I have left St. Louis for job in Cologne, Germany.
This blog is in a state of semi-hiatus, as of September 4, 2018.
I’ll write posts here every once in awhile, just to update you all on how I’m doing, and my thoughts on whatever big news breaks. Our favorite doggy will chime in every once in awhile with his own guest posts. Other than that, expect posting around here to be not that frequent going forward.
I proposed on December 14, 2019, and was married on March 7, 2020. We welcomed twin sons into the world on December 22, 2020. You can read about how it all happened and eventually future updates in that stead on my RHOC Series.
Fall has finally arrived, both by the thermometer and by the calendar. Now that the mini September heat wave is now gone, the pugs and I are in a lot better mood.
So I figure it would be a good time for me to check in and put up an open thread.
St. Louis’s organization of realtors has apologized for something neither it nor any of its current members ever did. And to make up for it, they’re going to start to do things which they’ve already been doing for a long time, quit doing things which none of them personally ever did and don’t, and lobby to change laws which were already changed decades ago.
Virtue signaling is one of the few things that the current inflation scourge has not yet touched. It still carries the low low price of $0.00 (plus tax).
“The demand for White supremacy” coming from FBI headquarters “vastly outstrips the supply of White supremacy,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We have more people assigned to investigate White supremacists than we can actually find.”
Wherever demand is greater than supply, usually someone will find a way to be a supplier.
Here are a few but probably incomplete list of possibilities, based on recent history, on how it will be done in this case.
(1) Outright and obvious hoaxes. Whatchya doin, Rabbi? Examples too numerous to list or count.
(2) Hypochondriac paranoia. People who are so hyped up on the zeitgeist that they “hear things” that aren’t there. If that Duke volleyball playerette didn’t totally make it up, and she might actually have, then the explanation there is that she’s so on edge because everyone is telling her that everyone is out to get her that she interpreted racial slurs from the retarded utterances of a retard in the bleachers. Similarly, back in 2013, there was a Klan scare at Oberlin University, which turned out to be a homeless woman sleeping under a white blanket on a park-style bench. When you’re a hammer, everything around you looks like a nail. It should be no surprise that lots of people are seeing lots of nails, because they’ve been officially instructed to think that they’re hammers. But, all of these hate hypochondria incidents will be used as examples of WS violence, in spite of their getting debunked.
(3) Agents provocateurs. That one is easy, Feds or Fed assets hyping up goofballs to do this that or the third and then slapping the cuffs before they can.
(4) The opposite of agents provocateurs. That the Feds or Fed assets don’t try to provoke anything, but they’re attached to people who are seriously planning something bad on their own volition and without external provocation. The Feds/assets turn their heads and let him/them carry it out. So that the event that happens can be used as “proof of WS violence.” (“Just collateral damage” — Bill Clinton). Unless there’s other evidence, I think this thing in Buffalo earlier this year is an example.
(3.5) A “halfway house” between (3) and (4) is that APs do what they do, but a combination of human and bureaucratic incompetence means that they either forget to stop the actual crimes or provoke something that gets out of their control and they can’t stop. I think that partially explains OKC.
And the most morbid possibility of all:
(5) Actual lone wolves in or around our sector or adjacent sectors, that we know nothing about, and the cops or the Feds know nothing about, and who see that there’s all this new official demand for white supremacist (or right wing non-WS) violence, and then plan something and carry it out, just so they can become celebrities. Alternatively, there could be people who aren’t WS (or non-WS rightists), who still want the “fame” and “glory” enough that they fake or feign the ideology before going out and doing the “deed.”
I will indeed be on a flight to Rome in eight days to see history in the making.
Giorgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy Party are most likely going to finish in first place, and she will have enough backing from other similar parties that do well to become the next head of government, which is another way of saying that she’s going to punch it all the way through, a first for our movement in modern times. In spite of all that, I still contend that what happened in France this year was actually the most important and critical election of the year. Because what happened in France has far many more lessons and morals and instructive guideposts for the near future of our movement and our sector.
Meanwhile, we all know how volatile are Italian politics. We have to admit that such volatility is the main reason why Meloni is on the vestibule of power, more so than the actual issues. So we also know from recent experience that she won’t have long to prove herself. Just don’t be disappointed if this isn’t the start of a very long run for her and/or the BOI, that’s all I’m saying. If she does well, what will mean is that she and the BOI will be in the credible mix for the ebb and flow of coming in and out of power in Italy in the coming years.
Once again, though, it’s Italy. So it could be the case that, five years from now, a party that advocates that people subsist purely on a diet of purple tofu will be running the country.
The leading party, the Social Democrats, had some gains.
The good guys, the Sweden Democrats, had big gains, and are now the second most powerful force, both in terms of votes and seats.
The reason why there will probably be a right of center coalition government is because the left wing parties that were the governing partners of the Social Democrats all had significant losses.
While the Sweden Democrats are going to have more votes and more seats than the Moderate Party, it will be the leader of the Moderate Party who becomes the head of the coalition and the head of government. It was agreed upon before the campaign season, and contested openly to the electorate, that it would be the case. For reasons I don’t yet know, though I know someone in my Dex will fill me in soon.
The reasons the other left wing parties lost ground: (1) The energy crisis and the economic malaise in general. (2) Immigration and crime. (3) The most left wing parties who used to be the biggest peacemongers have suddenly turned into the biggest warmongers, and while Sweden is pro-Ukraine through and through, the left wing parties got punished because of both their extreme bellicosity and their rush to want to make Sweden an official American vassal/client/protectorate (aka join NATO).
The contradictory nature of this day, that has existed since practically the day after it happened, is that the ruling class wants us not to forget, and also wants us not to remember, at the same time.
I was too young to have any conscious memory of the ruling or governing times of all of these listed individuals, except for the last one. And I was too young to remember Pope John Paul I, who followed Paul VI and was pope for a month until he himself died, and also Yuri Andropov and then Konstantin Chernenko, the two short lived immediate successors of Brezhnev who themselves died in power.
So for me and my conscious lifetime and recollection, Ronald Reagan was the first President, John Paul II Pope, Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet leader, Helmut Kohl West German and then German Chancellor, Margaret Thatcher British PM, and obviously Elizabeth II as Queen.
