Pandora’s Ballot Box

According to Merriam-Webster, hope is a desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment. You want something to happen. You have little or no reason to think it will happen, yet you sense that it is going to happen. Hope and faith are traveling partners, in that hope is often the result of trusting a system or person. The system has worked in the past, so despite evidence that it is not going to work this time, you hope that it carries through again.

Hope and faith are the cornerstones of elections. In the best of times, people are left to hope that the guy who wins will do a decent job. Even when it is obvious that the winner will be a dud, maybe even crazy, people have faith in the system to carry us through the ineptitude of the office holders. Popular government requires people to believe that all of us are smarter than most of us. Every couple of years people hope this is true as they cast their ballots for people they barely know.

What we have seen over the last thirty years is that some people, the people we call the Left, have increasingly lost faith in the system. Their reason for voting is not the hope that it will continue on, but that this time it finally fails. Barak Obama was the turning point with his constant talk about hope and change. The whole point of his presidency was to destroy the old system and replace it with a new one. He was the change they had been waiting for.

The looming presidential election is looking like a similar inflection point for the people we call the Right. In 2016, most of them voted for Trump, hoping he would be a message to the system. People voted for Trump as a rebuke, an often crudely humorous rebuke, of official Washington. These people still had faith in the system, so they hoped that Trump could deliver the message. The people were unhappy, and Washington needed to address their concerns.

This time, much of the support for Trump is like the hope and change business that Obama ran on in 2008. People saw what happened in the Trump years and they have been following the aftermath. They no longer have faith in the system. The system produced this corrupt ruling class. The thinking is that another Trump term will cause so much anger in official Washington that they will go berserk. Everyone else will then see that the system is hopelessly broken.

There is still some faith in the system. Lots of the MAGA hat wearing folks think this time will be different, but a good chunk of his support is cynical. This is why his support is so solid, despite the presence of Ron DeSantis. People know that in a normal country with a functioning political system, DeSantis would be the far better choice, but America is no longer a normal country. Prudent administration is not the answer to a demonic ruling class hellbent on pulling the roof down on us.

On the other hand, Ron DeSantis is the hope and faith option. His support is entirely from people who still have faith in the system. Here is the venerable Paul Gottfried coming out in support of DeSantis over Trump. Josh Hammer, a member of the common good conservative club, is also supporting DeSantis. Pedro Gonzalez sounds like Bill Kristol in coming out in favor of DeSantis. Three people from three different perspectives making the same argument.

These folks and the others supporting DeSantis think the system is mostly fine, but it needs the right guy to get the right result. They hope DeSantis is that guy, because after all, he “got things done” in Florida. For his supporters, Florida is a model for how things ought to run. DeSantis is therefore the model for how an executive pulls the right levers in the system in order to get the desired result. The fact that Florida is nothing like Washington plays no role in their thinking.

DeSantis is the last gasp of conservatism. Until the catastrophe of the Bush years, the subtext to conservatism was that it needed to be presented to the Left in just the right way so as not to upset them. Conservatism had to sneak up on lefty with a pleasant-sounding program presented by someone they liked or at least they could not plausibly claim was Hitler. For the DeSantis supporters, their guy is Trumpism without the crude orange man that makes the regime so angry.

Of course, their support rests on the assumption that the right man can get in there and pull the right levers to get the right result. It also assumes that the people in opposition will go along with this. The shadow of ignorance about the nature of the people in charge hangs over the DeSantis supporters. They are sure that the other side wants what they want and that they do not believe what they say. They just need a good talking to and they will stop the nonsense.

The hard reality is that the people who run the empire want what they want, and they will not be talked out of it by an election. The reason they recoiled like a startled snake when Trump came to town is because they feared him. He represented a threat to their preferred order, so they sunk their venomous fangs into his presidency. They will do the same thing to the next guy if he proves to be a threat. There is no way to clear out this nest of vipers at the ballot box.

In the 2016 election, Michael Anton famously penned the Flight 93 election essay that allowed many on the Right to throw in with Trump. The essay was an argument in favor of Trump as one last desperate attempt to save the system. The fact that the Trump presidency ended like the famous flight did not register with many people. Some of them are now throwing in with DeSantis for the same reason. It is one last desperate attempt to save the system, in which they still have faith.

According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from the gods, Zeus took vengeance by giving the lovely Pandora to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. She was left with a jar and told not to open it. Being a woman, this meant she could do nothing else but open it and out came all the evils that plague the world. She quickly put the lid back on, but the only thing remaining was what is often translated as hope, but which could also mean deceptive expectation.

In 2016 the Dirt People stole fire from the gods in that they defied their masters and supported Trump in the primary then the general election. Instead of sending a jar containing plagues, they sent another ballot box. In 2020 that box was opened and out came the secret police to carry Joe Biden to the White House. Despite it all, some still cling that that ballot box, hope trapped inside, thinking that maybe this time when they open the box, their hopes will be realized.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


144 thoughts on “Pandora’s Ballot Box

    • Perhaps we have different definitions of “accelerationist”, but my understand was always that it was an acknowledgement of where we are *all* heading, just that to get there faster was perhaps to do so while we still had the resources to resist.

      11
  1. HAR HAR HAR!😂👍

    You are a treasure, Z. A sense of wit and humour, stropped to an absolutely lethal razor’s edge! I read the title and first paragraph and quit. This is not going to be another random blog poast… I can tell already.

    I am going to save it for tonight, when the chores and the day are done and it’s time for a pot of tea and a peaceful pipe. Consider yourself honoured – I can pay no higher compliment than that, though I wish I could. I will savour it as I do my few other pleasant rituals.

    I really gotta stop being so damned cheap and figure out how your substack works and get on that too…😂

    11
  2. Isn’t it the Z-man himself who said you can’t be too cynical? I’m really starting to think that the American Greatness site has been bought out by one of Meatball Ron’s billionaire backers to fluff him full time. For a while now, they’ve been running pieces by some Florida-based “consultant” that trash Trump. Next they killed the comment section so no one could sass back about them. Now we’ve got Gottfried and Hammer overt puffery taking up space over there.

    I’ve got a lot of respect for Gottfried so I really don’t think he’s some kind of paid shill like “Moobs” Williamson, but why do I suspect that if he were to write something extolling the virtues of voting for Trump then he’d suddenly find himself de-platformed?

    11
    • Gottfried is sincere. Your theory on AMG seems legit. Before the shutdown of open comments they had people policing the comments aggressively. It was clear that there were certain topics that they were very very sensitive too – to the point of delusional paranoia – the kinds of places and topics that DiSantis seems bent on showing he is on the right side of.

      That doesn’t make you right, but there was a crackdown over there. It wouldn’t shock me if it all tied into the highly organized, and highly international NatCon movement.

    • Yeah, scratching my head about this “voting is a waste” then “make a great candidate” thing going on here at this blog. A candidate? WTF is that, current year??

