The comment feature on the latest Right Angle page entitled “Things to Come” is not working.
This is a serious drag because Bill is right in his opinions in this video and discussion of the points he is making may well be the most important discussion so far had on this site.
Please fix this. We need to discuss this further so that people on our side can have the clearest possible vision of what’s going on and what can be done about it. Other media is taking a lot of people on our side down every rabbit hole possible. Bill, as usual, is cutting right to the quick and the bunnies need to understand why what he’s saying is vital to our future.
41 replies on “Comment section not working on latest RA “Things to Come”.”
Well, it’s nice to see the layout is fixed, but any comments I’ve made since October 14, 2023 9:08 PM have been extinct. I suppose I am the dodo.
Added to that, now I can once again NOT submit comments while behind a firewall. Yesterday’s temporary usage of the older, lighter-weight WordPress layout was a very brief respite from such constraints. Sigh.
I have both a full system VPN that works through a virtual TAP NIC and a browser addon VPN that comes with my VPN account. The browser VPN addon is handy for when I don’t want to slow my whole system down by running everything over the VPN. I can just VPN the browser I’m on at the moment and leave everything else running at the full bandwidth I get from my ISP. After years of fiddling with this stuff I’ve never found a VPN that can handle the Gb/s speed I pay my ISP for.
When I’m connecting through the browser VPN it’s hit and miss whether or not a comment will post. If I toggle the browser VPN off then it posts reliably. The problem I have is that I engage the browser VPN and forget to disengage it. Until I try to post a comment here and it won’t post. When that happens I get an error that says something about my email address being incorrect. Then I look and sure as sh!t the browser VPN icon is green instead of red. I toggle that off and everything here works as expected.
The reason I’m telling you all that is in the hope it will give you some clue about why you have posting problems. You may or may not be on a VPN, you said “firewall” and that’s not the same thing so I assume my issue and yours are not the same thing either. However, there’s something about this site, probably a security thing regarding originating IP address or a networking protocol, port or socket that the paywall does not pass under certain circumstances. It might be a token or a cookie that has your IP address embedded and it might be something else entirely.
I don’t know what it is, exactly. This is just the behavior I’ve noticed under the conditions I’m describing.
Question. Does anybody think that Iran encouraged this Hamas invasion because they knew there’d be an overwhelming response from the Jewish state, one so bad that they could justify nuking Israel?
I don’t know about the nuking part because I don’t know if Iran has nukes yet or not. If they do have nukes then the fact that they’re not “rational actors” by the common geopolitical meaning of the phrase is vital.
I think if Iran had nukes they’d see nuking Israel as a good way to kill a shitload of Jews while putting their Islamic enemies on notice that there’s a new sheriff in town and he’s not a bit afraid to draw his gun. Of course that would last about 5 minutes until the Israeli nukes started raining down on Iran and turning it into a pretty glass parking lot.
So I kind of doubt Iran is coming at this from an angle of justification for nuking Israel. I don’t think Iran gives a crap about justification or the need for it. If Iran has nukes then this current round of barbarism isn’t going to provide much in the way of justification for using them, no matter what.
For instance, Hamas is justifying the slaughter they’re perpetrating because “Palestinians are being evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem”. Four homes to be exact. Four homes that were sold by their Palestinian owners decades ago, then when sold the owners refused to vacate them and have been living there rent free ever since.
Justification-wise that’s so thin as to be nonexistent. It certainly does not justify the gross atrocities we now know were committed on women, children, babies and the elderly since last Saturday.
So as far as justification goes, none is really needed because none is really being offered anyway.
That said, there’s no doubt that Iran is using Hamas to do its dirty work and there’s no doubt Hamas is a very willing stooge either.
Soon there will be buckets and buckets of crocodile tears shed for all the “innocent” Gazan civilians killed because Hamas uses its own people for human shields. Israel uses rockets to protect its people, Hamas uses its people to protect its rockets.
