The 2018 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

"You asked for this lecture, and you're going to get it, good and hard.
These are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have other ones."

In comments to yesterday's offering, Anonymous (presumably, the same one, but bear in mind I have no way whatsoever to tell all of them apart) took the momentary but sincere drubbing of the idea of the State of Jefferson in stride, and suggested the following:

"Now... your suggestions for turning California around? Besides waiting on the San Andreas to do it for us? Those I WOULD actually like to hear. If it's not Jefferson, then what? Giving up a single foot to these carpetbagging liberal fuckwits is not an option."

1) I have doubts that the state can be turned around, nor indeed, ought to be. But I understand the gist of the question you're meaning to ask, which is better stated as
"What do we do, if not invest in silly games and pipe dreams?"
We'll get to that, by and by.

2) The San Andreas is another pipe dream. At current velocity, the date Califrutopia slips into the sea is NEVER. For those to whom geoscience is anathema, because it requires some measure of intelligence and thought, and an acquaintance with real science, which is boring as hell compared to mediocre Hollywood melodrama and disaster-pic fiction, in a paltry 4,000,000 years, Los Angeles (parts of it, anyways) and San Jose will be suburbs of each other. San Francisco will be the tip of the 400-mile long peninsula that makes Portland a port tucked inside a protected sea, and one presumes that the Golden Gate will not quite stretch the requisite distance, at that point in time, to span from SF to Marin County. And Baja California will be the newest part of CA, most of it by then being north of the latitudinal border line, and no longer off the coast of Mexico proper. But in 4,000,000 years, everyone reading this fresh now, will be deader than canned tuna, deader than triceratops, so who gives a flaming rat's hindquarters? Neither the 1906 quake nor the 1994 one did any appreciable damage to the state, long-term, and nothing seismic that happens after this is written will, either.
Get over it, whether you live here or not.

And if you live here, get your earthquake preparations crap in one bag, like you should have done the minute you moved here or came of age here, or else resign yourself to being part of the relief problem, instead of part of the disaster solution.

3) And now, the rat killin'. What to do?

A) Benedictions

First off, if you moved here to fuck up my home, or left here because it had gotten too fucked up, a cheerful but sincere "Fuck you!"
You're the cause of the current problem.

For the latter:

You can wave your reasons for leaving like your dick, and both will be about as welcome. What you can't do is explain away your ultimate selfishness, however altruistically motivated or explained. You can get away from CA, but you'll never get away from you.
As countless residents elsewhere find out when they refer to you as "Californians", without any appreciation for the fact that in 90% of cases, they're incorrect, by any objective standard.
Even if we grant that you were a good man, forced into making the choice by terrible circumstances, human nature dictates that hordes of your less-altruistic colleagues were exactly the selfish shits we'd expect, based on all of human history, so we're still in the same place.

By leaving, you helped tilt a state that was 45/55 Republican, and as close to a paradise as we'll ever see on Earth as we know it, to one that is 65/35 Democrat, and bears more resemblance to Petrograd circa 1929 than to Paradise. We still here pay for that now, but you'll get your reward when it crashes, and your toothless banjo-playing kinfolks return home in droves, followed by their illegal alien housekeepers and waiters, and their seventeen generations of relatives, and do to your new home what you've done to mine. Take a guess how many fucks I'll have left to give you on that day.

But what's done is done, and you and I will have to move on, and deal with things as they are, not as we'd like them to be.

For the former:

Build the Great Wall Of Trump.
Then start deporting illegals, not just here, but everywhere. En masse, and in haste.
Dreamers, schemers, and every other swinging Richard.

When the boat is sinking,
First you plug the holes.
Then you bail out the boat.
Write this on your hands, lest ye forget.

Those of you who think you can walk away, because this is only a problem in Califrutopia (and Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), go stand outside the local Home Depot in Hooterville or Peoria, and tell me why Aztlan seems to have found its way all the way to you, even as far away from the ancestral lands as New Hampster and North Dakota. Spot the Giant Logic Fail in your asinine self-absorption for fifty-plus years.

And ponder why every time they raid chicken and pork processing plants in Arkansas and Alabama, they seem to find an overwhelming plethora of folks named Jimenez, Garcia, and Sanchez? You figure maybe they're undocumented Puerto Ricans, or do national flaming @$$holes like Lindsay Grahamnesty and Marco Screwyoubio have national consequences, and for generations, just mebbe?? Those are jobs your people aren't getting, because you thought the leaks at the other end of the national boat wouldn't affect you. Look at the popular vote tally from 2016, and get back to me on where your future lies.

I won't even get into the details about how importing the Worldwide Jihad Club here is going to pay us dividends for generations, other than to note that when you bring the bizarre bazaar here, you erase all the advantages two oceans gave us in America for 230 years.

Once again, harder: you may not care about illegal immigration, but rest assured illegal immigration cares about you.



