Black ghettos are a Northern not a Southern invention.


Put in the plainest terms, the War of 1861-1865 was an invasion and conquest of the South by fellow Americans in control of the U.S. government—Republicans with no more than 40% support of the American people. It could not and did not save the Union. It turned the Union of the forefathers into something else. It was not a war to free the slaves. That was only an opportunistic move that never took into consideration whatsoever the welfare of African Americans.


Between 1860 and 1890, African Americans suffered a ten-year decline in the span of life and suffered many other declines in their welfare. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.


Satan is real. He is quite active these days in Washington, D.C.


A large proportion of the members of the U.S. Congress are intellectual and morally shallow people whose actions are entirely self-referential and self-serving. Their only interest in the people they are supposed to represent is maintaining their own popularity by federal payoffs of one kind another.


If you look carefully at all the atrocities that have been done to symbols of Confederate heritage, you will find that Southern Republicans have played a major role in the atrocities every time.

Trump is making major gains in support from Hispanic voters. Recent polls indicate that recent immigrants are in favour of limits on new immigration. Something similar is happening in Australia where recent immigrants are among the strongest supporters of immigration limits. What do they know that our rulers don’t?

If you think the Dark State is going to allow a free and fair Presidential election, I have some nice land in Florida I would like to interest you in. Our only hope is in their general delusionary view of the world and their incompetence. What sensible person would put Kamala near the nuclear phone?

Many Americans seem to believe that we are a great democratic, peace loving, benevolent country. It takes an above average attention and perception to understand that “America” is a decaying empire.

Tocqueville in the 1800s and Solzhenitsyn in the 1900s pointed out that Americans (meaning the Yankee breed) were conformists and strong believers in their own virtue and superiority. We are now living through the inevitable collapse of the Yankee Empire established at Appomattox.

Unusual experience. On the TV ads the other evening I actually saw an all-white family.

For several decades, testosterone levels, IQ, and Christian faith have been declining in the U.S. Not a good sign for a country that thinks it’s Number 1.

The illegal alien “refugees” that U.S. and European governments are allowing into our countries, are mostly military age males.

America’s rulers care far more about the welfare of illegal aliens than they do about yours. After all, you are only one of the “deplorables” while they are noble examples of democracy at work. Southerners shouldn’t mind---we are very used to being “deplorables.”

The everyday world into which I was born and have lived most of my life is disappearing. This codger finds it frustrating and disagreeable. So much for a peaceful old age.

I recently made the mistake of making a phone call about a computer issue. I spent the next day and a half attached to the phone, straining to understand Hindu gibberish from five different people, some of who thought I was their servant. With long waits in between. I finally canceled the whole thing, never having received any answer to my problem.

I recently learned that my local heating and air conditioning firm, with whom I had a long and happy association, is now owned by a Texas corporation, as are now most of the other such firms in my South Carolina town. I started receiving bills for advance payments for services months in the future with threats for non-payment. Contacting Texas by phone I realized that I was dealing with crooks who tried piling on thousands of dollars in bills for services never received.

Believe it or not, my local trash collection is now owned by a Canadian company that I find it impossible to deal with usefully either by phone or online. I am sure many people are having the same experience of pushing through an endless line of recorded choices, picking the one that sounds most likely, and getting to the end to find there is no way to get an answer to your question.

I have decided that I will no longer talk to or take orders from a machine. Should a free American take orders from a machine?

The knockout blow was delivered when my mortgage was sold to another holder. The material I received from the new company included six different addresses in four different States. I sent in my first payment to the most likely address. A few days later I received a call from another one of the offices, rudely threatening with drastic action for a missed payment—a payment which I had already sent. With land letters, email messages, and online efforts I finally got the matter fixed—I think.

I have wearied you already too much, Dear Reader, so I won’t even get into the car insurance fiasco.

All these companies want you to set up an account with them where they have access to your bank account for payments. Not for me.

