To: MNGOP SCC Delegates From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant Re: On Your Predilection For Running Headfirst Into Walls And Kicking Yourself Repeatedly In The Groin
Esteemed Colleagues,
I got your letter the other day, about the intent to try to toss state party chairman Hann at the next State Central meeting.
I know who’s driving this, and I suspect I know why.
I’ve also seen no evidence that there’s any more of a “plan” to this than there was to Matt Gaetz’s defenestration of Kevin McCarthy.
MacGowan, the lead singer of the legendary Irish punk-folk band The Pogues, passed away overnight. He was 65, going on 110.
He was a Keith Richards/Ozzy Ozbourne-level drinker, a brilliant songwriter, an irreplaceable bandleader…
…and, like most British punks of the era, full of political hot air:
“We just wanted to shove music that had roots and is just generally stronger and has more real anger and emotion, down the throats of a completely pap-oriented pop audience,” he told NME in 1983 as the band was getting off the ground.
He frequently wrote about Irish culture and nationalism, as well as the experiences of the Irish diaspora — including his support of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
“I was ashamed I didn’t have the guts to join the IRA — and the Pogues was my way of overcoming that,” MacGowan admitted in Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.”
MacGowan was celebrated by many of his peers as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. But he was also known for his heavy boozing, often leaving him stumbling and slurring his words at shows.
Love the art, ignore the artist.
And at their best, the Pogues were one of the things that made the early-mid eighties such a blast
So what was “their best”?
I’d start with the title cut of their 1985 classic album, If I Should Fall From Grace With God,
Featuring the shreddingest Mandocello solo in rock history.
I’ve always been partial to this one, from the previous album, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash:
This one pops up on the NARN once in a while – and likely will again soon:
Most Americans who are familar with the Pogues at all know them from this, a song that is to Christmas music what Die Hard is to Christmas movies:
MacGowan’s been suffering healthl issues for a while now, and was reportedly wheelchair-bound since 2015.
Probably a decade ago, a story circulated that scientists were studying some of the most legendarily indestructible rock stars – Keith Richards, Ozzy Ozbourne, MacGowan and a few others – to try to figure out how they could survive decades of chemical abuse at a level that’d kill entire 70s funk bands or squads of Marines, and keep on going.
In addition to football, we saw last week the annual “progressive” tradition of wrapping one’s self and others in un-earned victimhood.
It was “Trans Violence Awareness Week”, during which Leftis pols conjured up victims from the ether to rally the soft-minded to their cause.
Senator Smith, for starters (with a riposte from Shawh Holster)
She is describing a fiction. Show me a single kid murdered because they were trans. Of the 26 reported incidents, none were children. This is a fiction intended to evoke sympathy. Storytelling. pic.twitter.com/gHLOKZExg1
The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.
To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”
Holster ran down the HRC’s numbers in this twitter thread:
Long story short – like iron ore, Big Left wants to take the raw material of intra-relationship and street violence, and try to refine it into yet another social grievance to keep the ignorant and uncritical in a hot lather.
It’s come up on the blog before – I wasn’t a big Jimmy Carter fan. The consequences of Carter’s one term in office played a disproportionate role in my becoming a conservative in the first place.
He’s garnered a lot of hagiography for his philanthropic work over the past 40 years or so – and earned a few brickbats for his dingbat contributions to foreign policy. Like President, lie Ex-President.
But there’s a throwback aspect to Carter that we could use more of; the idea that political opponents weren’t entirely sub-human.
The family of his late wife Rosalynn did something I can’t imagine a lot of Democrats, and even a few Republicans, doing today:
“Rosalynn Carter’s family said she specifically wanted Melania Trump to know she was invited to the service. In a time of division, she hoped all the first ladies would join in a show of solidarity as her farewell tribute,” per @marycjordan: https://t.co/l8wtkzdrsX
I’ve most certainly gotten cynical over the years. I’m not alone – the funerals of Paul Wellstone and George Floyd certainly set the bar for public funerals, and set it very, very low.
