A Ride In The Country

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During the early weeks of the Covid Crackdown, I tried to maintain a normal work schedule, just doing so from home. I’ve worked from home before, so I was prepared for the pitfalls that come with the home office. In fact, I have a home office setup just to avoid those pitfalls. The reality of the crackdown, however, started to sink in at the end of the second week, so I have transitioned to treating this as an involuntary vacation from reality. I’m going to use the free time as best I can.

The weather is getting better here in Lagos so I decided one thing I can do is get some time in on the bike. I ride in the winter, but this year not as much. Spring is always a good time to ride in the country and with the crackdown it means far fewer cars on the road than typical. Good or ill, people are obeying the crackdown orders in the spirit of civic duty and perhaps genuine concern. Regardless, I took advantage of it last week and hit the road out in the county for a long ride.

That really is the striking thing about being out during the crackdown. It has a post-apocalyptic vibe, just no zombies or roving gangs of survivors. I saw a few people running or walking their dogs, but otherwise, everyone was inside. Even on a beautiful spring day, no people. If you have ever seen video of North Korea, where traffic cops perform their duty, despite there being no traffic, that is what it is like in parts of the country right now. Civilization just waiting for civilized people.

A great example of the eeriness was a private golf club. The gate was open, so I went in, figuring they were allowing the golfers onto the driving range. There was one car parked near what I assumed was the maintenance building. The sprinklers were running, but otherwise, no people. I rode the cart paths around the course and did not see a soul. It turns out the state has banned the playing of golf, along with most other forms of enjoyment. A reminder that this is not really about the virus.

I left the golf course and headed to some roads I ride a lot in the summer, as they tend to be quiet and have a good combination of hills and valleys. Another cyclist, younger than me, was out so we rode together through the empty country roads. Adding to the weirdness, he was wearing a Reagan T-shirt. I’m guessing he was in his 20’s, so he was not alive when Reagan died. I guess there is some sort of nostalgia cult forming up among young white guys for Reagan.

The Mid-Atlantic is a forgotten region in many ways, but it has some great cycling opportunities if you’re into that sort of thing. The mountains are a short drive to the west and the ocean is a short drive east. In between there is a lot of good terrain. I told him that there was a very steep climb up ahead and that I may not attempt it. I’ve never been a great climber and now that I’m in my dotage, I’m even worse. At 220, I don’t exactly have the body type to be on the professional tour.

My young friend said something like “you can do it”, so not wanting to look like an old man, I decided to forge ahead., I threw all the fury my old body could muster into the climb and eventually made it to top in better shape than I expected. I coughed up part of a lung, did the Rocky pose at the top and then realized by companion never made the climb up the hill. When he said, “you can do it” he was being literal. He had no intention of tackling a steep climb. Some people just don’t like challenges.

After the climb, the road gets flat and the scenery is a blend of old country houses and some older ad hoc development. It makes for a pleasant ride. Maryland is one of those strange parts of the country where you can go from the land of suburbanite bug men to old time country living in a few miles. Get far enough away from Lagos itself and the state is quite beautiful, with an aesthetic that is unique. The state has always been a strange confluence of the surrounding regions.

I went over this weird little bridge and saw a couple of soyish looking guys standing by a car pulled over to the side of the road. I approached thinking they were having car trouble, but then I saw one of them was wearing a Reason T-shirt. I stopped and beat them. They knew why. Just in case I also said that Hans Herman-Hoppe spells his name wrong. I may have mentioned some unfortunate things about Ayn Rand’s personal life. You can never be too thorough with these types.

I continued on down what is more like a lane than a road. This is an odd part of the county, where you can pass a big beautiful home that looks like a country estate, but across the street can be a dilapidated old dump. In some cases, what used to be a farm was parceled off into lots back in the last century. There will be a beautiful old farm house then a handful of brick ranchers. It is a reminder that in the last century, the classes used to live in closer proximity to one another than today.

A house that always makes me smile is a run-down dump of place with a big Confederate flag posted out front. It has some other flag with what looks like a Norse rune on it. The house is across from a big old farm house. Most likely, the farmers started parceling off their land as economic reality required. The Compsons kept selling off lots in an effort to keep up appearances, but eventually, the old farm was all Snopes and no Compson. Now it is the Snopes clan keeping up appearances.

Having ridden past the house many times, I noted that the flags were once again in new condition, while the house was a little worse off since the last time I saw it. I always imagine the owner putting out those flags, thinking that soon, his efforts will pay off and the fortunes of his cause will change. On the other hand, maybe he just hates his neighbors and this is his way of punishing them. Either way, his neighbors no doubt notice his flags, but find a way to ignore them too.

That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. You can be sure the neighbors in their neat little ranchers think burning flags and toppling over statues is monstrous. They just lack the courage to do anything about it. So, while they privately agree with their redneck neighbor, they also wish he would just go along with it. His protest is not really about the flag or what he may think it represents. It’s against his neighbors. At the same time, their resentment for him is that he won’t just go away.

I went down what I think may be a private lane, but I’ve never been sure. It runs along a tiny creek or brook. Even though my head perfectly understands it, I’m always amazed to see anglers on these little bits of stream. Wherever there is water, nature finds a way to put some fish, which means nature finds a way to put a fisherman. For whatever reason it reminded me of an old fishing buddy. He and I probably stood together in rivers and streams more than on dry land. I should give him a call.

Coming back to my bit of the world, I could not help but think about how easy everyone has gone along with the crackdown. Americans may say they don’t trust their politicians or the media, but in the end, they trusted them completely on this panic. You can be sure the politicians and media are both feeling bold right now, having seen tens of millions dutifully follow their commands. No matter what happens in the near term, the long-term cost of that will far outweigh the threat of the virus.

The empty parks and streets are a good reminder that civilization is people, not the stuff made by people. If a bunch of strangers moved into our empty towns right now, it would not be the same. Soon, they would transform the stuff to reflect their will. Right now, our civilization is full of people ready to cower under their bed when the people in charge come up with a decent ghost story. I half wonder if the people in charge are doing this just to see if there is any fight left in us.

All of this reminds me of a great Joe Sobran quote. “By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.”

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303 thoughts on “A Ride In The Country”

  1. Pingback: The Founders would have been shooting already

      • The Hill gave her that space.

        I don’t know why, he’s quite tamed now. Trump is being very Presidential – that is he’s doing what he’s told.

        That’s all they want from a President, someone who does what he’s told.
        They’ve become quite accustomed to Titular Leaders for decades. That has been our recurring national drama all these years; Presidents who don’t do what they’re told.

  3. I doubt Reason and Hoppe would ever associate with each other. Hoppe is a “racist” pro-borders reactionary, while Reason are morons.

  5. Happy Easter to Zman and all the readers. Thanks for the light-hearted fare today. Still, two humorous observations: 1) I’ve seen your “mountains” in Maryland. We call those foothills here out West. Not sayin’ I want to ride up one on a bicycle; but let’s not exaggerate for sympathy. 2) More than passing reference to a golf course. Are you perhaps trying to take up the mantle of the pre-Wuflu Sailer? Golf is his go-to for light-hearted fare. If I hadn’t wasted my 30s striving for bogey, the concept of obsession wouldn’t make any sense. Now that I’m retired and closer to the grave, I can’t spare the time.

  7. In my area, you wouldn’t know there was a virus going around unless you tried to go to a restaurant or a bar. The outdoor areas are quite active (we’re having nice weather right now) and everyone is out and about. The traffic is starting to pick up on the freeways during the week. Its comparable to one of those holidays (Veterans day, Columbus day) where the schools and banks are closed, but everyone else still works.

  8. I grew up in the Midwest. Friendly and wavey. I now live in SoCal. No one ever waves at each other out here. But now they are. It’s kinda nice.

  9. I have a feeling that, when this is all over and the dust is settling, all across America regular folks will pull off their masks and gloves, and sheepishly realize they’ve been had. They’ll know that their rulers and the experts are not to be trusted — that they are inept and not honest about their motivations. They will have complied because they wanted to trust, they were afraid, and they had to believe that those who run the show had their interests at heart. I believe that for many, after this truly significant event (or it’s truly significant social and economic impact), will feel this deeply and personally.

    I don’t believe that the broad swath of our people felt a personal, real and immediate threat to themselves on the evening of Sept 11, 2001. Horror? Maybe. Anger? Perhaps. But an immediate sense of impending destruction …. no. With this, they do … the press made sure of that. So I think this just might result in something that’s a bit of a problem for our “betters.”

  10. My friends tell me that the governor of Michigan has named garden seeds and plants as non essential and that although Lowe’s is open, the garden area and vegetable seed rack is roped off to keep from making sales of these items. While I think this whole shutdown is ridiculous and horribly destructive, this stopping people from growing food and being outdoors doing things they enjoy like gardening or golfing is sadistic. They are doing it because they can. PS. I had a sense this was going to be crazy in late January and bought all my garden supplies to make it through the year.

    • They hate happy and normal white people. So of course they would ban things that make normal white people happy.

      That said alot of the SWPL types vote Dem anyways so it’s hard to feel too bad. Most actual conservative, rural types with a garden wouldn’t be buying their seeds at Lowes (or, would have no problem “getting some” anyways).

  11. Zman, just over six months ago I moved to your neck of the woods and have to agree, it’s quite beautiful in places. Still, I miss the west, where I spent most of my adult life. I do have a geography related question, though. Being a transplant I’m curious about the opportunity to socialize with some like-minded people. My work as a rule tends to draw flaming leftists so from my perspective Maryland appears as ideologically homogeneous as a place like Utah. Any suggestions would be welcome. I’ve added my personal email in the details below. Lastly, I’m in Frederick county. Thanks in advance.

  12. Pausing in reading to make comment:

    Out here in this rural part of Indian Territory, people are just going about their business. Went to church this morning — specially configured service with folks in cars or widely dispersed about large, manicured entrance lawn. Preachin’ and guitar pickin’ took place on big porch, with good sound system. As he said, you have to apply judgment and common sense, and not allow fear to take over.

    Spoke about religious belief, and threats to our liberty.

    Anyway, I did on the way there notice several large churches shuttered, and displaying notices saying all is on hold until the virus passes us by. (Perhaps they’re marking their doors with blood, too, like days of old ….. ?). But this small church has gone to putting lessons on YouTube and other events on a web site.

    People here still going about their business — taking precautions, yes, but still going out and about to get things done. One (tested positive) case this county; zero dead. It’s like that in many IT counties. Oklahoma City, Tulsa and surroundings have bulk of cases and deaths, with the county containing UofO right up there challenging them for dominance.