January 20, 1989 was the first date in my lifetime that someone in one of those high positions of power was no longer going to be. I had already known for a few years before then that that day was coming, why it was coming and what it meant. And I watched the entire 1988 Presidential campaign season unfold, from the primaries to the conventions to the fall season then the general election, the first time I was able to understand and learn what was going on, so I knew that George Bush (back then, you didn’t need the “H. W.” or “41” part) won the election and was going to be the new President. But even in spite of all that, and even in spite of the fact that I was well cognitively sophisticated as a late 11-year old about two months away from turning 12, I still couldn’t help but worry that the world was about to end, or at least be in a far more perilous state, for no other reason alone that the only President I ever knew was no longer going to be President. My mother did her best to calm me down and bring me to my senses, but it wasn’t until January 20, 1989 came and went and the world didn’t end did I have the confirmation I needed. As an aside, a St. Louis TV station, and probably also a lot of TV stations in other cities, played a lot of Reagan movies on the weekend after Reagan left office, as a tribute.
The next time I had that feeling was April 2, 2005, when the only Pope I ever knew died, and the process kicked off to find a new one. By then, I had just turned 28, so I knew the world wasn’t going to end. It was just going to seem weird, and then it did actually seem weird, seeing a different man wear the Papal white after a whole conscious lifetime of only seeing JP2 in it. Of course, when JP2 came to St. Louis in 1999, I made sure to get myself in a position to see him in the flesh, and he was the first head of state I so witnessed. As an aside, Benedict XVI is a native of Marktl, Bavaria, very near the current Austrian border (and it was the same when he was born). I’ve seen Wadowice, Poland, the native city of JP2, and I fully intend to see Marktl one of these days. It’s about halfway between the point on the particular Autobahn that leads to Salzburg, Austria to the south and where the Danube crosses from Germany into Austria to the north, and I’ve seen both, so I at least kinda know what Marktl is like from a regional terrain and topographic standpoint.
Yesterday, September 8, 2022, ditto, and for the final time in my life, on that sentiment. Full circle in a way.
Margaret Thatcher leaving Number 10 on November 28, 1990 because of her own party not liking her opposition to European unification, then Mikhail Gorbachev being more or less phased out of power in the fall of 1991 during the final days of the USSR actually existing, and legally losing power on Christmas Day 1991, and then Helmut Kohl no longer being what was by then the Chancellor of “reunified” Germany on October 27, 1998, after his welcome wore out and he could no longer politically coast on being the Chancellor that got “reunification” done, didn’t evoke the same kind of feelings in me, they were just curiosities in the world news section to me when they happened. As another aside, Gorby just died here back on August 30, though that news kinda got lost because of more critical matters relating to Russia these days. And Kohl’s successor, Gerhard Schröder, after himself being un-elected in 2005, eventually became a lobbyist for Russian energy interests, something that always caused some measure of angst and unease around here, but became totally intolerable after February 24, so much so that official proceedings are underway formally to throw him out of the Social Democrat Party.
***
George H. W. Bush became President of the United States on January 20, 1989.
John Major became British Prime Minister on November 29, 1990.
Boris Yeltsin became the undisputed head of government and state of the Russian Federation on December 26, 1991.
Gerhard Schröder became German Chancellor on October 27, 1998.
Benedict XVI became Pope on April 19, 2005.
And Charles III became King on September 8, 2022.
Some people might wind up having a lot of power and clout in life. But no human being is ever so important that the world ends in the happenstance of their no longer having power or dying.
Meanwhile, in this month alone, Italy, the Czech Republic and Sweden will all be holding major national elections where the pop-nat-right sector(s) in all three are expected to make major gains, and then some in the case of Italy.
By the end of this week, I’ll know if I’ll be able to make the time to go to Rome that weekend, the 24th and 25th, to see history in the making:
While he’s going around trashing Viktor Orban and anyone else who is still buying gas and oil from Russia, he’s renting this seaside house, which he owns, to an as yet unnamed Russian billionaire for 50,000 € a month.
I wonder how “never let a crisis go to waste” translates into Ukrainian.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Olympics terrorism.
Just to show you what kind of decade the ’70s were, fifty years ago today can be described like this:
Palestinian Muslims, assisted by German neo-Nazis, assassinated Israeli and Jewish athletes, all to avenge Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Christians. One of their demands was to free from prison Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, of the Red Army Faction, the Antifa of its time and place.
So everybody got a piece of this action. It was intersectionality before intersectionality was cool.
Today’s official ceremonies in Munich are going to be subdued, because many of the important players announced beforehand that they’re not going to show up. And the reason for that is that the clusterfucky nature of what happened fifty years ago has begat the confused and deliberately stupid official public conversation today.
I’m inclined to believe that Zuckerberg wasn’t quite telling Joe Rogan the whole truth and nothing but the truth. While I can believe that the FBI approached him, my spidey sense tells me that they weren’t as matter-of-fact demanding or “warning” as he now puts on like they were. He might be working some post hoc angle in trying to pass this all off as the FBI’s fault.
But to me, all that is a moot point that misses the point. To me, it doesn’t really matter if it were all the mainstream social media (MSSM) doing it entirely on their own volition, or whether the Feds made them offer they couldn’t refuse, or somewhere in between. All that really matters is that it was done to begin with.
To me, the fundamental point all along is that Official America treats/treated the person of Donald John Trump and his Presidential candidacy, then his actual Presidency, then his post-Presidency and now his potential attempt to return and his potential second (third?) term, as a hostile invading virus, that had/has to be resisted and eliminated by any means necessary short of an actual assassination. (And as much eliminationism as they have been spreading in the process, you have to wonder about the “short of” part.)
This means that “everyone” was going to look the other way and pretend Hunter Biden’s laptop away at least long enough to get past election day, and that all would have happened even without any FBI “visit” or “warning.” To put it another way, but for this supposed visit and warning, Zuckerberg still would have censored HB laptop posts and comments.
Don’t forget that when this FBI and Zuckerberg meeting took place, Trump was still President, and was therefore the FBI’s boss. And they still stabbed him in the back.
Then again, I was all but right there on the scene in late 2015 when various professors at the University of Missouri cynically weaponized black football players as a front in a “deep state” sort of effort to oust the president of the university system, because they didn’t like the fact that he was not “of” academia and especially feared his budget knife. Which is this kind of thing scaled way down.