Illegal alien on left explains how they'll beat you, and his friend on the right displays his IQ. Glendale, CA, 2005

I'm not heartless though, and I don't want to break up families. If mom and dad have to be deported, interpret the 14th Amendment phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction of" correctly, recognize that "anchor babies" of non-citizens are not and never were American citizens, and deport them along with the entire clan.

And direct the US AG to arrest, prosecute, and imprison state and city officials and LEOs for violations of black-letter federal law for the "sanctuary city" nonsense. The correct terminology for that is sedition and corruption, and it should end in the land of the orange jumpsuits, once and for all.

And then, turn off the legal immigration firehose, for about a century.

Clear?
This is non-negotiable.
Demography is destiny.

B) Vote.

If you're too lazy (and about 70% of you are, most days, BTW) to show up for something as painless as voting in elections, STFU.
You're nothing but lazy stupid bastards, and if you're running your piehole while not voting, you're nothing but lazy loudmouth stupid bastards.

"Elections don't matter."
Really? Explain 2016, and the wee kerfluffle nationally, daily, and interminably ever since, to the whole class, in light of that recockulous proposition. I'll wait.

The jackholes shipping that bilge in 2016 weren't ready for a national open shooting Civil War 2.0 in 2016, and they won't be prepared when they get one down the road, like they will. They're farking morons, and if Nature is just, they'll be the soonest part of the National Gut Pile when things, near inevitably, actually do get sporty.
In the meantime, they're the kids in school who stapled their fingers to the desk, and ate the craft paste.

Now you know What Happened To Them.

C) Voting won't Fix Everything.

Maybe it won't even fix Anything. But physics and experience teaches us that hitting the wall at 10 MPH, at a shallow angle, is vastly preferable to hitting it at 90MPH, head-on.
(Bonus points if you can strap your Leftard Busybody neighbor to the bumper first.)
Ask the people on Sully's plane if they would've rather entered the Hudson going straight down at 200 knots, or like they did.
Your job is to create viable options, not instant solutions.
Starting with being alive to exercise those options, rather than a smoking hole where Civilization used to be.
The problem with electing our guys, both in Sacramento here, or Washington D.C., is the minute they get to Mordor, they forget who they are and where they came from, and they stop being our guys. Rip them a new asshole, set their feet on fire, and remind them.
Ever so gently.

The old political axiom is, "If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, and then vote against them anyways, you have no business in politics."
The voter's maxim should be "If you can't pay attention, we'll smack you upside the head so hard your eardrum will rupture, and then you can listen to us with your good ear. And when we swing, it may not always be with an open hand. Verstehen sie?"

If you're going to take people's money, drink their whiskey, and then not do a whore's job when called upon, you have no business in politics.
And we'll fire you.

D) Agitate.

Agitate like a washing machine on rocket fuel, having grand mal seizures.
There is shooting war, and cold war.
We're primarily in the latter, and will remain so for an indeterminate time.
War, as von Clausewitz would remind the brighter of you, creates friction.
Your job, then, to thwart your enemies, known and unknown, is to throw gravel in their transmissions, sand in the bearings, and leave boulders all along the road, to make life interesting for them. And, if necessary, some IEDs. (I'm speaking figuratively and metaphorically, of course. Doing kinetic things to bad people would be illegal, and we all know you should never, never, ever do anything illegal, which is doubleplus-ungood, even if there's functionally zero chance of getting tagged for it. Right? Enough said.)

Mayhem is out there. You, too, can recruit him. Just don't put him in command.

That also means all lesser means, from snark, to handbills, to blogsposts to shitposts is fair game. If you're throwing lava at the Dominant Culture (not just preaching to the choir) somehow, to the limit of your ability, you're pulling your weight. Get to it, and keep at it.
Let them know this isn't going to go the way they think. Ever.

You punch bullies in the nose now, maybe even with brass knuckles, as a humanitarian gesture. So that you don't have to slit their throats, cut out their beating hearts, and play polo with their severed heads tomorrow.
Unless they fail to pay attention.

E) "Babe Ruth is dead. Throw strikes."

Said to every pitcher afraid of getting too close to the plate.
Not getting my drift?
The Marquis of Queensbury is dead too.
There are no fair fights. There are only fights you win, and fights you lose.
If any fight is fair, you've massively fucked up.
A fight for the culture of a society, and the soul of a nation, is no-holds-barred.
It should be as fair as clubbing harp seals.

In a children's game of Tag, any touch is sufficient. And that's appropriate.
But like the Vegas gambler who reminds the Newb that the dealer isn't "playing" cards, she's working, in Adult Tag, it's okay to throw an elbow into a throat, or tag hard enough to break a bone or leave contusions. And stand over them afterwards, "and then, Kick them in the balls!", as Captains Sykes and Fairbairn reminded every class of British SOE commandos being trained to fight Nazis.