      For me, I am massively bored between the sniveling, chiseling of those enjoying ‘success’ in this sewer culture, and brain-dead Joe Normie, waddling around giving up pieces of self and their own children, while muttering “wha happint?”

      21
  3. The notion that the voters sent a message to the system in 2016 by electing Trump is overblown. His support, while some of it was very fervent and hoping to send just that message, was not that large or widespread. 2016 was in fact a repudiation of H, not just by the people who voted for Trump, but by the large number of folks who never would have voted for him but couldn’t be bothered to vote for her, since she was that uninspiring. Trump just happened to be the other name on the ballot who benefited from her weak support. Meanwhile, the regime got high on its own supply and the media portrayal of her as inevitable and Trump as impossible, and thus weren’t motivated to fortify.

    Trump’s 74 million votes in 2020, nearly 10 million more than he got the first time around, were closer to being that repudiation of the system. Cast by people rightly appalled at the system’s lawless reaction to him. A reaction that clown world now tries to pretend never happened, even as it continues happening. Sort of like the GR, “it’s not happening, but here’s why it’s a good thing.”

    I don’t know how many times Charles Schulz reran that same cartoon of Lucy holding the football, but I think he ran it about every September and it was a hit every time. The lesson is don’t be the one trying to kick, be the one holding the football. It took the “left” about 60 years to get a good firm grip on that thing. If the “right” were to get started right now, maybe by the time they hypothetically got their fingers on the laces AINO would be about 35% white. So never mind the ball, best they can shoot for is waterboy.

    18
    2
    • In the final accounting, all it seems we go for vooooting for Trump was some funny one liners, some crying feminists, and a crackdown on our rights like never before. Then an American gulag system.

      4
      1
      • When we are in gulags, we’ll still smile when we remember the videos of feminists and liberals melting down when Trump won. A cold comfort, sure, but it will be one of our few.

  4. I’m kind of wondering if the dems will try to find there own trump. In my view it’s not the issues but just a feeling of confidence. Like imagine a dem candidate who is part morning zoo radio personality and part tony Robbins.

    Basically saying “the only reason we have these problems in America is we’ve become afraid to dream.” I’m here to give an injection to the American people of confidence in our country. We can be going at the speed of sound again. All our problems that we have, and believe me, there are a lot, could be solved by confidence “.

    If the candidate was a standard issue liberal but could talk like that, they would win easily. I can imagine a campaign event where they walk onto the stage in a smoke veiled silhouette with the opening riff of “photograph” playing

      • Yep, that’s our boy, the Lightbringer, alright. No drama, Obama, the Rohrschach test for liberals; what do you see in this blot? Anything you want to see through the eyes of your confirmation bias, but in the end, it has no relation to the realities of the evil cabal standing behind this Potemkin president.

        12
        • There are three things the affluenza men I have to interact with can talk about:
          1. Their health.
          2. Their money.
          3. The Lightbringer.

          After that it is a quick hop in the Prius to yoga class.

    • On AINO’s current trajectory that will happen. We will see, “spiritual leaders”, like Tony Robbins run or spawn someone to run. He, thanks to his wife, consorts with an increasingly large and weird panoply of gurus. One of them is this psychopathic Indian guy, (something Banjan), who goes around the WEF saying he, “wants fewer souls”, on the planet and cackles on the red carpet after saying it.

      I have some slight evidence that even the Clinton’s have their hands in the new age, psychoactive therapy culture.

      What was the guy in Game of Thrones? The Sparrow? Yes. When civilizations collapse broken people desperate for cheap and easy hopium emerge and can wield tremendous political power. That is going to be coming our way.

        • Yup, our posts here are likely their ‘oppo research’. Once the harvest is brought in, buh-bye.

  5. Stellar essay! I’m doing my best not to lose patience with all the naive folks I know who still buy into the voting charade. Most of these poor saps are well-meaning, yet simply lack the stomach for confronting the futility of it all. They seem unaware that loss of faith in the system is a gateway to higher consciousness. Or perhaps some or most of them do not want that higher consciousness. Admittedly, it’s not all a bowl of cherries.

    12
    • The fat ass normie only gets off the couch to get a beer, grill, or vote (preferably by mail). Therefore higher consciousness equals guilty conscience; which they cannot abide and must therefore abstain. Only 3 days without a meal can rile a Bongino fan boy.

      8
      1
  6. “an often crudely humorous rebuke.” – This is the biggest problem the D.C. regime had with Trump. On paper he was more liberal than Nixon. The regime is humorless. There’s a giant billboard when you land at Dulles that reads “We will not be mocked!” The billboard exists on each and every forehead in that metro area. Even the Uber driver taking you into town. Humorless, gray, android like people. Like the Bishop character in Alien that bled white blood.

    As a Californian, I have huge problems with my state. Problems that will soon turn it into a backwater like Sicily or a Mexican city. Perhaps that’s the ultimate fate of all Mediterranean climate regions. But it sure as hell isn’t D.C. I’m thankful for that.

    12
  7. Call me a pessimist or a quitter or whatever you wish, but the reality is that America is dead, permanently. There is no fixing it, no turning it around, no nothing. It is successfully and permanently destroyed. All one can do at this point is do your best to disconnect and make your way as best you can. There is always talk about how horrid our ruling class is, and indeed that’s true, but not enough emphasis on the millions of people here who support all of it. I find them to be even more reprehensible. The people with the “no human is illegal” and “black lives matter” signs in their yard. There is no fixing these people, there is no coexisting with them, there is no compromise to be made to live in peace. There is only one solution and one solution only so let’s stop beating around the bush. We also know that it won’t ever get there, because there aren’t enough people willing to sacrifice what they’ve got in order to make that commitment (understandably so). Normie will continue to bend over and it will just continue to get worse and worse. White men will soon be entirely removed from any opportunities and more and more blue hairs will rise to the ranks. Honestly, I can see only two solutions for individuals. Move out of the country if you have the means or move to a very remote area and live the rest of your days in isolation.

    As for the next 30-40 years? I see America becoming a tribal landscape with an even more tyrannical federal government. There will be pockets of the few remaining white, heritage Americans trying to survive (mostly poor and demoralized), while the cities devolve even further into jungles run by feral negros. 20 years from now we will look at 2020 as the glory days compared to what is coming. There won’t be this epic collapse that everyone thinks will cure the ills. Instead, a slow grinding will continue and as long as sports ball is on the TV and normie can at least grill while waving his flag, they will continue to vote harder in the next election. The idea that America has collapsed and has been destroyed is just not a concept that most can grasp. It is “unimaginable” to most – yet, here we are. Facing the reality sucks, but it must be faced. No matter how bad it gets, I continue to see people refuse to acknowledge the many flaws of multiculturalism, race mixing, diversity, etc. “We’re all one race, the human race” should be tattooed on America’s gravestone.

