After MAGAWeek2023 and my extended time out of town, I’ve decided to take this week to rerun some classic hits from the extensive TPP back catalog. Most of the posts are those with very high view counts, though I am presenting them in no particular order. TBT will proceed as usual, and regular posts will resume Saturday, 15 July 2023.
With that, here is 30 September 2019’s “Tom Steyer’s Belt“—the most viewed post on the blog:
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One of my shameful holiday pleasures is the cloying, condescending, tone-deaf “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by British New Wave super group Band Aid. At least, that’s how the tune would be described if it were written today.
At the time, it was a progressive project: the Ethiopian Civil War and related famine inspired the songwriters, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, to write a song to raise funds for the people there. That’s actually quite noble, and it’s an enjoyable and fun song.
It also spawned millions of pounds in sells and royalties to help Africans, and sparked the United States to respond with “We Are the World” in 1985 (and, later, a heavy metal variant).
I’m not sure how it was received upon its release in 1984, but many of the lyrics are unintentionally hilarious. Today the very same progressives who can’t wait to sign on to the latest cringe, woke charity project would call these lyrics Eurocentric or anti-African
My favorite line is “And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime.” Never mind Mount Kilimanjaro, which stays capped in snow year-round.
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Talk about a forgotten post: I wrote this post way back in 2019, then reblogged it in 2020, and haven’t thought about it since.
When you’ve written and/or edited blog posts for going on 1430 consecutive days, it’s easy to forget some of the pieces you’ve written. It’s one reason why it’s so foolish to crucify public intellectuals and other personalities for misguided tweets or ancient blog posts. The nature of the medium is to produce, produce, produce—a constant churning of content. That doesn’t mean we should be irresponsible with our words, but that it’s easy to forget old posts and arguments.
What brought this post to mind was a comment from the Quora contributor whose answer to a question inspired this post. He commented over Thanksgiving and asked that I remove his name from the post, which I did.
Here was his comment in full:
I’m the one you’re quoting in this piece, and the connection you’re trying to make is utter nonsense. If you’d like me to explain the difference between trying to drink the ocean and altering the CO2 content of the atmosphere, I’d be happy to do so, but given the utter lack of scientific understanding displayed here, I’m guessing you wouldn’t care.
As a scientist, I’m offended that you’re peddling this kind of misinformation, and using my name to do it. As a Christian, I’m offended that you’re invoking the name of deity (and a diametrically wrong reading of scripture), to argue in favor of ignorance and lack of responsibility.
If you’re going to sell this kind of garbage, kindly leave my name out of it.
I respectfully disagree. I think the poster missed the point of my piece. Obviously, drinking from the ocean is not perfectly analogous to pumping carbon dioxide into the atrmosphere, but the two do seem related: if we meaningfully affect sea levels by taking a collective drink from the ocean, it seems unlikely that we can meaningfully affect the ozone layer.
But the comment proves my point: here’s a man so enslaved to the dogmatism of scientific materialism, he’s spending his Thanksgiving calling people stupid online.
I mean, I’m no scientist, and I probably am stupid about a lot of things, but I also didn’t shut down the global economy and civil society for two years and demand people trust my authority because I wear a lab coat. My whole life I’ve heard that “science is our religion now” (probably true) and that “scientists are the new high priests of society.”
Well, they’re doing a pretty lousy job of it. I wonder how many Westerners will freeze to death this winter because our priestly caste demands we bow obsequiously to Mother Gaia? If questioning their dogmatic faith is “misinformation,” then I am proud spreader of the same.
With that, here is “TBT: Climate Hysteria Robs Us of Joy“:
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Well, the midterm elections have come and gone, and my primary reaction is bitter disappointment.
I’d been tepid about the elections this year, barely taking notice of them, but allowed myself to fall for the “red wave” hype. In a sane world, that should have happened—a major backlash against inflation and insanity.