You’re at a show – from a club gig to an area show – and you watch the musicians doing their thing, and the thought crosses your mind; “What if (fill in a member of the band) were to keel over in a faint right now, and the band called for someone in the audience who knew the material, and I jumped on stage and totrally rocked it“?
Yeah, I’ve had that. At a Springsteen or Asbury Jukes or Richard Thompson or Warren Zevon or Gear Daddies or Los Lobos gig, thinking “If Nils or Gary Thompson or Pete Zorn or David Landau or Cesar or whoever the guitar player is gets the flu and faints away, I could jump up there and totally take over!”
It remains a fantasy for almost everyone. 1
Almost.
It was 50 years ago last Friday, every musician’s fantasy came true, for one Scot Halpin, of Muscatine Iowa, who’d been living in the Bay Area for about a year.
He was at a Who show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.
After playing an hour and a half, Keith Moon – the Who’s manic drummer – passed out behind the drum kit. Roadies revived him after another song or two, before he passed out again.
The rest of the band – singer Roger Daltrey, bass player John Entwistle and guitar player Pete Townsend, continued for another song (“See Me, Feel Me”) without a drummer.
Then, Townsend asked the crowd if anyone could play the drums. Halpin’s friend ignored the fact that Halpin hadn’t touched a drum kit in the year since he’s left Iowa, and got the attention of a roadie, who got the attention of promoter Bill Graham. And one thing led to another.
When Townshend called out, “Can anyone play the drums?” Halpin and Danese were already at theedge of the stage.
“And my friend starts saying to the security guard, `He can play,’ ” Halpin says. In truth, he hadn’tplayed in a year, but that didn’t slow the braggart Danese, who made such a commotion thatpromoter Bill Graham appeared. “He just looked at me and said, `Can you do it?’ ” Halpin doesn’trecall his answer, but Danese assured Graham that he could.
“The story was that I stepped out from in front of the stage, but that’s not what happened,” Halpinsays. “Townshend and Daltrey look around and they’re as surprised as I am,” he says, “becauseGraham put me up there.”
With a shot of brandy for his nerves, Halpin shook hands with Townshend, then sat down at his firstdrum set since he left Iowa, in front of 13,500 critics. “I get onto the stool. Was it still warm? Whoknows. I’m in complete shock,” Halpin says. “Then I got really focused, and Townshend said tome, `I’m going to lead you. I’m going to cue you.’
“I’m laying down the beat. They’re doing all their `Live at Leeds’ kind of stuff, and then I don’tremember what happened. I guess I played a couple more songs. It was such a weird experience.”
The bootleg reveals that Halpin drummed through the traditional “Smokestack Lightning” and”Naked Eye,” from “Odds and Sods,” closing with the anthem “My Generation.” He wasonstage for about 15 minutes. “I played long enough with them that no one booed and no one threwanything at the stage,” he says.
After the show, Halpin got to party with the band backstage; Daltrey gave Halpin kudos in the press later – and bootleg tapes showed that he did a decent job. And he won a special, one-time-only “Best Pickup Player Of The Year” award in Rolling Stone‘s critics’ poll at the end of the year.
And until his death fifteen years ago of an inoperable brain tumor, he was probably the luckiest pickup drummer in history.
1 As it largely has for me. Although in the summer of ’18, I went to a show at the Seventh Street Entry making the 40th Anniversary of Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, with a Springsteen tribute band, “Tramps Like Us” (possibly now defunct, more’s the pity – and if it’s for lack of a guitar player, have their people call my people). They did a good show, by the way. But they were doing “Something In The Night”, one of the more obscure deep cuts on the record, and the lead singer was flloundering for the words. And I was singing along at the foot of the stage, so rather incredibly, he handed me the mic and I finished out the last verse for him. Not exactly pinch-hitting for David Hidalgo on “Will The Wolf Survive”, but it was fun, and I thank that lead singer, whoever he was…
Nothing suspicious there. Or here, for that matter.