For a long time, what was/has been/is called official history education and the official history canon in the pre-university or pre-tertiary years (“K-12” in American parlance) in the Western world has been almost nothing more than the hagiography of the forces that successfully ended slavery, segregation/apartheid/Jim Crow/caste systems, colonialism, fascism, and official white supremacy.
This brainwashing is so intense that so many young people walk away from it concluding that, in the absence of any individual one of them having rare world-beating talents, the only way to become a hero in life and potentially for history is to do something which ends one or more of these things.
Problem is, these things don’t exist anymore.
How can you help to end something that has already ended?
Easy — You have to work yourself into believing that something that is currently happening in society that is plainly and obviously not one of those things is one of those things. Then you get to work. If and when you succeed, everyone will congratulate you as if you were the people that you learned to lionize back in history class.
The fancy name for this is “diminishing marginal returns.”
This is why, for example, Antifa love to clobber 80-year olds carrying Heritage Foundation signs. It’s because they sincerely believe that Heritage Foundation ideology is fascism. Antifa by the facial reactionary definition of its very name needs fascism to exist. Can’t be Antifa without the Fa. And by beating up the lamercon octogenarian, they get to become heroes for stopping literally Hitler.
Since real colonial empires don’t exist anymore, the way to end colonialism today is to pretend that having to learn Beethoven when studying music in a Western university is colonialism. Since segregation in the United States doesn’t exist anymore, the way to end segregation is to pretend that black people willingly living among themselves is segregation. Since Jim Crow doesn’t exist anymore, the way to end Jim Crow is to pretend that requiring photo ID to vote and imprisoning black men for having committed violent crimes are Jim Crow. Since apartheid doesn’t exist anymore, the way to end apartheid is to pretend that a small farming community of Afrikaners in the middle of nowhere is apartheid. Since official white supremacy doesn’t exist anymore, the way to oppose white supremacy is to pretend that being on time and doing arithmetic correctly and speaking English correctly and the preference for long stringy hair in women are white supremacy.
And since slavery doesn’t exist anymore, the way to oppose slavery is to pretend that prison inmates being put to work is slavery.
Germans and Irish maintain a mutual admiration, mainly because they have a common traditional adversary. So today’s centennial is being well noted and observed here in Ye Olde Bundesrepublik. And in a few hours, I’ll be going to a low key get together for the purpose.
Sad how it turned out in the long run. Ole Micky went through all that just for the Irish capital to become a suburb of Kinshasa.
If it’s any eternal consolation, Micky, so have parts of London.
Other notable anniversaries this month: The 30th of Ruby Ridge (yesterday), the 25th of Princess Diana’s death (the 31st), and yes, I saw the exact spot in April, and the centennial of the official adoption of “Deutschlandlied,” aka “Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles,” as the official German national anthem (the 11th). Yes, you read that right, it wasn’t during the Empire or the Nazis, it was during Weimar. So many people think that a song with the original lyric “Germany over everything in the world” was a Nazi invention to animate its expansionist imperative, and most of those who know that’s not true think that it was an Imperial-era imperative to emphasize German unity over the long tradition of smaller entities.
Myself and the better half, my parents-in-law, and my sister-in-law and the soyboy-in-law, all live within the bounds of the photo.
If you look closely enough, and know where to look, you just might be able to see all of us waving up to the sky.
Three years ago, one of you snapped this front page, which of course featured a recent pic of Frankfurt’s skyline. Then, I was still temporarily living in Wiesbaden rehabbing my legs. And I told you then that, if you look at just the right spot on the horizon, you could see me waving.
All kidding aside, funny how much difference a year can make. Last year at this time, around here, the problem with rivers was too much water.
(1) She was close family to the losing side of a civil war where the winning faction was getting tired of being oppressed by the faction they ultimately defeated, and she and her close relatives decided to hide out in America.
(2) Her whole political schtick is to try to do a clever melding of that which makes her a traditional Somalian and fashionable current year white leftist woke-ism. That’s a forked tongue game that is not lost on a lot Somalians in her own city or in America, which is why she is a divisive figure among them. But, to her “credit,” it means she knows on which side the bread is buttered in the current year. She knows that there’s a yuge seller’s market for the whole liberal egalitarian religion of peace variety of pseudo-Islam. Also notice that this publication is explicitly Jewish-oriented, and it does mention at one point that Jews really eat up her “oppressed in the old country made it in the promised land” schtick. Like I said, on which side the bread is buttered.
(3) As is often the case with these things, the genesis of the very existence of a Somalian community in Minneapolis-St. Paul is an agricultural processing facility in rural southwestern Minnesota. That was the economic attraction and the beachhead. In America, The Great Replacement of any given city or town often starts with an ag processing plant, and its agbiz owners gluttonous for the cheapest most docile possible labor source.
I could imagine that people all over America were counting down as if it was New Years Eve coming up on midnight, to the very moment the polls in Wyoming closed last night. And when the hour struck, everyone popped champagne bottles, but instead of singing “Auld Lang Syne,” they sang “Ding Ding the Witch Is Dead.”
Someone got some last minute footage of Liz Cheney campaigning in Wyoming.
Not stated here, but I think the reason why “LGBT” has become unsustainable is because the mutual defense treaty metaphor I extended to it seven years ago turned out not to be mutual, but a matter of I want you to carry my water but I never have to carry yours.
The practical on-the-ground reality of LGBT has that Ts have converged and dominated the whole alphabet spectrum and weaponized it and all the letters on their own behalf. In fact, I saw that coming as early as six years ago. Ts want Ls, Gs and Bs to respond to any perceived slight against Ts as if it’s also a slight against Ls, Gs and Bs, and that they have, until now. However, I’m not aware that Ts are rushing to the front lines to defend Ls, Gs or Bs when they come under singular “attack.”
In other words, Ls, Gs and Bs are finally catching on to the Ts’ one-way parasitism. In that Ls, Gs and Bs always have to carry the Ts’ water, but Ts never carry the water of the Ls, Gs or Bs.
And it’s also like I said: If they don’t have anything to fear from us, then they fall apart over their improbable differences, which they only ever papered over out of fear of us. If Ts do wind up getting evicted from the Grand Acronym, then I predict that the next divorce will be between Ls and Gs, because of their many differences.
We’re now within three months of midterm election day.
