Idaho's patriots beat the machine

Dear H,

When my son and I stepped out of the car it was about 26 degrees, with just enough wind to make it feel like 15.  There was a drone overhead -- not sure whether "ours" or the cops' -- and a family of three who had just stepped out of their car in front of us.  One chubby middle-aged woman complained about her parking choice: an "undercover" cop was sitting next to her, and I used quotation marks here because he was an officer in full uniform sitting in a civilian's car.  I told her there was one next to my car, too.

Here we were
The police presence was in fact overwhelming, at least for the circumstances.  If it hadn't been for the cops I would have wondered whether we'd even found the Southwest Health District building in the first place.   There were only about a hundred-ish protesters there when we arrived; but word had gotten out there was a board meeting, and a chance that out of this meeting would come a health mandate.  Rumors were flying around that even here in Idaho, the Powers That Be were going to force us to stay six feet apart in public, put masks on us, and make every business hire people to enforce these rules -- a kind of American Cheka, with the full power to get us in trouble if necessary.  

I'm told they had already tried to do it next door in Ada County and were shut down by protesters -- some of which went to the public officials' homes.  It didn't end Black Lives Matter badly, but I would say it didn't end well.  It never does when you go to a public official's home*.  But then again, it doesn't end well when a public official tries to ruin your business, which is how your children stay in your home.  So I think they're even.

Anyhow that was all the week before, and forced Ada County to postpone their meeting until that afternoon -- a meeting at which there were snipers on the roofs and officers wore badges without any names on them.  So the Sheriff's department here in Canyon County was on edge too, and their presence was heavy. 

Still, they were professional. The officer greeting us as we pulled up to the entrance was friendly.  "Good morning!" he said, with a smile you could see through the mask.  "Are you here for the protest?"  I told him I wasn't sure, and that I heard there was a vote going on this morning, and I figured I'd see what they were voting on to see whether there's anything to protest about.  He smiled again and said, "parking's right over there."

When we did step out of the car we approached another nearby family, just to see what was going on.  They had apparently been informed that the National Guard was on the way and we were in for a fight.  "But it's okay," the wife said, "we have God on our side."  "We had better have God on our side," I replied with a smile; to which she very seriously replied "of course He's on our side."  With that matter settled I moved on to other questions.

I asked how they knew the National Guard was coming and they said a friend, who supposedly had pictures, had just told them.  "Praise Jesus!" the girl shouted, and the parents echoed back -- a few times, it turned out, in a walk of 30 seconds.  And a good thing, too.  The National Guard never arrived, and was probably caught in a freak flood, or the earth opening up.

However, even with God on their side, things didn't go as smoothly as anyone hoped.  First off was the bitter cold.  Next thing was the meeting got mysteriously postponed.  Idaho people are tough, and they hung tight; but it appeared that if we weren't going to give up, the council was going to freeze us out.  Heaters were set up and teeth chattered but few of us left.  Then came the bad news.  The public meeting was officially closed.  There was no way for any of us to enter the building, to find out what the meeting was actually about, or to weigh in on a potentially tyrannical mandate.

Not that I blamed the board members: I wasn't entirely sure who the leadership was at this protest, but a few of the people came off as radicals, and if they had entered the building, could possibly have started shouting.  Several voiced concern that they weren't allowed to weigh in.  One skinny, middle-aged man with wary eyes and a screechy voice, God bless him, after saying that he was told to give a speech, admitted he didn't know what to say.  He proceeded to give the usual complaint about the extremely low death rate of COVID-19, and the strangling of mom and pop stores over it, and the tyrannical overreach of state and local governments, and how depression, and suicides, and domestic violence were way up this year, alongside our national debt, and how it was our God-given right to not wear a mask.  Each of these statements had a long pause between them, and as he thought about what exactly he was going to say next, he looked nervously around, wide-eyed and quiet, apparently in shock that he was the center of attention.  Hats off to him for giving it a good shot.  Cheering and applause peppered his remarks, so I would say he was successful.  Others gave speeches and did a good job too.  

There is of course no God-given right to not wear a mask like there's no God-given right to not wear pants; but there is some sense in the right-wing here, and the left-wing is entirely to blame for it.  The New York Times is telling us, in fact, that an app could say whether we've had the vaccine so we can shop -- a parallel to The Mark of the Beast that only an ignoramus could miss.  It's masks forced on us today, and tomorrow the fly-by-night vaccine.  It always starts with some random minority to protect, and the next thing you know, some life-upturning plan is being foisted on the rest of us.  Today we're protecting the elderly and the obese from a bad flu, and tomorrow we're in a cashless society where the little businesses are all strangled, where we can be locked in our homes at a moment's notice, and where nobody can go to church, or even celebrate Christmas.  In some states it went from two weeks to nine fucking months

So there's no reason why the religious right wouldn't take this seriously.  Every single time conservatives have allowed leftists an inch they've taken a mile.  From social security being used as a form of identification, to gay marriage being the step to kindergarteners learning about anal, the whole history of the last few decades has been a non-stop slide into a cross between 1984 and Somalia and Sodom and Gomorrah.  Leftists say they don't want to throw a few good Mexicans out, and the next thing you know there are caravans waltzing across the border.  One day they say they don't want an innocent black man to die, and the next day they want to get rid of police officers.  So why should we put up with masks?   Why not stop them before we get locked out of Target?