I think that the Israelis might as well hold funerals for all the Israeli hostages that Hamas has taken, then go in there and dig Hamas out root and branch and kill every last one of them whether they’re political leaders or actual fighters. Never in the history of modern Israel have the Israelis intentionally attacked civilian non-combatants and Hamas doing that is more than enough justification to send every last one of them to a permanent dirt nap.
There’s no way to rescue those hostages, as soon as it looks like the Israelis might be close enough to do that Hamas will kill them. I hate to be so pessimistic and the Israeli military is very good so it might find some way around this. I hope so but I don’t think so.
Afraid you’re right about the hostages. I’m thinking the reason Iran chose now is they just got the nuke done. They’ll appeal to the rest of the world showing just how over-the-top the Israeli response.
Anything is possible and only time will tell as far as Iranian nukes are concerned.
If they have them, the Israelis know it. Those boys are no slouches when it comes to intel. They don’t mess around. Unlike our intelligence services where jockeying and backstabbing for career gains are common with the Israelis the only way to career advancement is successful results delivered. The Israelis can’t afford mistakes if they want a home to go to at night.
The “look for horses not zebras” solution is that this is just a boil over of the bloody minded barbarity that side cultivates and encourages. Once they had the pieces in place they could so they did.
There’s something badly off with Arabs and Persians. Something that cannot be laid entirely at the feet of their Islamic religious/political system. There are other nations under sway of Islam that while strict and unwavering in application do not carry the bloodyminded hatreds Persians and Arabs have. There is some sort of primal evil in play with these people.
I know, I know … Stereotyping people is always a mistake and I agree. There is always the individual to be factored in if we want to be on the side of good. But I lived and worked in that part of the world for quite a while and to me this particular character of the overall region is undeniable.
The Jews don’t have this. The sons of Isaac are a mostly good, forgiving, peaceful, decent people. A little gruff and a lot of attitude but fundamentally good people. The sons of Ishmael not so much. I don’t know if this is a genetic thing, a cultural or a spiritual one but it’s a thing even so.
Leon Uris in “The Haj” said it well in the words of a character in the book …
” … So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.”
This might be a survival trait from a time where the basic resources for life were scarce and difficult to obtain but I think it’s more than just a holdover from a bygone era. With those people it goes bone deep and you never know for sure when dealing with them if you are being played for a sucker.
I have no doubt there is a spiritual element. It may not be the only factor but it’s a big one. Allah is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Al-Lah is an ancient Arab moon god and that’s where the Islamic “Star and Crescent” symbol is derived from. That Muslims worship the same Creator God that the Judeo-Christian world does is a bald-faced lie.
Arabs and Persians.
Thanks for making this distinction. Not many do.
This is not one culture against Israel, it is several cultures against Israel.
I have often wondered what would happen in the ME if the common enemy was defeated. Would they really turn towards Western Civilization, or would they first attack each other over some other perceived slights and millennial aged arguments. Trying to consolidate who is the biggest wolf first, then going after the real big dogs.
I think the tribal angers would prevail first.
My “evidence” is that Afghanistan still is a “nation” of tribes. Not a country.
The entirety of the M.E. including Turkey has roughly the same population as the US.
I also think back to an Egyptian co-worker from several decades ago who informed me that while Egypt considered itself an Arab country (The Arab Republic of Egypt) most other Arab countries, especial Saudi Arabia, did not consider them Arabs. His own biases fueled no doubt due to his family being Greek Orthodox.
A terribly complex part of the world for which generalizations just don’t work well.
Persians and Arabs are genetically dissimilar but it’s the cultural similarities and differences that are telling.
Cultural is important. I think this is why we’re fighting a culture war here in the U.S. The Left tries to conflate culture with race and they’re not the same thing at all. It’s not so much a matter of genetics (race) as it is one of culture.
Conflating race and culture is a dandy way of changing a culture into something it was not originally. There are plenty of black Americans who adhere to the better, more noble American culture. There are some that insist on staying with African tribal culture. The former is constructive and the latter destructive.