    Usual groups being used to try to force Governor to make Shelter in Place order — coalition of tribes, and amalgam of medical professional organizations. Lock ‘em down, they say.

  13. Excellent post.

    As to why the American people accepted this variant of Martial Law is simple. Trump ,the CDCand the MSM packaged it very well. Trump trotted out his scientific experts who told us tha tmilions will die if we don’t shut down the country.

    The MSM ran with this and repeated the lie in different forms on a 7×24 basis creating a mass panic. The state and local pols – all budding tyrants at heart used this to shut down all public venues via fatwas and gun point.

    ne other thing, the local police have shown no qualms about enforcing every insane edict coming from local officials.. This should scare the pants off you DR types. It would not be hard to imagine a Democratic preside and governors issuing edicts to round you guys ups or simply declare you a threat and confine tyou all to your homes.

    • “I stopped and beat them. They knew why. … You can never be too thorough with these types.”

  15. Hey, Zman. I know this is off topic, but have you noticed more people promoting “National Socialism”, lately. We found out earlier this year that the CIA was funding groups like atomwaffen, so it’s pretty much confirmed that they’re funding these extremely fringe groups in order to encourage terrorism. Do you think people like, say, Mike Enoch, who still have access to Twitter and bank accounts are being funded by Feds?

    • As Jim Chanos said recently in a CNBC interview, paraphrasing, Tesla is the big fraud in front of our faces. It’s the embodiment of modern day fraud and dependency on subsidies. The accounting is fraudulent and the CFO is a flaming soy boy 30 something yes man for that prick huckster Musk. Thank you Fed and artificially low interest rates that allow companies like this to exist, with unworkable business models, while savers are robbed daily. They reported 80,000 deliveries this quarter as the other auto companies were tanking. Where? No one knows. Does anyone care? No, outside of a hand full of contrarian fund managers, not really, as Boeing gets its veiled “virus” 737 Max bailout. Thank God for Scotch.

      • Agree, but SpaceX isn’t really a fraud (apart from PayPal, the only Musk enterprise that isn’t) even if they depend on government contracts.

        However, the article describes a step backward in design philosophy for SpaceX: originally, the tanks were supposed to be carbon fiber, but they kept cracking open when pressure tested, so now they’re back to welded steel.

          • It doesn’t work better, they just can’t figure out how to make a carbon fiber tank in the appropriate size.

            Again: SpaceX is a real concern, but they’re not making anything new, they’re making souped-up V2s, just like everybody else in the business: a bi-liquid turbo engine, designed by Wernher von Braun. If they want a business, they need to do what all the others do, but do it better.

            A few years back, some crazy, self-styled “art engineer” crowdfunded a Danish space program. His goal was to build a hybrid rocket burning epoxy and nitrous oxide. Cheap and dead easy to make if you can nail the epoxy mould, and, theoretically, good enough to shoot him up above the official border of space and perhaps launch a low-orbit microsat.

            Unfortunately, he raped, killed and dismembered a Swedish journalist while taking her on a cruise in his (home-built) submarine to tell her about his space dreams.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Madsen

            It did not play well with his backers.

          • “Unfortunately, he raped, killed and dismembered a Swedish journalist while taking her on a cruise in his (home-built) submarine to tell her about his space dreams.”

            LOL

          • The big thing (and only innovative) thing spacex has done is the landing of the rockets. Lots of savings in reusablility.

          • Lots of savings in reusablility.

            That’s what they said about the Space Shuttle, but it turned out it was more expensive to refurbished a shuttle for re-launch than it was to build a new rocket from scratch. Granted, the Shuttle was a lot more complex animal than your usual BDB – Big, Dumb Booster – but the concept has some of the same inherent problems, namely that it’s heavy: you need extra fuel for landing and, of course, the landing gear itself.

            And SpaceX aren’t the first to land a rocket vertically, although they’re the first to do it after a successful mission.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24

          • I’m really space colonization goal oriented and totally technology agnostic Felix. Especially but far from exclusively for America, it could save us from a world corrupting and ruining us and that we ruin in turn. Our current cycle could not be more vicious, and Musk is breaking it.

            I’m very committed to the goal.
            So if the rapist has the answer put him on supervised work release.

            Really – I get focused on goals, but I’m real agnostic on methods.

          • I’m really space colonization goal oriented

            So am I, but that’s at least 100 years into the future, more like 200 years, actually, and the first step probably isn’t Mars, but the asteroid belt, where you don’t need to fight gravity to get your platinum ore back to Earth.

            Note that Musk hasn’t sunk any of his own money into Mars One – it is financed by volunteers paying for a ticket voucher. He should be prosecuted for mail fraud.

            Before we can go big on space, we need some kind of launch system not based on chemical rockets – the simplest being a combination of a rail gun and a rotating tether to catch and accelerate the payload.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether

        • SpaceX is a private company, we don’t know the finances. It’s a black box. What we do know is that almost a couple years ago, when Goldman Sachs was doing a diligence investigation to do further business with them, they ran out of the building like it was on fire and downgraded Tesla a week later. Keep in mind Musk is a guy who promised ventilators to NY hospitals and gave them used CPAP machines from Amazon. Between Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co., and SolarCity, the whole place is a ponzi where money is shuttled back and forth. Billions have been lost in shorting them because no one can fathom them depths in which a Ponzi-ocracy that is the current US financial system can tolerate companies like this. But it will be swept away one day, and probably suddenly. I think sooner rather than later. It depends on its cash position, which is muddy because it’s tied to its new China operation and fraudulent accounting. I doubt they have the $5 billion in the bank that they said they had earlier in the year.

          • “Billions have been lost in shorting them because no one can fathom them depths in which a Ponzi-ocracy that is the current US financial system can tolerate companies like this.”

            Funny/not funny. Anyway, that is a common excuse that sell-side analysts, wealth managers, etc. use when they’ve been hugely wrong. I.e. “There was no way of knowing just how screwed up the state of such ‘n such was/is.” Sorry Mr. McBrain but your whole schtick is premised on being so incredibly smart (and dirty dog clever) as to be a kind of seer. So exactly why were you fooled again?

            Which is why I try and determine if a stock analyst has Left leanings or is politically naive. He’ll miss many big-picture angles if he is.

          • I see.

            I can’t speak for the business model, except that the competition is stiff, but they are building real rockets, not just putting wheels on 2,500 lbs of laptop batteries.

          • The market?
            Seriously?

            Mr, Market just took us all for $6T plus and counting for stock buybacks. We get nothing for that, except they’ll come back for moar.

            Musks rockets fly, his cars run, his batteries work. I could care less about anything but the working rockets. Further if Musk develops a taste for raping and murdering female reporters I also could care less. He can start with the network money honey’s.

            The market. Snort.

    • Whee! A handful of sad sacks will live a short, grim existence on Mars. Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. Future generations will talk about them like the Roanoke Colony, except there won’t be any followups.

      P.S. The author of the article looks like she’s easy. “Will fuck for a seat on the flight.”

      https://twitter.com/janeidyeve/status/979949828313632774

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIw18TPUQAEi-3A.jpg

      ETA: Oh, yeah….

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVGujSzUEAERhis?format=jpg

      “Elon, didn’t we tell you to stop bringing hookers into the office?”

      “No, this is the reporter!”

        • It’s Nevada without the casinos. Anyone who would want to go there is deranged, and deserves the radiation poisoning he would get in attempting to go there.

          • Yes, you’d have to be 12 years old to buy into the Mars thing.

            But while Mars One is a scam, SpaceX isn’t. They’re actually lifting stuff. Whether they can compete, remains to be seen. The Space Shuttle was built on a reusable design strategy, and the cost of it boosted Roskosmos and ESA into the lead of commercial lift operators.

          • Nope. Pick the worst, most godforsaken inhospitable piece of ground in Nevada, and you’d rather be stranded there than on Mars.

            People don’t seem to get how fantastically inhospitable every place off Earth is.

            There are far fewer logistical problems involved in living at the bottom of the Marianas Trench than on Mars, and nobody is keen to do that.

          • Yup.

            Humanity will be beating each other to death with sticks and rocks at the bottom of the Olduvai Gorge.

          • I aways point out that it’d be far easier to colonize Antarctica than moon/Mars. the only comeback I get is that it’s “against international treaties”.

      • Man, before I committed to my fiance I’d BEELINE for chicks like that. They were my specialty. And they absolutely love misogynist humor. I’ll take a goth chick with a side of daddy issues, please.

  17. There’s an untapped genre of hipster-horror in this – Free-State NAPsters being hunted by feral wolf-packs of cave-grug Fascists and other Statist hobgoblins.

    Remember Blair Witch Project? Who among us wasn’t rooting for the Witch to give these solipsistic suburban Bugs an authentic YOLO travel-experience, good & hard?

    No shaky camera, better costumes. Let’s make this happen, fam.

    “NAP meets BAP and there’s no turning back. When an atheist prays in the woods, there’s no one to hear him scream. A is Gay – coming soon to Bitchute until it’s banned.”

    Hey, They made “Hunters” didn’t They?

  18. ” You can be sure the politicians and media are both feeling bold right now, having seen tens of millions dutifully follow their commands. No matter what happens in the near term, the long-term cost of that will far outweigh the threat of the virus.”

    Yes, and that isn’t even the worst part. We’ve found out that “The Lives of Others” unintentionally was an allegory for post-Cold War American, and our own citizens put East Germans to shame in ratting out their neighbors.

    There is a silver lining. When people start to suffer unprecedented economic devastation, they will be ready to lash out. We are talking more than restive and whatever direction it takes those in power will be sweating bullets and largely be unable to control any sort of narrative as rage tends to be mindless. And again, all those white folks signing up for PPP has rattled them already. White folks aren’t supposed to do that. It will get worse.

    • Jack Dobson; oh I question we weren’t supposed to sign for PPP.

      A year/18 months from now; The list of people who were fire sold as distressed assets to the big boys or closed forever is going to line up with PPP applicants.

      PPP is a version of ARM; string you along getting you in debt on $15K and maybe another $15K and meanwhile given false hope you become ever more drained. You mustn’t think the big boys don’t care about pennies from the poor; “pennies roll into dimes, dimes roll into dollars.” – Sam Giancana.

      Robbing us of our poverty works fine since there’s nothing left to steal.

