apogee?

Native-born populations in the West are aging, shrinking and dying, not reproducing themselves. The cost of pensions and health care for the elderly is inexorably going up. Immigration into the West, almost entirely from the Third World, is bringing in peoples who, on balance, take more in social welfare than they pay in taxes.

Deficits and national debts as a share of GDP are rising. Almost nowhere does one see the old robust growth rates returning. And the infrastructure of the West – roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, airports, subways, train tracks – continues to crumble for lack of investment.

The days of interstate highway systems and moon shots seem to be behind us. Are Puerto Rico and Illinois the harbingers of what is to come?

Probably. Washington can bail out Illinois today. Tomorrow, who will bail out Washington? And/or Beijing? London?

On the football field, quarters of poor execution and foolish play have a consequence: the game is lost. A similar phenomenon happens with cultures and economies.

Look at the rats and see them preparing to flee. Take a wider look at the ship and see it listing. Look at nothing, to include that damned glowing screen on the wall, and go under.

Might be time to make some plans.

Like your First World unmolested? Then prepare to join Perrin Lovett on Patreon. Your support will continue the defenses. Coming soon.

We’re Number 18!!: Progress: Another Global Survey

22 Thursday Jun 2017

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rankings, society

This one measures social progress – health, wellbeing, and opportunity.

The U.S. came in 18th place, in the High (but missing Very High) category.

nimbus-image-1498156811938

As with most of these things, I’m a little dubious of some of the metrics. Others though are spot on. And the findings are pretty consistent with other surveys and rankings we’ve looked at recently.

The FULL REPORT.

Not in the U.S.? Many of you are not. In the U.S.? Most of you are. Regardless, check the charts and see how you and yours did. Hats off to the “very highs.” The full study may be accessed:

HERE.

Deep Thoughts on Imperial Decline

15 Thursday Jun 2017

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America, Charles Hugh Smith, culture, decline, Roman Empire, society

Charles Hugh Smith examines the decay of post-America, partly through the lens of the late Roman Empire.

To these lists I would add a few more that are especially visible in the current Global Empire of Debt that encircles the globe and encompasses nations of all sizes and political/cultural persuasions:

1. An absurdly heightened sense of refinement as the wealth of the top 5% has risen so mightily as a direct result of financialization and globalization that the top .1% has been forced to seek ever more extreme refinements to differentiate the Elite class (financial-political royalty) from financial nobility (top .5% or so), the technocrat class (top 5%), the aspirant class (next 15%) and everyone below (the bottom 80%).

Now that just about any technocrat/ member of the lower reaches of the financial nobility can afford a low-interest loan on a luxury auto, wealthy aspirants must own super-cars costing $250,000 and up.

A mere yacht no longer differentiates financial royalty from lower-caste financial Nobles, so super-yachts are de riguer, along with extremes such as private islands, private jets in the $80 million-each range, and so on.

Even mere technocrat aspirants routinely spend $150 per plate for refined dining out and take extreme vacations to ever more remote locales to advance their social status.

Examples abound of this hyper-inflation of refinement as the wealth of the top 5% has skyrocketed.

2. The belief in the permanence of the status quo has reached quasi-religious levels of faith. The possibility that the entire financialized, politicized circus of extremes might actually be nothing more than a sand castle that’s dissolving in the rising tides of history is not just heresy–it doesn’t enter the minds of those reveling in refinement or those demanding more Bread and Circuses (Universal Basic Income, etc.)

3. Luxury, not service, defines the financial-political Elites. As Turchin pointed out in his book on the decline of empires, in the expansionist, integrative eras of empires, Elites based their status on service to the Common Good and the defense (or expansion) of the Empire.

While there are still a few shreds of noblesse oblige in the tattered banners of the financial elites, the vast majority of the Elites classes are focused on scooping up as much wealth and power as they can in the shortest possible time, with the goal being not to serve society or the Common Good but to enter the status competition game with enough wealth to afford the refined dining, luxury travel to remote locales, second and third homes in exotic but safe hideaways, and so on.