    What a waste. Sorry for the black pill, but like Z often states, reality does not stop because you stopped believing in it. So forgive me if I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about presidential candidates, campaigns or “sel”-ections. As much disdain I have for the ruling class, I look around and see the monsters who are supposed to be my fellow countryman and I recognize no one. I see vile creatures that need to be vanquished and nothing else.

    51
    1
    • Agreed..if Trump or RFK got 90% of the vote, the DC cobras still wouldn’t allow them to be inaugurated..It’s not likely that the UniParty will even allow them to run…So their role is to be the sacrificial lambs, the Gracchi, to demonstrate that America is beyond redemption…

      14
      • Considering how open RFK Jr. is about the CIA and the assassinations of his uncle and father I wonder if he’ll make it to next year.

    • Call me a pessimist or a quitter or whatever you wish,

      I don’t call you a pessimist or a quitter, sir. I call you a true believer. You clearly have that personality type. At some point in the past, you were a true believer in America; and once that failed, you became a true believer in cynicism. You must always have something to believe in, even if your “belief” is in despair.

      I don’t mean to pick on you personally, but this is why I hate people talking about red pills and red-pilling and telling stories about who red-pilled them the best. (And yes, that is a sexual innuendo. Every Alt-Right blog is filled with these kinds of cooing catamites whose main purpose in life seems to be to fluff up the blog author and show themselves down with the message.)

      The fact is, if you had been a realist to begin with, you would never have needed a red pill. But because you are gelatinous, you need someone to impart some sort of shape or structure to you, and if you cannot get it from the dominant culture then you seek it in the alternative culture. What you call a red pill is actually just a new mold.

      No one can be blamed for being the type of person they are, but they also need to know and accept their limitations, and jellies should not be discussing politics, especially in a time of troubles—it gets them all jiggly. They are eminently suited to being political objects but they should never try to be political subjects. You derive an enormous amount of courage from your despair, and for that very reason you would stone the prophets who try to free you. Belief—tenacious, ever-hopeful, unending belief—is your superpower. Whatever else you may be, you, sir, are no pessimist. You are the very definition of Georges Sorel’s optimist!

      So little are we prepared to understand pessimism that we generally employ the word quite incorrectly: we wrongly take pessimists to be disillusioned optimists. When we meet a man who, having been unfortunate in his enterprises, deceived in his most legitimate ambitions, humiliated in his affections, expresses his sorrow in the form of a violent revolt against the bad faith of his colleagues, the stupidity of society or the blindness of destiny, we are disposed to regard him as a pessimist – whereas we ought nearly always to regard him as a disheartened optimist who has not had the courage to rethink his ideas and who cannot understand why so many misfortunes have befallen him, in contrast to the general law governing the production of happiness.”

      2
      5
      • Anybody naive or ignorant enough to believe there’s a general law making happiness the norm is no realist; he is a fool. And I dare say the man who is not a believer is a nihilist. That describes you, ID, and your Sorel.

    • Depends on how worked up one gets on the matter of politics and candidates. One can, like Z-man, look at the situation with detachment and use developing situations as instructional points, as Z-man has. I listen to a lot of that stuff on the local radio. It’s a distraction and amusement, but no longer an aggravation.

    • Tired Citizen wrote, “There is always talk about how horrid our ruling class is, and indeed that’s true, but not enough emphasis on the millions of people here who support all of it. I find them to be even more reprehensible. The people with the ‘no human is illegal’ and ‘black lives matter’ signs in their yard. There is no fixing these people, there is no coexisting with them, there is no compromise to be made to live in peace.”

      I know these feelings well. However, I guess that many of the reprehensible people you mention can be saved.

      If you can accept that many people, even those with high IQs, have little ability to think independently, then you can imagine fixing these people. If these people have been programmed by our enemies, then they can be programmed by us.

      You can be mad that so many people are such sheep, but that’s like being angry about the temperature at which water freezes. It’s just the way the world is.

      Of course, our chances of winning are quite long, and that’s a whole different reason to fret.

  8. Anyone who thinks that they won’t use lawfare against DeSantis the way they did against Trump is going to get redpilled soon. They set a precedent with Trump. Going forward, any Republican candidate who isn’t completely controlled opposition will be arrested or threatened with arrest:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/06/texas-migrants-flight-marthas-vineyard-charges-sheriff

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/05/california-florida-migrants-sacramento

    14
    • There’s an interesting dynamic in play with the fortification and the lawfare. Now that the regime has trained their foot soldiers in how that’s done, they can’t just turn it off. The true believers will carry on. So even regime approved candidates, such as DeSantis, are at risk.

      • I say bring it on. Although I now view him as something of a regime toady (when a State Governor flies to Israel, it can have that effect) I nevertheless cheer DeSantis on. Let him be charged for (allegedly) “kidnapping” the migrants and flying or bussing them to “sanctuary cities.” It’ll be free publicity, and a perfect example of the heavy-handed totalitarian behemoth the Deep State has become.

    • Perhaps true, but what of it? To me it’s even a positive development. What’s one of Joe Normie’s hard core beliefs? It’s the justice system. When such occurrences happen that show the system’s corruption, it can only benefit the DR if it shakes JN out of his delusional state.

    • The Irish method involves actions like the boycott of Bud Light, which continues to increase in strength..down 60% in some areas on Memorial Day weekend…

      • Fine, but how much of BW’s income is based upon Bud Light? What other brands owned by BW are down in sales? There’s a reason the polls all refer to Bud Light and not to “Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV”

        Not to black pill here, I am heartened by the decline.

  9. Considering Painter’s “…demographic reality. Christians & Muslims have their answer – religious nationalism & mixing. The ANC has their answer – “kill the Boers”.” statement, I think we may have been misinterpreting Marx.
    Thus, the importance of the Christian perspective.

    We see “the opiate of the masses” as a lulling effect, as faith in the system.
    I’d say no, that faith has a motivating effect, that religion moves the masses.

    In Marx’s time, half of England’s population used opiates, from soothing baby’s aching gums to easing grandpa’s aching joints.

    Opiates enabled the English to endure the crushing labor schedules of the Industrial Revolution.

    Civnat enabled the masses to endure the diktats of a War economy.

    Woke enables the masses to endure the diktats of an ESG economy.

    Christian nationalism enables the masses to endure life’s chaotic tides.

    We have already tried two forms of religious nationalism:
    Civnat, and Woke.

    The Civnats have folded.
    The resurgent Christian nationalists mean to stand up to the Woke nationalists’ bullying.

    We may be headed into another Thirty Years War between the Christian Trads and the Bolshie Woke.
    I wonder if this one will have the same result as the last: a wiping out of half of the European population.

    We’ll need some pretty strong medicine to endure that.

    23
    3
    • Addendum: Reviewing this, I see Marx’s clarion call as the Prophet of postmodernism.