I’m not talking about heritage here. I’m a Danish Norseman by heritage but I’m an American far above and beyond my heritage. My ancestors’ masters had their chance and drove out those who wanted a better life than a culture of perpetuated feudal poverty. Many of whom, including my great grandparents, fled to America and America fulfilled its promise to them.
I’m an American by culture and a Norseman by race and heritage. I do not take up my sword (I own swords, and spears and battle axes too) and pillage my neighbors. Because I’m culturally an American. This applies to all other races and heritages here in America exactly the same way. it doesn’t matter what pigmentation a person’s hide displays. Pigmentation is just pigmentation but culture is the determining factor.
In my culture, the culture my forbearers admired and adopted, we do not loot Catholic monasteries or banks or anywhere else where loot might lie. We make our own money and do not take it from others. Both because we can and because this is the civilized, right thing to do. This is the fulfillment of the promise of American culture and it is available to all Americans.
Not everyone has the exact same opportunity here. There are absolutely white, black and brown people that have had more opportunity than I had. The reverse is also true, there are people of all races that have had less opportunity than me too. It’s not the degree of opportunities that makes the difference. The proof of this is in the fact that those who have had more or less opportunity than me in either direction. There are those who have had less and done more, or had more and done less. It’s that the opportunity is there for everyone and you do with that what you can and what you will.
The vital crux is culture. Arabs and Persians will not abandon their culture until it no longer works for them. That might not ever happen because culture is a great resistor to logic.
Which is why it’s so important to the Left to change our very good and noble culture into something far less.
As you say, there are many cultures against Israel. There are many cultures against America too. Israel is just a microcosm of the bigger picture. A canary in the coal mine, sort of. If Israel can continue to exists there’s hope for the better angels across the globe.
If the immediate enemy of lesser Middle Eastern cultures in the form of Israel is eliminated the focus will shift to us, whom they name “The Great Satan”. They do not call us this because of the evil we do, they call us this because we do not adopt their own evil and so are an enemy to their evil.
Those people will continue to fight each other as enthusiastically as they wish to fight us. They are closer to each other and so easier to reach.
Some of them will happily accept our help in fighting the others. They will not be true allies and will continue to consider us infidels to be overcome even so.
We see this with nations like Saudi Arabia. Which is a nominal ally that still finances, expands and supports Wahhabist Islam by building mosques populated with radical Wahabi Imams all across America. Mosques where the teaching is jihad against the American infidel and a major source of Islamic radicalization.
If America were a true friend and peer nation in the Saudi viewpoint they would not and could not do this.
America is a friend of convenience to Saudi Arabia. Right up until it’s not. Saudis fear atomically armed Persians much more than they fear us. Even though we have proven, accurate, working thermonuclear weapons far, far beyond the destructive capacity Iran is likely to possess in the next couple lifetimes.
Saudi Arabia does not fear us because they know that their radical mosques and Imams will never trigger a rain of thermonuclear hellfire from America on Riyadh or Mecca. They also know that if Iran gets atomic weapons they are in existential peril.
This is a good example of how things would look if Israel were wiped from the map. Taking Israel out of the equation improves little or nothing in the bigger picture. It just frees up resources to use against us and each other.
Because from our viewpoint there’s something basically off about Arabs and Persians.
That doesn’t mean we should flash fry them all to a crispy crunch. You don’t kill a fox for being a fox, you kill a fox when he starts eating your chickens. You take precautions to keep your chickens safe from the fox and you never get a warm fuzzy feeling about the fox’s intentions. You don’t forget, ever, that a fox is a fox and is going to act like a fox.
Egads, man. Can’t comment on Right Angle 10/12.
The world needs my ramblings! My day is hereby ruined and meaningless.
Lol, you have it backwards. The world doesn’t need my ramblings, I need to ramble at the world. Not the same thing at all and a pretty darn sloppy chide for a Doc.