4. An unquestioned faith in the unlimited power of the state and central bank.The idea that the mightiest governments and central banks might not be able to print their way of our harm’s way, that is, create as much money and credit as is needed to paper over any spot of bother, is unthinkable for the vast majority of the populace, Elites and debt-serfs alike.

That all this newly issued currency and credit is nothing but claims on future production of goods and services and rising productivity never enters the minds of the believers in unlimited state/bank powers. We have been inculcated with the financial equivalent of the Divine Powers of the Emperor: the government and central bank possess essentially divine powers to overcome any problem, any crisis and any conflict simply by creating more money, in whatever quantities are deemed necessary.

If $1 trillion in fresh currency will do the trick–no problem! $10 trillion? No problem! $100 trillion? No problem! there is no upper limit on how much new currency/credit the government and central bank can create.

I love comparing Empire to Empire though I don’t relish the implications. Declining morals, debased money, unending wars, foreign invasions, rank corruption, mass disparities between classes – all have been seen before. Gibbon’s work comes to mind. Luckily, we know America is the indispensable nation, completely immune to reality.

decline_and_fall_of_the_roman_empire

On the Congressional Baseball Shooting

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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Tags

Congress, crazy, crime, firearms, GOP, gun control, leftists, Republicans, society, War, Washington

Shots fired first thing in the morning. The news rehashed all day long. If you just emerged from under a rock, in a cave, on a desert island – go back! But first know what everyone else does: James T. Hodgkinson, 66, of Illinois, opened fire with a rifle this morning at a baseball field just outside D.C. His targets were Congressional Republicans practicing for the annual GOP/DNC charity game.

Five people were wounded, including LA Congressman Steve Scalise. All are expected to recover. Fortunately, only the lunatic shooter was killed, dropped by Capitol Police at the scene.

hodgkinson

James T. Hodgkinson, crazy man (deceased).

James Hodgkinson was a deranged leftist, Bernie Sanders fanboy, and homicidal sociopath. Even CNN is covering that angle which means it must be universally understood and accepted. Enough with it.

Several things:

I have no use whatever for Republicans and Democrats. I’m glad they’ve found solidarity today. Great. “An attack on one of us … blah, blah, blah.” In truth they almost always have solidarity in their quest to wreck the country.

The baseball game is a perfect metaphor. On the ball field, Team GOP squares off against Team DNC. They oppose each other in play on the field but the overall goal is shared: raise money for charity. If that were their entire purpose I would applaud wholeheartedly. It isn’t.

In Congress, Team GOP squares off against Team DNC. They oppose each other with idiotic grandstanding and faux ideologies but the goal is shared: raise power for their Big Club masters. More power and money for them, less of everything for you.

I’m not saying take a rifle and shoot them. I am not saying that.

The whole lot of them aren’t worth a bullet, let alone the 50 fired off this morning.

But they have, with much and great assistance, utterly wrecked and destroyed the country I grew up in. Maybe “utterly” isn’t the right word just yet. Parts linger here and there. But darned near everything is fractured, including the people.

Hodgkinson is a picture perfect example of that fracture. And there are many more where he came from. People on the left really, really hate Donald Trump, GOPers, God, and you. They make plays about assassinating Trump. They hold up a mockery of his bloody severed head. They punch people talking to journalists. They hit people with bike locks. Some, more than just one nut from Illinois, are willing to murder.

The right-wing can boast some similar ideologues, but this post isn’t about them. This is about the leftoids, the communists, the blue-hair, shrieking loonies who hate the above mentioned personas. They hate a lot of people and a lot of things. And I’m writing about the “normal” ones. Their ultra-violent criminal allies in the ghettos and their pets of the Jihad are bad enough. But the home team regulars may be the worst of all.

Yes, they are full of hate. However, lately and quietly they have seemingly gotten over one object of hate – guns. Early this morning, before the facts were clear, I think I only heard the once ubiquitous calls for gun control from two sources, two fringe sources at that. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, other Democrats, CNN, and the media have been strangely quiet about the whole “a gun did this” thing. It’s almost like they’re over it. And they might be.

