Shitstorm Saturday!

Yeah, we’re definitely in a shitstorm right now, and we’re starting to respond to the other side’s opening salvos.

Assuming things go as we hope (and for the most part, expect) this will be looked upon as one of the pivotal points in history we will consider ourselves lucky to have witnessed. (On the other hand if we get a nasty surprise, it will be looked on as a pivotal point in history we wish we hadn’t seen.)

This is for ALL OF THE CHIPS. They are “all in.” We are “all in.”

If the Enemy wins, we will never, ever, ever have another chance at this without a hot civil war, and the enemy will have the full weight of the Federal Government on their side. Because we haven’t managed to drain the swamp, and they can certainly either co-opt or get rid of the few good people Trump has managed to install.

Trump having to leave office next January would be a catastrophe, and everything he has accomplished will be undone in a matter of months…if not weeks…if not days. To the applause of the minders of our culture and our educational system.

Welcome to the American Socialist State (ASS). Maybe that’s why the Dems have that as their mascot?

If Trump wins the work has just begun. The swamp MUST be drained, it must become his TOP priority. I’ll be honest, I think it should have been kicked into higher gear a long time ago, but then…I do NOT know what the Generals know, and I also don’t know what they DON’T know. Maybe by delaying, he’s pulling an Alexander I, giving Napoleon a long enough supply line to hang himself on. Seriously, I am reminded of this. Alexander was risking being deposed because the Russian army would not meet Napoleon head on. But in the end it was worth it. Napoleon didn’t just fail to conquer Russia, he himself ended up being chased all the way back to Paris and being deposed.

I wrote most those words last week, and can’t improve on them, at least not without pulling a Biden and plagiarizing someone.

[Which is what sunk Hiden’s candidacy in 1988, of course now who on the Left would care enough about things like that? Or remember Gary Hartpence a/k/a Hart, the carpetbagger nominally from Colorado who ran for President for the second time that same year, but was sunk by having an affair? It didn’t take too long for the Dems to decide that should pose no obstacle…]

On Messing With Patriots

And of course, that talk about the War of 1812 caused me to remember a certain piece of music and I posted it and analyzed it to make my point. That’s always kind of risky for me, I will form associations with a piece of music that others will not share; but in this case I was mostly in line with Chaikovskiy’s intent.

The 1812 Overture from last week was written long after the fact, in 1880, and is properly but never here referred to as the “Year 1812 Solemn Overture.”

The War of 1812 isn’t called “The War of 1812” by the Russians; it’s not even called by that phrase translated into Russian. It is, rather, “Отечественная война 1812 года” or, romanized, “Otechestvennaya voyna 1812 goda.” That’s pasted in from Wikipedia, which does a minor disservice here because they didn’t spell out the Russian for “1812,” which (from memory of Russian classes decades ago) would be something like “odin tysich vosyemsot dvyenadtsat.” (It looks a lot harder to pronounce than it actually is.) Anyhow, the entire translation of the name of the war is: “The Patriotic War of the Year 1812.”

This parallels what we are dealing with right now: We’re heading for the Patriotic war of 2020…in fact, if you count “cold wars” we’re already in it. A civil war between patriots and…er…traitors (whew, managed to restrain a profanity or six).

But hearing the phrase “Patriotic War” in a Russian connection might remind some reading this of a different war.

World War II in Russia is known as “Великая Отечественная война” Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna , or the “Great Patriotic War.”

This started when Hitler turned on his erstwhile ally, Stalin, in June of 1941.

(Never let anyone forget that the Soviets and Nazis were allies for nearly two years. They collaborated in carving up Poland in September 1939, and as far as the United Kingdom was concerned, the Soviet Union was the enemy, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.)

The Soviet Union, of course, was an empire just as much as the Russian Empire was. It was run largely by Russians, and hundreds of conquered peoples were basically just so much crap on the bottom of Russian shoes–a status relieved only when those people adopted some Russian culture.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was supposedly a union of co-equal countries all striving towards a glorious communist future (but merely socialist for now). If you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. Russians dominated in daily life, they got the good jobs in the military, and so on, though at least in the very uppermost echelons of leadership belief in Marxism-Leninism was more important than ethnicity. In fact as of 1941 the leader of the USSR was a Georgian, not a Russian. (Georgia, by the way, is called “Sakartvelo” by its own people, who call themselves the “Kartveli.”) Stalin’s original name was Jugashvili, which ends in shvili, which is one of those endings, along with -adze and -ia, that screams “This dude is a Kartvelian!” to those who recognize it.

Stalin, of course spoke Russian, but with a very thick Kartulian (Georgian) accent.

What did he do when Hitler unexpectedly attacked him? (Yes, unexpectedly. For whatever reason, Stalin, as paranoid as he was, didn’t expect Hitler to stab him in the back before Stalin would be ready to stab Hitler in the back.)

