“NEVER…GIVE…AN…INCH…” [1]:
Try That In A Small Town by Jason Aldean (Songwriters: Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison)
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya likeCuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re toughWell, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small townGot a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they’re gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luckTry that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small townFull of good ol’ boys, raised up right
If you’re looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small townTry that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small townTry that in a small town
Ooh-ooh
Try that in a small town
History should properly remember that, following the initial spark, not a whole lot about the mostly peaceful but oh-so-very destructive riots over the summer and fall of 2020 was organic in any way, shape, or form. Most of that “unrest” was fanned into flame by progressive politicals to exploit a convenient tragedy (they could have / would have picked up on one somewhere along the line that summer) to provide anti-Trump campaign material and, even better if it happened, to provoke President Trump into additional exploitable actions. No doubt some of this was enabled…encouraged…supported…coordinated directly with key national figures in DC. (Deny that? Doubt that? Well, a multitude of current events these days drives such suppositions as the default until and unless they prove that this was impossible.[2] As in: Prove to me that there were no communications between anyone at/with the DNC and/or with the Speaker’s Office with anyone on the ground leading up to and during the events in Portland, Oakland, Chicago, … … I’m sure the FBI has all of the documentation nicely filed away from view. But I digress.)
To the point of the song above, all of the extended and expanded “protesting” – a super-pseudo-event if there ever was one – took place under the protective umbrellas of friendly mayors, city councils, etc. The provocation even included two such mayors who allowed or encouraged or assisted in painting the banner of a domestic terrorist organization on the street down the entire block in front of the White House and in front of Trump Tower. (Who paid for those expedited, professional jobs? Was the cost properly accounted for under campaign finance regulations? Was it union work?) For as destructive and dangerous as it was out on those streets, the greater campaign all took place on friendly turf. Supply lines (bricks, frozen water bottles, large fireworks, etc.) were safe. Authorities were faithfully restrained and catch-and-release was fully greased and funded. Not all turf will be that friendly…those closer to their rugged individualist roots and closer to their neighbors and closer to the store owner down the street just may provide a different field of engagement when that shit goes down in their town. But it won’t…rent-a-mobs insist on a home field advantage.
I wonder what next summer’s super-pseudo-event will be? (I know I expect to stay close to home…my “in a red town in a red state” home sweet home.)
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POST SCRIPT
Of course, the fake outrage over a song is par for the progressive course: shallow and intellectually un-serious. Via Powerline:
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Reference for the post title and this opening line: Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
[2] Reference from The Gulag Archipelago Volume I :
There was a rumor…that the Petrograd Cheka…did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos. I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were. But I wouldn’t set out to look for proof, either. Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible. How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years? – Page 174
[EDIT: Minor formatting changes.]
the philo t. custis institute 
From this week that was, this text is worth documenting here (https://ricochet.com/1471321/is-america-dead/#comment-6856192):
“My name is Emma-Jo Morris. I am the Politics Editor at Breitbart News.
“I am here today because I published a series of news stories three years ago, in October 2020, about Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop — also known as the “laptop from hell” — which is seen as some of the most scandalous reporting of the last decade.
“What was more scandalous than the reporting itself though was the fact that it exposed the unholy alliance between the Intelligence Community, social media platforms, and legacy media outlets.
“At the time, I was deputy politics editor at the New York Post. My reporting showed that, despite then-candidate Joe Biden’s repeated and furious denials, he was apparently involved in the foreign business deals of his family.
“Over several days, just weeks before Americans would vote for their next president, I revealed verified authentic emails from the Biden scion’s hard drive showing Ukrainian business partners receiving leaks from the Obama White House, I documented an off-the-books meeting between then-Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian energy executive, and introduced the world to “the Big Guy,” who got action on a deal with CEFC China Energy Co.
“The Post published exactly how the material for the reporting was obtained, even identifying the sources, as well as a federal subpoena showing the FBI was in possession of the material the story was based on, and had been since December of 2019.
“But when the stories appeared on social media that morning — the venue where millions of Americans go to find their news, and editors to get their angles — within hours, the reporting was censored on all major platforms, on the basis of being called “hacked” or “Russian disinformation.”
“Twitter refused to allow users to share the link to the stories, banned the links from being shared in private messages — a policy typically used to clamp down on child porn distribution — and locked the Post out of its verified account.
“Facebook said it would curb distribution and reach of the links on its platform.
“However, the stories were not based on “hacked materials,” nor were they “Russian disinformation.” And despite those claims appearing to come out of thin air at the time, we would eventually learn that they actually didn’t come out of thin air at all.