      To address the problems of the Industrial Revolution (filthy slums, coal smog, dangerous machinery), he proposed the abandonment of God and tradition- a cultural revolution led, of course, by his Enlightened people.

      Thus, we get
      * Freud-Bernays,
      * the Frankfurt School,
      * the International Brotherhood of Electrical Engineers Local #132,
      * CIA / MI6
      * Henry Kissinger’s WEF,
      * Larry Fink’s Blackrock ESG,
      * Leo Strauss and Jaffa’s 2nd Founding
      * the Democratic Socialists Alliance (Pelosi/Reid Congress)
      * the PGLE corporate social credit score group-
      https://twitter.com/iamlisalogan/status/1663257319491387392
      and
      * George Soros’s Open Society Institute: “The Final Election”–
      https://ellacruz.org/2018/10/31/leaked-the-last-election/

      • Further abuse of the comment space–

        Harry Dexter White, to the Vatican and Free Masons:

        ” You pikers, you second-rate amateurs!
        What are you, Muslim Brotherhood or Turkish Grey Wolves? Sicilian Cosa Nostra? Sicily was a prison for exiles, you low-rents.

        You call yourselves secret societies?
        We’ve been doing this since Babylon.

        Watch and learn, losers!
        We’ll give you a United Nations, the Euro, and the Federal Reserve!”

  10. “For the DeSantis supporters, their guy is Trumpism without the crude orange man that makes the regime so angry.”

    I don’t think this is totally correct. Desantis looks good on the anti-woke/groomer/tranny issue, while Trump is completely on board with all of that.
    Also, Trump compares poorly with Desantis on their handling of Covid.
    Finally, Trump apparently failed on Build The Wall, Drain The Swamp, etc., while Desantis looks successful in accomplishing things in Fla. (As Z says, Desantis ‘ successes in Florida won’t carry over to DC, though).

    23
    7
    • If you could take the governing acumen and cultural instincts of DeSantis and mix them with Trump’s foreign policy instincts, economic populism and his brash style, you have a great candidate.

      29
      1
  11. Look Z, I understand that “elections don’t matter” is your shtick, but this whole essay was incredibly goal-seeked and ended with a conclusion not supported by any of the premises. You also managed to get all of your analysis exactly backwards. That isn’t so much wrong—a photographic negative is still a recognizable picture, after all—as it is lacking the last rectifying step that turns it into a true color image.

    The MAGA-hat voters in 2016 did not have hope in the system; quite the opposite. They were the people who simply wanted “the system” out of their lives. The Left, on the other hand, represented in that election by Hillary Clinton, are the Deep State. They have unshakeable faith in the system because they are identical with it. This basic alignment has not changed.

    If you want to rectify your image, you will need to stop playing matte-and-bailey and tell us exactly what you mean by “the system.” Do you mean:

    1. The popular franchise?
    2. The whole fact of parliamentary republicanism that has obtained since 1789?
    3. The Deep State managerial class?
    4. All of the above?
    5. Something else?

    Because, even though they are all related, they are not all one and the same thing. In 2016, the MAGA-hat voters used The System (1) to challenge The System (3) because they were oppressed by The System (2). They were not anxious to preserve anything about (2). In essence, Trump was elected to be the first constitutional monarch of new American dynasty, but he didn’t understand his role well enough to fulfill it.

    I can disambiguate what I mean by “The System” to explain any salient fact about the contemporary political landscape. Can you do the same, or is it more important simply to denigrate normie at every turn, even twisting language to do it?

    11
    10
  12. If I have any hope, it is not in DC. It is in less centralization, in state leaders exerting more control over their states instead of ceding it to the federal behemoth. For that reason, DeSantis has been a fantastic governor. In the dark days of 2020-2021, he did bring some hope to the rest of the country, and has also provided a blueprint on how states could push back against all this nonsense. I wish he stayed in Florida, but the allure of the presidency is too much for a guy who is already ambitious enough to become governor. The fact that DeSantis has already shown he is willing to play ball for the top job (by, for example, flying to Israel to declare badthink for Florida’s dirt people) is a major reason why I do not have any hope for DC or our federal system.

    40
    • Republican politicians go to DC to get rich. DeSantis has been told that Trump will have been arrested and is not a rival regardless of the poling. The fair election pretense must be maintained so DeSantis has traded his honor for the money promised after a respectable loss.

      18
  13. I was in Western New York this past weekend (first time in the US since 2020, still unjabbed). I have to say that based on what I saw, Trump is still the locked in favourite for rural America. Tons of TRUMP flags, lots of Gadsden flags. Not a single DeSantis sign or flag anywhere. Trump is the man, for better or worse, and is the only one who will do anything interesting in 2024, albeit will still lose. (unless the regime decides to rig it for DeSantis).

    I loved the vast and rolling hills and mountains, and endless small towns. Pre-Appalachia. That part of rural America seems to be doing okay, although some of the houses are kind of shabby. Stopped in at some comfy rural bars. Quite a number of white families and lots of children everywhere. The Buffalo area is quite white compared to Ontario (and has a noticeably younger white population), but even in WNY you can see the imports start to accumulate, at the mall, at state parks, etc… most of them didn’t have Ontario plates… Can’t image how bad the major cities are.

    33
    • The Southern Tier is the part of New York they never talk about on TV.

      I’m convinced half the reason NY state banned fracking is that it would create an economic boom that would revitalize that area.

      21
      • Absolutely. That’s why they shut down both New York “Upstate” and Western Pennsylvania fracking. West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and PA coal too, I might add.

        Those white coal miners were getting a bit uppity, like they done before.

        15
        • Yep, and so now, as the Democrat party has gutted domestic energy production, Exxon/Mobil and Chevron are combining to develop such resources in Algeria, obviously with an eye on filling the need for natural gas and fracking-derived products to Europe since the US took out the Nordstream pipelines. In the case of Exxon/Mobil also looking toward their survival, as the Greenies, and the NeoCons have frozen them out of enterprises in the US and Russia both. It’d be a hoot if this undermines the plans to take Europe over the barrel by selling them LNG for ridiculous prices.

      • That’s exactly it, WGH. The I-86/Rt. 17 corridor is beautiful and still very sane (outside the usual pockets of insanity, like Ithaca and Corning). And comparing it to the I-90/Mohawk Valley string of cities is like ice cream to horse manure. Unfortunately, it’s taken the brunt of the State’s mismanagement. Fracking is one thing that could bring money to the area.

        I still hold out hope that at some point there will be a political realignment of the states, something along the lines of northern/mid PA and NY’s southern tier going their own way together.

    • Western NY, Western PA, West Virginia, Sothern Ohio… it’s all white, all solid Trump Country because it’s been completely marginalized by economic globalism, affirmative action, urbanism, and immigration.