I’ve been working on this thought for awhile, and I think I’ve given it all the spit shine and polish I need to present it to the world and for the record:
If the red team doesn’t do as well as the median of the legit predictions, then it will be for two reasons and two reasons alone:
Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell.
In other words, people realizing that probably the two most singularly undeserving people in the United States would most benefit from all this new pop-nat-right energy, and those two people would then proceed to run it into the ground.
That would be what makes the difference between an extinction-level event and just a mere landslide, or between a landslide and some gains, however the case will work out.
If you read my social feeds, then you already know the word.
When I split the goalposts between the black pill and the white pill, and between extreme conspiratorialism and extreme anti-conspiratorialism, and between extreme cynicism and extreme optimism, I come up with some accurate predictions.
I think it was maybe as early as 2006, but definitely before 2010, that I saw coming down the pike, and outright predicted, that it was going to get to a point that people would be in more legal trouble for calling the cops than actually committing the offense which caused the cops to be called, and that the imperative would be social justice-y and equity-y in one way or another. That has certainly come to pass, to wit: The Central Park bird watcher, and all the fallout from it, including several states passing laws.
Now, with that out of the way, I want you all to remember this word:
Good, you came back, at least. You didn’t abandon me.
Now let’s mash it all together.
Geofencing (for the purpose of limiting the speed of automobiles within the geofenced area, and of course cars will be made to have the ability to receive and obey geofences), will happen, no matter how much you or I or anyone else whines, whales, bitches, moans, sues, protests or agitates. It’s because of stories like the one you just read. More generally, it will be because of increasingly wild driving on the part of jubilant blacks in the United States who no longer have to fear getting a traffic ticket because George Floyd. And on this continent, it will be because of the Truck Drivers of Peace (“We’re driving down the road in the Truck of Peace, you never know who we’ll run into today” — SyeTen), who slam on the gas after misinterpreting that liberal egalitarian religious book called the Koran.
In fact, it was two months ago that I mentioned here the very story which got the mainstream German media, especially FAZ, to start floating the geofencing trial balloon, as if to get people prepared for it. Here, the term is at first spelled out as “Geografische Einzäunung,” or “Geografischer Zaun,” but then they subsequently use the English language term.
And on top of all that, I’ve just seen this movie too many times before. Most theoretical proposals that people initially resist for privacy concerns wind up actually being implemented because something happens that does or seems to override all those concerns.
And it only took 22 years from Rubicon to Empire the first time around. That means by 2044, things should shake out. I’ll probably live long enough to see it all transpire, and thankfully, from afar.
It’s all just a matter of names, dates and proper nouns, and seeing who is sitting in the last remaining chair after the music stops, seeing who gets to be the American analogue to Augustus. If the history holds, there will be at least one major assassination along the way.
Those interesting times referred to in a Chinese curse? We’re going to get our interesting times whether we want them or nah.
August 8, 2022, a day that shall live in infamy.
***
As an aside, today, August 9, 2022, is the eighth anniversary of the GENTILIVUS GIANTIVS of the Fergaza Strip purloining his ultimate cigarillo. That is what started the nearly three year era of this blog having its highest traffic and most attention, and me becoming something of a medium wheel in the Alt Right. Of course, that other day, almost three years later, ended that era. Because I ran the only frequently updated St. Louis-based (double entendre) and -focused Alt Right platform, and people obviously got interested in St. Louis starting eight years ago tomorrow night, I was well positioned to be that market’s only supplier. I was a monopoly. And a lot of people stuck around even after Ferguson cooled off, right until, well, that day. Not so much since then.
Like I have written here before, I was at the State Fair in Sedalia that day, and four something in the afternoon, I took a break to get in some shade and glance at the news on my sail foam, and I saw this story about a fatal officer involved shooting in Ferguson. Twenty-nine hours later, Ferguson instantly and forever changed from being a middle aged St. Louis suburb to international news and a permanent metaphor.
Must get this out of the way first — We all know that it’s not true that the “far right” is the prime threat of domestic terrorism in the United States. Or even here in Germany, where they’re preaching the same lie (“Kampf gegen Rechts”). The real honest dispassionate examination of statistics bears it out, in both countries.
Onward and upward.
In theory, and let me say that a few more times so I don’t get misunderstood — In theory, in theory, in theory, in theory, in theory.
There is a plausible path for both the greatest domestic terror wellspring being the far right, and no far rightists or any rightists being on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List, to be true at the same time.
It’s because, generally speaking, people who are on the FBI’s, or any agency’s 10MW lists, are there because they’re wanted for relatively non-recent crimes, and have been on the lam for as long. Hence, why they’re “wanted” — If they were in custody, they wouldn’t be “wanted.”
Notice on the FBI’s current 10MW, that some of the crimes are more than 50 years old. And I don’t think any of them are what you would call fresh blood on the wall.
And why are there so many left wing extremists on the lam at all? And how can they be on the lam for decades on end?
It’s because they have networks and connections they can use to hide out.
Remember, a good chunk of the while Bill Ayers was on the lam, he was living on a houseboat owned and expenses paid for by the National Lawyers Guild.
And I imagine that people or groups with some importance, influence, gravitas or clout are hiding most or all of these people on the current 10MW. A few of them are using a country, that being Cuba. During the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow was ultimately behind the Baader-Meinhof gang (Red Army Faction) here, and the FALN (Puerto Rican separatists) in the United States, using their vassals East Germany and Cuba as fronts. Terrorism is a lot easier to get away with when you have big and serious institutions in back of you.
Meanwhile, and in contrast, right wing extremist terrorist types in the current epoch don’t have those kinds of networks. When there is an act of RWEDT, the perpetrator (usually just one in a given act, lone-wolf-ism is a RW tendency, and their lone wolf mentality helps to explain their lack of being networked up) doesn’t have the ability to hide out for long, and is quickly apprehended. If not, they instantly turn themselves in or make themselves very easy to catch, because they want to to be known and want to start cashing in on the instant publicity and infamy, and they want people to read their stupid manifestos. Which means that RWEDTs aren’t ever on the lam long enough to wind up on a 10MW.
So you mash this all together, and it’s easy to see, (again, in theory), how RWEs could be doing most of the DT in a numerical sense, but its individual perps never end up on 10MW.