Instead, we have a brain-dead automaton in the United States Senate and a lean Republican majority in the House—a majority, I fear, that will be ultimately meaningless. At the time of writing, the balance in the Senate itself is questionable, and the Democrats may even walk away controlling it—completely the opposite of what we all thought would happen.
I was a fool to get my hopes up about national politics. Even had the Republicans taken huge majorities, what would have been the result? Would anything have substantially changed?
Perhaps with time I’ll take a more measured response to events, but right now, it seems like our national republic is a joke, and the American people are addicted to government largesse and cultural degradation. We don’t want to improve, and we don’t want to be free. We want to be children, and children can’t govern themselves.
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Well, here it is—Election Day 2022. The much-vaunted midterms have arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good day for Republicans.
I’ll admit, I’ve been tuned out from and burned out on politics of late, and while I’m optimistic about today’s results for Republicans, I’m a tad disillusioned with the state of electoral politics generally. Will a “red wave” result in some meaningful reform this time around, or will GOP Establishment types wrangle the feisty upstarts and neutralize the MAGA Wing?
I’m not a “doomer” by any stretch—I sincerely hope for the latter, and I think it is the future of the Republican Party, if the GOP hopes to survive as a viable political party. History, however, is not an encouraging indicator.
That said, a sweeping Republican victory is, by any measure, vastly preferable to a sweeping Democratic one. At worst, I know a Republican House and Senate won’t screw things up further, and may make some marginal improvements; but a Democratic House and Senate, at worst, will double-down on the current insanity of lawlessness and moral relativism.
The Virus is like a bad movie series that just refuses to die. There was a controversial but impactful first release that everyone was talking about, even if they didn’t see it. Then there was the lackluster sequel, which still enjoyed some popular support, even though ticket sales were down.
Now it feels like we’re on the tired third film, which is a watered-down, ineffectual finale (one hopes) to a premise that is played out. Sure, critics love it, but audiences are tired of its antics.
What still seems to make it into the script of every one of these films is the part where the government bureaucrats lock everything down and release a bunch of ghosts into Manhattan (uh, wait, what?). Meanwhile, we all kind of sit by and twiddle our thumbs and put our masks on dutifully.
What happened to the band of merry wastrels who tossed tea into Boston Harbor, rather than comply with an odious monopolization of the tea trade? Or the plucky scofflaws who made it impossible to enforce the Stamp Act? I’d rather disguise myself as an Indian (feather, not dot) and caffeinate the water supply than put a mask on again (but that would be cultural appropriation, of course).
In short, why don’t we get a backbone, instead of cowering behind masks and locking ourselves indoors? We’re literally cowering before an invisible enemy with a 99%+ survival rate.
Well, liberty is never easy. Better to stay inside watching movies and disconnecting from reality, eh?
With that, here is 29 July 2021’s “TBT: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus“:
When I first wrote about the “degrowth movement” three years ago, it seemed like another kooky Leftist spin to cover for an economy that would inevitably decline under a Democratic president. When I revisited that post last summer, it was after five months of Biden the Usurper’s economic misery and malaise, and after a year of shutdowns thanks to The Virus.
In other words, we’d tried involuntary degrowth, and it’s made us poorer.
A year on, the economy has gotten even worse. We’re all quite aware that gas prices are through the roof. Food prices have skyrocketed as well. One reason I’m dieting this summer (besides the fact that I need to return to my lean, pantheric form) and skipping breakfast is because it saves a few bucks (and because I need my massive spaghetti ration to last a lot longer—I can down a pound of spaghetti with shocking rapidity). Groceries are too expensive for binge eating.
The most recent print issue of Backwoods Home Magazine (Issue #189, July/August/September 2022) features a cover story entitled “The Return of Victory Gardens.” That piece discusses not just the high prices of groceries, but the scarcity of items on shelves.
