Colloquialisms, Appalachian and Otherwise

One of the many little Appalachian colloquialisms for which I’m known is “You don’t kick a dog for barking. That’s just what dogs do.” It just means that getting angry at someone for acting in their nature is a waste of energy. The indomitable colloquialist Mark Twain said something similar, “Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of time and annoys the pig.” Is there a point to all this? Yes… and I’ll get right to it if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

Elites Gonna Elite

As more and more Americans shed themselves of the moderated and censored corporate press and find new, independent, and honest places to get their information, one thing has become very clear. The inside the beltway crowd is more out of touch with those of us in the real world than ever.

A couple of examples:

The January 6th Grief Orgy of Happiness

Just in case any of you have been living under a rock lately, on January 6, 2021 as Congress was certifying the election results and clearing the path for completely competent President Elect Joe Biden and Exalted Black Lady Kamalaladingdong to become our nation’s next embarrassment… the last embarrassment let his orange freak flag fly and encouraged a large group of nitwits, imbeciles, hicks, ding dongs, and git ‘r dunners to jump on their government purchased hover rounds and head on down to the Capital for some good old fashioned coupin’.

It wasn’t the first such incident that year. Americans had been showing their asses in large groups for months. But of course, because this time it was Trumpers, the elites in Washington saw a wonderful opportunity in the vulgarity. CNN got ratings. It seriously damaged Trump’s legacy. It made white people look like idiots. The event had everything… and make no mistake, nobody was happier than the crowd that watches Morning Joe on their Peloton.

The one year anniversary was one sketch satire bit after another of self important windbags making speeches and caterwauling on cable news and pretending not to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

“See!” they blithered, “Those unwashed working class racists have no ability to govern themselves! They must be controlled by their betters!” At least that was the barely veiled message. Oh yeah, they also said it was like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. I’m still waiting on the punchline.

Nancy Pelosi got some people from the cast of the play Hamilton to sing a little song while she whined about something or other. CNN went wall to wall for a week about how journalists felt threatened and many are still in therapy and have PTSD over the event. (That’s not just me being cheeky. It actually happened. Not for nothing, but if you have PTSD over that, you are officially a pussy. Get therapy for that.)

MSNBC was simply giddy. They didn’t even try to hide their joy over the event. All the major newspapers were filled with opinion and news articles about the “deadly insurrection”. I would say it was like Christmas for the elites, but elites are all atheists… so maybe Christmas was like January 6th for normal folks.

Was this pageantry going to fix the elite’s image with working class Americans? Of course not… nor was it intended to. Was it going to galvanize people against the return of the Orange Menace? Nope, likely the coverage achieved the opposite effect. Was it going to resonate with anyone in the known universe who didn’t go to private school followed by a liberal arts degree at an elite university? What do you think…

But you don’t kick a dog for barking. That’s just what dogs do. Just give it a scratch behind the ear and leave it to go lick itself in the corner. It doesn’t really matter anyway.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor Cares About COVID Kids

Justice Sotomayor is a kind of weird person. Like most Supreme Court Justices, they tend to keep their personal lives out of the press. It helps them seem beyond reproach in SOCTUS opinions. Just to let you know though, she is the perfect first generation elite. She is born to Puerto Ricans in New York City. She went to Princeton then Yale Law. She got divorced, has no children, seems like a pretty unhappy person, and hasn’t socially interacted with anyone who didn’t graduate from either Harvard or Yale since the Reagan Administration.

Also she thinks there are 100,000 children on ventilators because of COVID. Why, one might ask, does this obviously brilliant, hugely successful, powerful, influential, and well connected woman believe something so hilariously false that even WaPo had to correct her?

There is an answer to that. She’s wrong about that for the same reason she is wrong about virtually everything else she believes. She has been surrounded by cloistered, overeducated, underwhelming, trust fund nitwits since the day she said adios to her Puerto Rican roots and started smelling her own flatulence with the rest of the glitterati.

What I’m trying to say is that they only talk to themselves. They make speeches to the unwashed, but they don’t engage with them. They only engage with other elites.