I’m puppy sitting today. Dang puppy is glued to my left thigh and hip until my sister gets back and “rescues” her. Comment section ramblings are about my only distraction until that happens. I’d like to get up and make some breakfast but that would involve more scampering, whining and barking than it’s worth. And that doesn’t include what the puppy would do.
These First World problems are insufferable.
Is that a CB Radio mic dangling from your desk, sir?
Or are you CQ’ing on shortwave?
It’s a dual band 70cm/ 2m connected to a single element vertical about 40 ft high behind the building. The tower is 40 ft, can’t remember the antenna length right off hand.
The puppy doesn’t have a licence so she’s not allowed to use it.
It’s one of several amateur band radios here but I do also have Citizen’s Band radios for comms with the yokels if need be too.
If you’re a ham, please don’t ask me what my call sign is. I won’t tell you, it’s nothing personal so please don’t take it that way. Call signs are a simple matter to look up and from there get a real, physical address, name and phone number of the call sign holder. Being as I don’t make my identity and location available on the internet any more than the absolute unavoidable minimum … Posting my call sign would be like putting a big target marker right where I live. So that’s not happening.
I’m not really an amatuer radio enthusiast/hobbyist anyway. I don’t do DXing, contests, field days or any of the other stuff real hams seem to love so much. I have the radio gear solely for EmCom purposes. The radios are almost always off, I don’t like listening to the banal crap and rag chewing that dominates the amateur bands and CB is even more annoying. I almost never talk on them either. Other than a monthly test none of that gear is turned on unless there’s a good reason to have it energized.
Me? Chide? Too ADD to focus long enough. (Kidding)
I actually wasn’t even thinking about you when I wrote that. Your stuff is great. The one time I said I almost fell asleep I thought it was a bit wordy. Usually make it to the end, though. Like me, you tend to say the same things. And there are times you guys with your backgrounds in engineering/computers lose me.
I hear you, puppy “uncle” ACTS. I have four rescue dogs. Two very much want to be attached at my hip. And very recently they were. One on each side with me on the couch. The other two like it too, but are not very insistent about it. Good thing. Not enough room in the couch, and I only have two hips.😏
Lol, pets are one of the great joys and deep sadnesses of my existence. I love those animals and cat or dog (or both) they make great companions. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that they’re not like family members, they are family members.
The problem is that I’m devastated by their loss when they have lived out their lifetimes, and I give them the very best life I’m able to provide, then I have bury my good friend of many years in the backyard.
I just can’t take that anymore so recently when the last one died I decided not to get another pet. I’m not all that old yet and just recently retired but I’m already older than my Dad was when he died. I might not outlive one so I don’t want to do to a pet what happens to me when I die either.
I still get some of the benefits of having a dog. I “babysit” the one in the picture when my sister and her husband go somewhere. She’s a great little dog, very affectionate and gentle, loves everyone she meets and has a bright and calm personality. But there’s no black hole of despair for me when she’s not here either.
I dread knowing I will lose all my dogs.
Therefore, I love them, spoil (not too much) them,spending all the time I can with them, and try not to think about it.
I just can’t take the heartbreak anymore. There’s been more than enough heartbreak in my life. From the loss of brothers in arms to the loss of friends and family members to two divorces neither of which I wanted and more.
I worry all the time, though I know I should not, about losing my little sister. We’ve always been close and she’s not that much younger than me (a year and 4 months) so we’re both at the age where something sudden and unexpected can happen.
Tragedy is part of the human condition and I know that. Not losing another four-legged family member is a foreseeable tragedy I can avoid. I wake up every day grateful for what I have and not even a tiny bit envious of those who have more. I just can’t bring myself to imperil the peace and happiness I now enjoy after so many years of otherwise. I’d love to have a pet but I just can’t bear the thought of losing another one.
Which means that you’re probably stronger than me. There’s not a lot of strength left in me, I’ve spent it all. Spent some of it well and some of it not so well.
