Biden the puppet revolts against his puppeteers. I'm old and it reminds me of when the Monkees revolted against Don Kirschner, the creator of their TV show, and wanted to actually write and play their own music. Except the Monkees actually had more talent than poor old Joe.
Joe seems to have the upper hand right now because his opponents don't know what to do without making a bad situation worse. But this isn't a scandal caused by a one-time event. This isn't a case where you can just hunker down and wait for the storm to blow over. Joe might not be going anywhere right now but neither is his dementia. It's getting worse and it's only a matter of time before Joe further embarrasses himself, his party and his country.
If there was just one person close to Joe who thought of something besides his or her own own best interest, the coming humiliating climax to this sordid ordeal might be avoided. But there is no one like that on Team Biden.
You are right! If the parties in DC would do what is right according to the Constitution and the country, we would be safer & better off as a country. The ultimate goal is not holding on to power, but as the preamble to the Constitution states:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution is the framework that has made our country great & what has made us the envy of the world. We have been so blessed.
Even two weeks ago, the Hee Haws were crowing that Biden's age and cognitive ability were his "superpowers". I hope they enjoy eating crowpie for at least the next 12 years.
And Don Kirschner went on to create the cartoon group The Archies who had a number 1 hit with "Sugar Sugar". Maybe what we need is a cartoon character to replace Joe. Any nominations? President Spongebob?
Sure they were a synthetic creation with a silly TV show but the Monkees are underrated as a pop group. The earlier albums had some of the finest songwriters, e.g., Carole King and Gerry Goffin, and some of the finest musicians backing them, i.e., The Wrecking Crew.
By the time they were contributing more musically the novelty had worn off.
All true, but also true is that Mike Nesmith was an excellent musician and terrific songwriter. "Papa Gene's Blues" was one of the Monkees' finest tracks, and the three First National Band albums (Magnetic South, Loose Salute, and Nevada Fighter) are country-rock gems. Nesmith and Gram Parsons are two key reasons country rock is a thing.
okay, I will. Burton does have his own way to rock, you know.
btw, wouldn't it be funny, if during a nowadays extended performance of 'American Woman', maybe in some Canadian casino or whatnot, in the middle, improv section, he riffs on how few hits ...MC5 has or Ozzy for that matter, and how he could kick Foreigner's butt.?
of course, the cited polls are misleading, because the popular vote doesn't count. I would be more interested and impressed with how these other choices poll against Trump in the 7 or 8 swing states (e.g., starting with these 3 that if the blue team loses, it's already over: MI, WI, & PENN).
We ALL saw this immediately after the 2020 election: they came right out and said they had 'fortified' the electoral process, and thus the election itself. Ffs, TIME mag had it emblazoned on the cover! Chattering class rags like The Atlantic and Politico boasted right out in the open. Again, the quiet part right out loud: NO ONE in the political class gives 2 shits about the American citizenry. They will just continue with whatever circus they deem necessary while we slide further and further into crisis. Good luck everyone! 👍👍
Sasha, with respect, schadenfreude is vestigial liberal thinking.
True conservatives don't crave it; we just want to see this flush though so we can move on. We hope some lessons learned, and will be listened to in the future. We are in mourning for our country and society, and schadenfreude is like being smug at a wake. Blue pilled people see us as evil versions of themselves. We are not.
This is a very good point and got me thinking. As much as I am glad the Dems are in disarray because it means grown-ups might win the next elections, I feel no sense of schadenfreude. I don’t need Dems to suffer, like they want us to suffer, I just want them to lose.
Although the ideal would be for hardened leftists to acquire some common sense, human decency, and respect for the Constitution, I am not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. But if they and their toxic ideology can be exposed clearly enough so that people are not deceived by them, a lot of their power goes away. And yes, prayer helps.
Significant example? I think for a population that has had their president stolen, suffered greatly under a false one, lost jobs due to covid vaccine mandates, (insert a million other examples) is ultra non vengeful. I am not talking the persistent, "we are victims" whining or false flag events, nor any "rile up the base" from FOX (whom no one on the right watches since the 2020 election) towards Retirement RINOs who cant understand they no longer live in the world in which they were raised and thus all of their suppositions are wrong. I mean actual examples. Closest I can come are the few protests, (Jan 6, trucker convoy) which peaceful, (did have instigators to cause the needed violence) horribly misrepresented and it was the protesters who suffered, not the establishment. (look up French revolution if you want to see real vengeance). I am NOT calling for this, but to say that conservatives are in anyway being vengeful is as bad as the "Jan 6th is the worst disaster in the history of Hyperbole!" type lie.
Funny for a election that was "stolen" many sites that pushed it had to retract those articles because courts found they lied or misinformed people. I live in a state where GOP won 2010 then got revenge where they pushed revenue sharing and policy that directly helped them more than the cities that helped democrats and constantly tried to meddle with their choices at every turn. I look more at policy and actions of bills and GOP are just as guilty at revenge bills.
I am further down the awakening path than most on this blog (though I like reading it as It allows me to gauge the rate of awakening), but I am "with" nearly half of the country. Sasha speaks for an important but really on maybe 5% of liberals who still have the capability to question things, instigated by how stunningly bad things have to get for a few to scratch their heads.
I do have a quiet schadenfreude when the bad guys get their asses kicked, in whatever field and in whatever way. I had it when my first cousin, who is a sociopath, got exposed a decade ago. It was made sweeter by his frantic, nevertheless than hilarious attempts to gaslight his way through it. Sociopaths are reputed to be clever, but often, the only thing they're clever at is sneak attack evil.
I had it when I read about a man named Neal Falls, who could be described as America's Unknown Legendary Serial Killer. In 2015, Falls made the mistake of picking on the wrong young woman.
These people cause so much grief that it's arguable that one's humanity is in jeopardy if he doesn't have occasional schadenfreude. Name Invalid, the Democrats didn't destroy the country. They have, however, done whatever they could to push it along.
I love the "leadership is a team" group portrait, but am royally pissed off by the exclusion of Admiral Rachel Levine. That's discrimination!! What hypocrites those Democrats really are!
Spoilsport. You go ahead and pretend to take the moral high ground. I'll savor the chaos and collapse of the DP. My only real fear as a spectator to this farce is that the current regime will commit even more crimes and the corpse-in-chief will be used as a figurehead for entering into WW III or forced to preside over another plandemic.
Politics is the method by which we presumably choose our representatives while pretending that we are not ruled by an oligarchy. Even "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" recognizes that we have to deal with Claude Rains and guys like Smith are naifs but nevertheless needed to keep up morale.
I honestly think her intention here is a warning. A warning to all, from years of experience. I believe Sasha has gained much wisdom and I, for one appreciates her warnings, her wisdom.