If you close your eyes, you can imagine a scene. A ritzy Georgetown restaurant where they charge $7 for bread and ask about your water preference… Joe Scarborough, Michelle Obama, Liz Cheney, Sonia Sotomayor, and Nancy Pelosi wait for Jerry Nadler to waddle his fat ass back from the bathroom. When he gets back, he says, “Do you know my driver failed to wear a mask until after I got in the Range Rover? Can you believe that? I bet he’s not boosted to boot.”

Liz Cheney then says, “We should put them in camps”.

Joe Scarborough: “Call your dad. He has some experience with that.”

They all chortle.

Then Sotomayor says, “I heard there were 100,000 children on ventilators because people won’t get vaccinated.”

Michelle Obama says, “Oh yes I heard that too. Melinda Gates told me so.”

Then they all raise their glasses and curse flyover country.

Pelosi snaps her skeleton like fingers letting the poor waiter know it’s time for the Salade Niçoise. ($41)

Somewhere from outside Nicolle Wallace is herd harrumphing because no matter how much she debases herself, they still won’t let her sit with them.

The next day Sotomayor repeats the COVID statement during at SCOTUS hearing and is thoroughly confused as to why everyone is calling her uninformed. It really is that simple. And… if she’s wrong about that, what else is she wrong about? She’ll never know, because she would never think to ask.

You could try to tell her to be more intellectually curious, but… don’t try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of time and it annoys the pig.

They Seriously Don’t Get It

You know, the most annoying thing about the DC Beltway elites is that they seriously don’t understand the mood of the country. The reasons are obvious and I’ve mentioned a couple of them here; arrogance, lack of intellectual curiosity, being cloistered and only really interacting with themselves… the list goes on. The result of all of that is that our politicians and their partners in the press are attempting to govern and influence a country they don’t know or understand. They attach motives to everyday people that those people don’t have. They make claims about their desires and needs that are simply wrong. It’s like they don’t even speak the same language.

I am reminded that in the late Middle Ages, many monarchs and clergy never spoke the language that their subjects spoke. It’s true, look it up. It was only somewhat recently that a common subject could even really communicate with their rulers. The American experiment was supposed to remedy that. We were determined to be self governed and elect representatives we knew. Men, who instead of ruling us from places we didn’t know, were to represent us from a familiar place. They were to come from our ranks. Somewhere this has gotten off track.

The clearest example of this problem is the reaction to Donald Trump’s election. The simple fact is that the elites in this country did not, cannot, and do not understand why a person with half a brain could vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. So, when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, they came to the logical conclusion that a huge portion of the country didn’t have half a brain.

They took about 3 months after the election in 2016 and pretended to do a little self reflection. Their conclusion was that they could not have been wrong. Trump voters were the problem. This is a belief they hold to this day and will likely carry to their graves.

The problem wasn’t that Hillary was a despised, corrupt, mean spirited, corprocrat with not a single closely held belief beyond her own need for power. It wasn’t that the American people had been lied to and hurt for so long by an insider caste represented by her, that given the choice, they bucked the system. It was that they were all toothless hillbilly racists who don’t know what’s good for them.

Here’s a tough fact they can’t reconcile. Had it not been Trump, and had it been another change agent… perhaps someone not quite so abhorrent to female voters around the country, the 2016 election wouldn’t have even been close. She would have lost in a landslide.

Here’s another tough fact they refuse to accept… in 2022, there ain’t no Trump on the ballot. The American people are even angrier with the elites now than they were then, and the electoral walloping that is about to take place is going to be so much worse than they can possibly imagine.

Don’t get me wrong, they see that the Biden Administration is failing. I mean, Ray Charles could see that. But their proposed solutions just prove that they haven’t learned a damn thing.

Thomas L. Friedman, an elite’s elite, wrote an op ed in the New York Times saying that maybe Joe Biden should run in 2024 with Liz Cheney. Dear sweet mother of god… Now there’s a ticket that might actually receive zero votes. Outside of the beltway in Washington DC and 3 zip codes in New York, can anyone name a single person who would support such a ticket? My God man, even if Biden wasn’t loonier than King George, Liz Cheney is a traitor to the right and the literal spawn of Satan to the left. Who is left to vote for her?