Before I let this go, I once again have to put in a book recommendation, and this excellent review of it which is almost as good as the book itself, in case you don’t want to do the book, while we’re talking about LWEDT in and the ’70s in America. Incidentally, the Baader-Meinhof Gang here also peaked in the ’70s, which means that the ’70s were truly the absurdum to the reductio that were the ’60s.
On the Alex Jones and Sandy Hook civil lawsuit judgment and verdict.
Going to start off with a prediction:
The public facing mainstream media platforms of major American multimedia corporations and conglomerates are gloating and spiking the football, now. But, don’t doubt me on this — Probably as you’re reading these words, the lawyers for these same corporations are already hard at work writing the legal briefs that will be submitted in the process of filing the appeal to this verdict in the hopes of getting it overturned. At the same time that CNN’s on-air personalities are popping bubbly, Warner Brothers’s C-suite lawyers want it overturned.
And I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why. If you can’t already figure it out, the rest of this post will have hints.
Now, onward and upward.
I might be misreading the matter, or I’m properly reading the analysis from people that are themselves misreading the matter. But the way I interpret it right now, if AJ actually sincerely believed that SH was a total hoax/false flag/crisis actors event, and he testified to such while under oath or deposition in the process of this suit, there would have been no legal path for the jury to find for the SH parents and against him. What turned out to be the tort was that he said it and knew he was deliberately saying something he didn’t believe, all to draw attention to himself, and of course to make money. And he had to confess as such during the process, because he was under oath. Prison if he lied. And there had to be a giant paper trail to prove that he didn’t actually believe it, that could have been easily discovered and used against him in a potential criminal perjury trial against him, if he would have claimed that he actually believed it.
To put it another way, the rub in this civil trial is not that AJ believed something so obviously crazy and virtually impossible, but he didn’t and claimed he did for clickbait and eventually for profit.
It might be tempting to think that one of the good things that will happen as a consequence of this trial is that it’s going to act as a future deterrent against the American right of the lamestream right’s not quite so desirable propensity to find a conspiracy in everything. Sometimes, in fact, usually, the cigar is just a cigar. Comma, Bill Clinton. The reason it can’t do that is, for what I wrote above, that if AJ said it because he actually believed it, that would not have been tortious.
No, what the real and hopefully positive fallout from this here will be is that it will put a kibosh on the clickbait industry. You know, “Why is my hot nude yoga class still hideously white?”
Like I said, hints.
In a way, provided this verdict stands, and I have my doubts it will, this will be some measure of earthly sweet justice for people like Jared Taylor, and my second son’s namesake (RIP), and all like them, and I have to throw myself into that mix, who have never wanted publicity, attention or fame so badly that they feel the need to say that a mass shooting that happened didn’t actually happen, or go out and do one themselves. For us, the only solace we can take is that we’ll get our flowers after we’re long gone. As it has happened for my second son’s namesake, that starting eleven years after his way too untimely departure and continuing to the present, he finally got the attention he deserved, while nobody remembers the lame boring uninspiring establishmentarian key pounders and talking heads that were his much more famous (i.e. establishment-peddled) contemporaries in life. Hell, the only reason anyone might remember William Safire a hundred years from now is that he wrote a backup version of Nixon’s Moon landing statement in case Apollo 11 failed and Armstrong, Collins and/or Aldrin died either on, near or around the Moon.
One more thing:
This verdict has sunk Alex Jones’s credibility so far that it’s almost down to CNN level.
The first season of “House” on was also the last season of “That 70’s Show,” both were on over-the-air Fox. And both shows had a character named Eric Foreman.
There were four guys with my first name on the baseball team sophomore year of high school. My first name isn’t exactly a rare one, but it’s also not the most common one.
***
What happened yesterday is what I said would happen back in March. Even though Eric Greitens’s collapse in the polls took longer than I thought, it eventually happened.
The problem was that, as long as it was nothing more than he said she said, gossip, and the pure political vendetta of a Soros prosecutor, it wasn’t going to hurt him. Whatever connection he had and made with people, and I never could grok it myself, it was enough to power through all that, and any other predicaments he got himself into.
But as of March, it became an affidavit. And that became a lot harder to overlook.
I was at the inauguration in 2017 where all five of the Class of 2016 red team clean sweep were sworn in, Eric Greitens as Governor, Mike Parson as Lt. Gov., Josh Hawley as AG, Eric Schmitt as Treasurer, and Jay Ashcroft as SoS. I thought to myself then that Schmitt was the one who had the highest ceiling. I was wrong about that precisely, but it’s also not a surprise that Schmitt is (very likely) going to the United States Senate. And as of right now, the only one of those who is where they were on inauguration day in 2017 is Ashcroft. And now, Parson is most likely going to have to go shopping for another AG, and I see that the Treasurer that he put in Schmitt’s place when he moved Schmitt from Treasurer to AG after Hawley went to the Senate himself won the nomination for Auditor yesterday, and should he win in November, Parson will have to go shopping for a Treasurer again.
That’s a lot of turnover and deck shuffling in a mere six years.
Now from what I can see with the results yesterday, and combined with what I was able to glean in the months leading up to it, it came down to a point where the two Erics were the only real contenders. Neither Vicky Hartzler nor Billy Long ever had enough name rec outside their own districts to be able to rise above the level of dark horse semi-contenders. Long finished in third place in his own home county of Greene, to make matters worse for him. For Hartzler’s sake, she won most of the counties in her Congressional district, which was enough to slot her ahead of Greitens for second place when all the votes were counted. And Hawley endorsing her likely helped. (That, I’ll never be able to figure out.) But it wasn’t enough to give her any serious chance to win.
“But Blogmeister,” I can already hear the peanut gallery squak, “weren’t you….?”
Yep. Ten years ago this time. And just typing that makes me realize that it has already been ten years. That was the last time Missouri had a truly contentious Republican primary for U. S. Senate.
The difference then is that, if you were a Republican doing a statewide run from the previous vantage point of only ever having won a Congressional district, CD-2 (in the way it existed in the era of Missouri having nine Congressional districts) was the one you wanted to be from. Because it overlayed the most active and interested Republican voters in the state, and the most enthusiatic donors (and also the biggest donors). Too, Todd had statewide name recognition in sort of a “below ground” sense, mostly among conservative churches.