Well at first he was too stupefied to respond, and the Soviet military, seriously weakened by Stalinist purges in the late 1930s, fell back, and fell back, and then tried something different: they fell back.

Stalin eventually came out of his shock and began to rally his slaves.

Did he do it by appealing to the great glorious quest for communism? No. He appealed to Russian patriotism! Which is why they called it the Great Patriotic War. Why not evoke images of 1812?

Imagine the irony of a guy with a thick Georgian accent appealing to Russian patriotism on the radio.

There were songs written for the Great Patriotic War, and the most famous of them was first published three days after the invasion. It’s titled Священная война Svyashchennaya Voyna “Sacred War” or страна огромная! Vstavay, strana ogromnaya, “Arise, Great (Vast) Country!” It was written by Alexander Alexandrov, the same man who wrote the Soviet national anthem.

It’s a kick-ass song, and here is a kick-ass video of it chock-full of footage from the front lines, restored and colorized. (I know the color is not original, because I have seen many of the same clips in black and white in documentaries.) It even shows von Paulus surrendering at Stalingrad!

(Note: If you go directly to youtube and try to play this, it will ask you to sign in to prove your age. Apparently you can get around that by copying/pasting the URL.)

The lyrics, as you will soon see, say not one word about socialism, but plenty of words about kicking the fascist scum the hell OUT. As such it’s worth a look despite its origin.

Here is a literal translation (think New Revised Standard Version) on the left, and a looser paraphrase (think Living Bible) on the right. The right hand column even has the same meter as the music; you could sing it if you ever have to drive Nazis out of your country.

The appeal to patriotism rather than socialist glory worked…eventually. After a few years and 25 million deaths.

If you’re like me, you have mixed feelings about the fact that the Soviet Union beat Nazi Germany in World War II. (And you’re no doubt wondering why the hell I am posting Soviet patriotic music here.) Couldn’t they both have been annihilated? Pretty please?

But that’s exactly my point. The Soviet Union was a disgusting stain on the world, it was a mammoth prison, it was a mammoth slave plantation, it was the most evil thing on Earth for decades. And yet the people there had a sense of patriotism that could be dredged up in 1941, the depth of Stalin’s rule, even after over two decades of propaganda against the notion of being patriotic to a country, rather than being international socialists.

So (now finally returning to America) when someone proposes to mess with a country that is not only worthwhile, but the greatest ever in history, what are its people going to do?

This is something the Left cannot imagine. And they will continue to not imagine it as it blows up in their ugly faces.

There’s no ambiguity here. There’s no situation where an outside observer should want both sides to lose, like there was with World War II. The Left deserves to lose, and America deserves to win. Hopefully it won’t come to a shooting war, but if it does, perhaps, given the Left’s hatred of America and our love for it, it will be known as the Patriot’s War. Will we end up with a song for this? Perhaps, perhaps not. But really, do we need another one? We already have our anthem. We have America the Beautiful. We have My Country Tis of Thee. We have God Bless America. We have God Bless the USA. We have The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

The other side cannot lay claim to any of those, because they hate America. In fact, they have nothing but their own misguided hate for America to guide them through what is about to come.

And they are about to learn what happens when they threaten something people love.

Justice Must Be done.

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.

Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

The Mandatory Coin

I found out that the Russian Empire issued a number of coins to commemorate the War of 1812, more specifically the battle of Borodino.

In 1834, the Russians issued this ruble coin:

In 1839, a memorial was constructed at Borodino, and this ruble was issued that year (sorry about the crappy photography).

The portraits on both coins are of Alexander I, who was tsar at the time (1801-1825), rather than Nicholas I, his younger brother, who was tsar in the 1830s (1825-1855). In fact, if you want a portrait of Alexander I on a ruble, you have to get one of these coins; he did not put his own portrait on his coins while he was alive. Neither did Nicholas, nor Paul, Alexander’s father (1796-1801), nor Alexander II, Nicholas’s son (1855-1881).

(Maybe monarchs don’t have such a big ego after all–given a precedent of not putting their image on coinage, these absolute monarchs were all happy to keep it that way.)

Finally in 1912, to commemorate the centenary of the Patriotic War of 1812, we have:

I’ve had some trouble translating that inscription on the reverse. It runs something like “this glorious year has passed, but the deeds done in it will not pass” though I’ve seen very different renderings. “This glorious year has passed but the deeds done in it will not be forgotten” probably is a better rendering.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

Just two more things, my standard Public Service Announcements. We don’t want to forget them!!!

How Not To Find Yourself In Contention For The Darwin Award
(Nothing to do with bearded dragons)

It has been pointed out that all of the rioting is nominally on account of criminals who resisted arrest in one form or another, and someone suggested schools ought to teach people not to resist arrest.

Granted an “ass kicking” isn’t the same as being shot, but both can result from the same stupid act. You may ultimately beat the rap, but you aren’t going to avoid the ride.

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

Appendix: The lyrics in Russian

For anyone interested, here is Sacred War in Russian, with a transliteration.