The fact that the media isn’t covering it isn’t so much “suspicious” as it is “predictable”. The Strib, MPR News and all the rest are nothing but PR flaks for the DFL.
Someone claiming to be MN State Senator Grant Hauschild posted this on TWitter yesterday:
Proud to join our @HermantwnHawks Teachers this morning as they advocate for fair wages & better family insurance. Our Teachers are some of the most important public servants in our communities, standing behind them when they need it should be easy #mnleg@EducationMN@MNAFLCIOpic.twitter.com/orKc8Y9cc1
This must be a Russian hoax. Hauschild,and the rest of the DFL caucus in the legislature, to say nothing of the Flanagan/Klink Administration, spent the whole first half of summer high-fiving each other over “fully funding education” (in between selfies of grinning legislators stuffing donuts and corn dogs in each others mouths).
Now, they never, not once, explained what that meant.
For that matter, the term has vanished from the DFL’s chanting points since about Bastille Day.
One of the great lessons Don Vogel taught me when I was working as his call screener was that there are four types of callers on radio talk shows;
Boring callers: People whose calls, mostly agreeing with you, didn’t help the show go anywhere. Inexperienced hosts figured having someone on the air was better than nothing – but an experienced host doesn’t need callers – and can do better than the boring ones. Don wanted me to politely turn them down.
Average callers: Regular people making regular points. Put them on as time permits.
Crazy callers: They’re a crapshoot. Sometimes crazies kill the mood. Sometimes, they accelerate it. They’re a judgment call – one of the things that separates a good call screener from someone who just takes calls and types names into a computer.
Great callers: The ones who had great points, and made them in a way that didn’t just help the flow of the show, but improved it. “Get them on all the time, every one”, Don said. It’s harder than it sounds. Was I any good? Well, I learned to pick out Tommy Mischke’s voice when he was still “The Phantom Caller”, and got him to the front of the queue every time he called – which played a solid role in launching his career. So yeah. I was good. Sometimes.
“Mark from Saint Louis Park” was one of the great callers over the past decade or so at AM1280. How great? He’s the only regular caller I’ve ever written an obit for [1].
We got word on Saturday that Mark – real name Mark Rice – had passed away. I met only met Mar in person once, but even face to face I recognized his voice instantly.
Mark’s incisive intelligence and keen understanding of whatever the conversation was about made him a standout caller, even when he occasionally disagreed with us. “When Mark from SLP calls, just put him on the call board”, we told our producers. No need to screen him, having him on the air always made the show better.
Mark was one of the few regular callers that was a subject of conversation off the air himself. That may not sound like a big deal; trust me, it is.
My condolences and prayers for all his friends and family, from all his radio fans. He is missed.
[1] I’ve long since lost track of “Steve from Roseville” of my KSTP days, who popped up as “Steve from Plymouth” once on the NARN in probably 2006. He’d be the other one to rate a full blown memorial.
North Dakotans, being gloriously well-armed and with a state government run by smart people ,will have all sorts of pulled pork (and, given these pigs reportedly yield a fairly bland meat, likely come up with some great recipes).
Minnesotans in CE7 and CD8 – the northern half of the state – will try to kill some hogs. But Metro “environmentalists”, claiming the “erasure” of “undocumented potential DFL voters”, will appeal to Keith Ellison, who will promptly file an injunction citing a battle against “MAGA White Supremacy”.
Canadians, being largely disarmed, will remain under cover, get eaten by hogs, or prosecuted by the Trudeau (who is no way, no how Fidel Castro’s son) regime.
Also – condolences to the family of Mark Rice, aka “Mark from Saint Louis Park”, a long-time regular caller, and one of the few that the producers were told to always let on the air, because he always added great stuff to the show.
To me, they all like the came from IKEA, and appear to have been designed to work as button icons on Android phones, but…
OK, Minnesota here are your six state flag finalists. They can tweak any of these designs, but one will eventually be picked as the basis for the final flag. pic.twitter.com/ZEnTdiWhOE
…the one on top, and the bottom right, offend me the least.