All in all, what happened yesterday is that Eric Schmitt was perceived as the safe choice, and once the fact that Mrs. Eric Greitens signed an affidavit sunk in, people gravitated to the safe choice. It’s just too bad that he’s going to do whatever Mitch McConnell wants and nothing more. Though as far as that goes, he’s going to be the perfect drop in replacement for Roy Blunt, who himself was the perfect drop in replacement for Kit Bond. Let’s just say that Schmitt isn’t going to make any waves, unlike his about-to-be Senate colleague from both the state and the Class of 2016.
Oh, and one more thing: Mark McCloskey, why did you even bother?
***
I wrote earlier this year that the two big acid tests to whether the Republican Party body politic in the United States is really changing were going to be J. D. Vance and Neil Kumar. Vance won and Kumar didn’t. But I should have added Blake Masters, who did win yesterday. What Vance and Masters had that Kumar did not was Peter Thiel’s money. And Peter Thiel isn’t playing with house money, which means he’s not going to burn money. Vance and Masters were in open races with no incumbent and with other candidates that weren’t too well funded by other sources, whilst Kumar had to face a Walmart-funded entrenched incumbent.
Other news from other states yesterday: I see that Kris Kobach is getting back into the ring, and he won the nomination for Kansas AG. As badly as Trump treated Jeff Sessions, I think his snubbing of Kobach was even more devastating. And the Never Trumper Impeacher Peter Meijer (Who I think is part of the family that owns the hypermarket chain) in western Michigan is out, at the hands of someone who looks like an age-progressed Rerun from “What’s Happening.”
Let’s say there’s this model railroad club in this city. Among its members are Paul, the executive vice-president for something-or-another at a Fortune 500 corporation in town, and Billy Bob, a teenager whose parents have a very modest income. But Paul notices “something” in Billy Bob, and uses his pull to get Billy Bob on in the mailroom at the Fortune 500 corporation. Forty years later, Billy Bob has risen all the way to the top and has become CEO.
That’s why Chetty is talking about, the mobility in socioeconomic status (SES) that comes from and in fact rooted in the SES heterogeneity of groups and organizations that aren’t explicitly organized around SES.
However, what Chetty is trying to sell you on, or he’s either deliberately or unwittingly peddling disingenuously, is that there should be something that forces the model railroad club to take in any ole Jamarquavious who has zero interest in model railroad and a low IQ, because, that way, Paul will be able to get him on the CEO track, too.
Then again, that seems to be Chetty’s purpose in life, to hunt for any justification for shoveling black people out of cities and move them next to you.
Remember, the sine qua non of the model railroad club is interest in model railroad. And on top of that, Paul had to “see something” in Billy, that he never did in anyone else at the club.
Hey, black people. With “friends” like the FBI under “President” Joe “Black Lives Matter” Biden, you don’t need the actual Klan anymore.
But of course we know what this is all about — ZOMG MUH RUSSIA LOL~!!!!!!1
And continuing the narrative that Russian trolls have far more influence than they actually do, which is of course to prop up the lie that Trump 2016 because Russia.
A “recession” in the United States is officially defined thus: As many consecutive quarters of year-over-year negative economic growth as necessary such that the final single quarter of the chain of consecutive quarters ends after an election day in which Democrats defend either an executive level office and/or a majority in a legislative body.
Tony Dow has indeed passed, yesterday, at the age of 77. Day before, it was reported that he did, and then it was retracted but noted that he was probably only hours away. The hour struck for good yesterday.
As most of you know, I have this as my avatar on most of my social media presences.
It’s a screencap from Season 2 Episode 24, “The Bus Ride.”
Note: If you try to watch ^this^ YT video on its standalone YT URL, it will claim that it has suicidal imagery and make you hit “Agree and Proceed.” Here in the current year, you’d think the problem would have been that it traumatizes Black people. Gotta love AI.
I adopted this as my avatar after the Jena, Louisiana noose hysteria in 2007. (“No noose is good noose”). When I changed countries and continents, I also found out that Jena (here pronounced “Yay-nuh” or “Yee-nuh”) is a Thuringian city of decent size and some deep history. First time I was there was in October 2019, which was the first time I saw all the significant Thuringian cities.
So as you can probably figure, I’ve watched LITB. In fact, I think I’ve seen every episode.
In recent years, a lot of people from the LITB actor universe have passed on. Barbara Billingsley (“June Cleaver”) in 2010 at 94. Frank Bank (“Lumpy Rutherford”) in 2013 at 71. Ken Osmond (“Eddie Haskell”) in 2020 at 76. And now, “Wally Cleaver.” By comparison, Hugh Beaumont (“Ward Cleaver”) passed in 1982 at 73, in fact, he happened to be in Munich when he passed, visiting his son. Richard Deacon (“Fred Rutherford”), in 1984 at 62.
So now, only The Beaver (Jerry Mathers) is left, age 74. His character’s name was in the title, and he’s the one who outlived them all. No surprise, because he was/is the youngest. I’m guessing that most of the people who played the characters that were his friends in the same grade as himself are still living.
Tony Dow’s passing is actually making me think of history a little bit.
***
When my mother turned me on to LITB, must have been when I was around eight years old, she made it out like the way life was depicted in the show was the way it was for pretty much everyone during that period.
Already I can hear the peanut gallery and the back of the class yelling out in unison: “OH BULLSHIT~!”
As I got older, and able really to grasp and understand history, I realized that she wasn’t quite telling me the truth. Because it certainly wasn’t that way for her.
I’m going to go through what I believe to be is some of the relevant history of the matter.
***
LITB ran for six seasons, from 1957 to 1963. It was on CBS during its first season, which was the network you wanted to be on. But after that, it switched to ABC, the network you didn’t want to be on, for the remainder of its run. (I’m guessing because CBS didn’t want it anymore for its poor ratings, in spite of all else, which I’ll get to.) It was slotted in four different nights of the week, and two of those were Friday and Saturday, which was pretty much like not being on TV at all. It never cracked the top 20 in ratings, even during its best season.
So how is it that anyone even remembers the show at all, or knows about it today, here in 2022-land? Such that the passing of the man who played the older brother on the show is even somewhat newsworthy.
For that, we need to start three decades earlier. That the First World War caused a lot of cultural changes is pretty well known to most people who are conversational in 20th century history. The increasing libertine attitudes were more prevalent in some countries (cough, cough, Weimar, cough, cough, speaking of Thuringia), than others. But all throughout the Western world, especially countries that were WWI combatants, that was the trend.