I recently had to see about turning on the water in a little neighbouring town. I found that one cannot sign up with a phone call in this town. You must sign up either in person or online. The online application is lengthy and overly intrusive and not very clear as to how to proceed.

​I am thinking of selling up, giving everything to the children, and joining a monastery for what remains of my time.

Growing old ain’t much fun but there are certain benefits. 

I don’t have to shave every day. 

I don’t have to sit through faculty meetings, an exquisite torture. 

I no longer bother to shine my shoes. 

I don’t feel required to sit through boring “scholarly lectures.” 

​I seldom need to put on a tie. 

I don’t feel obligated to change my own oil and take care of my own yard.  I don’t worry about weeds in the yard or raking leaves. 

I can answer the many enquiries and requests for help only from those scholars and students I know deserve it. 

When I read internet articles I no longer feel obligated to read  the Comments which with rare exceptions are ignorant and abusive statements made by clueless, obsessed people who never actually do anything but complain. 

​I can enjoy the blessing of adult children and fantastic grandsons. ​

It does not do to be too sympathetic to Muslims. They fight among themselves, seldom help their co-religionists, and (like Americans) are often betrayed by their own leaders. They harbour strong elements of murderous jihad and abominable sharia.

Yet there are many millions of them, they occupy a large swath of the earth’s surface, and their tainted religion does encourage decent behaviour and peace among a lot of otherwise primitive people.

In normal times, they would be U.S. friendly (as they used to be) and happily sell us their oil, without bothering us much. But for more than a half century they have been the victims of serious injury by the U.S. establishment. In Palestine they have been invaded and occupied by foreigners, had their land ruthlessly stolen, been herded into camps, and become second-class inhabitants in a land that has been theirs for centuries. And the invader has harmed the ancient community of Palestinian Christians as badly as the Muslims.

“Terrorism,” though ugly war against the innocent, is a natural response of the weak facing overwhelming power. An overwhelming Israeli power massively subsidized by the U.S. state which for decades has provided Israel with more support than all other countries put together, including the best weapons.

In that circumstance, Hamas takes on the character of the resistance of an occupied people. Now, in response to a military attack, the Palestinians are being driven from their homes and subjected to a massacre of women and children. Is this war, or simply war used as an excuse for something long desired by the ruling power?

Can any decent American doubt that this an evil thing for which we ought to expect the wages of sin? Can any decent American fail to condemn the suffering on the innocent? A few lonely American voices who have questioned our position have been quickly silenced. Our establishment is callously, and sometimes in a celebratory mode, cheering on this evil. What ever happened to what so many thought of as our benevolent national character and sympathy for the underdog?

The Republicans are the worst of all. They complain about Palestinians protesting on our own soil, although they have abetted mass immigration for decades. The newly-elected Republican leader in the House of Representatives says that he is supporting Israel because he is a Christian. Intelligent people who want to can cause a lot of evil. But we should remember that stupid people are capable of terrible evil also without even knowing what they are doing.

Mr. Lovett has provided us with useful commentary on this site on the situation, including suggestions for reading. I can add that there in fact quite a few movies sympathetic to the occupied Palestinians, usually made by Europeans.

I’ll suggest two that have moved me. They came out around 2008 before the current troubles. Neither is the least shrill or militant. They are quiet and gentle in portraying the life of occupied Palestinians.

Laila’s Birthday might be called “A Day in the Life of a Palestinian.” A taxi driver, struggling for a living in an occupation well below his educational level, is trying to find a gift and a cake for his daughter’s birthday. In addition to the normal problems of daily life, he faces the normal abnormal realities of explosions, checkpoints, and routine humiliation. His experience is almost a classic odyssey.

The Lemon Tree, based on a real event, is a poignant account of the tribulations of a Palestinian woman. Her lemon tree, her only inheritance and living, is targeted for destruction by the Israeli army, who declare it a threat to “state security” because it blocks a short section of their view. The victimised lead character is a Palestinian lady. She has a maturely beautiful and subtly expressive face such as we associate with great actresses. No civilised human can fail to be moved.