Truthfully, most lefties never favored full gun control. Sure, they wanted to take your guns and mine. But they always had ways of carving out exceptions for themselves, their friends, and their security guards. Funny.

I started reading maybe back in December about the rise in liberal gun ownership. Just this time last year the same people were beating the same old, worn drum of disarmament. Remember Kersh Kuntzman almost exactly a year ago – he of the frightening AR-15 experience? My but things seem to have changed.

A year ago they were against guns. By December they had started buying them. At rallies and riots, here and there, this spring, they started toting them – in poor and uncomfortable form. Today they started using them – again, rather poorly. (Open baseball field? Clear day? AK at close range? Five wounded? Come on…). Tomorrow, however, cometh the next natural progressive step: shooting well. That’s coming about and up to speed pretty fast.

I’ve already heard some idiots making fun of the libs for being: soft, wimps, queers, etc. “They probably use little pink rifles.” Funny but more delusional than accurate.

These people are violence personified. They are the heirs of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pot, and all the other brutal leftist dictators of the 20th Century. Then, they collectively racked up a death toll of about 250 Million. That’s anything but soft or wimpy. “Dangerous” is more like it.

They may have taken a short break while they tried to take down the Second Amendment. And by “they,” I mean the ordinary liberals; their leaders never put down the sword (or the bombs). When the assault on the 2A failed and failed pretty miserably I guess they decided to get back to their more traditional ways.

This morning they stormed back in style. More of this is coming and not just against Congress.

So, what should we, the remnants of the Old America do? I’d suggest preparing for battle. One survivor of this morning’s attack credited a police officer with saving lives. As usual in these matters, things took a turn for the better as soon as a good guy with a gun showed up and started shooting back.

If the officer(s) hadn’t been there, this could have turned into a multiple homicide bloodbath. That’s the commonality with political assassination attempts, violent crimes, and terror strikes – they all rely on unarmed, soft targets.

It’s time we ended that part of the equation. Why wait for an officer who might not be there? Arm yourselves. Train yourselves. Carry everywhere. Shoot back. And win. Winning will be kind of important…

While this could have really been a stand-alone event, the insular work of a single nut case, something not likely to be repeated, it could also be something more and something much worse. Remember all the fracturing after a century of descent. The shots fired first thing this morning could well be the first shots of a new civil war.

Taki on Tacky: March of the Sunday Funnies

12 Monday Jun 2017

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culture, society, Taki, tattoos

A brilliant take on a highly visible sign of fallen times from Theodore Dalrymple and Taki’s Mag, perhaps the highest brow on the internet:

Ariana Grande, of whom I had not heard until Salman Abedi killed 22 people at her “concert” in Manchester, has had herself tattooed with a picture of a bee, a symbol of Manchester’s industrious industrial past, as a “permanent tribute” to the city. Apparently, the other performers in her vulgar act have done likewise. Could courage, compassion, sympathy, self-sacrifice, indeed virtue itself, go further?

This could be the start of something big: a movement called Tattoos Against Terrorism, or TAT for short. If anything could convince the Islamic suicide bombers of the superiority of the Western way of life, with its fundamental freedoms, surely this could. Alternatively, it will terrify them into giving up.

Nothing says “I’m unique” like a big old tattoo – or seven. And nothing says “decline of civilization” like half the population sporting all that uniqueness – each the same as all the rest. “Decline of Civilization” might make a great tattoo! Consult Reality Winner (Real Name?) on this point:

“Cupping,” Molock, and a side of crabgrass??? Twitter.

Yes, I’m sure your tattoos (plural aren’t they) are very unique. Special. They mean something. Just like Ariana Grande’s new bumblebee tat. Everyone associates bees with tempered diversity in Manchester, UK after all…

Some very few are actually interesting – on men. Mostly soldiers, sailors, and bikers. I’ve never seen a woman I thought benefited by copious ink. And it’s usually copious these days. If one is good, twelve are Grande. More ink than the Sunday funnies.