      • These programs in the past factored in “X” whites would not apply, and applications from certain zip codes and addresses would be rubber stamped. I know as fact the PPP applications put the bank processors on their heels. It’s why all the wrangling is happening in Congress for more money. The Democrats don’t want to add to the coffers because all those white folks would benefit, and the Republicans are afraid not to do so for the mirror reason.

  19. The long term costs on this will just be awful. I aways knew this bubble would burst, it’s been over 10 years since the last crisis. But never did I foresee a nationwide effort to put a gun to the head of small business and pull the trigger. Every day is a more complex ordeal. You can’t just go to the grocery store without standing on your little masking tape markers on the pavement, waiting for enough people to exit. All the money spent on plexiglass, etc. It’s become some bizarre cake walk from square to square. No free people would tolerate this. No country with pride would tolerate this. I’ve rolled my eyes all my life when I hear the words “land of the free.” And who are we listening to? Some feckless bureaucrat with WRONG models on this from the beginning. Preening momma’s boy governors who now have 85% approval ratings (just wait until the extent of the economic crisis is seen, not for long).

    This was the article that, for whatever reason stuck with me this week:

    https://deadline.com/2020/04/dr-anthony-fauci-names-who-should-play-him-on-saturday-night-live-1202906332/

    The ego! This little fuc*er needs the beating of a lifetime. But the politicians who enabled him are even worse. This is a time when we need to look at every investment we have and say, “how will this perform in a deflationary depression?” aka Argentina. We already have our orange Juan Peron.

  20. Happy Easter to all! Z….thanks for your thoughtful travelogue. Love in the time of cholera. Bicycling in the time of faux pandemic. Our overlords testing our mettle. Our mettle is shredded.

    As much as I’ve groused about my sheep-like Mormon neighbors and friends, Gov. Herbert has come through greatly in one way….he and Romney may be globalist pirates, yet he still believes in a touch of liberty. The old ancestors’ blood still runs through his veins. He turned over the responsibility of Wuhan response to the counties and the Salt Lake corridor. This state never got locked down. Salt Lake did because of the wahmyn pols. Thank you Gov. Herbert! Goes to show life is messy, not cut and dried.

    Half the restaurants are closed and small stores are closed due to lack of shopping. Can walk into Home Depot, Smiths/Kroger any old time with parking lot 1/3 full. Most of us not wearing masks. No moon walking suited up folks here. Shelves mostly full.

    The women particularly fall in line like good sheepies. They don’t question the party line. Wonder what their hubands are thinking. Speaking of sheep, this is sheep country. The ewes just started popping out the lambs and goodgodalmighty they are so damned cute. In a week, they will be running and leaping and shouting all across the fields. Terminally cute!

    No problem walking or driving around. No….that’s non-essential…you’re bad! Yesterday Basic Husband took me on a drive north into the Star Range west of Milford to show me one of his hiking areas. Juniper transitioning into pinyon pine, to the song of the pinyon jay boys cawing. We drove in the 03 ranch truck Tundra geared to 4H and bumped our way to the old mining ghost town of Moscow approx. 7,000 ft elev. Multiple mining towns in the Star Range and west of Milford in the San Francisco range.

    The old mining town of Moscow sprung up near the Burning Moscow mine and this section was mostly tents as we found no foundations and no wooden structures. More cans, broken bottles and crockery in the wash than I have ever found. Lots of busted light blue and purple glass before turn of century. Cans were an odd mixture of solder seam and crimped seam transitioning to crimped seam. Lots of corned beef and sardine cans. Not a lot of booze bottles as probably mostly Mormon miners. What a tough life. How different men are now. We moseyed along bumping up the road to an unnamed mine up the ridge. We picnicked on the flat surface of the mine rock waste dump with a beautiful view over the basin valleys to the New Harmony snow capped mountains to the south. A partial mine headframe was all that was left. It hung over a large inclined descending adit. I peeked from behind the headframe. Hmmm….these open mine shafts might come in handy…hmmm. Mining was for…..lead-galena-zinc-silver-copper-gold. Time to mosey home as a summer-like storm with some towering clouds and veils of rain was approaching.

  21. This is one of those rare parts of the year, along with October, where the mid-Atlantic has livable weather.

  22. great post Zman, it reminded me I need to donate those rick steves books I sheepishly admit I have in the basement . wouldn’t want to drop dead at work an have the “clean the dead guys house out” ghouls find them. the last paragraph, well lets just say the pill is a bit redder going forward, thanks.
    this morning the local news station website had a story about a house party of 400 in Bakersfield. 6 shot, no mention of suspects. a little digging and, you guessed it 4 blacks in a white sedan. since death race 2020 has turned out to baloney the pivot to blacks are dyeing because of guys like me,never mentions that the basketball courts in south central have been packed this whole time. I’m sure Buck Owens would have been disappointed.

  23. Oh the lamentations and wailing! Knock it off everyone! Okay, okay, I admit to being victim to a sort of creeping optimism (you can conflate that into “creepy”), but look, there are *reasons* to be optimistic about various potential results of the Chinese virus. Globalism is dying if not outright dead. Nationalist manufacturing capability is rushing back into style. The FDA is being shown to be a government entity that kills people. Trump has daily press conferences in which he all-but-explicitly calls sneering MSM reporters assholes (repeatedly). The southern border has been slammed SHUT, and no one is objecting (in fact, boosting illegal immigration as a “thing” is DEAD and the open-borders pigs have been all but shut down). “The Hunt” has been released and the elites are reduced to having the media assure everyone that “it’s only satire.” More guns were sold in March 2020 in America than in any month in history, resulting in a number of “woke” individuals becoming “truly woke.” The European Union is fracturing (see Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia), Brexit happened (and Boris is getting better), Greece is manning up to seal its borders, and Trump is finally able to treat Russia normally (as he always would have if not for the Deep State criminals and their media servants). Outsourcing and coddling of China is DEAD and world opinion is shifting quickly to recognize the Middle Kingdom as a global cheat, liar, bully and threat (thank you Steve Bannon). Are you guys kidding me? There’s *lots* to be thankful for as the Chinese virus wreaks havoc on addled, ossified habits that are harmful to America and *need* to be destroyed. Be of good cheer, friends! Well, at least somewhat. We’ve still got problems, but this ain’t over, not by a long shot. A renewal and positive outcome may yet be possible as this Fourth Turning grinds its way to a climax.

    Now come on everyone: Gimme a bunch of plus votes!

    • Happy Easter.

      There is opportunity here.
      Globalism has collapsed.

      The downside is so did our economy.
      This is financial repression if anyone missed it.

      We just became Venezuela.
      With not a peep.

      I’m going to make a prediction; when this COVID scare is over they’ll be lots of young, entrepreneurial Americans leaving America for the “developing” world, I’m thinking Uruguay and the other more sober minded nations.

      That’s what happened in Venezuela and that was as soon as Chavez turned hard left.

      As far as I’m concerned they can go, and never return. Not fond of fair weather types.

  24. Out here, a frat house near OSU hosted an unauthorized party this weekend. Cops shut them down, but the fact that it even happened is telling. Some churches are continuing to meet out of defiance.

    Does it mean the sleeping normie is stirring? Who knows?

  25. A beautiful post today…Really. Maryland has some stunning countryside. Though the inhabitants have done yeomans work erasing it in the post war era.

    This whole circus is a damned farce. Highlights the fact that somewhere along the way Uncle Sam had a sex change and became “Auntie Samantha” we have well and truly become a nation of simpering cows.

    My state of PA recently closed off access to hard liquor. State stores are closed for the duration. Safety and all that. Got a taste for some of the hard stuff this week. Asked co workers and friends for their requests. Then proceeded to violate various state and local laws. How you might ask? Well, by driving over the border to an MD liquor store.The state of PA has resurrected the grand tradition of rum running.

    This is the face of tyranny in Pennsylvania. It would be funny if it weren’t true.

    https://www.advocate.com/health/2020/3/30/meet-transgender-doctor-leading-pennsylvanias-covid-19-response

    Happy Easter to all in and out of Clownworld.

    • What a horrifying link:

      (Rachel Levine) is a trusted national speaker on issues ranging from the opioid crisis to LGBTQ health issues. Levine also happens to be a transgender woman.

  26. The empty parks and streets are a good reminder that civilization is people, not the stuff made by people.

    What is maybe a contrary thought hit me over and over on my trip to the Grand Canyon 10-ish years ago or so. There is this stark dividing line in the architecture and aesthetics of the buildings and human-improved features around the park. In the days when the Kolb Brothers and the railroad controlled the canyon edge, they built beautiful buildings — all the Colter-designed buildings like the Desert View Watchtower and Bright Angel Lodge, and the Kolb Brothers house, literally hanging off the side of the canyon. The Kolb Brothers trail is still the main way down the canyon on foot and mule, and the only decently-improved trail down to the main canyon.

    Then the government took over, shouldered the Kolb brothers out, and since then everything built is hideous, utilitarian blocky crap. We made the mistake of staying in one of the newer park service hotels and it was so awful it would put your basic hourly interstate-side hooker haven in a good light. We regretted not staying at El Tovar or Bright Angel Lodge. Basically, nothing interesting has been built by human hands since then except the The Hualapai Tribe Skywalk which they could get away with, because Native Americans.

    When I look at the Grand Canyon, I think, “Yup. Sure is a big hole in the ground.” I mean, it’s impressive and all, but what really made for interesting stories was learning about the relationship between men and the big canyon. The Kolb Brothers were fascinating men and their story, and the story of the others who scraped the initial trails and buildings out of a harsh environment is what turned it, for me, from a big hole in the ground to something worth pondering.

    Civilization is people, but the monuments we leave behind to our effort are also important. It’s a blend. You take the people away, and you have nothing but the lonely statue of Ozymandias. But take away man’s ability to impose his will on the world around him and you have apes in clothes.

    I don’t want places like the Grand Canyon to be theme parks, but the movement to minimize all traces of human encroachment from wild areas can go too far.

  29. I wonder if the haste to comply with government Social Distancing is more about people being exhausted and sick to death of the frenetic pace of our lives than an implicit trust in our government.. Now we have ‘permission’ to drop most things and retire to our homes with our families and be left alone for awhile.

    • Methinks you have captured a truth. Particularly given a femmed-over society. They’re tired, which historically means we should strike hard no matter how tired ourselves. I don’t have an offensive plan unfortunately.