“It’s not really democracy the Democrats want—it’s fascism. They want absolute power to decide who should and should not be elected. “
Thank you! I’ve been butting my head against the wall saying this for years. As an ongoing student of history, the parallels between the fascist parties of Europe & the Democrat party anymore are practically invisible. Benito Mussolini - arguably the founder of fascism (& a Marxist) - defined fascism thus: “Fascism is the melding of corporate & political power.”
The differences between fascism & communism are only by degrees; under communism the state owns both the means of production & distribution. Under fascism the state nominally leaves production & distribution in private hands (corporations) yet dictates the means of production & the outcome. Both are totalitarian & tolerate no dissent. Under both the rights of the individual are crushed in lieu of the collective. Both are on the left side of the political spectrum. Nationalism was a big feature of National Socialism in Germany so that is how it was tagged as “right wing” & that was done by the Soviets after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa (Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union) June 22, 1941.
The Left has been represented by various currents that have historically been very aggressive toward each other because they used different tactics and strategies to achieve socialism. Like many intellectuals, revolutionary leftists did not get along with each other very often. Since the inception of Marxism, which is the doctrine of communism—an extreme and distinctive flavor of socialism—the far Left has portrayed adherents of less revolutionary ideologies as enemies of the working people. The followers of evolutionary socialism—the Social Democrats—were accused by the communists of betraying the proletariat. Non-Marxist currents of socialism, such as Fascism and National Socialism, were excluded from the socialist camp and put on the right wing by Marxist-Leninist propaganda. Stalinist political science became a benchmark that set markers to distinguish between the genuine Left and the Right. This article shows the origin and historical background of the artificial shift of Fascism and National Socialism to the right side of the political spectrum.
1A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Coming across that academic paper was the equivalent of discovering a modern Rossetta stone.
It explains the situation almost perfectly, and if you research the New York Times archives https://www.nytimes.com/search?
For the early 1920s and 1930s, you’ll find some very interesting examples of socialist and communist organizations splitting off into ‘left and ‘right’ sides
Socialist Factions Name Two Tickets Right And Left Wing New York Times 1919 08 07
'Mild' Socialists Win on Platform; Conservatives, Led by Hillquit, Defeat Attempt to Name New Committee. Fight To Continue Today Ultra-Radicals Denounce the Party Principles Presented as "Lacking Punch." Demand Proletarian Rule Planks Offered Include Recognition of Soviet Government and Socialization of All Industries.
The "conservative" wing of the Socialist Party won a victory over the "ultra-radicals" at the second day's Session of the Socialist National Convention at Finnish Socialist Hall, 127th Street and Fifth Avenue
Biden is a tool just like W was: The 'New World Order'. And shit. Follow Mike Benz and he will recall the sordid history of our 'ruling class' since the Soviets fell. It isn't pretty. @MikeBenzCyber
Teaser: Jeffrey Epstein worked for Donald Barr, father of CIA operative and twice AG Bill Barr, chief cover-up man of the Blob.
I am 55 and grew up with Trump in the news all the time... The 'press' loved him for the most part and you just know women simply let their clothes fall off when around rich, charismatic men; that is not a slam on said women, it is just life. It has been pretty obvious that Trump was not a tool of the Blob and they simply couldn't have that. Starting in 2016 you could see the Internet - even controlled to an extent by the Blob(Twitter Files) - was fomenting said Schadenfreude.
I just hope and pray the People really understand things and appreciate your attempts at clarification, Sasha.
Note: Trump is a NOTORIOUS germaphobe which leads me to believe that he does not seek women like Stephanie Clifford(Stormy). What the Blob and their media has done to Trump is a travesty of epic proportions and I hope and pray you all understand it.
Seeing this all unfold as it has, I believe there is exactly a 0.0% chance for Trump to win the election. Trump knows this too. He says so every chance he gets.
Carville, Axelrod, Hilary, and the rest of the Deep State aren’t upset that Biden is going to lose this election because he’s a brain dead old man who’s polling below Satan. They’re angry because now it’s that much more work that needs to be done to rig the election. The illusion has been shattered.
Look, when polling was fairly close and the TDS sufferers could only focus on one thing (Orange man bad) nobody cared. I know this because to any conservative that pays any attention we’ve known Biden had dementia (or Parkinson’s or whatever) for 3 years at least. They knew we knew and they didn’t care. Just like they didn’t care in 2020.
After all, who was going to count a couple hundred thousand votes discrepancy as fraud? They’d just get shouted down and mocked by the complicit leftist media. Sure, they’ll recount here and there while their body double illegal aliens do the heavy lifting when voter counts are compared, Fox might say a thing. Yet… but… when the kimono is wide open for the world to see that Biden is gone? That the wizard behind the curtain is a muppet? That’s much harder to fake because now the TDS sufferers wont so easily run cover for them.
Alas, they will get it done, with the risk of destroying everything being escalated dramatically.
This is historic, and I don't think anyone knows exactly how it will unfold. But since they got away with the 2020 steal, they definitely think they'll get away with it again!
Good point. I haven't read the book (yet), but there is a similar pattern in the Bible, Old Testament, where people are enslaved and miserable, but they faithfully worship God, He sees this and delivers them, and they are a VERY blessed nation as they continue to worship God. However, just a few generations later, the people forgot where their blessings came from, they worship false gods and all kinds of sin, and they are again overrun by their enemies. It is a cycle...because prosperity -- generations of wealth tend to cause people to lose their vigilance, as though they were 'entitled' to their lavish existence. That's where too much of America is today and its sad.
We are the MOST blessed people, just by birth alone. Each of us cudda been born in Africa, Cuba, China....etc. Birth-fate is all that separates us from the illegals coming up from central America.
Trump can very well win but what does he get with a win? A divided congress, a lame duck presidency from day1 and congress will not go along with him since they are out for their own careers. His BEST hope is to get one bill with compromise and nominate more judges. Biden will get the same treatment a divided congress and lots of issues that HAVE to be resolved.
I agree with you about Vance, but I do like Tulsi Gabbard, perhaps without proper warrant. She was a Democrat, and I don't know why. Still, the woman is extremely serious, cogent, and capable of nursing and speaking with moral outrage. That voice of hers must get to every heterosexual man. She has a recent video on her YouTube channel in which she says bluntly that Joe Biden is insane.
Likeable yes, but Tulsi is kinda like SashaStone...a relatively new convert. Tulsi too new to be trusted as VP -- she could be a 'stealth' Democrat, after all, and at the least, a RINO. But, maybe give her a place in the Trump Admin where she can be easily fired if she fails the conservative test.