      I drove up the Ohio River from Parkersburg to Youngstown a couple of months ago and I couldn’t believe how shitty and decrepit and poor a lot of the towns were, like Bellaire, OH. But people living in ramshackle singlewides surrounded by junk cars next to the river had still had “TRUMP 2020” and “FUCK BIDEN” banners proudly flying. West Virginians had barns and signs proclaiming “TRUMP” overlooking the interstate to that all the bourgeois city liberals driving past in their Audis and Lexuses could see them.

      When Trump was elected in 2016, I was skeptical. After all, his is an obnoxious, loudmouthed New Yorker, and a former Democrat. I didn’t fully trusted him on guns or abortion for that reason, and as others have pointed out he failed to accomplish a lot of his promises and was good with the gay and covid stuff. I remain surprised at how drawling rural Southerners developed a fanatical devotion to the guy.

      But for these people, Trump was just a way to give a middle finger to the system that fucked them over, and is still fucking them over. There’s absolutely no way he will get elected again (Garland is considering a federal indictment in addition to the 34 New York felonies) but they cling to him anyway because they have no one else.

      28
      • I love those areas in the mountains. Don’t know why but they always feel like home despite being shit holes.

        • I call Ohio “one giant small town.” I mean, the whole state is like Main Street USA.

          That is, until you get to the abandoned factory lots of Toledo.

          Toledo make grandparents cry.

          • “the whole state is like Main Street USA.”

            Well, the Cuyahoga River Valley in Downtown Cleveland, Youngstown, East Cleveland and, as you stated, Toledo sure as hell are not like “Main Street USA.”

            If they are, we’re truly fucked.

            I get your point, though. There are a LOT of really great, small, Midwestern, by-God-‘Murica towns in Ohio.

            There are also a lot of shitty, decrepit towns that were great places to live in the 19th and 20th centuries but have been destroyed by offshoring factory jobs to China and Mexico.

            That’s true of the entire Great Lakes-Rust Belt region. 100 years ago it was THE place to live. There were unionized auto and steel plants everywhere. Upstate New York was the home of Kodak, Xerox, IBM, GE, Carrier, Corning, etc. There’s some fantastic little towns in the Finger Lakes. Some really crappy ones too.

            One of the many reasons Toledo sucks is that the Ford Maumee Plant closed. The GM plant in Lordstown closed. Youngstown was destroyed when the steel industry went belly-up.

            These people are all Trump people because the government hates them and is willingly and openly screwing them. Just look at how Biden and Gay Pete Buttigieg absolutely refused to give a flying fuck about the vinyl chloride train derailment poisoning the white trash in E. Palestine, OH.

            Had there been a bunch of Negro children or white liberals living there, they would have been all over it.

            11
      • “but they cling to him anyway because they have no one else”

        And it just doesn’t get any sadder than that.

        19
      • I think it’s an admiration of the male ego, remember years ago some southern good ole boys gleefully exclaiming “by dern, that one-eyed bastid sure kin fight” about Moshe Dayan

    • I live in central Florida and I see the Trump name over DeSantis’s 5-to-1. In fact I haven’t seen a DeSantis 2024 sign yet.

      11
    • God forbid Tired Citizen should visit Toronto. The ensuing pathos could well shatter the space-time continuum.

      • I went for the first time in a few years this past January. But even after 3+ years, the changes are only incremental.

        It’s kind of like noticing someone age. It’s when you look at old pictures you’re struck by the differences. I see an old Canadian beer commercial from the 80’s on Youtube – all whites, up in cottage country, listening to generic rock music – and then I cross the border and I’m confronted with foreign hordes and degenerate whites.

  14. The farcical nature of the system has been exposed with the unfettered power of the police state apparatus. The very few elements of the Republican Party that are not part of the system and want to act as actual opposition have been proved impotent as the State laughs in its face when expected to conform to laws and rules. The brutal nature of the Regime no longer is hidden, only denied with a smirk.

    The Comey interview says it all. “Our Democracy” means “we” get what “we” want or burn it all down, never mind that the place already is a tinderbox. The only reason there has not been a full-blown civil war is because one side is fighting one and the other is not and passive. The aggressor is as predictable as is the besieged party. The most likely scenario under which the victim finally strikes back and kicks it off is economic misery, and that may be coming quite soon. Even deprivation may not be the spark, but if it is, the battered impotents have much pent-up outrage, even if not especially at an unconscious level.

    The Regime decided it could not permit a Trump re-election because the aggressor would indeed revolt and break and kill more things. It correctly decided the Normies would swallow wholesale totalitarianism that targeted them as long as their bellies were full. Have they thought of what happens when stomachs growl? The assumption of nothing is a safe bet based on recent history but could prove fatally wrong.

    A smart Regime would allow someone like DeSantis to serve as a figurehead through economic devastation. Even a Trump Redux would serve the same purpose. But the calculation has been made that the “Left” will rise up if it feels no longer in control, and the “Right” will swallow whatever shit sandwich it is fed as long as it is fed. Our Regime is not smart, and is often quite crazy and stupid, but it has been very lucky. Maybe that will hold and maybe it will not.

    Fragmentation and dissolution are the likely future and we see indications of it even now as states and localities timidly move away from an increasingly dysfunctional central government. But if oppression intensifies as economic conditions deteriorate, even that slow process may speed up. That possibility/probability, more than whoever the puppet in the Oval Office is, will decide the future.

    34
    • If AINO is ever to be saved, it won’t be via a civil war, or at least that would not be the best way to do it. IMHO, the best way to do it is to tear down the managerial state. The managerial state is the root of every evil we suffer from.

      Even if the managerial state wasn’t staffed by evil people who hate us, it is far too big and really cannot be supported by the rest of us. Not only are there too many of them, but most of them make more than the national average salary. Not only do they make too much money to be supported by us, they impose even larger costs on us with their endless rules and regulations.

      20
    • Well over 50% of the U.S. population is dependent on government payouts for basic survival, whether is by retirement pension, employment, food stamps, etc. We already know there’s no way to balance the budget, and the great decoupling with the dollar has reached the point there’s no stopping it.

      I honestly believe that the dollar will be dominant for at least the next 20 years, but massive inflation will become the only way to pay the debt, which, as always, will wreck those living paycheck to paycheck the most, requiring even more social service payments while the rich insulate themselves, leading to even more wealth centralization..

      It will all come down eventually, but we’re looking at an incredibly long burn. It took South Africa forty years to essentially collapse once complete incompetents got unfettered control, and it will probably be similar here.

      16
      • I don’t think the SA comparisons are apt. SA is nearly 90% Black. America is 50% White, 13% Black, 30% Latin and 7% Asian. Seems like it will be more a Brazil than a South Africa.

        17
        • But what about the anti-white legal regime? The SouthAmerIndian worker class benefits at white working class expense. The black metro underclass that is barely functional benefits and becomes middle class via government hiring. Asians, blacks, Jews and now SouthAmerIndian ascendants benefit in college and the professional class.