With the recent court decision in New York, the U.S. has entered a new era on its downward path to destruction.

Trump’s sentencing on absurd technical “crimes” that harmed nobody is scheduled just before the meeting of the Republican presidential nominating convention. Nobody with “two grains of sense to rub together” (as Grandmother used to say) thinks that is unplanned.

The Republican elite may very well use Trump’s “felonies” as an excuse to repudiate their most popular candidate and their voters and give the country a “respectable” ticket - one of them. We are hearing of Nikki Haley as a Vice-President - a ridiculous opportunist who has never done one constructive thing but who is a darling of the Republican wing of the Dark State.

Assuming Trump is allowed to run, it is possible that with multiple candidates the decision will be thrown into the House of Representatives. This will give the Republican elite another opportunity to collaborate with the Left and block Trump. That is what they always do. It m atters not to them that they trash their most popular candidate. He is not one of their posed “respectable,” moderates.

Meanwhile, the Republican leaders in the Senate and House declare giving money to the corrupt Ukrainian government is America’s greatest challenge at the moment. It is hard to tell whether they are that stupid, blinded inside the D.C. bubble, or whether they are merely lying to keep their “respectability.”

People are always complaining that the Dark State gets away with everything it wants. Why? The answer is simple. There is no opposition. The Republicans are not a political party but merely an electoral machine for those who benefit from it. They are certainlynot an Opposition party. Any one of a hundred top Democrats could be prosecuted for crimes greater than Trump’s. But the Republican leadership has no interest in doing right. Their concern is to keep their moderate and respectable stance. Perhaps they are now badly miscalculating the situation.

The most positive thing that can come out of the pending debacle will be the collapse and destruction of the Republican party in its present form - perhaps allowing the emergence of a genuine Opposition party.

I have never been enthusiastic about Trump, but have given him the benefit of the doubt as the only game in town. His moral transgressions are more publicised but probably behind him and less than most politicians and rich men. A wise man once told me that you can evaluate a politician by looking at his children. Trump scores high on that measure, compared with Biden or any other national figure I can think of.

He is a genuine American type, not one I admire, but at least he is the real thing, and unlike any other national figure, capable of good, old-fashioned straight talk. Every attempt to stop him results in an increase in his support and donations. I have to admit that my level of enthusiasm has been declining lately.

​I am disappointed in some of his possible appointees that are mentioned, but that may just be empty speculation. I am even more disappointed in his callous support of Israeli genocide. I would like to think that he has learned something since his last term and stolen re-election and will actually be able to make some progress in draining the Swamp. But that is just a hope, not a certainty.