I am praying for you. Have been. Will get specific about your heartbreak.
Remember, God loves you. And many people here like you…including me.
If there is anything I can do for you, let me know.
If I am able, I will do it.
I consider you a friend I’ve never met physically.
Take care of yourself.
Yours in Christ, Harry.
Revelation 21:4 ” He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
Thank you Harry. I hope I didn’t give the impression that I’m unhappy, feeling sorry for myself, or whining about the events of my life. I’m not and not doing any of that at all.
After a life like mine it’s very easy to keep things in perspective and enjoy an attitude of gratitude. Which I do. “Bigly” as our favorite orange nemesis of the Left would say.
Remember, the more you love the deeper the pain when you lose that which is loved. I’m very fortunate to have loved so many people and things so much that I cannot bear the thought of losing them anymore. It’s not necessarily a bad state to find oneself in.
It’s just that at this point in my life the benefits of a puppy or a kitty do not outweigh the liabilities so while I must forego the pleasure I also will not suffer the loss, nor leave a friend or family member to deal with an animal I might leave behind.
If this helps, ACTS, my next kitten I will name Mome in your honor. Mimsy was the inspiration,
Lol, careful … Its raths will tend to outgrabe.
wake up every day grateful for what I have and not even a tiny bit envious of those who have more.
As far as I am concerned, this statement is THE key to happiness on Earth. I don’t mean blissful, smiling all the time happiness that Hari Krishna tried to sell; I mean actually being content with life. The fact that you owned your own business also shows that if you wanted more, you were willing to put forth the effort to get it.
If more people lived their lives with that to start their day, there would be less of the trouble they’re causing. (yes, I did that on purpose and I am sure you, Harry and RR will see that to which I am referring.) 😉
It would seem that this broken format is on repeat. The latest Right Angle: Backstage 10/10/23 suffers the same missing comment section and navigation bar. I have reported it via the Contact form. Hopefully, this is resolved soon.
Yeah, I just now watched the Backstage episode and clicked the “back” button on my browser to get back to the Home page. Where I was going to do what you did so thanks for beating me to that. I don’t see any point in both of us doing it.
I think this clears up the question of whether the Right Angle episode “Things to Come” had those omissions by accident too.
Now the question is how responsive whoever the “Contact” button contacts is.
If you get a personal reply please let the rest of us know what’s going on by posting here.
I sense Bill is overloaded. Been praying for him. He’s got a lot on his plate. I think no comments was on purpose,but all those projects can cause things to slip.
I wish I had a lot of money to donate. I.mean a lot . Only thing I may ask, not demand, ask in return is first peek at any output. And then would put it in a blog here, only with his permission.
And I agree, he needs to get out of the pit of California. If we could just get Natasha on board😁
Hmmmm.. Maybe if I give enough I would bribe him to move. 🤑
Not in the city where I live, but nearby. Some conservative areas nearby. But even in my city, it would be much, much, better
Only guessing here, but I believe that this is with intent.
The audience for this is non-members as this is Bill’s version of asking for monetary assistance from those who watch his videos for free at YT and Rumble.
So he may have not checked the box to upload it with full site capabilities.
Or he just forgot like he did a few weeks (months?) ago and uploaded it incorrectly.
Either way, the fastest method is the contact button as that will send an email to Shelley (info@billwhittlecom.wpenginepowered.com) I believe.
Shelley will tell Bill. Doubtful that any of the quartet will read the blog post.
You win the hat, Ron, for a correct analysis.
That may well be so, and if so it would be nice in light of past accidental omissions of forum functionality if someone said something about it being on purpose. LIke in the video synopsis for instance.
This Right Angle page also is missing all the usual web controls like the “Home” button. Which is the same as has happened in the past when the page was not fully enabled. That’s what made me think this is the same mistake(s) as we’ve seen before and not just a locked down plea for support.