If you think this is just a game, you've dreadfully misjudged the stakes of the contest.
And if you haven't "gone too far", you haven't gone far enough.
I don't want to just beat the other side, I want to dance in the pooling blood as it drains from the lifeless corpse of their nihilistic cause.

"If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin' hard enough.
If you get caught cheatin', you're trying too hard." - every Special Forces instructor to every trainee since Aaron Bank, if not Robert Rogers

F) If you lose a battle, walk it off. Then get back in there.

We will lose battles.
We may lose all the battles before things turn around.
They may never turn around.
So The Eff What?

"Every day we're not fighting is another day to sharpen our tomahawks." - DanMorgan

If you get back up, you haven't lost. And you're tougher. And you've bought another day to get ready when things go from rhetorical to kinetic.
Like. They. Will.
Based purely on 6,000 years of recorded human history.

G) Bridge Out

Califrutopia, like most of the country, is headed for a fiscal cliff.
Chicongo just started laying off actual workers, to use the money to pay the exorbitant recockulous pensions of retired state workers.
That means they can't pay actual cops and firemen, because they're too busy funding the retired ones.
This induces productive citizens, and businesses, to flee a city and state that can't catch the crooks, nor put out the fires.
Which accelerates the financial collapse of such agencies and jurisdictions even faster.
(Don't get smart-ass; 50:1 your state or city is in the same boat, to a greater or lesser degree. Pay attention to this.)
California is in the same boat.
And when they get to the IOU stage for retirees, the ones who moved to your low-tax retirement haven will now be on your welfare dole.

But either way, cities and states will go bankrupt, even if they briefly try confiscatory tax policies.

(Refresher lesson: what two things started the Revolutionary War?
a) Taxes
b) Weapons seizures
c) Both of the above
Now, tell me which of those are a problem in CA. Or Chicongo. Ad infinitum.)

What cannot continue, won't.
They can end the welfare state, including ridiculous state pensions and EBT card largesse, or they can totally collapse. There is no third option.

So, point to ponder:
What happens when retirees, including cops and firemen, aren't getting pensions, they can't pay for the current ones to catch crooks and put out fires, and they stop paying protection money to the Diversity here, or anywhere, because they simply cannot come up with it?

Here's my guess. I've only seen it firsthand twice in my lifetime, right in Los Angeles.

So, you're going to do - and should do - What, exactly, about that?

H) Local, local, local

"Infantry Rule One: if you are not attacking nor defending, you're improving your position.
Dig, wire, mine, resupply, and train. Lather, rinse, repeat." - military axiom since before Caeser's legions, and probably back to the bone-wielding hominids at the monolith at the dawn of prehistory

There's going to be a rumble. Whether you're in it, or just want to be left the Eff alone, your needs are identical (cf. Switzerland).

You need the "B"s:
Bases.
Bangsticks.
Bullets.
Beans.
Band-aids.
Blades.
Bullion.
Battalions:
Bunches of ball-breaking bastards to batter and bash the bunch of bumbling buffoons on your borders.
That would be a Band of Brothers.

In short, everything you've read or heard about survival necessities, for adventures (Louis L'Amour's definition for which is basically some damnfool accident best left untried, unless one has no other choice) both great and small, from a house fire to a world war, and everything in between.

You need friends, weapons, tools, and the normal supplies of any civilization large or small, to stave off the State of Nature, and the resultant unadorned lifestyle in it best described by Hobbes as

"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

 

If you aim, therefore, to enjoy something less stark and more user-friendly, you'd best be about making all preparation for securing that possibility NOW, while you have the possibility, time, and resources, in some abundance.

That means not just getting "The Stuff", but also getting the training and experience in using The Stuff, long before your life literally depends on your proficiency. Or lack of it, in a Darwin Award-winning way. This is why we teach kids to swim in pools, and not in floods and hurricanes.

If you don't have The Knowledge, you damned sure better start bum-rushing the doors to take training from people who can impart it to you. (Note they won't give it to you; you'll get what you pay for, and you'll earn every lesson to learn every lesson. "Nothing is free" has several meanings. Think about it.) For those who need it, there's a list of (seven currently)those kind of folks at the top of the right column beside the blog.

 

That's "my plan".

 

It's got one helluva lot better chance than anything else, it's likelier to play out this way than anything else, and it's a metric fuckton more fun, more principled, and more righteous than anything else, unless, contrary to all likelihood, the fuckwits in charge blow themselves up, and the bus swerves to one side bare feet short of plunging into the abyss.

 

I will accept Divine Intervention instead of Calamity, if that outcome is fortuitously to appear.

But while I both pray for miracles, and rely on them, they aren't part of the formula for how I suspect things will actually play out. There is always room at the dinner table for the unexpected steak and lobster feast, but I still feed the chickens and weed the garden.

And that only works if you raised the chickens, and planted the garden, in the first place.