Tsk, tsk… so young, and yet so cynical.
Tag: Good Guys
Apocalyptic Addendum
It’s a little late now, but Walter William Jacobson’s excellent anniversary essay is if anything even more timely than it was a month ago, and it simply adds a little support to yesterday’s Eucalyptus summary:
There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable. I feel it in the air, even at Cornell which is far from the worst…
Even language as a means of communication is corrupted, with terminology manipulated and coerced to achieve political ends. It started on campuses, and it’s moved into the AP stylebook and the mainstream.
The press could stand as a bulwark against this slide, but it too is corrupted.
Please note that Walter wrote that in 2009. Bringing it more up to date:
We’re in the collapse phase. You can feel it. There are no credible national institutions left. The medical field, the sciences, public health experts, on down the line are being gutted and losing legitimacy.
The military is run at the top by woke clowns.
Higher Ed is gone, K-12 is the last cultural battlefield. That’s why the teachers unions, the education bureaucracy, and leftist billionaire funders are fighting so hard and so dirty. What better wake up call do you need than the fact that you have to worry about your kindergartner being ideologically manipulated at school by teachers and administrators?
Collapse is not irreversible, but it’s happening in real time. You can feel it.
And then:
The backlash is building. You can feel that too. It’s not a natural state of affairs for people to want to live under such tyranny. It can’t continue at this rapid pace. Something has to give.
Still more:
But the backlash to the backlash will be to criminalize dissent and to intensify the cultural purge. We already see that the power of the state and corporations will be brought to bear.
Jacobson goes on to say:
I have so little faith in the people running this country at various levels that stocking up on long shelf-life food and other prepper-lite protections seems to me, for the first time in my adult life, to be one of the least crazy ideas.
I’ve done all that, and a little more besides. So what’s left?
I’m going to sharpen my bayonet now. A bayonet on the end of an old WWI-era rifle may be a stupid, old-fashioned and ultimately hopeless thing, but then again: so am I.
Quote Of The Day
“Physical sciences is a VERY hard subject, which will require ALL of your attention and your FULL brain capacity (and for a large fraction of you, even that will not be quite enough). You can ONLY do well (ie achieve your potential, which rightly or wrongly several people here assumed you have) if you are completely focused, and learn to enjoy the course. People who just TAKE the course, but enjoy their social life, can easily survive in many subjects — but not in this one. Remember that you are NOT at any other uni, where students do drink a lot and do have what they regard as a ‘good time’ — and you are NOT on a course, as some Cambridge courses sadly are, where such a behaviour pattern is possible or acceptable.”
— Professor Eugene Terentjev, Cambridge University
My hero. It’s precisely what I would say to incoming freshmen if I were teaching a course at university. (Which is why I wouldn’t last long.)
Predictably, all the Fainting Goats are outraged.
Helping Hand
Sarah Hoyt and her husband Dan are two of my best friends. They decided to leave Colorado for a better life and for Sarah’s health, and as so often happens, they’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place, and before they have their children sold into slavery and their new home repossessed by the Evil Moneylenders, they’re going to need some serious cash.
Not accustomed to asking for help, Sarah contacted me and asked my advice. They could have got a bridge loan from said Evil Moneylenders, but as there’s no guarantee of when they’ll be able to sell their old house in Colorado, that wouldn’t help much.
We’ve all been there — and I more than anyone. What follows is an abbreviated email exchange between us:
On 11/1/2021 11:51 AM, Sarah Hoyt wrote: We’re going to need something like 50k in the next couple of months. We’re hoping old house will go up in two days and sells that fast, but Colorado isn’t TX and we’re heading towards massive snow…. If it takes more than a month to sell, we’re probably going to lose everything including our (modest, and rather cute) new house, which we love.
I don’t want to do a GoFundMe. It’s weird. When I can, I donate to my friends, and I’ve never viewed them as begging, but to ask for 50k, which is what I make on my TOP earning years feels shameful, like I spent it on furs and caviar.
I know you’ve done one before. I also know your circumstances were literally unforeseen, but I thought you might be able to give me some perspective, one way or another.
Sarah
From Kim: Do the GoFundMe thing. It literally saved my life, not in a dramatic sense, but in a “keeping all the money-related stress” out of it.
Don’t put yourself at the mercy of chance, the weather or the real estate market — none of which you can control. Your home is more important than that, and losing your new house is not something to gamble on — even if you ignore of the effort of packing everything up and storing it, the costs thereof are considerable.
Don’t be silly. This is what friends are for. When you set up the GFM thing, let me know. I’m probably good for $500 if I can do it over two months.
All love and affection, and my best to Dan.
Kim
On 11/1/2021 12:52 PM, Sarah Hoyt wrote: Is there an instructable showing how to do this?
From Kim: I just went to the GFM website, and followed the instructions on how to.
Just so you know, I hated doing it — asking for charity from others is so out of my comfort zone, you wouldn’t believe it. But at the same time, a HUGE number of people loved me, and Connie, and WANTED to help. The best example was from a Reader who had once visited the house and had dinner with us. When the GFM thing appeared, he donated $1,000 even though he was long past retirement age. Before I banked it, I emailed him and asked him if he’d misplaced the decimal, and if not, was he SURE he’d want to pay that much. His reply was epic. “It’s my money, and how dare you tell me how to spend it as I wish?”
I don’t know whether you’ll get up to the $50 thou, but my suspicion is that you will, easily. I raised over $30k in two weeks… and I hadn’t been blogging in over two years.
Remember to let me know when it’s up, so I can put it up on my website. Also ask Stephen to give you a punt on Insty so you don’t have to do it for yourself.
Go for it.
And she did. I also know that she needs a LOT more than $50k, but she was too embarrassed to ask for more. When you get to the page, you’ll be flabbergasted as I was — give anyway, because if anyone needs a break, Sarah does. And if you want to know how much she is loved, check out the comments at Insty’s place.
Sarah needs our help. Please go to her assistance — she’s one of the hardest-working people I know (in a field which doesn’t pay much — ask me how I know about writing as a profession). Her writing income has also suffered not just through poor health, but also because her books are not “politically correct” and she faces a continuous barrage of calls to stop publication of her books altogether.
And anyone who’s read her posts will attest that she is a stout patriot and a beacon of sanity in a world bereft of same.
So please, I beg you all to go over to her GoFundMe page and help out to the best of your ability.
I’ve donated $250 myself, with another installment to come next month.
Bless you all for helping.
Update: Sarah’s response, at hour 24.
Dept. Of Righteous Shootings
Guy gets fired, is pissed off about it, goes home, fetches a gun, goes back to his former place of employment and starts voicing his grievance by shooting people.
This being rural Nebraska, however, there just happens to be a shotgun lying around, so the aggrieved assumes room temperature, but sadly, only after killing two people.
Of course, had he not looked down the naughty end of a shotgun, there’s no telling how many more people he’d have killed because as usual, the police were miles away — but that’s not the way it’ll be reported.
Oxi Day
From Longtime Reader Brad:
You tell of your Grandfather on a yearly basis… his quiet determination to live his life, support and protect his family, etc.
Perhaps you recall columnist John Kass from The Trib — he’s indie now — he bailed earlier this year immediately after lefty vulture “capitalists” bought The Trib.
I give you this …
I always liked to read John Kass back when I lived in Daley City, and this ranks up there with his best. Wonderful, and humbling.
Thanks, Brad.