    • Most people weren’t enjoying life before virus (BV). Nobody wants to interact with weird 3rd worlders at the grocery store, hear their simplistic babbling on the cell phone, deal with them at work. The 3rd worlders don’t like interacting with other types of 3rd worlders either. The cat ladies don’t really enjoy being on the carousel and the soy gamers don’t really like being in their basements. Nobody wants to sit for hours in traffic every day to drive home to their suburb to avoid the tax urban living. (Suburb is probably filling up with h1b anyways).

      So yeah, if people can stop living unhealthy lifestyles they hate they probably will.

    • Patrick your comment was a seamless display of contrarian insouciance. Well done. But I can’t even give you a, “there’s some truth in that, bro.” There’s absolutely no truth in it. LOL

    • Good point. Let’s not forget that this mess has killed off the NBA season so let’s not pretend that there’s no upside!

  30. Heading out with the wife on an attack mission. She left our checkbook at the office in the Loop when she was evacuated, one of the last “men” standing until the post got overwhelmed by the progressive zombies and she fled in terror of social consternation. (Must have paper checks because ???) We’re going to walk to near the Sears Tower, it will never be “Willified,” which we can see from our perch in the Old Town Triangle. Cancer loves my wife’s estrogen, a fact I learned when we were engaged twenty-plus years ago that cost us babies, and it revisited all last year, so we have (mostly) been taking every precaution and yes I am the bugman wearing booties, MOPP suit, gloves and gas mask when shopping because my sweetheart’s autoimmune system is compromised – I just wear shorts and t-shirt while running if you can call it that, running, since the parks are closed and the sidewalks akin to Martian terrain. This usually marks the time of year when the farmers markets open, I am going to miss them, delivery just isn’t the same as snagging top heirloom tomatoes in person before the restaurants hijack them. Be safe, Zoom or Skype with the fam, or better yet defy the edicts, and know He is risen.

  31. Z: “It turns out the state has banned the playing of golf, along with most other forms of enjoyment. A reminder that this is not really about the virus.”

    It’s frustrating. But it really is mostly about the virus. If breathing on each other is a problem, then social entertainment is too risky. I’m a golfer and I’m pissed. The ban on golf may be technically excessive. But having golf courses full of golfers would be optically jarring for a society trying to maintain a pandemic mood of seriousness and precaution.

    • A friend I was checking on in MN told me how p.o.d he was that the golf courses would remain closed on the normal “opening day” of the season in early May. His comment: golf is the ultimate social distancing sport!

      • Someone excerpted a few lines from an article elsewhere in which a mother of three sons who had taken her boys on a camping and fishing excursion was quoted as having said something to the effect that ‘fishing is the ultimate social distancing activity.’ All I can say to that is that the mother in question has obviously never been, nor seen scenes of, “combat fishing” in Alaska.

  32. You can be sure the politicians and media are both feeling bold right now, having seen tens of millions dutifully follow their commands. No matter what happens in the near term, the long-term cost of that will far outweigh the threat of the virus.

    I’m not so sure. Soon, Normie will discover he’s had himself, his children and grandchildren consigned to lifelong debt slavery over what was basically just the flu, brah. Having all your possessions stolen, takes some forgetting.

    Thank god we have control groups in Sweden, Turkmenistan and Brazil, that makes it somewhat harder to gaslight us about how the police state saved us from the China Plague.

    • Looking ahead about 6 months I can see that there are going to be a LOT of (former) small business owners who are now working shit jobs at Amazon and have lost basically everything they have. This is the big gamble the rulers are playing. It remains to be seen if the newly unemployed and impoverished become the seeds of a harvest of fury.

      Why did they take this gamble? I posted earlier that I was skeptical of the conspiracy theories in general. However, I think once the panic ball started rolling the ruling class felt this was as good a time as any to eliminate that troublesome class of people who remain working outside the control of large corporations and government.

      A tyrannical regime that constantly needs to chase lots of non-conforming businesses and organizations is less efficient than one that can apply focused force on a few large ones. Voluntary organizations like the Boy Scouts, churches and fraternal societies have long been targets of destruction by the Left. Perhaps this virus was seen as a good opportunity to crush private contractors and small businesses as well.

      The goal of everything the enemy does seems to be the destruction of any “un-managed” connections among individuals and their replacement with controlled interactions through large organizations where ideological discipline can be maintained.

      • Why did they take this gamble?

        It’s a heist. Not only will those small business owners be replaced by chain stores, but the relief packages are astronomical, and the guy with the most lawyers take home the biggest loot.

        By some estimates, I already owe Corona Chan $25,000, as do every other Dane. If the numbers are comparable across the Western world, the amount involved is truly mindboggling, north of ten trillion. Of course, the globalists don’t get all the loot, but if they only rake in ten percent, it’s still well worth it.

        • That occurred to me too. It still seems like a huge gamble since this could be the last nail in the coffin of the US dollar, and maybe the Euro too. The thieves could end up getting a bad cup of coffee for their trillion dollar bills. Then again, I suppose the big players reckon that the worst case scenario would be that they need to retire to their fortified island lairs a few years early.

          • It still seems like a huge gamble since this could be the last nail in the coffin of the US dollar, and maybe the Euro too.

            Maybe that’s the whole point? Maybe they’ve decided it’s time to pull the plug on the dollar regime?

  33. Hey Z, do you enjoy climbs on the bike? I just finished a Bridgestone XO-1 and took it out on the road this evening. Roads are eeeeemmmmmptyyyyyyy, except for some neighbors and farmers doing their thing. Feeling that Chromoly frame flex with each heave up that bitch of a hill was great, especially with the damp cool air right now.

    • Neil Peart, Rush’s recently deceased drummer, was a cyclist. He wrote a lyric called “Marathon,” where he wrote:

      “It’s a test of ultimate will,
      The heartbreak climb uphill”

      Oh yeah. Gonna face that later today.

  34. Riding a country road is always great and I have done it out west (dirt roads and pronghorn antelope). But now I ride the empty streets of New York City and it is great. It’s surreal. Nobody , no cars. I would never do it before being afraid of traffic. It.s also super clean. Never seen city so clean. I feel that I am riding trough a movie set. The response to the virus is way exagerrated but my wife is a nurse and there
    is a meat truck outside her hospital as also outside other hospitals. Hopefully that will bring manufacturing back. People maybe will realize that in world war 2 ford motor company was making Liberator bomber plane in 1 hour and now we are still waiting for masks that,s made from a piece of cloth and a couple rubber bands. Happy Easter and Passover.

  36. I’ve had a similar experience here in Canada. Every day I go for a long walk and I’ve seen fewer people than before the “lockdown” but there is always someone out and about (oot and aboot) usually someone with their dog.

    One persistent fantasy that I hear people mutter is the idea that when this thing is over there will be some positive changes. There may be few but overall I expect people to be so desperate for a return to “normality” they will try to forget the whole thing. However, our rulers won’t forget how easy it was to force compliance.

  37. Fuji Gran Fondo. A day on the road in this weirdness is unlike any other. Ride safe Gentlemen. And Ladies too of course.

  38. Fox had a poll out where only 4% of respondents thought that the lockdown measures are excessive. Even if the real number is double that, there is still 90% support for the current restrictions ( or stronger ones).

    Makes sense if you think about it. Essentially, all women and old people support quarantine, as do the soy-infused millennials. Basically, only gen X men think this is all bullshit, along with a few Very Late Boomers.

    • Tarl – I think that’s what both surprises me the least and scares me the most – how gung ho everyone is on this insanity. My husband and I are later boomers and hate the hysteria. Our younger son, generation z, is in full agreement with us. Our older son, a later millenial, who was the most politically dissident and activist of us all, has shocked us by reacting with the herd. He and his girlfriend declined to join us for Easter dinner out of health concerns.

    • The result of American men being corporatized and subsequently cubicleized since the 1950s.

    • This female late Boomer thinks that it’s nonsense. When purchasing an item, I make a point of remarking to the cashierist that this is all ridiculous and everyone agrees.

    • It is funny how the young are so uninformed (or blind) about the nature of the generations. There never was a unified “Boomers” except in the media and in politics and in the mind of the bigots over that site where everyone is “high IQ”.

      I am a real southerner and born in early 50s. I hated every fucking hippy even if they were exactly my age. I hate to this day almost anyone born in the big cities of the east or west.

      What I am trying to say is that given weapons and an open field the Boomers would have killed each other — or tried. I once had the pleasure of a bar fight with a couple of dudes (duds?) from the north. Snowbirds come down to Florida. That was almost better than sex.

  39. An event and the reaction to the event are different things.

    The event itself doesn’t matter, just watch the government’s respose . It’s an excuse to allow them to do what they already want to (and have planned) to do for a long time. The response doesn’t even have to make sense as a reaction to the event.

    For example, 9/11. Committed by Saudi Muslims. A common sense reaction? Ban Muslims from the country, including immigration, and attack Saudi Arabia after Afghanistan. What was the government reaction? Import millions of Muslims, go to war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (Iraq), set up a spy state domestically, run trillion dollar deficits to fund all this, go to war on “terror”, continue business as usual with Saudi Arabia, encourage Wahhabism to spread unfettered into the West.

    In the same manner, government reaction to Virus will have nothing to do with virus itself. Enjoy your biometric implant, requesting permission to go outside, a dramatic decline in the quality of living, a rushed out, untested vaccine that will probably sterilize you and give you cancer, bread lines, 50% unemployment, the end of open travel, and google /government spying on you 24/7 all in the name of “public safety”.

    This is why arguing about how dangerous or innocuous Virus is ultimately misses the point .

    • Yes. If we are on a war-footing, as all this big talk from everyone in charge would have us believe, back it up with deportation of all Chinese nationals. There should be no problem with due process if we are truly at war. And given the Chinese cover-up of all this, as well as its takeover of the globalist behemoths like WHO, perhaps we should be at some sort of war.

      But this will not be done. Just as giving the Muslims the common sense heave-ho was not done in 1991. Maintaining diversity and the Asian workforce here, displacing Americans in American jobs, is and will be for the future the quite visible tell.

    • So, in other words, in the wake of 9/11, Jews got everything they wanted and more, plus they got Americans to pay for it all, and Americans got exactly nothing, except for the bill in blood, treasure, lost Liberty, demographic shredding, cultural debasement, and ruined social capital, in order to pay for everything the Jews wanted and got.

      And your inference is, the Saudis did 9/11…?