A divided Congress and country was exactly where the “both sides bad and do bad things” philosophy was bound to lead. How can good people coalesce around the idea that everything is bad? It’s a nihilistic circle jerk that leads nowhere.
I think his lame duck status will be an advantage, in that he has learned who his real enemies within the bureaucratic state are and he doesn't have to plan for re-election.
Edit: Introducing legislation is secondary to what he can accomplish with the power of the Presidency, mainly reversing all of Dementia Joe's executive orders and reinstating those Biden has reversed or eliminated. It's like a psychotic ping-pong match on a colossal scale.
How did the Presidency gain so much bloody power, anyway? I suppose it's the Patriot Act and PA 2 Boogaloo.
True, but it seems to me that it's a way for the Prez to sidestep Congress in pretty meaningful ways. Wikipedia sez, "As of May 9, 2023, President Biden has signed 118 executive orders." Here's a link to the specifics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_Joe_Biden
Pretty sure George Clooney just laid out the playbook that we’ve already heard whispers of in his New York Times opinion column today. Biden is done, yes, but now they anoint their new king. More skeletons in their closet the better to control them. So probably Pritzker or Newsom. Blackmail is a helluva drug.
I admire your ability to read the NYT. Does it make you want to vomit or send you into an apoplectic fit? That's what happens to me whenever I try to read it to maintain a sort of "balance" in my input or read firsthand what my political enemies are doing. Ugh.
Pritzker? Never heard of him. Newsome reminds me of the lead in "American Psycho." Anyway, whoever they put up as the next puppet will fail unless Trump dawg shits the bed in a major way. Absent some major fuckery, I think he's a shoo-in. Maybe in '28 Jr. has a shot (no pun). Gabbard would do well, I think, as would Ramaswamy from the R side Maybe we could get really lucky and Rand Paul will run, but my take is most are fed up with the duopoly and really want an I.
Excellent analysis and really love how the author provides insight with examples from films. I am cautiously optimistic about the changes afoot around so many battleground states leaning hard for Trump. Biden is not only failing badly but he’s clearly crushing his down ballot colleagues.
Since Joe Biden’s utterly disastrous debate performance, Trump has displayed incredible restraint and focus, not giving any fodder to the media to distract from the Biden White House’s flailing inability to deal with this moment. Democratic commentators have openly complained about the lack of public events from Trump, as if desperate for him to do something, anything to shift the focus. Amid House Democrats’ demoralized caucus meeting, frustrated donor calls and Sorkinesque fantasies about a “convention blitz” of replacement candidates, Democrats and their media allies would love to have anything gifted to them from Trump to talk about instead.
It’s an amazing trend to behold. The left got so used to this happening over the past eight years, they just took it as a given — now they’re practically begging Trump to do something crazy. Could he pretty please say something racist or sexist or start beef with another Republican? The T-Rex is out there in the forest, but he won’t come eat the goat.
You can just imagine them desperately waiting by their feeds, looking for something they can pile-on and distract from Biden’s dementia….. C’mon President Trump, say something so we can talk about something other than our lies about Biden..
Given that those polls show that Low Information Environments Dems prefer demented Biden to anyone else means that we now have to see Dems roll back the kill Joe attempt they made on him. And of course they just blame Russia, since their voters still believe Russia corrupted our prior elections and Russia is the problem in this world (and certainly not us!). It must have been better to live in Soviet Russia where at least the citizens mostly j owe that their government was a corrupt joke.
It’s not just dementia Joe that’s bad. This whole administration that Maria Shriver pictured proudly 🤮 are all incompetent idiots that can’t see the damage they’ve created bc the media praises their corrupt government policies that only doom our nation.
Now just a dang minute! There's Mare Pete; there's Kamaltoe Harris; there's MyYorkedAss; there's Dr. Jill (she isn't a real doctor, she just plays one on TV); there's The Hunt (newest live-in Cabinet member assigned to monitor the Mexican drug cartels); there's Blinking Blinken; there's Julie Su (she isn't a real Secretary, she just plays one on TV); and, as if there's more, there's Barack Obama, Acting Full-time President.
The election is a spectacle. Whatever happens, it settles nothing. Assume we (excepting the resident trolls) get our wish and Trump wins by more than the margin of fraud and pulls along a Republican Congress. Then what? Leftist media keep howling, Deep State keeps sabotaging and RINOs keep RINOing. Assume there is enough fraud to elect whatever meat puppet the Democrats settle on. Then it is more of the same but perhaps worse as Democrats figure out that the Republicans are a paper tiger.
None of this solves the fundamental problem which is that the country is hopelessly divided and a house divided cannot stand. It is time to embrace the division and on our own build a house that can stand.
Note the Thomas Nast cartoon done when elections were in person and same day and there were no voting machines. Old tech still works. People always leave off the first sentence of the Stalin quote "It is enough that people know there is an election.?
I worry that history indicates the way nations often solve hopeless internal division is to create an internal or external war that kills off a substantial percentage of those the elites favored the least. In this case, it will be straight poor white males. Hey! I heard they’re starting registration for the Draft again and women won’t be included! Funny how feminists don’t fight for the equality and inclusion of being drafted and put in combat units at the same percentage as men. Some are more equal than others.
Plenty of examples of separation, many of which were peaceful. Pretty much all of decolonization, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, India, the Russian Empire and then the USSR and of course, the original formation of the US. Getting rid of the Spanish took wars, same with the French before the twin debacles of Vietnam and Algeria, Brits would sometimes fight (US, South Africa, Malaya) but mostly let the people go. Decolonization of India was peaceful but separation into India/Pakistan was and is violent. Yugoslavia was violent but Czechoslovakia was peaceful. Russian Empire was violent but USSR was mostly peaceful other than the Caucasus where the default setting for anything is violence.
Even if Trump makes it to the White House he’s so hated by so many that he’d be unable to govern and there’d even be many who’d cheer and be ecstatic if he were assassinated. We no longer have a society capable of a successful transfer of power in an election. Too much distrust and hate for that now. People should pay attention to AI. This is the wild card now that’s powerful enough to radically change our present course and avoid the abyss which most surely is where we’re rapidly heading. Fascinating and well done assessment of what’s happening with AI in this video. Quite amazing. The best of times. The worst of times. Our situation in a nutshell.
“Why Nvidia, Tesla Amazon and More Are Betting Big On AI powered Humanoid Robots.” (17 min)
Linus of Tech busted AI and Elon Musk was forced to recant all his AI progress. The systems are nowhere near ready to house and real AI (He even noted the fastest supercomputer are incapable do doing it). What we have is set programed navigation AI and it cant do much outside of the narrative.
How about China? They’re also committed to AI powered humanoid robots to be used to dominate global manufacturing. Are they also just too stupid to realize it’s all just a big scam?