          The demographic replacement is bad enough. What is ominous is that a legal/financial regime is erected that makes us second class citizens even as a majority. A moral regime increasingly calls for our genocide, even as a majority. We become very quickly a minority. How do we turn the tide of second class citizenship in this environment?

          I think addressing the dismantling of the anti-white, anti-merit, anti-freedom Civil Rights Regime is the central issue for us at this time. It is a critical strategic battle we must fight and win. It is also a battle that some of the oligarchs would be vested in.

          Otherwise, despite the demographics, for whites it will be South Africa.

          12
        • Right. Even the most wild-eyed demographer doesn’t see a scenario where whites become less than a plurality over the next 50 or more years. The United States is a demographic trainwreck but there is no need to overstate things, either.

        • But what Chet is saying is that the burn-down will take decades. If it took 90-percent-Hutu SA 40 years to crash, how much longer might it take 60-percent-white AINO? Quite possibly well over 40 years. But you’re right, too, B125. Because of demographics, post-collapse AINO will bear a stronger resemblance to Brazil than SA. And both are massive steps down from America in the mid-60s.

      • Whatever the number is of people reliant on the state, that number is set to explode. Hundreds of thousands of people are added to the SS rolls probably every week. One of the largest generations in history is going into retirement.

        As bad as SS and welfare and SNAP etc are, we have a large class of “professionals” earning large paychecks who also rely entirely on the largess of the state either directly or indirectly. These people exist at all levels, from the local levels to the federal. I think I remember it being declared that the counties around Washington, DC had the most expensive (on average) real estate and the highest average income. Government spending at all levels is probably more than a 1/3 of GDP. That is even worse than it sounds because so much of the GDP is just fake and generates no income whatsoever.

        17
      • There is no way to fund these programs even now in terms of subsistence levels over the long term in large part due to inflation. And that’s before Juan, Juanita, Sahid, Hu, Shaneeka and Shitavious fully get anywhere near the levels of power and go full bore Jackson, Mississippi. Gibs are the true opiates of the masses and they are not long for it as a means of individual survival and thus national survival.

        It is miraculous that South Africa held on for forty years, but that was in part attributable to gibs, trade and accommodation from the West. Who will provide gibs to Westerners? To ask the question is to answer it. Even apartheid SA had nowhere near the social programs the United States and the West currently have.

        Again, the fragmentation is underway even now. The only glue is a tolerable standard of living. Maybe that can be sustained but it is hard to see how even if the wildly inflated dollar remains the reserve currency. There is a global race to the bottom. Some got there quicker and most already were there. The GAE acted as a brake on dissolutions elsewhere, but it no longer has that ability, and that is coming home to roost.

        I agree with you about copium as to the coming collapse, but short of divine intervention it is coming, largely in the form of poverty and subsequent fragmentation. Granted, those areas that splinter off either de facto or de jure are not going to have tremendous lifestyles, either.

        • One more time, SSI is not broke, nor will disappear. It has its own funding source, current non-retired working people. When SSI exhausts its “phony” trust fund, current estimates are it will have about 73-75% of the money needed for paying out retirement obligations. Current law requires an across the board trim of benefits for all retirees. This means that your $1000 a month pension is now reduced to $750. That’s not desirable, but it ain’t $0.

          Now this is not to say, Congress won’t screw with the rules to punish well to do retirees and hold harmless less well to do folk—or that the economy will have less workers at the time of you retirement.

          Medicare is the big problem. 1.5% doesn’t cut it. We have trillions in potential liability there. I suspect at some point to socialize all medicine, which would mask rationing and placate the masses as they have in Europe. You might also be able to increase Medicare taxes to some ungodly amount in exchange for “free” healthcare.

          • Well, at the rate of health insurance premiums (for those not paid by the employer) that Medicare tax hike would have to be enormous.

    • I live in a ‘third world’ country that is far freer and less banana republic than New Amerika has been for decades.

      The dollar’s value relative to local currency has plummeted in recent months . . . lost perhaps one-third of its value. The purposeful deconstruction of the U.S. economy and dollar is working. Full speed.

      10
    • But the calculation has been made that the “Left” will rise up if it feels no longer in control, and the “Right” will swallow whatever shit sandwich it is fed as long as it is fed.

      Have they been wrong? I get that past performance does not guaranty future performance, but it is probably the safer bet.

  15. Hope is getting pretty thin out in the wild.
    The only hopeful scenario I can imagine is a Trump or DeSantis miraculous victory. Then the victor takes a few companies of Marines and Army MPs, and uses them to arrest every bureaucrat who puts up a fight. Camp Deep State out in WV gets filled up with resisters including judges (Unless he goes full Sulla / Pinochet with helicopter rides).
    Anything short of that will yield zero results.

    29
    • DeSantis is one of them. If he gets elected think of the third W. term. You’ll see him go back to his neocon roots before the inauguration is over.

      29
  16. Pandora’s Box is an apt metaphor, but there is one footnote that Z omits here. At least according to the Nietzsche retelling, with Hope alone remaining in the box, man now thinks it an incomparable treasure, having apparently forgotten that the box contained miscellaneous evils. “Deceptive expectation” indeed.

    Obviously, there are at least two possible interpretations: (A) The Gods (Zeus?) were merciful and left Hope as a blessing in what was otherwise a box full of ills. (B) The box was uniformly bad stuff and man has deluded himself on the value of hope, which is actually a bane but he thinks it a boon.

    12
  17. “Hope and Faith are the cornerstones of elections.”

    What a coincidence, they’re also the two ladies who work at my bank as tellers.

    15
    • Where I live, they make excellent fried chicken in a restaurant called Dirk’s.

  18. The models say that a lot of chickens come home to roost over the next two years. Ukraine loses badly, embarrassing and emasculating the West. Russia rises and leads the BRICS++ toward a multi-polar economic transformation and the demise of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Foreigners flee US Treasury bonds. This results in surging inflation and bank failures/bail-outs drive the West first into recession and then a real depression. Pent up anger then explodes into street protests and riots in major urban centers while crime and poverty skyrocket. LEOs are overwhelmed and national guard troops are then deployed to quell violent mayhem. DC responds by going full-retard totalitarian. This includes huge tax increases, a digital currency, raids on 401k accounts, a new HLS jackboot corp, mass detention of suspected insurrectionists, and across-the-board abrogation of civil liberties.

    And all of this is a good thing because it resurrects our ancestral evolutionary environment in which hardship reemerges with a vengeance. It’s not too late to plant a garden in the backyard. Or get a goat to eat your lawn.

    34
    2
    • How about a family of guinea pigs? They’d have the benefit of concentrating on the grass, while leaving shoes, tin cans and sundry other objects unscathed. Problem: they don’t give milk, at least in useful quantities. One could hire some illegals to tend the herd, though sourcing campesinos from the Andean nations will be difficult. They’re also edible (the rodents, not the humans) and are sold on the street in some S. American places. Plus the little buggers whistle happily and the kids can play with them.