But let’s be honest – if on July 2 1863 the First Minnesota Regiment had gone into action behind any of these flags, Lee would have ended up sacking DC, NYC and Boston within a few weeks.
And the crop improved a bit from the semi-finalists:
Not sure if the committee noticed how redolent a flag with a five-pointed star would be of a Soviet, Nork or Red Chinese flag, or were anticipating the avalanche of jokes and not-so-jokes if they picked a flag that looked like, uh…
…the flag of Somalia.
Which seemed to have inspired a prett, er, impressive number of the original 2,600 submissions.
The comments have been off for, if I’m counting right, two weeks.
I’ve missed them. Well, most things about them.
I’m going to bring them back.
But there will be some changes.
Call Me “Pollyanna”. Once. As I pointed out last week, the goals of the comment section, like the blog itself if you think about it, are:
To have debate (where debate is needed) without a whole lot of regard for what the various parties feel about the issue…
While observing some standards in the argument – the basics of human respect, not to mention logic and social decorum.
If I want a barroom brawl, I’ll go to a bar. And since I got more than my fill of that kind of bar in my 20s, and of online universes that act the same way without the fun of girls and booze, it’s safe to say my cup has long since run over in that department.
Debate. Argue. But treat each other with basic respect, which means if you don’t respect someone, and feel the need to express it especially directly…
…don’t.
Take it elsewhere.
Maybe take it to Twitter, and have your ire swallowed up in the frothing sea of it. Or try your luck with Facebook’s censorship. Come up with things worth discussing. Perhaps start a blog, or other online outlet of your own, and build yourself an audience. Let them debate in your comment section any way you want to. See how it goes.
It’s a free-ish country.
Stick. Otherwise?
If you make a habit of threadjacking, or especially obnoxious dick-measuring, I’ll mark your comments as “spam”.
Which means your future comments will go into the spam queue until I get a chance to look ’em over. All of them. .
Which means a couple of things:
As we’ve seen in this comment section over the past couple of years, not only do I not have a lot of time or energy to spend on playing comment police, I don’t want to. Your comments may just stay in the mod queue forever. I’ll try to stay on top of things – but there’s no guarantee stated or implied. So just don’t do it.
Given that my spam moderation tool (“Aismet”) has gotten more opaque and automated over the years, it’s entirely possible I”ll never see your comments. I honestly don’t know. And if it gets to that point, I’m OK with that.
Unreasonable? Nah. Not for grownups.
So – if you’ve got it in your head that you want to try to change the subject in the comments, and make a practice of it (you know who you are)? You can’t. So don’t.
If your go-to is volume? Volume is for guitars and cars. Not arguments.
Carrot? I”ll be re-opening comments on Monday.
No, not today. The “rules” aren’t really open for debate.
So I’m going to say something that is considered racially rude, but I’m sick of the bullshit.
Conquest without morality was the rule of all peoples and nations until a couple of hundred years ago. Only in the very recent past has morality become a major consideration in warfare.
And the people most responsible for adding moral considerations to the law of conquest were… Europeans.
People pushing the Victim Narrative pretend that their ancestors were morally superior to their conquerors. In fact, they were not. Their ancestors conquered everyone they could conquer. The Comanche Empire conquered other Indian tribes, which is why Indian tribes allied with the American government to fight the Comanches.
If Indians had advanced shipbuilding, navigation, and steel-working, they would have conquered Europe.
Native Americans’ ancestors did not refuse to do this because they were more moral. They didn’t do it because they simply couldn’t do it. They were not superior in morality; they were simply inferior in technology.
And all of this endless bullshit whining about generations-old conquests is just a nasty cope.
You’ve heard of “Victor’s Justice,” in which the winner of a war can vindictively set the terms for peace…? Well we live now in an age of Loser’s Justice, when the losers of the war can, somehow, endlessly torment the great-great-great-grandchildren of the winners of their ancestors having won in war.