And its all a marketing scam feel free to look at Linus Tech Channel he doesnt play political politics like Elon Musk just wants the tech and honestly does it.
I’ve often posted comments saying we lack a common reality and have often had leftists tell me we have never had a common reality in America. We certainly had vastly more in the past though than what we’ve got now. Just compare how sane and functional our society was in the sixties when meritocracy and patriotism were valued to what it is now under Woke Equity ideology. Excellent and very insightful article below about how common these values were in the past which have been lost and seem so distant and alien that many now believe they never did exist.
“At its peak, Apollo involved some 400,000 people, across thousands of institutions. Even the rockets were built across multiple locations. It was an extraordinary feat of co-ordination, achieved in an age before modern computer-design programmes or tools for instantaneous communication. By contrast, when in the 2000s California invited bids for construction of a high-speed rail line through the state, the French rail firm SNCF tendered a proposal – only to withdraw it in 2011 to work on a similar project in Morocco, whose government, the SNCF engineers declared, was less politically dysfunctional than California’s. Morocco’s high-speed railway began operating in 2018. California’s is still not completed.”
“It is unlikely that the America of today could muster the degree of co-ordination and industrial resources that put Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. Were I an American raised on the conviction that progress moves only in one direction, I too might conclude that, logically, these feats could not have been achievable half a century ago.”
“The most comforting conclusion, in other words, might be that the Moon landings were a hoax. The alternative is far bleaker: that the achievements of mid-20th-century America were the achievements of a different civilisation, one now as distant and mysterious as the Moon.”
“I’d like to believe the Moon landings were faked- the alternative is far bleaker.”
You seem to forget the turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s with civil rights despite all the space innovation it was a massively fractured country in turmoil. The big difference the people at the top did things for all of America not just for their partisan agenda something we lack today.
I’m 74 and remember the sixties quite well. In spite of the external turmoil the internal structure was still strong. Compare the California of the sixties to the California of today and the difference is like day and night. Same with Chicago and many other cities and states. We are now profoundly different types of people and deeply incompatible. This is just not working at all. I see evidence of that in Chicago every single day.
I not only remember the turmoil of the 60s, I participated. Yet there wasn't the feeling that we were a separate people from the other side. If I had to pick a point of inflection it was with Bush 1 with the New World Order and the betrayal of the Republican base. He lost an election because of it but the trajectory stayed the same up until the advent of Trump.
Chicago was crime ridden still is and California was nowhere the population of today. In fact 1970s murder homicide rate was 30 out 100,000 similar rates today (actually its 7 pts lower today). Neither party of today fixed crime in big cities that's why St Louis the actual murder capital of the US still has its problems despite being in a red state. I think you have a distorted view on what it used to be and to be honest I do the same thing looking fondly back at the 1990s.
Funny the governor and state GOP ran on fighting crime and yet will do nothing on doing anything. It tells you all you need to know about their actions vs campaign speeches.
I live in Chicago and except for 4 years in the Marines, always have. Don’t tell me this city has always had city-wide black wilding, crime and carjacking. Don’t tell me it’s always been such a lawless mess that even downtown is now dangerous even during the day time. The social breakdown in Chicago and many other cities is simply unprecedented.
As a former Chicagoan whose family migrated to the Western Suburbs in 1972, I have to agree. We left before the rise of gang violence and general mayhem.
Up until around 5 years ago, my brother and I would visit our old neighborhood on the SW Side every early summer, but we stopped because it was getting too depressing to witness the decay. On the bright side, the straight citizens in our old 'hood are circling the wagons with efforts like the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Their rhetoric is woke, but they're doing good things.
I like to believe that Elon Musk's Space X and his Starship project will eclipse NASA and make that agency concentrate more on deep space, leaving the continued exploration of our solar system to Musk's outfit, a triumph of Private Enterprise.
Biden the puppet revolts against his puppeteers. I'm old and it reminds me of when the Monkees revolted against Don Kirschner, the creator of their TV show, and wanted to actually write and play their own music. Except the Monkees actually had more talent than poor old Joe.
Joe seems to have the upper hand right now because his opponents don't know what to do without making a bad situation worse. But this isn't a scandal caused by a one-time event. This isn't a case where you can just hunker down and wait for the storm to blow over. Joe might not be going anywhere right now but neither is his dementia. It's getting worse and it's only a matter of time before Joe further embarrasses himself, his party and his country.
If there was just one person close to Joe who thought of something besides his or her own own best interest, the coming humiliating climax to this sordid ordeal might be avoided. But there is no one like that on Team Biden.
You are right! If the parties in DC would do what is right according to the Constitution and the country, we would be safer & better off as a country. The ultimate goal is not holding on to power, but as the preamble to the Constitution states:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution is the framework that has made our country great & what has made us the envy of the world. We have been so blessed.
We the people have work to do!
Even two weeks ago, the Hee Haws were crowing that Biden's age and cognitive ability were his "superpowers". I hope they enjoy eating crowpie for at least the next 12 years.
for the Monkees every one of their 4 albums sold less than the previous one. The more they contributed the less their customers wanted the product.
Steven Stills auditioned for the original Monkees but didn’t make the cut. Interesting alternative history of he was hired.
And Don Kirschner went on to create the cartoon group The Archies who had a number 1 hit with "Sugar Sugar". Maybe what we need is a cartoon character to replace Joe. Any nominations? President Spongebob?
The Archives had no humans to get swollen heads. Today’s equivalent is AI Joe, a virtual president.
How about Mr. Potato head?
Maybe a hit like sugar sugar with fried or mashed?
Really? Stephen Stills was almost a Monkee? Seems blasphemous.
The story is that Stills cried when he lost out in the role.
We all have dodge the bullet experiences where some of us say Thank you Lord Jesus!
Sure they were a synthetic creation with a silly TV show but the Monkees are underrated as a pop group. The earlier albums had some of the finest songwriters, e.g., Carole King and Gerry Goffin, and some of the finest musicians backing them, i.e., The Wrecking Crew.
By the time they were contributing more musically the novelty had worn off.
All true, but also true is that Mike Nesmith was an excellent musician and terrific songwriter. "Papa Gene's Blues" was one of the Monkees' finest tracks, and the three First National Band albums (Magnetic South, Loose Salute, and Nevada Fighter) are country-rock gems. Nesmith and Gram Parsons are two key reasons country rock is a thing.
That is true. He was the real musician in the band.
Indeed. Next to The Jam, The Smiths, and Jan & Dean, the Monkees are most cheated out of RnR HoF honors.