Also in the past I’ve just posted on the member blog and gotten a reaction from Bill. I’m not in a big hurry about much of anything anymore. The “Contact Us” button is no doubt faster and more sure and I’m certain you’re right about that.
Only the last third of the video is a plea for people to step up and help pay for this enterprise. The first two thirds contain subjects about what we’re facing that are ripe for discussion.
“Things to come” isn’t a title about asking for money, it’s a title pertaining to the things we’re facing as a society. Which Bill gets into before the solicitation for membership and donations. That’s the part I was focused on and those are things we really need to talk about.
Because a lot of Conservatives are missing those vital aspects completely. We have too many grumpy old assholes looking for things to be pissed off about and not enough thoughtful people defining the problem so that it can be attacked.
Again, that was the point of the first two thirds of the video, the last third was tacked on and had nothing to do with that or with the title.
Or such is my opinion. YMMV.
I am just erring on the side of giving Bill credit for doing something on purpose that has been an error in the past. Knowing how hard that last third of the video was for him, I want to pump him up a little.
I think I will send Shelley an email saying that we’d like to talk amongst ourselves about this cycle.
I just made a forum post under the General section. Title will be obvious. fwiw
Ah, I get it, sorry.
There’s a lot of stuff going on here. Zo was placed on “hold” and I’m certain that wasn’t an easy thing to do. A member threatened to withdraw her support over a harmless joke. People are whining that Right Angle isn’t entertaining them sufficiently or in the way they would want it to. Bill’s burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. Etc.
Bill’s gotta make a living AND get the message out, getting this message out isn’t an easy way to make a living. Whatever we can do to help and not hinder in this regard is a positive. My purpose in bring this up in a blog wasn’t to be critical, I just thought it was an innocent oversight and I’d fire off a post in case anyone was interested.
Frankly you’re a lot more considerate than me. I think Harry (and other people) are right about being on the spectrum but that’s no excuse, mea culpa.
I still say that Bill really needs to get out of hostile, hideously expensive Kalifornia for his own peace of mind and wellbeing. Unassing that place has done wonders for my quality of life so I know whereof I speak. So much so that over ten years later every single day I literally thank God I don’t live there anymore. That entire environment is intensely spiritually toxic. It amplifies the evil in bad people and sucks the joy of life out of good people.
I still say that Bill really needs to get out of hostile, hideously expensive Kalifornia for his own peace of mind and wellbeing.
Couldn’t agree with this more. I am sure it was hard for Jeremy to pull up stakes and move everyone to TN, but I think they are better off for it.
As much as CA has to offer lifestyle-wise, it’s a big country with lots to offer in lots of places. The hills of SW VA have been home for me for a long time. Lots to do here and lots of beauty to be seen.
The idea of living in the belly of the beast to combat it in the information age is really not needed.
And with more going on with DW, somewhere in the SE US would be better.
It would do a lot to ease one form of his stress.
Yeah, I think Bill’s got enough stress without the stress of living in the Soviet Socialist Repooblick of Kalifornia added on top of the rest.
It’s not just the politics, though the politics are bad enough. The people there are a problem too. My neighbors in California were all “prosecutorial”, always looking for something to pull a “gotcha” over. They’d be nice and friendly to your face but the slightest little thing they’d be making a stink over behind your back too.
A good example is what happened to my sister. She had a vertical board fence around her back yard. The wind blew a section of it over and it took a couple weeks to get it fixed. Partly because she had to wait for me and when I’d have time to help her repair it. Her neighbor across the street, who she and her husband had been on a friendly, neighborly basis with for years, complained almost daily about the “eyesore” until it was fixed. After it was fixed he never spoke to them again. I don’t know what his major malfunction was but this is very typical of people in Southern California.
It’s almost like people there are thinking “Yeah, I’m gonna be REAL nice to you, until I can find something to hate you for.”