Including the United States. Most of you know the history of that at least to a rudimentary level.
Hollywood’s part in peddling the cultural rot in the 1920s did eventually generate a backlash. That eventually resulted in something called the Hays Code. It wasn’t any kind of state-enforced law, but an industry cartel agreed upon set of standards to stop the backlash and prevent actual state censorship. Formally, the Hays Code was most seriously self-enforced from the early ’30s to the mid ’50s, but its affects lingered on for much longer. In fact, I happen to think that the Hays Code still has lingering effects on the industry to this day. This might be different now, because I haven’t seen an American polprod since about the middle of the last decade. But even then, generally speaking, and in the entirety of my conscious existence in watching TV, the cops always win, the criminals always lose. That was part of the Hays Code, in order to prevent people from thinking that the cops and the law in the real world could be beaten and that one could “get away with it.” So as to prevent marginal people (“morons”) from even trying. Too, because TV networks and movie studios are also linked with local and national news divisions, and those want and need a good relationship with real world law enforcement agencies, (inside tracks to information), this notion to show that “you can’t ever get away with it” serves to keep that real world relationship amicable. On the flip side, that eventually caused something called The CSI Effect, where real world jurors expect the real world cops to do it as well as the cops on TV, and refuse to convict defendants when the real world cops don’t. And most of the time, they actually don’t. Because, well, TV is TV, reality is reality. But that’s for another day.
So while the Hays Code as A Thing might have petered out by around the mid-’50s, its precepts still lingered. Combined with the fact that television was far from universally praised in the first full calendar decade of its existence, (“The Vast Wasteland,” etc etc.), TV and media company execs wanted to continue to grease the skids by providing “wholesome” non-controversial programming that itself was Hays Code compliant. Not helping matters were the game show corruption scandals of the second half of the decade. And all this was at the same time that there were other moral hysteriae afoot about comic books and rock and roll. I know there were actual Congressional hearings about the “dangers” of comic books in 1954.
Against that background, you can see why the TV execs of the time wanted to throw bones to the wolves.
Shows like LITB, “Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Father Knows Best,” were such “bones.” And why the networks tolerated their relatively low ratings and the fact that they were money pits, to a point — In fact, the famous LITB episode where The Beaver gets stuck in the soup cup on a billboard was the most expensive television show to produce in the history of TV until that point. (BTW, a “discriminating” hostess? You can tell this was before the Civil Rights Act, lol).
Another parenthetical: The reason there were so many St. Louis references in the dialogue during the LITB run I believe was because its sole sponsor for the entire run was Ralston-Purina. This was back in the days when almost all shows had only a single advertising sponsor.
Yet another parenthetical: LITB was the first show on American TV to show a toilet. That was in the second aired episode in the first season, the one where Wally and Beaver order a pet baby alligator. Evidently, that toilet scene was so controversial that it was a struggle even to get the suits upstairs to sign off on it, that a whole frickin compromise had to be worked out where only the top half of the toilet was shown. Such were the times. Which all sort of goes to prove my point.
Anyway, as time went on, the Hays Code self-enforcement cartel became weaker, and the LITB type shows ended. With no imperative to replace them with similar shows. The last real “dorky” family show in my reading of the history was “The Brady Bunch.” But even that was a bit different, in that it portrayed a widow with her daughters and a widower with his sons getting married and creating a blended family. It too never had good ratings during its original run, but was rescued and kept afloat by its cult following.
LITB was destined to be forgotten totally, as if it never existed. And that would have been the case.
Except…
Fast forward to the decade of my birth.
Americans in the decade of the 1970s suddenly got nostalgic for the 1950s. The first canary in the coal mine was Don McLean’s famous song, “American Pie” (1971), which itself was an anthology-as-song of popular music between the Iowa plane crash of 1959 which killed Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson (Waylon Jennings was supposed to be on that flight, but gave up his seat to The Big Bopper because the latter was feeling sick and didn’t want to suffer a long bus trip), on one end, and the clusterfuck that was the 1969 Altamont Free Concert (“Woodstock West”) on the other end. But maybe it was because of Watergate, economic malaise/stagflation/misery index, the failure in Vietnam, or the existence of the Ford Pinto, that people wished for “better times” and “the good ole days.” Blah blah.
Which means, this, a disco arrangement of the “I Love Lucy” theme song, is the most ’70s thing possible, as it mashed up two big late ’70s trends, ’50s nostalgia and disco. Clubs that played this song had Vitamitavegamin on tap. (RIMSHOT) (Allusion to the joke that the VHS tape of the cast of “Friends” giving a tutorial on how to use Windows 95 is the most ’90s thing possible).
And what people of the 1970s remembered about the 1950s was what they wanted to remember. Selective memory. Which is, always has been, and always will be, a bad human propensity. Can’t have the good ole days without the good, now can we?
That’s when someone must have discovered LITB sitting around in some film vault, the metal cylinder can collecting dust.
Off to the races.
So what it all means is that what LITB eventually became in its second and more popular life was the selective memory filter through which nostalgic people of a later era would come to view delusionally the 1950s. Conversely, LITB would become a cautionary tale metaphor for those who expounded the dangers of papering over the more difficult parts of history with too much “good ole days” schmaltz.
And because LITB became popular again, so did its principal actors. Neither Hugh Beaumont, nor Tony Dow, or Jerry Mathers, ever got much prominent work in the industry after LITB, because LITB typecast them. Of the big four, the one who did the least actual speaking and was seen the least during the LITB series run, Barbara Billingsley, was the one who had the most work post-LITB. (“I speak jive.”) Which is probably why; That’s what saved her later career prospects. Sorta like the gang banger who commits the fewest crimes has the best chance of avoiding prison when the cops roll the whole gang up.
The renewed popularity of LITB actors eventually begat a reunion movie on CBS, which, as I noted, hosted the first season of LITB. “Still the Beaver,” in 1983.
That in turn begat a series revival, called “The New Leave It to Beaver,” which lasted from 1984 to 1989, on The Disney Channel first run, and it is still to this day (supposedly) the longest running series revival of a previous original series in the history of American television.