  40. Much of this is simply an opportunity for our progressive overlords to display their anti-white bigotry. Shutting down golf courses, gardening stores, no traveling to your cabin up North, etc, etc, all stuff that in their minds are things that only suburban white people like. Michigan’s execrable feminist AG tweeted as much: “I just can’t hear about one more black health care worker, police officer or bus driver die while getting a barrage of complaints from white folks outraged because they can’t go golfing.” Meanwhile, the last cell phone vid from the Detroit making the rounds ended with the mob chanting this cogent assessment of state government policy: “F— QUARANTINE!”

      • She’s also a lesbian.

        The Tribe really needs to made aliyah. Either voluntarily or it’ll be the 110th expulsion.

  41. “I could not help but think about how easy everyone has gone along with the crackdown.”

    I think it’s just that cities and their closer suburbs tend to be full of cat ladies, soy gamers, and Netflix. The only time they ever go out is to ride the cock carousel at bars (that includes the soy gamers), so of course if the bars are closed, the streets will empty.

    Around here, the woods, fields, roads, and parks are more full of walkers, hikers, kids, joggers, and bikers than they’ve been in decades.

      • I expect that the same soyboys who used to run “male-feminist game” will switch to “mask and glove game” if and when the bars re-open. It won’t work any better but it will give me something new to laugh at.

    • Funny how these turd brains can handle the small, inconsequential numbers… but lose their marbles when cretins like AOC and Bernie start talking about making everything free…

  43. First, you’re always welcome to come visit and ride the high mountain valley that I call home here in the Central Rockies. I’m in my 60s but can still climb all the neighboring passes, several of which top out at over 11,000 feet. And the single-track mountainbiking trails all have spectacular views. Second, do not despair that all of us have become sheeple. That is an intentional ruse. There are hundreds of thousands of skilled hunters in this country that can traverse 20 miles of difficult terrain while out on the hunt, often starting before daybreak. That is no trivial matter. And deer are much more stealthy than the whining soyboys that purport to lead us.

    • It’s funny about climbing. A long steady climb for miles is not problem for me. In fact, I quite enjoy it. What I hate are the short steep climbs, that plateau and then begin again. I hate those. It’s all mental, of course, but that’s just as real as anything else.

  44. We don’t celebrate our inependence; we celebrate a calendar date. It’s a paid federal holiday, so there ya go.

    • T. Morris – No one ever asks, “Independence from what?” What we dissidents really want is independence from typical human stupidity and cupidity – from human nature. The average really is awful, and so I suppose I’m merely a snob at heart. Whatever – the inmates have been running things for decades, and while I might wish the end were near, I fear we have yet to see just how much ruin there is in nation.

      • Welp, as our esteemed blog host has pointed out… if we are going to put women and vibrants in charge, they are going to do what they do. Our ancestors were not dull, hateful people. They understood blacks, and women… and actually treated them quite well. Better than they treat each other, in fact.

        • You can never be equal with blacks or women.

          Either you can be the benevelant dictator, or they will have you as their dog (in the case of blacks they will kill you).

      • Sadly democracy, while always fatal, kills the patient VERY slowly. In that way it’s sort of the political equivalent of a hybrid of ebola and Covid-19.

  45. Here in Cali, La La Land literally, (alliteration intended) the only free people are the homeless it finally dawned on me. They have nothing to lose. That is what it takes.

    Driving by Trader Joe’s I saw everyone submissively obeying the edicts which change by the day and the city. Everyone was 6 feet apart and wearing masks. Except for two homeless men who were were walking together mask-less, letting their free flag fly as it were. And they are free. Of course in Cali no police are going to bother them virtually no matter what they do. But still it was a striking, beautiful, and frightening contrast.

    I went into a store and admit I was wearing my mask. Fines and possible jail time do tend to make cowards of most of us. I got in the checkout line and the woman, who was the only unmasked person in the store, turned and shrieked, “6 feet.” Playing the game I replied “mask.” She said “do you want me to call the police?” I said, “please do, and ask them to bring a ruler because as they are arresting you I want to measure how many inches I am from you.” She did not oblige.

    Cry, the beloved country, indeed.

    • Sad. DemonRat controlled localities are going to collapse unless the President sends in the national guard to wrest control from the mayors and other officials. These Rats have no intention of loosening their grip on compliance until the supply chains are down and store shelves are empty.

    • I’ll bet the shopping cart racers are all having a blast out on the open roads out there in la la land. Free of motor vehicle traffic, the way God intended it to be when he invented the freeway. 🙂

      https://youtu.be/90m5zTHxsmc

    • On Friday, Utah started making drivers entering the state fill out a travel declaration form.

      “The entry points listed above have geo-fenced areas so that vehicles entering the state will receive a text message from a federal system, according to Carlos Braceras, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Transportation.

      When the vehicle comes to stop, the driver will be directed to entry.utah.gov to fill out a self-declaration form. The form will ask if the individual was tested for coronavirus, the results of that test, and if they are experiencing symptoms.

      It will also require basic information such as a name and where the driver traveled prior to entering Utah. It will ask about anyone traveling with the driver under 18 years of age. The driver will then receive a confirmation email when they have completed the form.”

      https://www.abc4.com/news/drivers-entering-utah-will-need-to-complete-an-online-travel-declaration-form-starting-friday/

      • Good information. When I go to visit my daughter in Salt Lake I’ll turn off my phone and remove the battery.

        • When all this first started I and got a couple of my old phones that I had already reset to factory and turned them into prepaid phones. Just seems like it might be helpful in the future. Who knows

  46. Here in NW DC mask-wearing has now increased to nearly 100%. Yesterday went to Giant Food across the street and I was in fact the sole customer with no mask; many were decked out in full plague-doctor regalia. From the stares I got I was apparently considered some sort of heretic or filthy leper, with people scurrying away as I approached. Given neighborhood most customers are white, yet all employees (as at nearby Georgetown Safeway) are Vibrants, who manned the sole entrance admitting customers on case/case basis (kind of like the old Studio 54) and roamed the aisles and checkouts barking orders to maintain proper distance (boot camp was less disciplined). My fellow whites fully complied, cowering before their new masters. To leave I navigated through the clot of people at the exit, which prompted the grotesque Laqueesha hallway monitor to scream at me for (I guess) disobeying her commands. Civilization has collapsed.

  47. my rule with riding uphill is i get off an push/walk the bike as soon as my pedaling results in a speed less than walking (if that makes sense).

    they actually made a movie about Ayn’s love life, with Helen Mirren playing her. Needles to say, that represented a substantial upgrade from Ayn’s actual attractiveness 🙂

    • My father loved Ayn Rand. When I was 11, he left anthem on my bedside table and I just picked it up and read it . When I was 13, I read Atlas Shrugged while away at a month-long Christian Camp in Alabama and I made sure they all knew I was an atheist. I can legitimately say, I have been persecuted by Christians. I read her entire oeuvre by the time I was twenty, even her terrible play. And then I read about her… you cannot separate her from her message. She is a hypocrite and a liar par excellence

      • Whitney – I had never even heard of Rand until I went away to college, where I discovered all my classmates had read her books. I didn’t get around to actually reading Atlas Shrugged until perhaps 10 years ago – lousy, turgid prose, with a few excellent points and insights buried within. As for her personal life and character, yet another human waste of space.

        • Atlas Shrugged has some pretty salacious sex scenes in it too which I think is a lot of the appeal for younger people way back when. Or perhaps I should say Randy sex scenes!

          • In the SF Bay Area people were into reading Tolkien and naming their dogs Frodo. Any Rand didn’t exist. In my early 50’s I stumbled onto her Atlas Shrugged, hit the sex scenes, read them over a few times and thought holy shitski…hot humping then off to the next guy. That type of gal turned into the crap wine drinking blue haired solo childless cat auntie arguing across the dining table at your prairie home companion Easter.
            A reasonably good Easter as good as we’re going to get to you ladies!

          • Range, no surprise, every Objectivist girl ever thinks she’s Dagny. A big reason why I never put a ring on my Dagny was knowing I wasn’t John Galt. The Bigger Better Deal would always hang over an Objectivist marriage like the sword of Divorce-ocles.

            And our shared “faith” sanctioned it. I wasn’t long for Objectivism once those red-pill truths sunk in.

        • lousy, turgid prose, with a few excellent points and insights buried within.

          Wholeheartedly agree. There’s meat and potatoes for a longish essay, the rest is a literary trashfire. I only got through it because I was on a holiday and had no other books.

          Towards the end, the elusive hero, wossisname, broadcasts a speech where he sums up the ethics of the entire book. The speech runs to a hundred pages, no kidding.

          • Felix – so Ayn Rand invented the effort-post?

            I could practically recite that speech after a few years – not so much for trying, but because it really does contain her whole spiel. Some of her essay collections still have useful critiques and ideas we can hack, but probably 2/3 of her overall canon is superfluous.

      • But she was not wrong in pointing out how The Herd seethes with envy of excellence, accomplishment, and independence. This needs to be explained, and often. In her time, she was one of the few saying it.

        • She wasn’t the first to notice it. It’s in the Ten Commandments. Though she would find that comparison galling

          • It’ been years since I read Atlas Shrugged but, IMHO, the best scene in the book is the run up to the train collision heard ’round the world where Rand is describing the occupants of the train(s) – car A, room 8b, a school teacher who believed herself eminently qualified to assume a larger leadership role in society given that she’d been leading a classroom of 3rd grade misfits for twenty-five years, or however it goes.

      • yah, she is great for 17 year olds 🙂 not so much for adults. and my god, the rape fantasies that woman entertained! maybe it was cossacks or something…

      • Rand’s mindset was little different from the average communist. Her results were different and credit to her for that. But her god of Reason reminds of Chesterton–civilization and barbarism are like the difference between polished steel and rust. You can only find truth with logic after you have found it without logic. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason, but the man who has lost everything but his reason.

        • That was enjoyable. It’s been a long time since I’ve delved into Randianism and that was a sufficiently meaty. Apparently I never could have been in the cult. You had to prefer Rachmaninoff to Bach?? Insanity!

          • My favorite is everyone taking up smoking because she did. Serial adultery/cuckoldry as well – hippies had nothing on Alisa Rosenbaum’s “salon.”

    • Et tu? I’m having trouble enough with the image of Z-man in spandex bicycle shorts – I had no idea there were so many bike fiends in here.

    • Young Helen Mirren was extremely attractive- see “The Long Good Friday”. Great flick

  48. I have said for decades that if George Washington and the boys had a fortune teller who could show them the future: if they could see today, they would apologize to the King and never give democracy (or whatever people call our system) a try.