“On October 19, five days after the Post first began publishing, Politico ran a story headlined, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
“Politico printed a letter, completely uncritically, from veteran members of U.S. intelligence falsely claiming the Post exposé “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“Most notable among the signatories of the letter were Jim Clapper, former DNI, and John Brennan, former CIA — despite having such damaged credibility following their participation in the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory.”
[C0ntinued…]
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[…Continued]
“A few days later, on October 22, when Biden appeared in the second presidential debate, and was confronted with the facts of the Post’s reporting, he said to Trump, “Fifty former national intelligence professionals said this: what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plot.”
“But it was not.
“Now, fast forward to this year, three years later.
“Just last spring, House investigators revealed it was a call by now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell that prompted the spy letter published by Politico, which bypassed agency approval processes that would have been normally applied.
“It is also now known that ahead of my reporting, federal agencies were priming social media companies to execute an operation to discredit it.
“According to internal documents released by Elon Musk upon his acquisition of Twitter, the FBI and other intelligence community members essentially directed the platform’s censorship operation in part externally, by working with top management; in part internally, by social media companies hiring eye-popping numbers of agency-alumni.
“Journalist Michael Shellenberger reported, based on documents he obtained from Musk, that “during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed” Twitter executives “to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation.” Feds arranged for Top Secret security clearances to be granted to Twitter management, and even had an encrypted messaging network set up, which they dubbed a “virtual war room.”
“To this day, hundreds of people from the intelligence community work at social media companies.
“Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.
“This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.
“What this relationship between U.S. government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.”
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More important documentation from this week that was (https://ricochet.com/1471244/my-new-personal-protective-device/):
“…So here we are, seven years later. Trump has since been replaced by a corrupt multi-millionaire politician with a 50-year career in Washington. President Joe Biden is the very embodiment of a dying republic. His overaged, tenuous connection to the real world is demonstrated daily with his conveniently made-up history, mendacious recollections, incoherent mumblings, and attached marionette strings leading to whatever puppeteer of the day has access. There is no question that he has been bought by foreign interests and that he has long led a family syndicate engaged in influence peddling. Yet his presidency is justified by the claim that he is not Trump. Sycophants in the media cheer him on, pretending that he is wearing clothes and that he is a legitimate contender for reelection in 2024. America has fully become a banana republic: the economy is in decline and public debt is out of control. Suicide rates compete with public filth and crime for the larger exponential increase.
“In the meantime, the years of innuendo and allegations of collusion against President Trump have been revealed to be political machinations bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and then embraced by leaders in the administrative apparatus. Here is where the [TDS] pandemic’s damage is most strongly evident. “Public servants” not only spied on and sought to undermine a duly elected President, but also spied on his administration and on congressional staff. They censored and silenced critics of their crimes. The media ginned up the hysteria, cover-ups abound throughout intelligence and justice institutions while the most toxic spreaders of the disease continue their mendacious lives with impunity. They are even hired as media consultants, as if their warped opinions and litany of lies are virtues. No accountability for treason is even expected. Instead, new indictments of process crimes abound against Trump. A dog pile of court action serves as cover for the criminal behavior of the guilty and to derail the upcoming election. …”
Continued…
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…Continued
“If you suffer from TDS, you are diseased. If you think Trump is the cause of the chaos and decline that is the real pandemic around us, you are part of the problem, not the solution. You are not well-intentioned, but misguided, morally bankrupt, and politically illiterate. Likewise, if you think more government is the answer to any question you are an idiot. If you think Canada and the US are systemically racist and the worst of what the world has to offer, you are irredeemable. If you think the mainstream media is fair and balanced, you are adrift from reality. If you think we have until 2012, 2015, 2018, 2022, 2030 to save the world from climate change, you belong to an apocalyptic cult and need deprogramming. If you think public education is a safe place for children, you are a danger to common sense. If you think there are more than two genders and that I care about your preferred pronouns you are delusional. I don’t question your right to believe these things. I just think that if you do you are beyond reason and of little interest to me. I have grown weary of the upside-down. I have listened to it all and found it wanting. I’m done. Go away. That is precisely how TDS zombies respond to people who disagree with them, so they have invited exactly this kind of rejection upon themselves.”
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July 23, UPDATE:
…One thing we know for sure, however, is that there is no point in knuckling under to the mob. If they try to cancel you, do what Jason Aldean did: tell them to get stuffed.
(https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/jason-speaks-for-me.php)
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