As an American, why should I be involved in a war between Israelis and Arabs in a distant part of the world? Especially since the Arabs in this case have done us little harm. Those who did us the most harm were from our “ally” Saudi Arabia.
As an American, why should I be involved in a border war between Russia and Ukraine?
As an American, why should I be involved in subverting the legitimate government of Syria? Allegedly for “democracy” but actually to suppress Christians and bring into power the Islamic jihadists who damaged us severely not long ago.
As an American, why should my representatives be trying to force a sodomite agenda in countries around the world?
Congresspersons waving Ukrainian flags on the House floor as they voted is stupid and treasonable. What would Washington or any American before recent times think of this?
It has recently been revealed that two generals were ready to ignore President Trump’s orders on the morning of January 6. One of them said it made him sick to think of Trump being President again. This official’s personal feelings allow him to disregard legal orders, a court-martial offense. There are now no soldiers at the top of the armed forces, only childish bureaucrats.
He was able to do this because everybody he knows in his power position feels the same way. They think they belong to a wise and righteous elite that is entitled to disregard law when their petty emotions are invoked. Especially since they all share six-figure salaries which they mistakenly believe they deserve.
That is the way we are governed now, by emotions. Illegal aliens are allowed in by the millions because liberals don’t like not being nice to people. We can’t hurt their feelings by telling them they can’t vote. (And because Republicans have always favoured cheap labour, one of their few consistent policies.) It is OK to steal elections because it rewards minorities against past discrimination. The poor suffering murderer who does not want to be executed excites sympathy from such people. The victim deprived of life is gone and no longer in their attention.
Emotional responses to public questions always involve short-sighted and self-referential perspectives. Republicans rail against Palestinian immigrants while voting for mass immigration for the last 50 years.
Bush, our first Trotskyite President, blabs meaningless emotional blather like “new world Order” while conniving to bring about illegal, falsely justified, and failed wars.
They are now pumping up hostility to China. It is true that China is expansive and has acquired some leverage over us. However, every advantage they enjoy results from what our government and Big Business gave them at the expense of Americans.
But the "hate Russia" posture of our Establishment is, alas, emotional only in its popular propaganda. It is deeply cynical and exploitive.
Why should we be taught to hate Russia? Such hatred has no relationship to any genuine American interest.
The fall of the Soviet Union was one of the most glorious events in history. It promised a future of peaceful association, a lessening of conflict all over the world, and a tremendous downsizing of dangerous and expensive military. It was even thought that American taxpayers would get a wonderful “peace dividend.” (I am still waiting.)
How did U.S. leaders greet this opportunity for peace? Neoliberals and neoconservatives sent supposed experts to handle transition from the Communist economy. The result was the creation of crooked oligarchs who looted Russia’s resources on a gigantic scale, creating massive public discontent with the Western-engineered new regime.
We are now told to hate Russia. Why? Because corrupt capitalists have been curtailed? Because the country is enjoying a revival of real Russian nationalism and Christianity? Because many Americans are unable to recover from the enmity of the Cold War? Because some influential Americans have a visceral hate of Russia that has nothing to do with American or world interest? Because the military/industrial complex is far too profitable and powerful to suffer any reduction?
The U.S. is now more heavily armed and involved around the world (often clandestinely) than it was in the Cold War, and is becoming an unpopular imperial regime. Who is responsible for this, and why are they doing it?
Whatever happened to the idea that the federal government was “to provide for the common defense”?

Can Donald Trump be inaugurated as President next January? It appears that he has a majority of the voters in a majority of States. However, the Dark State is determined he will not return to the White House, and they already have perfected the art of stealing elections. Preventing election fraud will have to overcome the courts, the media, and the Republican “mainstream” leadership. It is a big job that nobody may be ready for. These are not normal times.

The Republican elite cares nothing for the grassroots and never have. They destroyed Goldwater’s chances even before he was nominated. They successfully controlled Reagan. They wrecked Trump’s administration and re-election and there is no evidence that they will not do so again.

In an interview, Tuck Carlson hinted to Trump about the possibility of assassination. Trump properly dodged the hint but such a thing cannot be ruled out because the Democratic party and its street thugs are now in full Leninist mode. Thus he must be very careful about the Vice-Presidential choice. It must be somebody new, really able, and dedicated to his goals. Appointing a usual empty-suit respectable Republican hack will be fatal, but there will be tremendous party pressure to do so.

Being inaugurated will be just the beginning of the crisis. It appears that Trump has learned something about personnel since his first failure. He will have to find very good, dedicated, smart people if any reform is to succeed. It will require massive knowledge and effort in all parts of the federal machine to make any headway at all. Such good people are available—but they will need to be identified and placed. It will require massive defiance of the bureaucrats, including ruthless reduction of their power by executive orders and reinterpretation of laws. It may require defiance of corrupt judges.

We can hope that it will give us a downsizing of military commitments. With two phone calls a President Trump can broker an end to the Ukraine war. It will take a little longer to rollback all our worldwide interference in other countries. We cannot expect much improvement in the Middle East. Trump is the most Zionist President we have ever had, although it got him no support.