And we’re sick of it, and we’re done with it. We never point this out, because we don’t want to upset people who are clearly insecure about their ancestors’ failures. Who wants to pick on the fat kid?
But by not shutting this bullshit down, we have invited endless demands on us. Endless reparations and payoffs, endless “land acknowledgements,” endless affirmative action programs, endless demands for apologies (which are endlessly offered, and endlessly rejected as insufficient), endless demands we change our lives to “honor” people we don’t even fucking know, endless demands we “center” other people and endlessly think about what we owe complete fucking strangers.
Enough. Enough.
The fact that my ancestors were good at war is no credit to me. I can’t take racial credit for what people that lived 200 years ago did.
But neither do I have to take responsibility for the actions of ghosts.
And the fact that some people’s ancestors were bad at war is not a credit card with no limits entitling the bearers to make endless demands on others.
I’m done with walking around eggshells because some people just cannot get over their distant ancestors having been shit at fighting.
***
Could not agree more. The last man to have clear title to land was Adam, and he lost it when he got evicted for breaking the terms of his lease. Everyone after him has title-by-right-of-conquest (nowadays called “adverse possession” by lawyers and “colonizer” by activists) including Noah, who didn’t do his own slaying but moved into a world where his patron had slain everyone for him.
Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park
I would like to throw in a claim for my Viking ancestors and their history of fomenting what we now call democracy, along with their incredible facility at conquest.
But I can’t, because justice, the sins of the fathers are not visited on the sons, either their achievements.
I was on the road, driving somewhere the other day when the notion of listing the things for which I’m grateful popped up. I started trying to list them all – and the list only really came to an end when the car stopped, far too soon, at my destination.
So what the heck – I’m just going to start a stream of consciousness list of things for which I’m grateful on this, our country’s festival of thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for my family, and my family in law. Looking back over the past twenty years since I’ve been writing about all of us, there are so many ways things could have turned out differently, and much worse – but yet here we all are, and things are all right.
And I’m thankful for the family I grew up in – my sister and my brother, of course, and my father, who is blessedly still with us. And for my mother, who we’re spending our second Thanksgiving without, this year. And as I noted back last spring, I’m profoundly grateful for one of the greatest gifts my mother and father gave us all – boring, non-remarkable childhoods, free of the sort of pointless, mindless drama that has always afflicted less fortunate families, and that a certain segment of society has taken to celebrating these days.
The more families I get to know, the luckier I know we all were, and are.
So for Bun, Zam, Syd, Watermelon, and of course Barb, Jim and Dad, I’m happily thankful.
Oh yeah – and Pickle, the cat. I lost him last summer – one of those cancers that hits cats like tornados out of the blue. I’m thankful to have had eight years with the best cat ever.
Beyond just family, I’ve had some people who affected my life pretty immensely, mostly positively. I wrote about a bunch of them last month – and the more I wrote, the more people and events and priceless gifts of influence I thought of.
So for them, all of them, I’m grateful.
I’m thankful for the career I have. I blundered into it 25. years ago, more out of boredom with my short career writing instruction manuals – and yet after all this time, I still look forward to going into the office every day, literally or virtually.
I’m grateful in particular for the job I have with the company I’m at. Not naming names – but it’s a place I genuinely enjoy being, with people I genuinely enjoy working with. There aren’t many places where a UX designer with a BA in English could land on two engineering patents. For that story alone, I’m exceedingly thankful.
I’m grateful for the path I took to get there – all its myriad chicanes and hairpin turns. Starting in radio at 15, burning out on it when I was 21, getting back at 22, out again at 25, nightclub DJing, technical writing, and the various twists and turns that got me here.
At the very least, there are a lot of stories to bore my kids stiff with.
On the other hand, every once in a while I can offer someone a perspective they don’t have. And that is a great feeling. For both of us, I think.