      12
      • I dunno, I visited some relatives in Czechia and they were raising bunnies for meat. Tasted fine, but I felt bad about eating the poor bunnies.

        • When I was a small kid long ago back in South Africa, the nice Afrikaner family next door went and built a large rabbit hutch and run in their suburban Durban backyard.

          Only dawned on me many years later that they weren’t raising pets.

      • Rabbits, guinea pigs…imagine what else we could find. Woodchucks, coneys, squirrels, voles?

        A capitol idea. I think I’m going to become a rancher.

        • Well, you could raise up a crop of dental floss, useful to clean your teeth after sumptuous banquets of stringy rodent meats.

        • Pigs and chickens anyone could raise. In WWII my father’s family raised a pig in the back yard for a family of 9 in a large metro city.

      • The first domino to fall in the above prediction sequence is that Ukraine will lose the war with Russia. Are you banking on Ukraine to somehow pulling off a Hail Mary Pass and beat Russia? If so, please enlighten us as to how you see that occurring. Or if not that, which of the subsequent predictions has a less than 5% chance of occurring, in your view?

        • Russia will win, but the victory will be provisional and inconclusive enough that the GAE and its propaganda organs will be able to paper it over and limit the damage to its prestige and reputation. The GAE’s war against Russia, like the GAE itself, will die with a whimper rather than a bang.

  19. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Pandora’s Ballot Box

  20. I have been torn in what to hope for with the GOP nomination. My wrathful side wants Trump on the ticket again simply because all of D.C. and the east and west coasts wants Trump in prison- I want Trump just for the vanishingly small possibility that he might win again and make their heads explode.

    The more rational part of me wants DeSantis, but not because I think he can win or even win and accomplish something meaning in saving the country. No, that part of me wants DeSantis just so that when the Democrats stuff the ballot boxes with 91 million mail-in votes for Biden or whatever dog turd they end up putting on the ticket, Conservative Inc. will have to STFU about how it was all about Trump.

    17
    • a vote for desantis is a vote for his main backer Jeb bush . nothing is worth doing that

      21
      2
    • The Republican establishment is fully aware that DeSantis will lose in a landslide, which is why they are backing him. His role in the play is to lose with dignity, like McCain, Romney and the other GOPe losers. If the Republican establishment rigs the primaries to screw Trump out of the nomination the Democratic candidate will win over 400 electoral votes, as Trump voters will stay home in droves. In this event, I predict Texas goes blue in 2024.

      This result give the GOPe everything they want. They remain unaccountable to voters and get a huge fundraising opportunity so they can really stick it to the Democrats next time.

      In my humble opinion, the best scenario for the dissident camp is for Trump to get the nomination. Trump won in 2016, he won in 2020, and he will win again in 2024. The majority of Americans now agree that the 2020 election was rigged. The electoral fraud required to rig the 2024 election will be so brazen that they won’t be able to hide it. Even the dumbest chiller and griller will take note.

  21. The next American Presidental election will do 1 of 2 possibilities:

    1. Cement the hold of the Managerial Class
    2. Trigger a civil war that purges the Managerial Class

    Pray for America

    31
    1
  22. “Hope is the first stage of disappointment” – WH40k

    >100 million votes for Biden and <10 million for the sacrificial lamb Team R would be my preferred turnout.

    A man can dream.

    The PRI famously held uninterrupted power in the "democracy" of Mexico from 1929-2000….71 YEARS. Well on our way to that here. Hell, we're binging the Mexicans up stateside by the millions to do it.

    19
  23. “The thinking is that another Trump term will cause so much anger in official Washington that they will go berserk. Everyone else will then see that the system is hopelessly broken.”

    This is why I hope Trump loses and I despair that he still has so much support.

    The last thing in the world I want is more violent riots like the summer of 2020. The orange clown just stood around doing nothing except demoralizing the right with his inaction.

    11
    36
      • So much of what underlies right wing collapse fantasies is that they think victory will fall into their lap when it happens. That victory is somehow guaranteed.

        No, it can get much worse than it is now

        The best way to destroy the system and give all the advantages to the left in rebuilding the world in their image is to make sure the right has an ineffective leader when the “civil war” or “collapse” happens.

        Trump is a proven failure, and re-electing him while expecting the left to launch a civil war on his 2nd watch is courting disaster.

        11
        3
      • “”I hope your chains weigh heavy on your shoulders then.“”

        So you want a “civil war” where the left kills people, and Trump does nothing but “monitor the situation”

        That is exactly what you will get

        • Yep, that’s exactly what we need. Violence to come to the uncommitted. The Floyd riots simply did not affect enough people, so they did not commit. As they say, “grilling and chilling”. As long as “it’s someone else’s problem”, nothing will change.

          1
          1
          • Most people during The Revolutionary War enjoyed the late eighteenth century equivalents of “grilling and chilling.” Only about fifteen percent of the population fought on the American or the British side. Many were content to passively support one side or the other. Others took a wait and see approach and threw their lot in with the victors.

          • The uncommitted will only commit to winners.

            No amount of pain will convince the uncommitted to side with the impotent “plan trusters”. If anything it will cause them to bow down before the strong left, if only for their survival.

            Nobody wants to be on the side of forever losers and people who insist on re-electing proven failures

    • The George Soros Open Society “Final Election” link I posted has this juicy passage in it:

      ATTACHMENT 0100-C
      PROCUREMENT EXECUTIVE REPORT
      Asset Arena Notes

      AK-47 (2300 units) NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Los
      Angeles, Detroit, Miami,
      Atlanta, Houston, St. Lewis

      Ammunition reserves: sufficient
      RPG- ?? ? -32 St. Lewis, Atlanta, NYC, Los Angeles

      Man-portable Russian anti-tank RPG
      PLASTITIE (300lbs) Las Vegas, San Diego, Los
      Angeles

      User friendly plastic explosive
      Fake Bullet Proof Vests (500) Houston, NYC Used to eliminate BLM shock troops under our command.
      NOTE: They are not convincing if carefully inspected by a professional.

      Activated Cobalt (12kg) Seattle Handle with EXTREME CARE. DO NOT INGEST. Seriously, we’ve had problems with this.”

      Plus a lot of this Maidan or Rotfront-style planning:

      “Election Day Snipers Separatist Wings
      Our infiltration of some White Nationalist wings have allowed us to create a high-chance-of success plan to have trained ex-military snipers commit
      random killings at early polling locations. This will provide additional leverage to the canceling of elections.”

      Either demoralized and boycotting the elections, or to provoke a militarized “solution”, if that doc is authentic, the junta anticipates boxing us in from either side.

      As a further poke in the eye, the other link exposes not just a corporate financial social credit score, but one based a Pride score.

      That’s where the rainbow excresence is coming from. Being boxed in from the top, with BLM “reparations failure” at the bottom.