Another good example is the street where my Mom lived is jammed end to end with parked cars after about 4 PM. The city allowed too many people to develop their single family homes into multi-family apartment buildings (which generate a lot of income) without a zoning requirement for parking garages. All those apartment buildings and no place to park but on the street.
So one time my Mom was coming home from somewhere and she had to really squeeze to get her car parked. Two very attractive but bitchy women across the street saw her working to park her car behind theirs. They came over and complained. Mom didn’t touch their car at all and that wasn’t their complaint. It was that she had some trouble getting parked so “Maybe someone should consider taking her drivers license away before she really hurts someone.”
I could give literally dozens of examples like this. Bill talked about some guy getting out of line in a convenience store and he had to consider if he was going to do something about it when the owner, a small Asian lady, took after the guy with a broom and drove him off.
When’s the last time you witnessed something like any of these where you live? When is the last time this kind of thing happened multiple times a week, week after week, year in and year out?
When I first moved there I thought it was me and/or that I was just running into bad eggs by luck of the draw. After 15 years there I am absolutely certain that’s not the case, it’s a lifestyle thing not a “just happening to find the bad people more often than the good people” thing.
This manifests all across the board in SoCal. From prosecutorial neighbors to hostile angry people in traffic on the roads to service people and contractors to retail clerks and grocery store bag boys and much more.
It just never stops. About the time you start to feel good about something, anything, along comes some asshole to ruin your day. Don’t you dare relax for even one second, never ever lose sight of all the people around you that will jump to attack you the second they sense an opening. It’s almost supernatural and I’m not at all convinced it isn’t.
I recall Bill saying something about Natasha liking living where they do so he maybe doesn’t have a choice. Or the choice is between his wife and his choice of location to live at.
For whatever reasons he gives and all the other reasons he may not name, Bill might not have any real choice. If so, that’s too bad because that’s a Trumpian shit-hole of a place to live.
It’s so bad I was able to convince my entire immediate family to leave and it didn’t’ take a hell of a lot of convincing. When the opportunity arose and the resources became available we bailed. In spite of some very hefty relocation costs and about a year of highly strained finances during the process it was worth every penny and every drop of sweat.
If that happened in my neighborhood, several of us would have fixed it for your sister before she had a chance to call you.
My next door neighbor has back and knee issues pretty bad. The “kid” on the other side of her cuts her grass every week even though he is 27 and moved out of his parents house years ago. Just comes by each week, grabs his dad’s mower and trimmer and takes care of it.
When I lost a large part of a tree from wind, his dad came by and helped me cut and haul it to the curb.
I could give countless examples of this, as I am sure that you could. (BTW – winter coming make sure that blade for your tractor is ready to move your neighbors’ snow if we get more than an inch in any given day! 😉 )
One of the things I like about where I am, people are people and look out for each other. Not look to one up each or catch you in the wrong.
All of that is because even though we live in a not particularly Conservative state, we still live in Real America. That’s the kind of things people do in Real America. I’m so glad I got to come “home” to Real America and not have to spend my last years in the shit hole that California has become.
“Ron”, if things went south in the hills of SW VA, how likely would you move? I am not being a brat here, it’s just that I hear it all the time for Bill or others to move. Bill’s said that he doesn’t have a monopoly on the vote anymore. Gotta respect him for that…stand up guy trying to make his wife happy too.
I’m in the freaking thick of it, and it being the very epicenter, literally and figuratively, of commie california. As I’ve said before, all my family and my 3 adult kids, the house I inherited, the home I grew up in, 200 yards from the Monterey Bay. It’s a hard one to leave. Mrs. Road and I set our red line at reparations, California wide. Oh, that and home break-ins, which would happen only once and end very badly for the perp.
We have a plan of where to go from here. Was looking more likely before Youngkin won. And I am very hopeful that Winsome Sears can be “The First Black Female Governor”. VA has a very odd election schedule and you cannot serve consecutive terms.
That said we have TN, SC, FL (gulf coast) on our potential alternate retirement spots.