I’ve become keenly aware in recent years that there are people who’ve been very important at one time or another, that I will likely never see again. The time for chance serendipity random encounters gets shorter every year. So one thing I didn’t expect, but for which I’m intensely grateful – my show and blog and, to an extent, social media have led me back into contact with a lot of people I likely wouldn’t have via the normal course of random encounters – high school and college classmates who tune in, and occasionally shout out on my show’s various social media feeds. In three particular cases – my college friend Ray Zentz, and my high school and colleg4e classmates Eric DeMar and Pennie Werth – they passed away, very unexpectedly, and (gulp) way too young. And in this past couple of course, I’ve been blessed to have had at least some contact with each of them, while I still could.
And for my many friends who are still with us, and who I do get to see and hang out with? Yes, I’m even more thankful for each and every one of you!
It’s easy enough to say “I’m thankful to be healthy”, and it’s true. But in the five years since my crash weight loss I’ve become humbly aware that most guys who spend as many years sedentary and overweight as I did, aren’t nearly as lucky as I am, to be as relatively healthy, after all that, as I am. I got another warning last spring – I’d found a little under half the weight I lost in 2018, and had to get back on the program – and it worked, again. I’m very aware I’m as lucky as can be. “I’m healthy” is, in this case, delivered with a bit of “whew – close call” as a happy nod. And for that, I’m thankful.
Back to a bit of nostalgia – I’m thankful for my entire high school class. I can’t say I’m friends with everyone in the Jamestown High School Class of 1981 – but this past couple of reunions have blessed me with a deeper appreciation of quite a few people who, between cliques and crowds and circumstances I barely knew in the day, with whom I’ve spent more time over a few drinks at reunions than we ever did in high school, and intensely glad for the opportunity.
I’m glad I got the education I did. It’s become the fashion these days among a certain crowd of conservatives to dunk on the modern college education – and from what I see among 20-and-30-somethings today, there’s something to it – but my BA in English has served me far better than I’d ever thought it could when I graduated from college. It taught me how to think, reason, look for the question behind the question, for the additional questions that every answer launches.
I’m grateful that this version of the RIchard Thompson Band released this version of this day-appropriate song:
Perhaps a bit less ethereally? I’m so happy to have a band again. Oh, it’s just a classic rock cover band – it’s not the flaming-hot passionate “mission in life” vibe the twenty-some me wore back in the 1980s, when I took my swing at being a rock star, or at least a songwriter, producer and whatever else came my way. But I get to play guitar in front of rooms full of people who seem to enjoy it. And even if it’s a slow night at an out of the way bar, my Fitbit says I burn 6-7000 calories and rack up a zillion steps, so even then it’s a win-win.
Anyway – for that, I’m thankful.
Given the sturm und drang of this state and nation’s political scene, I’m deliriously grateful for the voice this blog, and the NARN, have given me over the years. On the one hand, social media have given everyone a voice, of sorts – and what people have done with that voice is another entire subject. But being able to do this on my own terms (within FCC and Salem Communications rules, natch) for all this time? To the extent I’m still sane, that’s probably why.
Of course, I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made during all these years of writing – Professor Reynolds, Gary Gross, Joshua Sharf, Sheila O’Malley, and the group of local bloggers that, about this time 19 years ago, started coalescing into that radio show: Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, Brian Ward, Chad the Elder, Atomizer, Michael Brodkorb, and of course Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Brad Carlson and Jack Tomczak. And of course, for the many friends I made in the “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers” days – including the three whose contributions still bless this blog, Mr. D, Jeff Kouba and First Ringer.
Why, yes – even Paddyboy! I’m thankful that Pad – someone I’ve considered a friend for over three decades, and to whom I owe an odd little debt of gratitude from back before the word “blog” meant anything but something that happened about an hour after you ate a gas station burrito – drops by, pique and all. I owe you a drink or two. Have your people call my people.
And I’m thankful for this little ephemeral bit of internet I’ve been wrangling this past 20.75 years. It’s been a sporty year – as I write this, the comment section is still shut down. And since you mention it, yes – I’m thankful I shut it down. It’ll be back. Yep – also grateful.