And in that category, please also include The Guess Who!
okay, I will. Burton does have his own way to rock, you know.
btw, wouldn't it be funny, if during a nowadays extended performance of 'American Woman', maybe in some Canadian casino or whatnot, in the middle, improv section, he riffs on how few hits ...MC5 has or Ozzy for that matter, and how he could kick Foreigner's butt.?
hey, that's right! Al Gore is more than two full years younger than Don Trump.
of course, the cited polls are misleading, because the popular vote doesn't count. I would be more interested and impressed with how these other choices poll against Trump in the 7 or 8 swing states (e.g., starting with these 3 that if the blue team loses, it's already over: MI, WI, & PENN).
It's a bloodbath in the swing states. These are shocking because they are national. Arizona, Trump +5.4
Nevada Trump + 5.4
Wisconsin Trump +2.2
Michigan Trump +.6
PA Trump +5.3
Georgia Trump +4
That's the Real Clear Politics average.
yeah, but vs. Oprah? or Michelle?
We ALL saw this immediately after the 2020 election: they came right out and said they had 'fortified' the electoral process, and thus the election itself. Ffs, TIME mag had it emblazoned on the cover! Chattering class rags like The Atlantic and Politico boasted right out in the open. Again, the quiet part right out loud: NO ONE in the political class gives 2 shits about the American citizenry. They will just continue with whatever circus they deem necessary while we slide further and further into crisis. Good luck everyone! 👍👍
Sasha, with respect, schadenfreude is vestigial liberal thinking.
True conservatives don't crave it; we just want to see this flush though so we can move on. We hope some lessons learned, and will be listened to in the future. We are in mourning for our country and society, and schadenfreude is like being smug at a wake. Blue pilled people see us as evil versions of themselves. We are not.
I definitely appreciate that. And understand it. But remember, I'm not a Conservative and have never claimed to be.
This is a very good point and got me thinking. As much as I am glad the Dems are in disarray because it means grown-ups might win the next elections, I feel no sense of schadenfreude. I don’t need Dems to suffer, like they want us to suffer, I just want them to lose.
Not necessarily suffer, but extinquished. Gone. Vanquished. Dem Party was taken over by pure communists and we cannot co-exist with communists.
God please help us, and may the pagan corrupt Dems continue to unravel.
Although the ideal would be for hardened leftists to acquire some common sense, human decency, and respect for the Constitution, I am not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. But if they and their toxic ideology can be exposed clearly enough so that people are not deceived by them, a lot of their power goes away. And yes, prayer helps.
I agree, revenge just leads to more of the same.
Revenge and schadenfreude is not the same.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold" -old Klingon proverb
Or "revenge is a dish best served immediately and relentlessly." - The Social Network
Touché 😉😀😂
And that is happening right now in red states revenge and partisan.
Significant example? I think for a population that has had their president stolen, suffered greatly under a false one, lost jobs due to covid vaccine mandates, (insert a million other examples) is ultra non vengeful. I am not talking the persistent, "we are victims" whining or false flag events, nor any "rile up the base" from FOX (whom no one on the right watches since the 2020 election) towards Retirement RINOs who cant understand they no longer live in the world in which they were raised and thus all of their suppositions are wrong. I mean actual examples. Closest I can come are the few protests, (Jan 6, trucker convoy) which peaceful, (did have instigators to cause the needed violence) horribly misrepresented and it was the protesters who suffered, not the establishment. (look up French revolution if you want to see real vengeance). I am NOT calling for this, but to say that conservatives are in anyway being vengeful is as bad as the "Jan 6th is the worst disaster in the history of Hyperbole!" type lie.
Funny for a election that was "stolen" many sites that pushed it had to retract those articles because courts found they lied or misinformed people. I live in a state where GOP won 2010 then got revenge where they pushed revenue sharing and policy that directly helped them more than the cities that helped democrats and constantly tried to meddle with their choices at every turn. I look more at policy and actions of bills and GOP are just as guilty at revenge bills.
I am further down the awakening path than most on this blog (though I like reading it as It allows me to gauge the rate of awakening), but I am "with" nearly half of the country. Sasha speaks for an important but really on maybe 5% of liberals who still have the capability to question things, instigated by how stunningly bad things have to get for a few to scratch their heads.
I do have a quiet schadenfreude when the bad guys get their asses kicked, in whatever field and in whatever way. I had it when my first cousin, who is a sociopath, got exposed a decade ago. It was made sweeter by his frantic, nevertheless than hilarious attempts to gaslight his way through it. Sociopaths are reputed to be clever, but often, the only thing they're clever at is sneak attack evil.
I had it when I read about a man named Neal Falls, who could be described as America's Unknown Legendary Serial Killer. In 2015, Falls made the mistake of picking on the wrong young woman.
These people cause so much grief that it's arguable that one's humanity is in jeopardy if he doesn't have occasional schadenfreude. Name Invalid, the Democrats didn't destroy the country. They have, however, done whatever they could to push it along.
I love the "leadership is a team" group portrait, but am royally pissed off by the exclusion of Admiral Rachel Levine. That's discrimination!! What hypocrites those Democrats really are!
Spoilsport. You go ahead and pretend to take the moral high ground. I'll savor the chaos and collapse of the DP. My only real fear as a spectator to this farce is that the current regime will commit even more crimes and the corpse-in-chief will be used as a figurehead for entering into WW III or forced to preside over another plandemic.
Politics is the method by which we presumably choose our representatives while pretending that we are not ruled by an oligarchy. Even "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" recognizes that we have to deal with Claude Rains and guys like Smith are naifs but nevertheless needed to keep up morale.
Thank you. You have expressed what many of us are feeling.
I honestly think her intention here is a warning. A warning to all, from years of experience. I believe Sasha has gained much wisdom and I, for one appreciates her warnings, her wisdom.
Edmund Burke would be appreciative.
You lost me when you referred to them as liberals….
They are Nazis in the 19th century meaning of the word.
Naze Nazi Schwäbisches Wörterbuch 4, I, J, K, Q, L, M, N Fischer Hermann Published 1914
https://web.archive.org/web/20240708023046/https://archive.ph/okm1M
This is a far, far better thing . . .
“It’s not really democracy the Democrats want—it’s fascism. They want absolute power to decide who should and should not be elected. “
Thank you! I’ve been butting my head against the wall saying this for years. As an ongoing student of history, the parallels between the fascist parties of Europe & the Democrat party anymore are practically invisible. Benito Mussolini - arguably the founder of fascism (& a Marxist) - defined fascism thus: “Fascism is the melding of corporate & political power.”
The differences between fascism & communism are only by degrees; under communism the state owns both the means of production & distribution. Under fascism the state nominally leaves production & distribution in private hands (corporations) yet dictates the means of production & the outcome. Both are totalitarian & tolerate no dissent. Under both the rights of the individual are crushed in lieu of the collective. Both are on the left side of the political spectrum. Nationalism was a big feature of National Socialism in Germany so that is how it was tagged as “right wing” & that was done by the Soviets after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa (Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union) June 22, 1941.