Well, not to be outdone, Douglas Shoen and Andrew Stein over at the Wall Street Journal wrote… apparently unsarcastically… that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the comeback kid for 2024! Oh yes. I can’t imagine how that could go wrong. I can see the hype man bringing her up on stage now, “She’s old, she’s mean, she’s angrier than ever and more corrupt too. You know her… You hate her… Ladies and gentlemen, the decrepit old loser herself, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON!!!!” (Two people who work for the New York Times clap from the back of the room and literal crickets chirp).

Other ideas?

Mayor Pete… the gay Secretary of Transportation who went on paternity leave during the supply chain crisis. You know… the Democrat that black people hate. I guess that’s one way to go.

Kamalabaladingdong… Ugh. Just kill me. To quote her from a recent interview: When asked if it was time to change course on COVID, she responded “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that… there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” That was a damn word for word quote. Go read that again… If you get through it without becoming dumber, good for you. Oh yeah… she’s ready for prime time.

Elizabeth Warren. Perfect idea, let’s dust off that relic and see if she can make Kamala look more likable by comparison.

And…. That’s pretty much it. Their solution to 2024 is the same guy everyone already hates, only older and with a Republican no Republicans like, Hillary, an aging twink, Kamala Harris, and a fake squaw. This is going to be fun.

As for 2022, don’t ask me what the strategy is. They have a slim majority in both houses right now… but have to contend with some moderates that aren’t on board with the far left ideals of the driving force of the party right now. Boy that sounds familiar… Just ask any Republican over about 30 how that feels.

So instead of moderating their message and trying to get some broad appeal, they just attack their own moderates and expect them to back down. They pitch some kind of election overhaul and call everyone who doesn’t want them to do it modern day segregationists. They try and fail to kill the filibuster, something they had no prayer of achieving. They just lose and then bitch.

What do the elites say about all of this? Well, that you’re a racist, of course.

I’m telling you… If the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, November is going to be a hell of a funny month if you like watching your betters whinge.

Post Script:

I write a lot about elites because I straddle the fence between our betters and the people who are bucking them so hard right now. I’m from a beautiful city in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains that was built on the railroad… one of many businesses that has long since left. I grew up very middle class. Yes, we were members of the country club… but the dirty little secret is that we probably shouldn’t have been.

In the late 90’s my family became more prosperous. The incredibly hard work and careful planning that my mother and father did for decades began to bear fruit. Things got easier and my brother and I got the opportunity to go to a very nice private school. We were able to head off to elite colleges and graduate with liberal arts degrees of our own… without loans. My brother even owns a Peloton. (I’ll never stop giving him shit for it either)

There is a part of these elites that I ridicule so hard that is very much in me. At the same time, I am not one of them. I don’t have their influence or money or power. All I have is a brain that works better than most, a constitution for risk, and the ability to work my ample ass off.

I am educated. I’ve traveled all over the world. I love literature and history. I can even read and write a little latin, although my Spanish remains atrocious. I enjoy tradition and support institutions. I live in a big city these days, make a good living, and seriously love a $20 ramen. But I’ll be damned if I have forgotten where I came from. My heart is in that coal blackened city nestled in pristine mountains. It is with the wonderful people who live there. And when the time comes to vote… I’m voting against the people who hate them, and by extension me.

Non Sequitur

Why don’t they retire?

Nancy Pelosi was recently dated at over 6,000 years old using radiocarbon-14. Joe Biden once dated the Virgin Mary’s grandmother. Grand Tortoise Mitch McConnell is older than Gandalf the White. Hillary Clinton’s claim that she used to read by candlelight was debunked when they found out she is actually older than fire. Even Donald Trump, a tyke compared to some of them, only keeps his energy up by bathing in the blood of children… a trick he learned from his first wife, Countess Elizabeth Báthroy.

Get it? These people are all so old! They are all richer than Scrooge McDuck. They have all outlived their first 3 biographers. Why on earth don’t they retire and make way for younger people instead of insisting on burning the damn house down on their way out the door?

I have no answer for you… but let’s just hope they aren’t immortal.

Happy Sunday all! Sorry for the missed article last week. I’ve been very busy.

—V