Hugh Beaumont was supposed to be in the reunion movie, but, like I said, he died in 1982, just before the shooting and filming started. So the script had to be rewritten to indicate that the Ward Cleaver character passed at some time in the past before the events of the movie. Richard Deacon (“Fred Rutherford”), was in STB, but as he passed in ’84, he was never in NLITB.
***
I can rationalize even if I can’t justify anyone whose existence ca. 1957 was truly LITB-like thinking that LITB was way more a documentary than a sitcom. But, like I said, it wasn’t the way things actually were for my mother. So why, when her life and existence was not like that, would she try to sell me on that it was the way it was for everyone? Is the power of selective memory so potent that it gives people memories of things they never actually experienced? Or does nostalgia cause people to believe lies about their own lived experience past? Of course I know the answer to that one: The stadium where a memorable event happens only holds 50,000 people, but thirty years later, 10 million people were there. Nostalgia does create its own bandwagon effect.
***
A little more LITB trivia before I get up on outta here.
* It was set in “Mayfield,” but it never indicated a state. And that was deliberate, so as to keep the geography relatable. There was one point where Wally got a package, and it showed the fictional Cleaver house address, but Wally’s thumb just so happens to cover up the state after “Mayfield” on the typed out address line. That’s how far they went not to associate the show’s fictional setting with an actual state. I think in NLITB, “Mayfield” was given a named state, but don’t quote me on that.
In reality, LITB was shot on the Republic Studios backlot (S 1-2) and then the Universal Studios Backlot (S 3-6), both in Southern California. When it came to dialogue, you got the impression that Mayfield was in where it was IRL filmed, Southern California, but then sometimes it mentioned “California” as a far off state. NLITB was again filmed on the Universal Backlot in L.A., except for its final season, when Universal totally renovated the area, and NLITB filming was moved to Orlando.
You see the link I provided. From that, you can see that the house that was used in “The Munsters” later on was also seen in LITB and was on the Universal backlot. “The Munsters” episodes were co-written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who themselves wrote LITB scripts for the early part of its run, and supervised other writers later on, so much so that even episodes that C&M didn’t actually write, they were credited in the actual credits as having a supervisory role. C&M were actually a famous script writing pair with a long successful resume, that had a lot of clout in the industry at that time. I’m guessing that if there was any way to get C&M in the credits, you did, because it meant big gravitas.
* IRL Jerry Mathers was one school year older than his Beaver character, and IRL Tony Dow was one school year younger than his Wally character. Wally the character and Tony Dow IRL was 12 turned 13 during the first season filming, and he was then portrayed to be in the eighth grade. When normally, 12-13 years old is seventh grade. Jerry Mathers IRL should have been in the third grade then, but Beaver the character was shown in the second grade. Eventually, both were readjusted to their actual reality, but in different ways. “Wally” had two junior years, Seasons Four and Five. (With no explanation anywhere in S5 why he was still a “junior.”) “Beaver” looked much older at the end of S5 than at the beginning, and was portrayed as being in the sixth grade. But toward the end of S5, a dialogue said that “Beaver is going into the eighth grade (next school year)…” — Meaning I’m guessing the producers/writers knew he was starting to look way more adolescent than boy, and had to adjust.
* Some time back, I noted some eerie similarities between the Ward Cleaver character and another TV dad, Jim Walsh (the original “Beverly Hills 90210,” played by James Eckhouse).
* The Cleaver family car during S 1-2 was a four door Ford Fairlane of what was at that point the current generation. However, for the rest of the run, it was some sort of Chrysler product. Ending with the S5 and S6 car being a 1962 four door Plymouth Fury. While Chrysler was not an official sponsor of the show, I could imagine that there was some sort of relationship between Chrysler and someone either at the studio or the production or ABC the network which begged that.
* Speaking of cars, I really liked “Knight Rider” as a kid. When Netflix had it, I slow binged watched it. In its first season, 1982-83, Tony Dow was in an episode. That was probably filmed at about the time “Still the Beaver” was, and I’m guessing that he got that KR bit part because of the renewed interest in the LITB universe.
Every July 19 I see for as long as I have left to live will serve to remind me how lucky I was and that I should appreciate everything I’ve gotten since then, because it came this close to not happening at all.
Today our port of call is…well, I already gave that way. As part of our continued and almost complete improvised vacation. Two years ago today, we were also in a beach and coastal city, that being Thessalonica, Greece, as part of our honeymoon.
Anyway, the Belgian coast with its beaches is not known as a warm one, but today it got up to at least 95 from what I can sense, on what will probably be the hottest day this summer in Western Europe. Thing about European heat waves, as I learned three years ago, is that they don’t last that long, so it doesn’t make much sense to call them “waves.” A day or two of really hot maketh a wave not. I remember when I was living in Wiesbaden doing the whole rehab thing three years ago. There was this one day when it topped out at or over 100, but then three days later, there was a morning low under 50. Likewise, here in Blankenberge, the next four days will be upper 60s and low 70s for highs, as they normally are this time of year, but cloudy with some rain every day until Saturday. European heat days also tend not to be any kind of humid at all, (today’s heat here was just about desert-like), unlike your typical St. Louis steam bath this same time of year.
Next year on this day, if all goes well, we won’t be anywhere near a beach. In fact, I plan on revisiting the scene, the very spot where it happened, with the better half, on July 19, 2023. Coming full circle. (“We’re married because this happened”). And we already have our plane tickets purchased — Thank God and Lufthansa for those new FFM to STL direct flights. We bought four round trip tickets, for us and the two hostages to fate and fortune, but we’re still undecided on whether we’re actually going to bring them. They’ll be two and a half years old then, and it will all depend on how terrible are their terrible twos, and how well and quickly and smoothly potty training goes, if they’ve even started by then. However, I really do hope to be able to bring them, not only for their intellectual development (inexplicably, I just wrote “intellectual development” and “St. Louis” in the same paragraph), but also for the fact that I have a pic of myself holding the palm of my hand against one of the legs of the Arch, and the photo is dated only October 1980, when I was three and a half. October 28, 1980 was the Arch’s 15th anniversary of completion, so I’m thinking that my mother took me there for some event or ceremony or observance relating to it, even if it wasn’t on that exact day. I want to replicate the photo with my own two.
Note: While I’m writing this post in the 11 PM hour where I am, I’m scheduling it to go live at 8:45 PM St. Louis time. About the exact time on the clock when…
Countenance Blog 