    The generation that gave birth to the Boomers spent the late 50s and the 60s destroying our civilization. They did away with REAL marriage, opened the boarders to wholesale immigration, did away with freedom of association, and so very much more evil.

    Like a snowball going downhill, the collapse has been going faster and faster. There is no hope whatever of voting your way out of this mess. The least violent future would be the breakup of the country into different nation-states. Let California or Texas lead the way. Who would want to stop either one? Let the states go.

    • Mark – Texas today is not the Texas in the imagination of so many. A lot of it is very typically urban and suburban. The state has hundreds if not thousands of mosques, brown and yellow imports from every corner of the globe, as well as NY, NJ, CA and IL refugees all set on recreating their personal view of ‘home.’ Texas is but a few years behind California, and will lead nothing.

      • I’m afraid you may well be right. And if so, that is why secession must occur at a level lower than the state. There remain chunks of rural and small-city Texas that would be wonderful nations or city-states if they could disengage from the USSA.

      • I agree that Texas today is not the Texas of old. I don’t expect Texas or California to secede and become a paradise for dissidents. I just want a big state to set the precedent. And I don’t think the left would try to stop California or Texas. Perhaps they could go together and guarantee they would be allowed to leave.

  49. The most enervating aspect of the shutdown is the compulsory abstinence from physical affection. Yes, some of you have family who are skeptics, but my mom subsists on a steady diet of CNN and Facebook. So no hugs, period. Worse, my grandmother is totally quarantined in her nursing home. She can’t even go outside.

    Moments before dying, renowned chessmaster Bobby Fischer said that nothing heals like the human touch. I now understand what he meant.

    Many of those who are closer to death need physical affirmation that they valued. Our vision fades; our minds, perhaps just due to normal cognitive decline, will lose their quickness of comprehension. But a good hug with an “I love you, Grandma,” will always be understood. Its emotional and cardiovascular benefits have been observed even in advanced dementia patients.

    Now, I would understand their having to forgo physical affection if this virus were sufficiently severe. But judging by the perpetually declining projections, this seems like a situation where people should be able to take proper precautions to arrange a meeting with their parents or grandparents.

    My Grandmother, who is in her late 80s, is worried she won’t be able to hug my mother before age catches up with her. And when I’m in a low mood — and I often am these days for hopefully obvious reasons — the first thing I want to do is visit my grandmother. Now, I can’t, and I might not ever be able to again.

    This fiasco has intensified my depression, whereas before, I was doing well. I didn’t think that the whimsy of a few scandal-mongers with MS Paint graphs could derail the nation. I figured that all I had to do was internalize a sense of well-being, socialize, and progress in my career. Silly me! You have no career now. You also won’t be seeing your friends, grandmother, or students until nobody ever dies of anything ever again.

    I really do hate these people. Although I don’t advocate violence, they deserve death for what they’ve done. They’re rapists of the soul. Driving a wedge between our families, closing our churches (and I’m nonreligious), wrenching us from our work. For what? A projected 60,000 deaths? I wonder, though, if the figure was 60,000 from the beginning, would we still be languishing in our homes?

    “That’s because of social distancing!” Yeah? Wasn’t Cuomo just throwing a fit on TV because of New Yorkers’ recalcitrance towards plague safety rules? And did “social distancing” really lower the anticipated deaths by more than 1 million? That is retarded. This whole crisis is soaked to the bone in premium-grade, vaginal stupidity.

    There is really no better word than ‘retarded’ for the times we’re living in. It’s not enough to turn the frogs gay; we have to make them retarded, too. And now that everyone is retardedly gay and gayly retarded, we can all post kissy-face videos to Youtube during our normal working hours because “we’re all in this together.” This is what our media is peddling. May they burn in جهنم, because Christian hell is too good for them.

    • The wily BIll Gates is uncovering all kinds of ways to lessen the population. Chinese viruses he’s funded. Then there’s the tried and true vaccination route, which if nothing else screws up immune systems. Now, he can add lack of touch to the list. Hell, he might even pick off a few babies, too. They are especially vulnerable to a lack of touch and nurturing, and have been known to die from it.

    • Lawdog,

      “I really do hate these people. Although I don’t advocate violence, they deserve death for what they’ve done.”

      Very well articulated, and, except for not advocating violence, I agree with everything you wrote. My hatred for these people is with the passion of a million white-hot suns.

      • Agreed. I don’t advocate violence because it’s a practical matter. They have the technology to quickly crush us; indeed, that might be the best course of action for them.

    • I have been driving a lot. Searching for a new place to live.

      In the transit across the landscape I have seen beauty and ugliness, separated in stark opposites of the masked and unmasked, distant and proximate; but there is a disturbing combination as well, a kind of utopian brave new world emerging that bothers me in ways that I struggle to articulate.

      While the china virus has illuminated the already massive divide between normal people and the truly sick, there is an emergence of this “new normal” springing up like overnight dandelions in every aspect of our formerly normal social lives.

      This invasive creep of new customs and habits is a testament to our ability to adapt and to cling to our humanity during inhumane times.

      Yet it is also spooky how these adaptations to the dehumanizing authority are so easily accepted as any kind of normal.

      I drove by an old folks home. A line of cars queued up in the drive isle. cars full of families. Some with balloons and signs and stuffed animals. Windows open and hands waving.

      At the entrance of the building, Hazmat staff were escorting old people toward the driveway one at a time, where there loved ones slow rolled by in their cars and waved. Then back into the facility the old ones went. The line of cars inched onward.

      The building next door, a VA facility, was shuttered but for a drive thru testing encampment. White pop-up tents manned by 20 or so fully NBC’d people in their white suits. All sat empty. No takers for the tests. Half the germ army doing air squats in a kind of strange days crossfit routine.

      Another mile to a park where 20-30 POCs were playing basketball like nothing at all has changed except the few white guys usually around where nowhere to be found.

      • Screwtape, I was just thinking the same thing this morning. It feels like a things have been irreparably altered, yet some people are acting like it’s been this way forever.

        To what kind of place are you looking to move?

        • Lawdog, just 80 miles south. Nothing too radical, just a change. Burn rate is way to high here. Hoping to retrench down there. Have a couple soft leads on some possible career moves but if I have to set up shop its a better place longer term. Smaller, slightly more sane city. Though I still hope to get out altogether before I am too old to buck hay.

      • You’re right, Toxic. I’ve already learned Spanish and Arabic, but practically speaking, these skills have helped me very little in the modern world. It got me one job that I didn’t even like.

        Honestly, for me, I think that learning to code is my best option. My problem is that I’m cognitively weird. Most people, for example, are either good at both mathematical and verbal reasoning or they’re good at neither. Not the case with me. They actually made me retake the SAT because the gap between my verbal and mathematical scores was insane; they thought I was just a retarded person who found a way to cheat on the verbal.

        It’s harder for me. I was on track to become a full teacher in a public school this September. All I had to do was finish my TA hours at the school of my future employment. The virus comes, and now, who the hell knows what’s going to happen to my job. Am I going to have to be a TA again because the whole world has gone Dim Tardashian? My son is coming in September, too, and it’s going to be a struggle without that salary increase and benefits.

        I want to be a teacher because I’m a male who’s good at sneaking dissident perspectives into lessons and leading debates (honor classes only; lower IQ 8th graders are atrocious at debating). All of the other teachers, save one token gay guy, are women. All they teach about is Viceroy Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, Anne Frank, and racism. Go figure.

        When I was a kid, I suffered a lot under these woke female “educators.” The school psychiatrist pumped me full of amphetamine — at the teachers’ behest — because I was rambunctious and called out a lot. Initially, my mom refused, but then they threatened to expel me if I wasn’t “treated.” This sparked a struggle with a chemical dependency that took years to shake.

        Even though it’s just a middle-class job, I love it. And losing it to this bullshit sucks.

  50. Something like 70 percent or more of young White guys voted, or would have, for Trump. Some of them wised up and moved further right than the Republican party, but the Neocons probably grabbed most of them.

    Turning Point Delende Est.

  51. The only thing that made this lockdown halfway plausible was the “Dunkelziffer” (in English, I guess that’s the “dark figure,”) the actual number of people who have the virus vs. those who get tested and find they have it. The dark number is obviously much larger, but evaluating exactly how much bigger will tell you to what extent our crazy elite is overreacting. Robert Koch Institute used a sample of nothing but people with Corona, a fairly large sample (roughly 1000) to find out how many people this thing really kills (not just elderly Italians who were going to die within two or three years anyway). You ready? About .3 percent. We just endangered or destroyed the livelihoods of maybe half the population for .3 percent, most of whom were ailing prior to this “crisis.” Trump should call BS, normalize everything, let the media call him Hitler and talk about how this is going to cost him the 2020 election, and then win in a landslide. Oh, and Happy Easter.

    • Saw that–didn’t they run a antibody tests on a full town to finally discover what the denominator is? More conspiratorial side says the pols around here are partially afraid to find out that number in case, during the ensuing depression, the population turns on them. That’s what’s bugged me from the start–modeling this thing would be like us trying to run natural catastrophe damage estimates—but lacking the Value at Risk denominator.

      • I think the mean age of the world is something like 29.9, so some disparities could be based on the fact that Germans are older than Swedes generally (47 vs. 40) and are less healthy (I know little about the Swedes, but I’d hazard they don’t drink or smoke like the Germans; the Irish don’t even drink like the Germans). Also if the official average age of Germans is 47 you can surmise it’s probably closer to sixty for actual Germans and the rapefugees are tipping the scales in a false direction.

      • If you mean Breitbart by Breitards…

        Ah, er, ah Breitmart’s actual owners have $6.3T reasons to be grateful that the chapter 11 angel has passed over them again.

        Its like any disaster; yes there is suffering and tragedy but there are vast profits to be made from looting.

        Not that I’m seeing it happen, but compared to ((())) I really don’t know what the beef with Tyrone and Laqueesha 👨🏿‍⚕️ is… poor taste and aesthetics perhaps but really petty crime compared to their upper class mentors.

        • If you mean Breitbart by Breitards…

          I mean the commentariat. They have a few handful of good posters, but unless you come in early, they’re drowned out by retards latching on to the first post to bump up their own, a kind of firstfagging by proxy, that pushes the following posts way down the page count.

          Of course, the mere mention of Sweden drives them mental on the best of days, so it’s basically a Pavlovian reflex, but the lack of self-awareness is depressing.