Lady tats aren’t just for the bad girls anymore. Look to the melodious examples of Ariana “I hope my fans f*cking die!” Grande and Reality “Who’d she meet with in Belize??) Winner. I know a grandmother sporting some shade of gaudy illustration on her ankle. All very special. Unique. Each and every decorated “lady” at the beach or the gym or the supermarket as different and special as the next dozen.

The good news is several. First, the trend must be getting overdone. A return to modest sense surely has to be in order. Second, time permitting, a fortune could be made in the tattoo removal business. Third, time expiring (20 years, maybe), the markers may serve as just that, post-collapse; a way to … differentiate.

Or it could be time once again to ramp it down a notch. Might I suggest nose bones and lip plates. How about tree swinging and poo flinging? Blue faces for the cave set?

I’d like to congratulate Ma belle Française on keeping it clean, original, and classically feminine. La tableau est l’art.

Curmudgeonly Bonus: Vox Day’s continued exposition of the bleak batty Boomer banality. “Lifestyle” is the Boomer’s tacky tattoo.

Happy Monday morning, all!

Anxious Nation Profusely Pops Pills

11 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

≈ Comments Off on Anxious Nation Profusely Pops Pills

Tags

America, anxiety, culture, depression, New York Times, Prozac, society

This Article by Alex Williams for Carlos Slim’s Blog caught my attention, mine not being of the hyper-affected, disordered variety (thinking disordered, yes…).

According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, some 38 percent of girls ages 13 through 17, and 26 percent of boys, have an anxiety disorder. On college campuses, anxiety is running well ahead of depression as the most common mental health concern, according to a 2016 national study of more than 150,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the number of web searches involving the term has nearly doubled over the last five years, according to Google Trends. (The trendline for “depression” was relatively flat.)

To Kai Wright, the host of the politically themed podcast “The United States of Anxiety” from WNYC, which debuted this past fall, such numbers are all too explicable. “We’ve been at war since 2003, we’ve seen two recessions,” Mr. Wright said. “Just digital life alone has been a massive change. Work life has changed. Everything we consider to be normal has changed. And nobody seems to trust the people in charge to tell them where they fit into the future.”

For “On Edge,” Ms. Petersen, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, traveled back to her alma mater, the University of Michigan, to talk to students about stress. One student, who has A.D.H.D., anxiety and depression, said the pressure began building in middle school when she realized she had to be at the top of her class to get into high school honors classes, which she needed to get into Advanced Placement classes, which she needed to get into college.

330 Million people from NY to CA, and 329.8 Million of them are on some sort of drug(s). I, myself, rely on cigar tobacco, coffee, and the periodic beer. Sans those, an axe. See, I’m one of you.

American Psycho / Lionsgate.

The article resonated with my slightly, due to the first recounted horror – that of a delayed text response. No, I’m not the anxious texter – waiting for the textee to respond within 15 sec. before I take to the socials for therapy. I really don’t care… No, I’m the anxiety-inducing textee himself. Or callee, emailee, whater-ee… If you’re my daughter or my mother, odds are I will answer right away. For about five other people I do my best to respond ASAP. A few dozen more are on the “remember to get back to” list or the concurrent “she was hot” list. Everyone else … get on Twitter or get over it.

I wish I had some advice for the legion of pill poppers out there. I truly wish I could write something that would take the edge off. Something to break the dependence on chemical comfort and reduce the urge to psychoactively alter the brain. (TeeVee and sugar are the absolute worst of those dreadful drugs by the way, not Prosac).

But, honestly, I can’t come up with a thing tonight. It is a very worrisome, troublesome world. A world and an age of utter insanity. Some need the dope to survive. They should take it. Others should reflect on why they feel the need to medicate, why they feel … whatever. To them, I say: reflect on it and then let it go.

Drink water. Get some sleep. Smoke a cigar. Go for a walk. Write something. Lift something. Hit something. Run. Flirt. Shout. Leave the city. Read a book. Buy a gun. Relax. Turn off that infernal glowing box from hell in the living room.

Come to think of it, all that sounds like advice. And I am confident it will be well received and used. Problems solved.

You’re welcome. Ring ya back when I get to it…