And yes, Bill is no longer a monolith when it comes to these decisions, but I wonder if the lovely Mrs Whittle saw how clean Dallas is (at least the last time I was there) would she reconsider her negative comparison of American Cities to Moscow?
is NC out of the running for Mr and Mrs RSAE? I’m a West coaster all my life and so is my wife, but she’s fallen in love with the hills of North Carolina (she’s never been there, btw…) probably because there are craftspersons/quilters/cross stitchers there (she thinks).
I live near you in northeast Georgia, minutes from the N.C. line, and it’s da bomb.
It is a possibility and the western side hills are nice, almost as nice as where we are. Charlotte and Greensboro are overrun at this point. If we were to do NC it would be more towards the coast. One of the reasons it is not as high is we thought NC was closer to tipping blue than VA was a few years ago.
May be settling out a bit so it may stay on the list. Some nice places near the coast that are far enough inland so as not to experience significant Hurricane effects.
Honestly, if VA can go Youngkin, Sears, Miyares over the next few cycles, we’d be good here for quite a while. But always good to have a plan B
I know about the area you live in and it’s lovely. That’s why it has attracted wealthy elitist communists. There are other enclaves like Sedona AZ, Taos NM and Aspen CO but where you live isn’t an enclave, it’s a full blown soviet socialist republic.
If the politics of the area didn’t have consequences it would be tolerable to live there. Indeed, because you are at the epicenter many of the consequences are not yet impacting you. That’s how these politics work, creating consequences that the creators do not themselves experience.
Because of all that, you might be able to live out the rest of your lifetime without going through the things I had to live with in San Pedro or Bill has to live with in Santa Monica. One size does not fit all and in your situation it’s a matter of when the consequences of the devolving California political climate come home to roost.
Roost they will, eventually. If not on your doorstep then on your children’s and grandchildren’s.
Don’t fool yourself, if you light up a home invading goblin or two while that might be a very bad end for them, your troubles are far from over too. California law makes NO provision for self defense no matter how obvious the self defense was. Which means you will likely face the results of a hostile grand jury and there’s a high likelihood you’ll be indicted. Hostile because a grand jury of your “peers” will have to virtue signal how amazingly wonderful they are because they condemn people who own and use firearms for their own survival. There is a good chance of a preponderance of people on that grand jury who think if they can just get rid of people like you they won’t have to worry about the goblins either. Because in California, politics are no longer required to make sense.
Then you will go to court and have to fight another hostile jury. You might win. You might not and spend the rest of your days in a California prison. If the latter you’ll spend every minute wishing you’d gotten the hell out of California when you still could. All those other reasons for staying will seem trivial by comparison.
Because of where you live, none of this may ever happen to you in your lifetime. At the epicenter you likely still have a decent police force and the goblins know that it’s cold comfort to them if they die in a hail of gunfire but you go to prison for protecting yourself and your loved ones. Eventually the police force will deteriorate and the goblins will grow bolder with the idea that you live in a place with very tempting plunder. That’s the future for your adult children and their children unless something drastically changes in California politics. A future you might avoid but they will not.
You’re still living a good life where you are. I was living a good life when I first moved to San Pedro. San Pedro was a sleepy “little” bedroom community at the south end of the Los Angeles Harbor Strip on the extreme southern end of Los Angeles County for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. When local attractions and businesses closed, gang tags started showing up all around me and drive by gunfire in the wee hours of the morning that they police refused to respond to — Those were warning signs that I heeded.
You’re not there yet. I never thought those things would come to my neighborhood either. It was a mistake to think that.
I understand you have very good reasons for why you don’t want to leave where you are now but it’s a gamble. Just think about all the other refugees in the world and how much better off they’d be if they left their homes at any point before they had to in order to survive.
You either make your own decisions or your decisions will be made for you. Neither you, nor Bill, nor any of the other good people remaining in California are going to be able to stem this tide of tragedy. The proof of this is that they have tried and failed.