As I noted elsewhere around the time of the 20th anniversary, writing this every weekday morning has been sort of a Zen-like lesson – come rain or shine, feast or famine, writer’s block or fit of logorrhea, the exercise of sitting down and writing, five mornings a week, has been a way of centering myself for this past two decades. For better or worse – I have to think it’s better – one of the great takeaways from doing this has been, I think, one of the great lessons of life; keep plugging away, and things eventually explain themselves.
Of course, I’m profoundly and humbly thankful that people still choose to read it, after all this time. Thank you all!
I could keep at this for hours more. And perhaps one day I should. But cooking calls, same as last year.
And so to borrow a line from that first Thanksgiving post on this blog, way back when:
But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.
Thanks to all of you. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.
This post is an update of a post I wrote last year. Not much has changed – for which I’m also grateful.
We’ll start with this thread on Twitter. I urge you to read the whole thing; it distills the response I have to the modernes attempt to cheapen and undercut everything Western Civilization stands for into a hot red crystal of truth:
Okay, let's have a little Truthsgiving.
You're a bunch of ungrateful, entitled, self righteous pricks who do nothing but tear at the foundation of a nation that allows people like you to bitch and complain while offering no workable solutions or add anything of value. https://t.co/QtMZBmx1Oo
— Dr Strangetweet or How I Learned to Love the RT (@lone_rides) November 21, 2023
To: Governor Wilhelm Walz, Co-Governor, State of Minnesota From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant Re: Hungry For The Truth
Governor,
You tweeted this yesterday:
We just announced $5 million in new funding to address food insecurity across the state ahead of the holidays.
As we continue working to lower costs and make life easier for Minnesotans, we’re making sure our state’s food banks can keep helping families put food on the table.
And yet your administration and the DFL majorities in the Legislature told us that Minnesota’s economy was doing better than ever, that “Bidenomics” was not a bitter joke whose self-induced inflation was no way no how hurting poor and working class people worse than the general population, and that the actions of this past session were going to reduce poverty by 30%.
If any of that were true, food banks wouldn’t be seeing unprecedented demand – would they?
“Public is to art as it is to rest rooms” — PJ O’Rourke, I think.
Among the less overtly but more insidiously stupid things the DFL controlled legislature sent the state chasing after this past session was redesigning the state flag.
The choice is such that some have suggested we, alone among states, need two, seasonal flags. Now. as a North Dakota native, the idea that Minnesota’s seasons are radical enough to warrant separate is worth a laugh or two…
…but I see a case for multiple flags.
In fact, I think it’s going to end up looking like this:
The flags of the four powers that are eventually going to be forced to move in and liberate Minnesota, and partition it untli it’s De-DFLified.
One of my great strengths is I’m a very loyal person. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll stick with you – sometimes to absurd lengths.
One of my great weaknesses is I’m a very loyal person. I’ve stuck with some friendships, and other relationships, that didn’t deserve it. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll take a lot of fairly pointless and demeaning abuse on what my inner critic thinks is “principle”, but is really more equal parts inertia, a childhood of not having a lot of close frieends, and excessive self-doubt (as noted by others).
A great example was the long-gone and utterly unlamented “Dog Gone”. She’d been a social acquaintance, even a friend of sorts, going back to the ’80s. She’d known my kids when they were babies. And when she turned up on the blog, a few years later, I figured “good – let’s see what happens”.
We all know how that turned out.
I mean, things started out OK.
And then, as the wheels slowly wobbled off, I figured “Dogs are gonna Dog”.
For a while, it devolved to the fact I just enjoyed watching the smart people in the comments curb-stomping her, week after week – although as her “technique” degenerated into “pooping and running”, that fun didn’t last long.
Finally, of course, she used her 20+ year old contact with my family to take a deeply bizarre and very personal swipe at me. Something so over the top, so biliously narcissistic that even I had enough.