      It might be puffery, or it might be a Boogaloo. Who knows where it will land.

      2
      3
  24. What DeSantis fans forget about Ron is the entire Florida political apparatus is, if not explicitly right-wing, at least neutral. The only reason the laws have gotten any traction is because the bureaucracy is largely willing to enforce them. Come to D.C. with a newly signed anti-groomer bill, and good luck getting the DOJ to even pretend to investigate anything.

    Now it is possible to wipe out the 20+% of true believers in these departments, hire your own guys, and watch the rest of the bugmen in the cubes shrug and change their views to keep their phony-baloney jobs. Unfortunately, the bench of actual dissidents with experience in administration is very low. It will require FDR levels of strong-arming with 200% of his shrewdness to succeed though.

    Judges will, of course, strike you down, and defying them will mean you’re basically daring the solidified powers to get rid of you, either through impeachment or activating some schizo with a gun.

    26
    • The thing that sticks with me with the whole “we need more Florida” bit is the fact that they almost elected a black, gay drug addict (natch) over DeSantis. Even if everything went according to some pie-in-the-sky plan that is still the “Florida” they’re more likely to end up with.

      23
      • The close 2018 race was also with Dem fortified Miami and Palm Beach.

        After DeSantis cracked down, suddenly Miami voted red, bringing Florida from a swing state to a very solid red state.

        17
    • Chet-

      Excellent points. People really do overlook the importance of friendly legislature and judiciary to an executive’s ability to get things done.

      As a counterexample, I would give Michigan, which from 2020 to mid 2022 had a legislature and courts that were weakly hostile to Whitmer.

      It took them a while, but eventually they managed to neuter most of the emergency powers Whitmer had claimed under the MI state constitution.

      Of course, Dominion and co. took care of that when they fortified the 2022 midterms, and turned both houses of the Michigan legislature blue.

    • Even thouigh I admire some of the things DeSantis has done, his trip to Israel to sign legislation that will increase penalties for naughty people who dare to distribute leaflets saying impolite things is, to me and no doubt many others, a “tell” on where his true loyalties lie.

      • I don’t know if it is an indication of his “true” loyalties or simply recognition of a necessary evil hoop to jump through in order to get elected. FWIW, Trump jumped through the same hoop, as do all “US” politicians. While it is not a good sign, it makes him no different than anyone else.

        1
        2
  25. Since 2020, I’ve been ambivalent about federal elections, assuming they don’t matter and nothing can change.

    However, this Comey interview is telegraphing that they are preparing for Civil War if somehow Trump were elected in 2024.

    https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1665705218258944000

    Part of me now thinks that maybe the greatest, most ridiculous ballot harvesting operation ever is called for to somehow push Trump over the line and force these people out of their safe-zone bunkers and see what happens.

    28
    • Ref the interview link – 30 seconds was all my stomach could handle – but those are 2 incredibly arrogant, smarmy, smug, insular pri*ks. Of greater lament is there are plenty more just like them. A pox on all their houses.

      25
    • Lucius Sulla: “…force these people out of their safe-zone bunkers and see what happens…”

      Someone named Thorsteinn Siglaugsson just poasted an essay this moarning, using a Kantian analysis to describe the sclerosis of the expert class.

      https://brownstone.org/articles/silencing-of-experts/

      Apparently Kant [being obviously a German] tried to analyze these personality types using the “blank slate” approach to psychology [which frankly would be the correct approach for the German personality roughly north of Frankfurt all the way to Scandinavia, although I would suspect that it’s far less appropriate for the more innately ingrained & pre-ordained Germanic personalities of Bavaria, Austria, Czechia, and Northern Italy].

      Anyway, using this blank slate [a-psychological] analysis, Siglaugsson seems to conclude that the experts have retreated from their public lives as butterflies and now hide [in terror?] in some sort of regressive retreat from the public sphere, back into the calm & comfort of the adolescent cocoon.

  26. ZMan points out what a lot of us have tried to tell people around us for almost a decade: That Trump running and winning in 2016 was a symptom, not the disease of what ails the country. Instead of a road to Damascus moment after the election, our ruling class doubled and tripled down on the absolute hatred they have for the people below them.

    42
  27. RFK, Jr., has the potential to be a threat to the Deep State. He actually has his father’s and JFK’s charisma, too. The powers that be must sense the threat, because the MSM are ignoring him.

    After watching Jr.’s campaign announcement, I was moved to watch his father’s ad lib speech in Indianapolis to a black audience telling them of King’s murder. It was breaking news.

    That speech, off the top of his head, is probably the greatest speech ever given. Its heart-felt sincerity is painfully obvious. That we once had such leadership is hardly believable in today’s degraded, degenerate country.

    9
    14
      • I remember JFK well. He had tremendous natural presence and charisma, and it wasn’t fakey-gamey jive or Barry Soetoro’s let’s-pretend ‘charisma’ either.

        JFK had faults (welcome to Earth) and was naive politically in some areas, but he was God-fearing, brave, patriotic and unapologetically masculine. Seen much of that in the White House since?

        Take him in my squad any day.

        Seen any joyful little boys tearing and bouncing down the WH corridors since his time? It’s been a daughter-dominated WH the whole plummeting stretch. Might be a reason for that.

        • Got a story for you, one I won’t tell.

          It’s a story about two Irish lads who served in the Pacific. We’ll call them Mac and Fitz, what they called each other.

          Fitz was pretty famous, couldn’t let his hair down much. So, when he found a saucy boyo who liked to joke about their common interest- poontang- well, Mac and Fitz became fast friends.

          Then, bad things began to happen to the little people around Fitz. Really, really bad things. Like from out of nowhere.

          Who knows if it was related?

          But, Fitz got departed from the scene, and things had gone from really bad, to nightmare.

          So yeah, Fitz was a good squaddie, for true- and America died with him.

          • Edit: “…fast friends.”
            When Fitz flew into town, Mac had to be waiting for him at the airport.

    • Good god Man! you can’t talk lik this here! doncha know he doesnt sound smooth and polished when he speaks. besides , What the heel good will it do the have him Shove the overton window open in every direction and enlighten normie in a way nobody has don in my 67 year memory.
      on a more serious note, any sane person knows it’s rigged. Even him It is inevetiable that a fee people in any large corrupt system will be riven by consiensce and try to help victims . I think he is that guy. he is running to tell people the vaxes are bad . the lockdowns were corporate destruction of millions of small businesses , Ukrane is a unnecessacary war crim that we should not be orchastrating, that the CIA is a shadow government that assinates those who cross them . I never would have believed that we would see a candidate talking these truths on the national stage . Being fore warned give a chance to prepare and plan. to stop unwittingly helping the rulers .

      9
      3
        • Bro, I can barely spell muh own name anymoar.

          When I re-read stuff I’ve just typed, muh jaw drops at how many typos I left in muh wake.

Comments are closed.