For years, I’ve boasted about how cheap food is. Just a few years ago, you could pick up a loaf of bread from Dollar General for eighty-eight cents. Granted, it wasn’t good bread, but it got the job done. Eggs were cheap. Butter was maybe a dollar for four sticks. Pretty much everything you could need was easily affordable, even if it wouldn’t make for the most exciting meals.
Now, none of those items are particularly cheap. The lowest price for a loaf of crummy (and crumbly) white bread I can find locally is around $1.49 a loaf. I have a hook-up for eggs, so I’m covered there. But my egg supplier tells me that I should start canning butter, because the price of that is about to go way up.
And forget about eating meat. It looks like the grand dream of the globohomo super elites—that we’ll all be eating cricket burgers, safely isolated and subdued in our living pods—is getting closer and closer to reality.
It became a BoomerCon cliché to point to Venezuela as an example of what happens when socialism runs amok. But the BoomerCons were right. Unless we want to be eating pet rabbits and zoo animals, we’d better do something to shore up our food stores and increase our independence from the supply chains stat.
With that, here’s “TBT: Leftism in a Nutshell“:
Everyone here on the Right knows that the Left can’t meme. Just like conservatives are better at talk radio, we’re better at making hilarious, spicy memes.
Perhaps it’s because the Left is firmly in the driver’s seat of culture and the institutions, so they’re just bad at humor, which requires poking at officialdom. Perhaps it’s because their worldview is so inherently warped and cringe, what they think is riotously funny doesn’t translate to the rest of us. Their hypersensitivity and adherence to identity politics make it impossible to poke fun at anyone or anything without suffering the consequences of their own cannibalizing cancel culture.
If anything, Leftist attempts at meme-ing just come across as propaganda. Propaganda is not clever or subtle; it’s certainly not funny. It just comes across as sanctimonious and pushy, which is probably why the Left loves it so much.
(At the risk of being even more controversial, it probably doesn’t help that the primary consumers and creators of Leftist memes are women, and with few exceptions, women aren’t exactly known for being riotously funny. It explains why so much of female “comedy” resembles paying a visit to one’s overly detailed gynecologist.)
On the Right, we’re pilloried for making memes about a cute cartoon frog living a traditional life. Hillary Clinton even attacked Pepe as a symbol of “white supremacy” while running for President of the United States, attempting to garner votes and donations by stirring up hysteria about frog.
Not only can the Left not meme; they can’t help but ruin existing memes with their overly-earnest moralizing.
My good online friend and regular commenter/contributor Pontiac Dream 39 wrote a great piece for The Conservative Woman about the new Highway Code in Great Britain. Apparently, the Highway Code is the document that deals with all that tricky driving stuff like who has the right-of-way in what situation, etc.
The new code features a bunch of carveouts and privileges for that most odious of roadway users, the cyclist. Ponty details how these “reforms” will result in increased cyclist fatalities, car accidents, and massive traffic jams, all in the name of giving cyclists more precious roadway.
That’s a trend all over the Anglosphere, it seems. Cycling nuts—the same people that want us all crammed into cities and getting around by public transport and aluminum bikes—keep pushing for not just more recognition on the roads, but more actual road space! Bicycle lanes pop up all over on congested city streets.
Cyclists also seem to have a total disregard for the massive vehicles barreling down on them. Few things make my blood boil and my eyes roll like seeing a a cyclist in full Spandex in 5 PM rush hour traffic. They seem to possess this notion that because there are laws allowing them space on the road, they are somehow invincible from harm.
But in this piece from 2019, I note there are some people who have no option but to ride a bike to get around. I consider these folks to be honest, hardworking dudes who just need a way to get to work (that, or they have DUIs or suspended licenses, so…). I am also not opposed to bike riding, per se—I desperately want a bike myself for running small errands around town. But I’m not going to be schlepping ten miles up US-401 at 7:30 AM in busy traffic, jeopardizing my life and making everyone else late for work.
But I digress. Read Ponty’s piece—it’s quite good!
With that, here is 17 September 2019’s “A Tale of Two Cyclists“:
The Portly Politico 