That arc took about a decade.
Because loyalty is wasted on some people.
No, that’s not accurate. It’s more true to say I waste loyalty on some people.
I’m not going to say that changed me, particularly – “Dog Gone” wasn’t a close friend, and jettisoning that fairly peripheral relationship had no effect on my life or how I live it.
But it’s a bit of a cue that I have a tendency to misallocate loyalty.
I had a long drive over the weekend. I spent it listening to Jordan Peterson.
I caught an excellent episode with Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. It’s a sprawling 97 minute discussion of everything conservatism is, everything it should be, where it falls short, how to make up the difference…
Here’s the episode:
…and, toward the beginning, a concept I’ve been struggling to put my finger on.
The topic was the American university’s new obsession with “safety”, especially intellectual safety. A higher education is, as Peterson notes, supposed to upset one’s adolescent stupidity, and thereby teach you how to think critically about all your, and everyone’s, preconceptions.
Roberts pointed out that in the traditional University system – especially in Europe – the goals are:
To have an intense, probing debate without a whole lot of regard for what the various parties feel about the issue…
…while observing some standards in the argument – the basics of human respect, not to mention logic and social decorum.
Now, call me a dreamer, but that’s what I’ve always shot for on this blog, and in the comments.
We’ll come back to that.
I’ve had plenty of feedback about the disabled comment section. I do appreciate it. I miss having it turned on as well.
It’ll be back.
But in this past week, I’ve done a bunch of thinking.
As I pointed out last week, I’ve always treated “managing” the comments with a certain amount of idealism. Pragmatic idealism – I also barely have enough free time to read the comments, much less play manager – but idealism nonetheless.
I figured “we’re all adults”. I asked a bunch of adults, respectfully, to mind their manners and treat each other with the same basic respect.
It didn’t seem like that big an ask at the time. And for about 20 years, I was mostly right.
And, let’s be honest – this blog is more a personal exercise in self-discipline and thought-development than “citizen journalism”, to say nothing of a money-making venue. I’ve been amazed to have an audience for a couple of decades, now – and, yes, blessed. Much of what I genuinely like about my life, particularly my social life, springs from the connections this blog started for me.
I figured the input should match the output.
But there’s been more than enough output for me to make it worth making things work.
The report, conducted by the Cato Institute, showed that New York ranked last place among the 50 states for 2022 policies that impacted economic, social, and personal freedoms.
New York ranked 50th for economic freedom and scored at or near the bottom for debt and state and local taxation, government consumption, land use and labor policy.
“Heeeeeyyyyyy – the study is by the Cato Institute! They’re biased toward freedom!”
We live in a world where that can be seen as a pejorative.
As Don Surber notes, suddenly everyone’s an expert on Argentina.
We’ll come back to that.
Libertarian-Conservative Javier Milei crushed his center-left opponent, showing Argentina’s crushing dissatisfaction with over a decade of center-to-far-left politics.
“A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
“Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56% of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
“Trump also congratulated Milei. ‘I am very proud of you,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. ‘You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!’”
Don Surber’s response – “don’t anoint him yet, but the vote matters more than the candidate – isn’t wrong at all.
But he adds:
I don’t recall Argentina being great before but diplomacy requires a certain suspension of reality. It’s the 1970s chant of I’m OK, You’re OK updated for international relations. I’m Great Again, You’re Great Again.
Thing is, Argentina was, if not “great”, at least doing really, really well not that terribly long ago:
Reminder that Argentina was once one of the richest nations on Earth and a rival of the U.S. – hence the well-known phrase, "as rich as an Argentine".
Incredible facts about the Argentinian economy in the early 20th century:
As Paul Johnson pointed out in Modern Times, socialism – in this case, populist socialism in the form of Juan and Eva Peron – happened. Argentina went from relative wealth to decay and authoritarianism, and all it got was a lousy musical.
Huh – a great political entity that got sucked into a vortex of authoritarianism, stagnancy and decay by leftists who just kept winning elections?