Wherever possible there will be a need to appoint good prosecuting attorneys. They will also have to be dedicated people. There are countless illegal acts by officials and activist groups in the last 20 years that should be prosecuted. Here again the good people are out there, but they will have to be identified and appointed. All the Soros district attorney criminals below the federal level is another question.

Will a Republican Congress go along with any of this? Or the Supreme Court? Certainly the media, the bureaucrats including the paper generals, and the Democrats, already in full destructive mode, will not. Our prospects of serious reform of the Dark State are small.

​I predict those “interesting times” that sensible people hope to avoid.

Libertarians rightly understand that economic freedom goes along with individual liberty and prosperity. But American libertarians have become, it seems, advocates of a solipsistic individual will and license. The sovereign individual is an imaginary beast that does not exist. Paleolibertarians like Ilana Mercer understand that man lives in a community, the virtues of which are necessary for capitalism and which is his best protection from intrusive government. And such virtues do not fit any and every society.

In this incisive chapter-and-verse exposé of the current American regime, she argues that the state, which now represents a merger of government and large corporations, is presiding over the destruction of American civil society. That is the nature of the touted global economy and global politics.

Mercer’s description of the American economic and social condition will not find disagreement from any Reckonin' reader. “The business of life,” she writes, “ one’s livelihood, and the locality in which one lives and loves - these are the property repositories for conservative loyalties.”

Living standards of the middle and working classes are falling. You would think this would bring the attention of public leaders. Instead they are busy promoting ethnic chaos, genocide, and sodomy here and abroad. The Covid lockdown killed 3.3 million small businesses; the homeless now include more and more families; Deep Tech claims to need to import foreign talent (Republican boilerplate) while firing Americans. Differences in wealth distribution are higher than ever seen in history.

Our leaders don’t seem to see any problem with their ways. They don’t notice catastrophic debt and overextended, wasteful, and incompetent military as problems, despite their contribution to the “aberrant” economy.

Mercer’s treatment of health tyranny, immigration, and outsourcing is informative and hard-hitting. “The free flow of goods across borders is not to be confused with the free flow of people across borders.. . . The very stuff of life has been contracted out. Not mere jobs, but careers; not just some products, but entire production lines; not one or two manufacturing plants, but the means of production.”

The author advocates and illustrates a preference for good old common sense. Common sense was long the undergirding of our Anglo-American law and way of life. Why have so many abandoned it, as in the Covid fraud, for the authority of phony “expertise”?
​
Mercer is always a fun read because of her creative labelling: castrati Republicans, Washington wokerati, FixNews, ConOink, Learjet liberals, bafflegat for bureaucratic and progressive discourse, “Walmart with Missiles” for the present U.S. regime.

Reckonin readers seemed to like my list of things familiar in my youngeryears. Here a some more, for better or worse.

Working men in bib overalls.

Pocket watches and watch chains.

Persimmons

Some people still lived in actual log cabins and log barns were common.

Lots of people in town with chicken coops in their back yards. Some even with goat pens.

Cigarettes (unfiltered) 20 cents a pack. Good cigars 5 cents.

Sweet singing from country Southern Methodist churches.

Sunday family dinners after church, required. That is dinner, not supper.

You had to clean your plate. No food was wasted.

Boys with BB guns.

Well-known and trustworthy neighourhood sheriff’s deputies.

Any man who cared and many who didn’t knew where to get moonshine.

There were actually no fast-food restaurants. Every thing was local. McDonald’s was a sensation that came later.

Cussing was a creative manly art. Now we have only ugly references to bodily functions repeated endlessly and on every occasion by all sexes and ages.

Woods nearby for boys to explore.

Going barefoot in summer.

One new pair of shoes per year.

Girls with skirts.

Local newspapers had locally generated news and editorials and writers with ideas of their own, not canned syndicated “thoughts” and themes.

Playing football in the street. Without any protective equipment.