          Also, a lot of ((them)), I suspect, are simply there to gloat over these tall, blonde supermen getting their comeuppance – they don’t care what the article is about, as long as it says “Sweden” in the headline, the most upvoted posts will be along the line of “lol, they deserve it.”

  52. Happy. Strangest. Easter. Ever. At least the Jews got to have the first real “Passover” in a few thousand years. Fun thing around here is seeing just how many Cuban style, CDR block captains have emerged to spend their days on FB calling out every business or person that doesn’t adhere to their interpretation of the lockdown rules. And swarm on anyone that has the temerity to suggest burning down the economy might have a few second order effects later on. I’m just waiting for the first Soviet-style poster art to appear.

  53. A delightfully charming piece. That’s the silver lining to life in The Age of The Virus: lots of time enjoying Nature and family. I’m also sitting at a robust 220, and getting out more is surely helping (although working in the house all day is counteracting that marginal increase in physical activity, as I’m indulging in salty snack treats more).

  54. The death ratio, Wuhan worldwide to date compared to an average year for the flu, is 0.28. Using a sportsball analogy, it’s up to Double A status. If it hits 0.75 it will have joined the bigs.

    A blessed Easter to all.

  55. Yes we are now a docile and compliant people. This trial run test has revealed to our leaders exactly what we are. Afraid.

    • The pain hasn’t really hit yet. If this goes on much longer, I think you might see some push back. So far it’s been more like a strange vacation. We’ll see what happens if it goes on much longer. Denial is a powerful sedative. What happens when denial is no longer possible?

      • I am a business owner. This is no vacation and guvment ain’t coming to bail me out. It is me or the highway.

    • I’m afraid, but not because of disease. I simply don’t know WTF to do around others any more. I’m happy to go about my business as I did a month ago, but how? If I step into someone’s newly defined “space” am I going to have to extricate myself from a fist fight? Now I’m not a pleasant person, but I usually follow the “rules” in a social situation. That’s what they were developed for over millennium. I try to say good morning, thank you, and address folk by title, and so forth. Now we are told that to sneeze, cough—or even breath around another is possibly assault.

      The heck with the economy, these evil bastards have destroyed the essence of a functional, interactive society. Even the churches have followed suit on this holiest of days, cancelling group services or replacing them with facades and broadcasts. Reminds me of a scene in Fahrenheit 451 with Montag’s wife attending “services” via her TV “wall”. Well, first we invented the TV wall, now it seems it’s time we invent the reason to stay home to watch such in place of the real time.

      • One whitepill: the normies in comment sections are now pushing back on this in a way they weren’t 2 weeks ago.

      • Stopped by the locked church again this Sunday. Not a car to be found. Quarantine signs on all the doors. Bent the knee to the Cross in the rear garden and gave my thanks and a decade on my rosary. I know I can log on to some online gathering but it just doesn’t feel right. The Church that survived Roman emperors, the Saracens and countless plagues and purges can’t find the defiance to even gather loosely in the parking lot. I don’t blame the priest, orders are orders and he answers to the archbishop.

        I listened to a sermon by Bishop Barron and reflected that cur of a New York mayor put the screws on synagogues and churches closing down but failed to mention mosques. Oversight or intentional? One can’t tell with these devils.

        Maybe I’m wrong in feeling this way. Not sure. Is it irresponsible to gather at this point and is my natural contrarian bent getting the better of me? Honestly dont KNOW. My spidey sense says this isn’t right and that sense has served me more than not in hairy situations. But my insubordinate streak, which often steels my spine is less reliable for good judgement. Can’t tell which dog is tracking.

        Either way, this Easter spent not hearing the mass, smelling the incense and feeling the vibration of singing voices, greeting people, and seeing extended family is a bit depressing. I know those things aren’t the reason to celebrate. Just thinking out loud.

        Anyway, a Happy Easter to all here. May your lives be blessed and bountiful.

        • Hi Penitent! Your instinct is spot on. All MS churches are weak these days and virtue signal to fly, they wish, under the radar of the ruling secular overlords. They won’t fight back for they are afraid of full scale attack by the overlords, taking away tax exempt status is one way, and some as churches of the left are bringing in their world view. These churches are self destructing before your eyes. Mr. Charlton explains:
          http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2020/04/clan-churches-should-be-as-strong-as.html
          My brother.. I feel your pain..this is your time for introspection and direct talking with Creator. We won’t view the churches in the post birdflu world as we did in the in the past.

          • RFF,

            Hello dear Lady. Perhaps I am being too hard. I float from Mass to Mass at various churches because of the obscene work schedule I keep. Vampires have it easier. Maybe each church is doing their own secret meetings, you know, “Where two or three gather…” and I’m simply not enough of a permanent fixture at any given one to be on the inside. I rather like that prospect. I’ll hope that is the case, and the laity and clergy are meeting in small groups and celebrating the King. This would make Him rejoice. Yes, I’ll hold onto that notion and feel a less down about the world.

          • RFF,

            Post script, forgot to mention I read your link and the subsequent link. Good stuff. Food for thought. The clock is ticking down on my relocation. We dirty Papists are few on the ground there and maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for in a smaller community.

    • It’s revealed this society’s neuroses to our leaders as well to the leaders in China, who will probably make plans accordingly. Tecatevirus, anyone?

    • The compliance of the original Milgram experiment was around 2/3. The French redid it as a game show in the late 90’s (I believe) an th number was aprox 5/6

  56. That’s the thing, isn’t it? The **cowardice.** The people freaking out the most don’t have young children, and as for aged relatives, they couldn’t dump them in a home fast enough. It’s pure, lilly-livered, sausage-spined poltroonery. Save me, holy government, from the merest chance of catching the 98%-totally-recover sniffles!

  57. I don’t think its trust, necessarily. I mean, for some, it is – they trust their faction.

    I think it’s a lack of will to openly challenge authority.

    I wonder if that goes with that metaphor you’ve been forming that we are in our end years as a country. Challenging authority is a young person’s perogative.

  58. In Arizona, you can still play golf and loads of people get out and walk, or hike in the wild areas every day….as the Governor has urged them to do…I walk a couple of hours every day, and see people walking, even whole families, that I had never seen before…Also, The small trades have kept working and there is a lot of construction and highway traffic…Also, Home Depot and Loew’s are booming, and most restaurants are open for takeout…Ironically, highway traffic has increased substantially since the restrictions were theoretically increased on April 1….but nobody talks about all this…..

    • That’s not reality on the East Coast. You can fire off a cannon down a DC street right now.

      • The difference between NYC, its expensive suburbs, and “upstate” (starts abput 60 miles outside The City), is like night and day. I too plan a ride today, on two wheels. But on my 1200cc machine. The feeling of freedom, knowing you are a twist of the wrist from dusting any member of that fraternity known as John Law, quite American. Of course, they know that and leave us alone.

        Long line to get into cavernous Home Depot one person at a time… compared to no such thing north of the shitlibistan blue line here in New York.

        • If all this doesn’t prove we are no longer a one-size-fits-all nation, I don’t know what will.

        • In NJ, facemasks are mandatory. Here in the northcentral part of the state, there was a line into a local supermarket last Sunday morning and some shops put up the plexiglass divider. I make a point of remarking to every person ringing me up that this is all ridiculous and everyone agrees.

          • Grew up there, in Princeton. beautiful town, but only went back to scatter my dads’ ashes. In Palmer Square. Guess that might not be legal. So arrest me.

        • Yup, didn’t think this post gets much traction here. The cohort of the public, “dissident” movement trends geeky. A weakness, IMO.

          When I rode south into Westchester today, there they were. Spandex ghey Wall Streeters on their $5 grand bicycles, perched on tiny seats no anatomical male would tolerate. With the helmets their moms made them wear.

          These self described Masters of the Universe typically do not obey the rules of the road. Saw one group 4 abreast. Then the affluent women that divorced them swerve around these males, often widely, while at the helm of the latest Range Rover. They are a hazard. Both.

          Sometimes, since we share the right of way, I will come along one, like a Foo Fighter must have felt alongside a Spitfire. They pedal madly, trying to use their perpiheral vision, before I buzz away laughing.

          Wait till they have to learn how to build a fire. Work a tool.

        • Agreed. In rural Upstate New York, this nonsense is having zero immediate effect. I’ve been to the rifle range 8 or 10 times since this shitshow started. Last week it was much busier than usual.

          • I am on the edge of Up, and Down State so I see both. Badge of honor a Downvote on my pointing up the geekiness of our online “dissident” males.

            Nerdy downvoter, learn how to open your car’s hood,then drop me a line haha.

            Nerds are the “dissidents” currently hiding under their beds. Even clutching the 2A rights. Sorry.

    • I’m in a camp town in the South. All the soldiers have crammed themselves into Home Depot and Lowes with their families in tow. Without an open restaurant, I’ve been eating lunch at a crowded park all week. The government wrapped the kids play equipment in police tape, so the kids are riding the walking tracks and fishing in the lakes.

      The only ones following this are businesses. It’s a good reminder that businesses are the conduit of government tyranny. Once they come for the guns, they will do it by ripping out the producers and sellers.

      • Kids seeing their playgrounds in police tape. That will do more to acclimate them to tyranny than any one high school history teacher could ever dream of inflicting.

        • I was saying similar things twenty years ago when all the little schools in my area were (literally) chaining their doors shut from the inside, forcing kids to carry clear plastic backpacks to school and so on and so forth, in reaction to the Columbine shooting. …

          • Yes, that and then there’s the damage to their bodies from hauling the equivalent of a day’s worth of busting rocks at Angola Prison around.

      • Wait a minute Tykebomb; the producers and FFL holders are exactly who its being enforced on for years. That’s why COLT got out of certain lines, as did DICKS and now CABELAS, at least in many stores.

        As far as enforcing it on the gun owners that’s why the NRA is an insurance company. The cost of firearm insurance will become high, the cost of self defense prohibitive.

        However given the vast disparity in all classes of power including wealth why do you hate businesses for caving in and obeying the laws?

        Its not business job to uphold liberty, dignity, sanity, even the laws.
        They knuckle under like everyone else, or else.

        • Businesses are organizations. Lack of organization is the primary reason Evil, Inc. is able to get away with its deeds without blowback; they only face individual dissidents.

          A business who defies government is organized opposition against the government… exactly what is missing right now. It’s why Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby were headline news.

          • Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby didn’t need armies to freak out the government, now did they? They simply told the government “No” while being too big to be quietly disappeared.