Two references you may want to Consider:
How and Why Fascism and Nazism Became the “Right”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350425183_How_and_Why_Fascism_and_Nazism_Became_the_Right
Abstract
The Left has been represented by various currents that have historically been very aggressive toward each other because they used different tactics and strategies to achieve socialism. Like many intellectuals, revolutionary leftists did not get along with each other very often. Since the inception of Marxism, which is the doctrine of communism—an extreme and distinctive flavor of socialism—the far Left has portrayed adherents of less revolutionary ideologies as enemies of the working people. The followers of evolutionary socialism—the Social Democrats—were accused by the communists of betraying the proletariat. Non-Marxist currents of socialism, such as Fascism and National Socialism, were excluded from the socialist camp and put on the right wing by Marxist-Leninist propaganda. Stalinist political science became a benchmark that set markers to distinguish between the genuine Left and the Right. This article shows the origin and historical background of the artificial shift of Fascism and National Socialism to the right side of the political spectrum.
The OED definition of socialism:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210427012936/https:/www.lexico.com/definition/socialism
1A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Just popped up in today’s American Thinker: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/07/leftists_emulating_nazis.html
Coming across that academic paper was the equivalent of discovering a modern Rossetta stone.
It explains the situation almost perfectly, and if you research the New York Times archives https://www.nytimes.com/search?
For the early 1920s and 1930s, you’ll find some very interesting examples of socialist and communist organizations splitting off into ‘left and ‘right’ sides
Socialist Factions Name Two Tickets Right And Left Wing New York Times 1919 08 07
https://archive.ph/gtzbH
Mild Socialists Win On Platform Conservatives Defeat Attempt To Name New Committee New York Times 1920 05 11
https://archive.ph/EevjM
'Mild' Socialists Win on Platform; Conservatives, Led by Hillquit, Defeat Attempt to Name New Committee. Fight To Continue Today Ultra-Radicals Denounce the Party Principles Presented as "Lacking Punch." Demand Proletarian Rule Planks Offered Include Recognition of Soviet Government and Socialization of All Industries.
The "conservative" wing of the Socialist Party won a victory over the "ultra-radicals" at the second day's Session of the Socialist National Convention at Finnish Socialist Hall, 127th Street and Fifth Avenue
A ‘Right wing’ faction of the Socialist party?
A "conservative" wing of the Socialist Party?
Biden is a tool just like W was: The 'New World Order'. And shit. Follow Mike Benz and he will recall the sordid history of our 'ruling class' since the Soviets fell. It isn't pretty. @MikeBenzCyber
Teaser: Jeffrey Epstein worked for Donald Barr, father of CIA operative and twice AG Bill Barr, chief cover-up man of the Blob.
I am 55 and grew up with Trump in the news all the time... The 'press' loved him for the most part and you just know women simply let their clothes fall off when around rich, charismatic men; that is not a slam on said women, it is just life. It has been pretty obvious that Trump was not a tool of the Blob and they simply couldn't have that. Starting in 2016 you could see the Internet - even controlled to an extent by the Blob(Twitter Files) - was fomenting said Schadenfreude.
I just hope and pray the People really understand things and appreciate your attempts at clarification, Sasha.
Note: Trump is a NOTORIOUS germaphobe which leads me to believe that he does not seek women like Stephanie Clifford(Stormy). What the Blob and their media has done to Trump is a travesty of epic proportions and I hope and pray you all understand it.
Seeing this all unfold as it has, I believe there is exactly a 0.0% chance for Trump to win the election. Trump knows this too. He says so every chance he gets.
Carville, Axelrod, Hilary, and the rest of the Deep State aren’t upset that Biden is going to lose this election because he’s a brain dead old man who’s polling below Satan. They’re angry because now it’s that much more work that needs to be done to rig the election. The illusion has been shattered.
Look, when polling was fairly close and the TDS sufferers could only focus on one thing (Orange man bad) nobody cared. I know this because to any conservative that pays any attention we’ve known Biden had dementia (or Parkinson’s or whatever) for 3 years at least. They knew we knew and they didn’t care. Just like they didn’t care in 2020.
After all, who was going to count a couple hundred thousand votes discrepancy as fraud? They’d just get shouted down and mocked by the complicit leftist media. Sure, they’ll recount here and there while their body double illegal aliens do the heavy lifting when voter counts are compared, Fox might say a thing. Yet… but… when the kimono is wide open for the world to see that Biden is gone? That the wizard behind the curtain is a muppet? That’s much harder to fake because now the TDS sufferers wont so easily run cover for them.
Alas, they will get it done, with the risk of destroying everything being escalated dramatically.
If Biden wins there will be another Civil War.
This is historic, and I don't think anyone knows exactly how it will unfold. But since they got away with the 2020 steal, they definitely think they'll get away with it again!
It’s shaping up to be a climax of a 4th Turning.
...obvious attempt to ingratiate yourself to the author, Matt L. ;-)
I’ve read the book is all, and understand and believe there is something to generational theory and these United States.
The Fourth Turning. An American Prophecy. What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny.
William Strauss and Neil Howe, 1997
Good point. I haven't read the book (yet), but there is a similar pattern in the Bible, Old Testament, where people are enslaved and miserable, but they faithfully worship God, He sees this and delivers them, and they are a VERY blessed nation as they continue to worship God. However, just a few generations later, the people forgot where their blessings came from, they worship false gods and all kinds of sin, and they are again overrun by their enemies. It is a cycle...because prosperity -- generations of wealth tend to cause people to lose their vigilance, as though they were 'entitled' to their lavish existence. That's where too much of America is today and its sad.
We are the MOST blessed people, just by birth alone. Each of us cudda been born in Africa, Cuba, China....etc. Birth-fate is all that separates us from the illegals coming up from central America.
Trump can very well win but what does he get with a win? A divided congress, a lame duck presidency from day1 and congress will not go along with him since they are out for their own careers. His BEST hope is to get one bill with compromise and nominate more judges. Biden will get the same treatment a divided congress and lots of issues that HAVE to be resolved.
Wait for Trump’s VP selection. He or she will take the baton and be part of a legacy.
Sure... when was the last good VP? Lets check the no's... Harris, Pence, Biden, Cheney, Gore,Quayle, HW Bush?????
VPs are usually tossed aside and they would have to defend Trump record and neither top 3 have his charm.
It’s gotta be JD or else whatever Trump does in his next administration, those gains will be watered down in future and a reversion to the Uniparty.
Tulsi would also be very good and would have wider support.