This being said, the longer things went the stranger they got.  The meeting still wasn't happening.  Protesters began running out of things to say and so started thinking of things to chant.  And when they ran out of things to chant they began letting random people on the bullhorn for new things to sing.  At one moment they burst into Amazing Grace -- all four verses of it, way out of key, with lyrics depending on who was doing the singing.  Then immediately after these four verses a grizzled middle-aged man with a mustache got on the bullhorn and shouted something along the lines of and we're not gonna take these tyrant fuckers' bullshit! -- each of these getting its own round of cheers, which goes to show that a common enemy can unite almost anybody. 

At this point my boy, totally unappreciative of the whole spectacle, had gotten too cold; so we ducked out for a bit to let the leadership, or what passed for it, harass the cops while we warmed up.  But in the time we were gone the harassment, with phones recording everything, turned into trespassing.  Apparently the whole thing was broken up.  We arrived back to find almost everyone gone, many apparently to the jail, where one lady was being detained for trying to break into the closed meeting (I was told it wasn't her first time**).  The rest of them, a lone straggler said, were regrouping to head to Ada County for the next board meeting that afternoon.  But what about this meeting?  Was it over?  Did they decide anything?

So we decided to find out for ourselves, my boy and I offering to go alone so as to not attract too many police officers.  When we approached the building a friendly cop stepped out and told us to get behind the barricade.  I told him we were just checking to see if the meeting was still in, and it was; but he refused to talk to us until after we'd gotten far back -- a sensible request, it turned out, when right after we arrived, another portly middle-aged woman showed up, unhelpfully belligerent, phone recording, and demanding to get into the meeting.  A swarm of cops came out of the building to keep her back, and she refused to back down for a good while, and I thought she was going to end up in jail.  But some ladies just enjoy a good public argument with a stranger, and this was a much better place to have one than a Walmart.

I was told the meeting would end at 1, long after it was supposed to have started, and that if I wanted I could find the results "somewhere on the internet."  His prophecy was fulfilled.  The internet delivered, and by the end of the day it was clear the patriots had won.  Both Ada and Canyon counties shot down any further mandates.  And this victory came with the further knowledge that two commissioners who supported these measures, both of them Democrats, had been voted out and were leaving in January.  Our governor, Brad Little, under immense pressure from the media and the leftists who control Boise, has held firm.  No added restrictions in a state where, compared to the Left Coast, they're already minimal.       

So for now Idaho is free, thanks to a slew of crazy and random and vigilant patriots, and the county officials who held out.  My thanks to all of them.  We have only to see what the Feds will do next, and where things will develop from here for the nation. 

Yours,
-J

*I'm not for showing up at any public official's home -- but what if the official puts himself into yours?  Aside from strangling your business, what if he tries to put your confused kid on hormone blockers, or threatens to take your guns away, or locks you out of your church, or buses ghetto kids into your school, or lets meth get into your neighborhood, or turns your city into a refuge for criminal illegal aliens?  The only thing keeping these saviors-of-mankind from absolutely prying into every avenue of your personal life and ruining it is the fear that you might ruin theirs.   Christ had always told us do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and it looks like many of our left-wingers have already made the first move.

**I'm not completely sure, but I think the woman who was arrested was with People's Rights, an organization started by Ammon Bundy to fight off the COVID lockdowns (yes, the Ammon Bundy, who won an armed standoff with the feds).  She had tried to get me signed up for text messages, but as I don't know these people well, and the protest was on the kooky side, I figured getting set up on a mailing list might also get me set up on a watchlist.  I pretended to text the number she gave me, and left it at that.  Curiosity might kill this cat eventually, though.  Quite frankly they're interesting, and I'm getting tired of seeing milquetoast conservatives bend over.  

But this raises an important question: why do conservatives bend over so easily?  I won't play the hypocrite here: when I say conservatives are weenies I'm talking also about myself.  My theory is that conservatism is for people who are well-adjusted and happy, more or less, with the situation.  They're taught that the rules are practically inviolable, and that if everyone would just get in line and play by them, everything would be fair.  Thus we wait for our side of the story to get out, for the courts to understand our side of the story, and then for people to be reasonable enough to listen to us.  A series of expectations that have meant losing, constantly, and mass demoralization***.    

The leftist, on the other hand, says the system is rotten, and so he has a hatred of the rules.  He has a large army of the unemployed and the misfits (i.e., those with little or nothing to lose) ready to march at moment's notice.  He trains his and other people's kids that change is necessary, and thereby undermines a sense of fair play, and believes justice to be the act of overturning.  Thus the leftist is the first to go to people's homes, to shout over someone who's speaking, to cheat in elections, and to constantly drag down the level of discourse until riots are happening and the conservatives are all standing around with their hands in the air.  What are we supposed to do?  Cheat back?  Punch back?  Riot back?  

By the time conservatives do fight back outside the rules (which is to say, fairly), things are already far gone.  Thus the men such as The Proud Boys aren't fighting to keep the status quo under the Old Regime.  They are every bit as revolutionary as the leftists they punch -- throwing aside the rules of common decency for a bit, as all soldiers outside the realm of conventional morality must, to either reestablish a lost order, or to make themselves a new one.  

Thus the job of all conservative intellectuals, if we want to survive, isn't to argue points of decency anymore.  And it isn't to try to hold leftists to the old rules.  The rules went out the window a decade ago. It's to convince the disaffected, the forced-out-of-work, the kicked-down and the slandered that the system is against them, and to raise an army of anything-goes thugs.  Order will not be restored until we first learn how to incorporate the disorderly -- the first step, historically, in the creation of any stable government.     

***The first goal of the left-wing is that nobody hears our side of the story.  Most of them have never heard it themselves.  Asking a leftist to explain your position, most times, ends less fairly than asking your five-year-old.

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