          • Government is masculine, business is feminine. I know the guy taking the risk would disagree, but think about it. Who entices, who forces? Businesses compete for customers like women compete for men. They don’t get the monopoly or the bailout without gov’t muscle.

          • Speaking of Chick-Fil-A, they were the first ones to shut down their lobby and go completely to drive-through only. I call that caving big time.

    • The other day I happened to hear an ad for Home Depot on the radio. It gushed over the fact that “during these difficult times” we have been honored to see the emergence of heroes in our world: first responders, medical professionals, retail employees… Retail employees!!? Yes, they actually said that. Those guys that stormed Omaha Beach? I suppose they’re worthy of standing next to the mouth-breather who stacks mulch at Walmart. When you set the bar that low, we’re all heroes by virtue of merely respirating. Personally, I tend to agree with what Norm McDonald said when talking about the vacuous “teachers are the real heroes” canard: “The real heroes are the real heroes.”

      Even in my lefty days, I couldn’t stomach Garrison Keillor; whom I found to be a pompous gas-bag, but that quip about everyone being “above average” was prescient.

      • KGB: I’ve heard that retail heroes canard a lot – and the lady who thought I was impatient (I was in no hurry, merely disgusted by her mask and subservience) at the store made a big point of thanking the cashier for his ‘service.’ Again, heard that multiple times from multiple AWFLs. Here in DFW burbs it’s similar to Lagos – empty streets, more White families out for bike rides, all restaurants closed. Yesterday at the store I was one of the perhaps 10% not masked, gloved, goggled, and shrouded. My misanthropy is thriving these days.

        • I have an “essential” job but sometimes wish I didn’t because people are so obsequious now. I’ve actually gotten that “thank you for your service” thing. It’s embarrassing. I usually just mumble “yeah” and nod or say nothing.

        • I’m about 325 miles west of you. Went shopping yesterday. Approximately 85% of the women looked like they were fit to dodge Phosgene in the trenches, while about 15% of the men were similarly tricked out. Lots of conclusions to draw from this observation, but the main one is that America’s panicked overreaction to the Nothingburger Pandemic is driven by estrogen and the emotions it produces. And, perforce, we see that America is now a feminine nation.

      • I think it all started going downhill once Subway declared their hoagie hacks “Sandwich Artists”…

        • Please, I still need to teach the low IQ workers at Scrubway what a tomato core is – a small piece of wood – and how they should not put it in my sandwich or that of any non porcine mammal.

          • When I worked at a restaurant as a teen, I cored LOTS of tomatos before they were sliced. So surely a massive child molester front man corporation could install protocols. Needless to say, they want to monetize every speck of the tomato.

          • The tomato core. Largely a product of picking tomatoes before they’re ripe so they survive shipping. Gotta love that industrial food supply.

        • For the love of God and all that is decent, don’t put Subway and “hoagie” in the same sentence. Subway doesn’t make hoagies.

      • I’m not a hero, never claimed to be. My school is still closed to in person instruction, most of us are doing our best to do the “remote learning” thing, not working all that well. I dunno if it was here or one of the other hate thinker sites I frequent, but I agree that parents getting a load of what their kids are actually learning might be a good thing!

        My New England latte town is pretty empty, but there are lots of people out walking, running and biking. My bit of defiance is I still go out and get my bagel in the morning- although the girl at the bagel store being cute may be a contributing factor…Saw the local small college cops roust some frisbee players off the soccer field. “ Whaddaya in for? Playing frisbee without a permit”
        Went for a drive yesterday, traffic was light, although it was Easter Sunday. I’m beginning to think that this whole lockdown was, to put it most charitably, a mistake. Since I’m 65 I’m not going to be out on the barricades, at least not at first. Also my wife has moonbat tendencies, and domestic peace is important to me, especially with us both home.

    • In my mid-sized burgh on the Plains I’m not seeing the apocalyptic scenario either. The playgrounds are taped off and basketball nets removed but otherwise state and city parks have people. I don’t see much drop in traffic either. Of course Lowe’s and HD are open, and people are using them to full effect. Lots are either walking the neighborhood or doing DIY or gardening. It’s almost…utopian.

    • Here, in Southern AZ, the stores that remain open have placed large plastic, clear panels/sheets between the customer and the cashier. Banks as well. Of course, that does little to nothing except make folk “feel” safer. In the pharmacy yesterday, they have the plastic panels, and a table between the customer and the pharmacist—who is now also wearing a face mask.

      Hilarity ensues of course as the routine is that no one can hear the other one talk. So I was inquiring about a prescription at the top of my lungs and giving the required ID personal info, while I was unable to hear the pharmacist’s reply. Wife came up to me from the other side of store to see why I was shouting, she could hear everything I said while she was at the cosmetics counter. HIPPA be damned I guess. 😉

      So what is the new social distance for communicating with each other when shouting? 21 feet at least I’d say.

      • Same here in South Central Oklahoma with these plexiglass barriers/nuisances. Virtually no one around these parts is going to go about his/her day-to-day activities wearing a mask, and everyone knows it, including the gun-toting authorities. I guess the plexiglass things are the last line of defense for the defenseless or something. Well, that and the fact that these businesses are instructed by the city-managers-by-whatever name to follow these sorts of protocols that the cities in question will remain eligible for federal aid when the time comes to divvy it all up.

        • I had thought our state, in which every county went for Trump, an exception to the madness, T. Guess it’s not.

      • The utter absurdity of trying to interdict microbes in a nation of 333 million seems lost on the vast majority of the populace.

    • In my neck of the woods the cops are dragging people off of the bus for not wearing a face mask. Like 8 or 10 cops for one dude on a bus!
      I had to run an errand on Friday at rush hour and the streets were empty. There is more traffic on an average week night at 10. I don’t think I have ever seen Philadelphia streets so empty.

    • When ive been out running this past week i’ve seen more people out running or walking than ever. Lots of families with kids and dogs. Lots fewer cars though. I went to get a truckload of barkdust yesterday and it was busier than i’ve ever seen it. There were 20 pickups in line and more pulling in as others left. Lockdown or not, yardwork cant wait.

    • Last night I was doing what I’ve assigned myself as a kind of grim duty and watched a bunch of news shorts from the major media. This is the first encouraging thing I saw. It was a segment on how life is going on pretty much as usual in Utah. They interviewed people who said they didn’t feel they needed to wear masks or keep distance from other people. They also talked to a white guy who was probably sympathetic to our thing and his 2 young sons standing by their pickup at a store. He said he felt people should “educate themselves” about what’s really going on but didn’t spell anything out. It was clear he meant he didn’t take the panic seriously. The reporter was, as usual, a pretty young newsho. It was clear that she was getting the vapors about these dirt people in this backward state still getting HAIRCUTS (OMG!! NO SOCIAL DISTANCE) and going to PARTIES instead of hiding under their beds. The whole segment had a clear undertone of irritation with these people for not being goodwhites and cowering in place.

      Meanwhile here in Western Oregon, mask wearing is up about 300% from 2 weeks ago. I keep getting people walking off the sidewalk as I approach. I don’t do or say anything special but it’s also pretty clear that I’m not diverting my path either. It’s like what I imagine being an obvious thugged out gang member in a nice suburban neighborhood must be like. I even had somebody cross the street to avoid me last week. Perhaps I’m an honorary PoC now.

      This area of course has always been crazy pozzed and I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised that some people, even old people, remain unmasked and seem unfazed. Sadly everything remains shut down and other than not wearing their Halloween masks, I see little sign of anger or rebellion here.

    • It wouldn’t have been quite as funny if Z-man was merely being facetious. As it is, I pissed myself.

    • [1,000 years in the future]

      “Mom, why do we beat libertarians and eat chocolate bicycles on Easter?”

      “I think that’s one of the pagan traditions, son.”

    • It’s reminiscent of another hate criminal I used to worship. Only he hated hipsters and killed them on sight in fun and inhumane ways. Cheese graters, catapults, and dull edged weaponry were brandished the same way a master musician wields the violin.

      I was an outhouse objectivist when I began my journey though. I think Ayn Rand should be mandatory reading for any aspiring dissident. Along with Mein Kampf, Das Kapital and the bible.

      It isn’t enough to just beat and kill lefties, hipsters, libertarians and other turds… you must also know WHY they must be kilt. 😆👍

  60. you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.

    Cultural inertia. Pure, plain and simple. Nothing more.

    psst! (Soup’s on.)

    • Gramsci’s heirs in schools and the media (the latter contains the biggest schoolmarms of all) have been readying the population for many years. This society was cooked almost to perfection. But the Borg did not account for the home schooled and those who home school them, as well as various and sundry traditional freedom lovers. Uneven heat will do that. Anticipate an all-out effort to fix the oven.

      • Can confirm. I was homeschooled and the first thing I noticed when going to college was just how much bullshit and propaganda normies believe in.

        • Congratulations. Your parents gave you an immeasurable gift — the gift to detect horseshit upon the first whiff. And most likely a balanced view of history and the capability to make change without the cash register cuddling you. You are one of the fortunate ones.

        • I used to teach at a community college. I would open every semester by asking the students how many had read the U.S. Constitution. On average, 98-99% had not.

          Last year the only kid in the class who had read it had been home-schooled.

          • I’ve mentioned this here before but the anecdote dovetails with your comment so I’ll repeat it. I was once at a Very Elite East Coast College soirée where people were talking politics. There was a young woman who was a poli-sci major, junior year. During the course of the conversation I got the sense she didn’t know much about the Constitution so I asked if she had ever read it. She said “well I haven’t read ALL of it, of course” and with a little probing I discovered that she had conflated the US Constitution with the US Federal Code. And she had never read the Constitution. When I explained that it could be printed on a few sheets of paper and easily read in one sitting, she was amazed.

            Another time I was talking with a Columbia man who had majored in US history. He insisted that senators and house reps both serve four year terms. He had no idea that reps served two year terms and senators served six year terms. The lack of civic grounding among “elites” is staggering.

          • Somewhat in her defense, reading the Constitution only has value as a study in human hubris. It proves that you cannot overcome human nature through a written piece of paper.

    • I hope the government gives me permission to leave my house on the Fourth of July so that I can celebrate my freedom.

      • If the government forbids–and I’ll allow it’s a possibility–then we turn the fireworks on it…

        • Nah. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the big annual “Pride” event in Tel Aviv kicks off in June (I think). This all has to come to an abrupt halt before then. Can’t deprive world traveling sodomites, especially those for whom 2020 will have been their first experience with the mother of all pride events in the mother of all pride cities, that experience.

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