Tulsi is my preferred VP pick too, Seva.
I agree with you about Vance, but I do like Tulsi Gabbard, perhaps without proper warrant. She was a Democrat, and I don't know why. Still, the woman is extremely serious, cogent, and capable of nursing and speaking with moral outrage. That voice of hers must get to every heterosexual man. She has a recent video on her YouTube channel in which she says bluntly that Joe Biden is insane.
That was a good one. I added it to my collection. She hit the nail right on the head with that one.
“President Joe Biden is Insane.” (3 min)
Tulsi Gabbard. Jun 29, 2024
https://youtu.be/4uT9fy-dJIA?si=O8x-7Kt0727Jd56n
Likeable yes, but Tulsi is kinda like SashaStone...a relatively new convert. Tulsi too new to be trusted as VP -- she could be a 'stealth' Democrat, after all, and at the least, a RINO. But, maybe give her a place in the Trump Admin where she can be easily fired if she fails the conservative test.
Every VP since approximately Agnew has, in fact, been a form of presidential life insurance policy.
Yeah, just a collection of Good News, Bad News, and Agnews...
Then its been a very poor one for quite a while
A divided Congress and country was exactly where the “both sides bad and do bad things” philosophy was bound to lead. How can good people coalesce around the idea that everything is bad? It’s a nihilistic circle jerk that leads nowhere.
Everything is not bad far from it but who leads the main parties yea plenty of bad people entrenched.
I think his lame duck status will be an advantage, in that he has learned who his real enemies within the bureaucratic state are and he doesn't have to plan for re-election.
Edit: Introducing legislation is secondary to what he can accomplish with the power of the Presidency, mainly reversing all of Dementia Joe's executive orders and reinstating those Biden has reversed or eliminated. It's like a psychotic ping-pong match on a colossal scale.
How did the Presidency gain so much bloody power, anyway? I suppose it's the Patriot Act and PA 2 Boogaloo.
Only so much EO power a president has.
FBI was created by one. so
True, but it seems to me that it's a way for the Prez to sidestep Congress in pretty meaningful ways. Wikipedia sez, "As of May 9, 2023, President Biden has signed 118 executive orders." Here's a link to the specifics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_Joe_Biden
This is political commentary from 1990s. The politics you describe here are not the politics happening today.
Its the same battle same things happening we have a habit of reviving the same battles over and over.
Any guesses about who the new man will be? Surely it won't be Dementia Joe, given what you point out in your penultimate paragraph.
Pretty sure George Clooney just laid out the playbook that we’ve already heard whispers of in his New York Times opinion column today. Biden is done, yes, but now they anoint their new king. More skeletons in their closet the better to control them. So probably Pritzker or Newsom. Blackmail is a helluva drug.
I admire your ability to read the NYT. Does it make you want to vomit or send you into an apoplectic fit? That's what happens to me whenever I try to read it to maintain a sort of "balance" in my input or read firsthand what my political enemies are doing. Ugh.
Pritzker? Never heard of him. Newsome reminds me of the lead in "American Psycho." Anyway, whoever they put up as the next puppet will fail unless Trump dawg shits the bed in a major way. Absent some major fuckery, I think he's a shoo-in. Maybe in '28 Jr. has a shot (no pun). Gabbard would do well, I think, as would Ramaswamy from the R side Maybe we could get really lucky and Rand Paul will run, but my take is most are fed up with the duopoly and really want an I.
No shit. First time I’ve read anything from them in 6 months. Such a worthless rag.
It's a hit! You're doing really good work!
Excellent analysis and really love how the author provides insight with examples from films. I am cautiously optimistic about the changes afoot around so many battleground states leaning hard for Trump. Biden is not only failing badly but he’s clearly crushing his down ballot colleagues.
Notice that it is always old films since the new ones are crapola.
Get ready for some more Schadenfreude:
The newly disciplined Trump is driving the left nuts
They hate this
https://archive.ph/YNsiu
https://thespectator.com/politics/newly-disciplined-donald-trump-driving-left-nuts/
...
Since Joe Biden’s utterly disastrous debate performance, Trump has displayed incredible restraint and focus, not giving any fodder to the media to distract from the Biden White House’s flailing inability to deal with this moment. Democratic commentators have openly complained about the lack of public events from Trump, as if desperate for him to do something, anything to shift the focus. Amid House Democrats’ demoralized caucus meeting, frustrated donor calls and Sorkinesque fantasies about a “convention blitz” of replacement candidates, Democrats and their media allies would love to have anything gifted to them from Trump to talk about instead.
It’s an amazing trend to behold. The left got so used to this happening over the past eight years, they just took it as a given — now they’re practically begging Trump to do something crazy. Could he pretty please say something racist or sexist or start beef with another Republican? The T-Rex is out there in the forest, but he won’t come eat the goat.
"The T-Rex is out there in the forest, but he won’t come eat the goat."
That's a bloody great metaphor!
Trump is the MSM job security. Down deep they just might really love him IMHO.
You can just imagine them desperately waiting by their feeds, looking for something they can pile-on and distract from Biden’s dementia….. C’mon President Trump, say something so we can talk about something other than our lies about Biden..
Given that those polls show that Low Information Environments Dems prefer demented Biden to anyone else means that we now have to see Dems roll back the kill Joe attempt they made on him. And of course they just blame Russia, since their voters still believe Russia corrupted our prior elections and Russia is the problem in this world (and certainly not us!). It must have been better to live in Soviet Russia where at least the citizens mostly j owe that their government was a corrupt joke.
It’s not just dementia Joe that’s bad. This whole administration that Maria Shriver pictured proudly 🤮 are all incompetent idiots that can’t see the damage they’ve created bc the media praises their corrupt government policies that only doom our nation.
Now just a dang minute! There's Mare Pete; there's Kamaltoe Harris; there's MyYorkedAss; there's Dr. Jill (she isn't a real doctor, she just plays one on TV); there's The Hunt (newest live-in Cabinet member assigned to monitor the Mexican drug cartels); there's Blinking Blinken; there's Julie Su (she isn't a real Secretary, she just plays one on TV); and, as if there's more, there's Barack Obama, Acting Full-time President.
I rest my case 🤪
The election is a spectacle. Whatever happens, it settles nothing. Assume we (excepting the resident trolls) get our wish and Trump wins by more than the margin of fraud and pulls along a Republican Congress. Then what? Leftist media keep howling, Deep State keeps sabotaging and RINOs keep RINOing. Assume there is enough fraud to elect whatever meat puppet the Democrats settle on. Then it is more of the same but perhaps worse as Democrats figure out that the Republicans are a paper tiger.
None of this solves the fundamental problem which is that the country is hopelessly divided and a house divided cannot stand. It is time to embrace the division and on our own build a house that can stand.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2024/07/our-democracy-in-counting-there-is-strength/
Note the Thomas Nast cartoon done when elections were in person and same day and there were no voting machines. Old tech still works. People always leave off the first sentence of the Stalin quote "It is enough that people know there is an election.?
I worry that history indicates the way nations often solve hopeless internal division is to create an internal or external war that kills off a substantial percentage of those the elites favored the least. In this case, it will be straight poor white males. Hey! I heard they’re starting registration for the Draft again and women won’t be included! Funny how feminists don’t fight for the equality and inclusion of being drafted and put in combat units at the same percentage as men. Some are more equal than others.
Plenty of examples of separation, many of which were peaceful. Pretty much all of decolonization, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, India, the Russian Empire and then the USSR and of course, the original formation of the US. Getting rid of the Spanish took wars, same with the French before the twin debacles of Vietnam and Algeria, Brits would sometimes fight (US, South Africa, Malaya) but mostly let the people go. Decolonization of India was peaceful but separation into India/Pakistan was and is violent. Yugoslavia was violent but Czechoslovakia was peaceful. Russian Empire was violent but USSR was mostly peaceful other than the Caucasus where the default setting for anything is violence.
Even if Trump makes it to the White House he’s so hated by so many that he’d be unable to govern and there’d even be many who’d cheer and be ecstatic if he were assassinated. We no longer have a society capable of a successful transfer of power in an election. Too much distrust and hate for that now. People should pay attention to AI. This is the wild card now that’s powerful enough to radically change our present course and avoid the abyss which most surely is where we’re rapidly heading. Fascinating and well done assessment of what’s happening with AI in this video. Quite amazing. The best of times. The worst of times. Our situation in a nutshell.
“Why Nvidia, Tesla Amazon and More Are Betting Big On AI powered Humanoid Robots.” (17 min)
CNBC. July 8, 2024
https://youtu.be/v0uKLCZocjs?si=HJu6oDC1ZJeVV1-D
Linus of Tech busted AI and Elon Musk was forced to recant all his AI progress. The systems are nowhere near ready to house and real AI (He even noted the fastest supercomputer are incapable do doing it). What we have is set programed navigation AI and it cant do much outside of the narrative.
How about China? They’re also committed to AI powered humanoid robots to be used to dominate global manufacturing. Are they also just too stupid to realize it’s all just a big scam?
And its all a marketing scam feel free to look at Linus Tech Channel he doesnt play political politics like Elon Musk just wants the tech and honestly does it.
I’ve often posted comments saying we lack a common reality and have often had leftists tell me we have never had a common reality in America. We certainly had vastly more in the past though than what we’ve got now. Just compare how sane and functional our society was in the sixties when meritocracy and patriotism were valued to what it is now under Woke Equity ideology. Excellent and very insightful article below about how common these values were in the past which have been lost and seem so distant and alien that many now believe they never did exist.
“At its peak, Apollo involved some 400,000 people, across thousands of institutions. Even the rockets were built across multiple locations. It was an extraordinary feat of co-ordination, achieved in an age before modern computer-design programmes or tools for instantaneous communication. By contrast, when in the 2000s California invited bids for construction of a high-speed rail line through the state, the French rail firm SNCF tendered a proposal – only to withdraw it in 2011 to work on a similar project in Morocco, whose government, the SNCF engineers declared, was less politically dysfunctional than California’s. Morocco’s high-speed railway began operating in 2018. California’s is still not completed.”
“It is unlikely that the America of today could muster the degree of co-ordination and industrial resources that put Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. Were I an American raised on the conviction that progress moves only in one direction, I too might conclude that, logically, these feats could not have been achievable half a century ago.”
“The most comforting conclusion, in other words, might be that the Moon landings were a hoax. The alternative is far bleaker: that the achievements of mid-20th-century America were the achievements of a different civilisation, one now as distant and mysterious as the Moon.”
“I’d like to believe the Moon landings were faked- the alternative is far bleaker.”
Yahoo News. The Telegraph. July 7, 2024
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/entertainment/d-believe-moon-landings-were-180000599.html
You seem to forget the turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s with civil rights despite all the space innovation it was a massively fractured country in turmoil. The big difference the people at the top did things for all of America not just for their partisan agenda something we lack today.
I’m 74 and remember the sixties quite well. In spite of the external turmoil the internal structure was still strong. Compare the California of the sixties to the California of today and the difference is like day and night. Same with Chicago and many other cities and states. We are now profoundly different types of people and deeply incompatible. This is just not working at all. I see evidence of that in Chicago every single day.
I not only remember the turmoil of the 60s, I participated. Yet there wasn't the feeling that we were a separate people from the other side. If I had to pick a point of inflection it was with Bush 1 with the New World Order and the betrayal of the Republican base. He lost an election because of it but the trajectory stayed the same up until the advent of Trump.
So true. In spite of the strife of the 60s, the US was still a high functioning society... not so today...
Chicago was crime ridden still is and California was nowhere the population of today. In fact 1970s murder homicide rate was 30 out 100,000 similar rates today (actually its 7 pts lower today). Neither party of today fixed crime in big cities that's why St Louis the actual murder capital of the US still has its problems despite being in a red state. I think you have a distorted view on what it used to be and to be honest I do the same thing looking fondly back at the 1990s.
St Louis is a blue island in a red state. Important to remember that.
Funny the governor and state GOP ran on fighting crime and yet will do nothing on doing anything. It tells you all you need to know about their actions vs campaign speeches.
I live in Chicago and except for 4 years in the Marines, always have. Don’t tell me this city has always had city-wide black wilding, crime and carjacking. Don’t tell me it’s always been such a lawless mess that even downtown is now dangerous even during the day time. The social breakdown in Chicago and many other cities is simply unprecedented.
As a former Chicagoan whose family migrated to the Western Suburbs in 1972, I have to agree. We left before the rise of gang violence and general mayhem.
Up until around 5 years ago, my brother and I would visit our old neighborhood on the SW Side every early summer, but we stopped because it was getting too depressing to witness the decay. On the bright side, the straight citizens in our old 'hood are circling the wagons with efforts like the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Their rhetoric is woke, but they're doing good things.
Look at crime statistics 1974 was terrible for Chicago
Thanks for that comment, Seva. Regrettably,. I fear it is all too true.
Great post.
I like to believe that Elon Musk's Space X and his Starship project will eclipse NASA and make that agency concentrate more on deep space, leaving the continued exploration of our solar system to Musk's outfit, a triumph of Private Enterprise.
Thank you Sasha. You are an artist with words.
What happened to Fredo is more dignified than what is happening to the President at the moment.