Pratchett’s “Witches” world was so similar to my own, from jumping over fires to get married (not legal in my day, but there was memory of it) to various local folk superstitions, that it was always a surprise when he pulled something I’d never heard of.

One of these is the “rough music.”

When someone has done just about enough that a small village can no longer put up with him, the men in the village get together and play a barbarous and terrible music as they nerve themselves up for the barbarous and terrible things they have to do.

In Europe — hell, all over the rest of the world — the rough music is playing. Just because no one is reporting on this, it doesn’t mean it’s not going on, and growing, and nerving itself up to… something.

The level at which the Gilets Jaunes have been under reported is extraordinary, except that it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.

(And now I think about it, how much do we see in main stream news about Hong Kong? And it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.)

To those of you who haven’t been to Europe recently (as locals, not tourists) and don’t have family there, there are things to remember:

1- Europe is weird in terms of blogs and alternate news media. They might read ours — some do — but blogs never really took off in Europe as a source of news. Even here, we’re at most 50%. Maybe a little more if you count that news filter in. People talk at the water cooler, whatever. More on this later. BUT in Europe this doesn’t exist. Mostly the news they get including the news from here are third hand via our media and whatever crazy alien clown they’re getting their spin from.

2- Europe is about 20 years “ahead” of us on the road of what a friend of mine calls the Brahamandarins taking over. The internationalist left has been in full command since the nineties. They never had a Reagan (Thatcher sort of kind of held off the tide briefly, but only in one country.) There was no eighties prosperity. Hell, slick Willie was to the right of their right. Obama is about center of their politicians, including his loathing for the country he governed.

3- Europe is in trouble BAD. The government has betrayed the people to the extent of making it almost impossible for rural populations to live with any dignity; for people to afford having families; for people to be safe in their lives, pursuits and possessions. No, I mean to a level you guys don’t comprehend. Imagine if the Obama years had lasted for 30 years now, and he controlled all the media, all the judges and most of the law enforcement.

And Europe has had just about enough. Things like Brexit and the Yellow Jackets filter through here, in the alternate news sources. I wonder how much else is going on, we have not a clue about. The fact we know about the Yellow Jackets at any level is bizarre enough, given that they are — media and internet wise — living in the eighties.

So, let’s talk about the rough music. Sure, you can hear it. I can hear it too. The stomp and the drumming can be heard all over the world.

That which can’t go on, won’t.

But I implore you to stop and think: if the rough music plays, what comes after?

There might be no hope for Europe, but Europe’s… ah…. how do we put this? Europe’s tenets, their stand before the world, an improvement as they were on everything before them, are not ours.

Even in Europe I suspect when this bursts — and there it will burst. The elites flaying and screaming is only making it worse — you’re going to see things that will make you wonder why on Earth good American boys died in WWII. Because we’re about to get National Socialism, the sequel. National because they’re getting tired of the international elites (and who isn’t) and socialism because the poor bastards have not experienced anything else their entire adult lives.

It will happen. It is necessary. The EU was probably one of the most bizarre ideas in the history of bad ideas. The way it’s run which essentially steals the franchise from ordinary people was just the old style “good families” coming back into power through a back door.

But what comes after will probably be horrific. If we’re all lucky it will also be briefish and like France after the revolution they’ll find their way to something slightly less insane. With or without Napoleon and Europe wide war? Ah… that’s where we need to talk.

First however, let me say that hearing the rough music from the rest of the world is starting to echo here. We see what’s going on there. And we hear strange and stupid stuff, like the “whistleblower of the day” and an impeachment without voting and of course, pancake-gate.

Faced with that kind of behavior you obviously think “It’s insane.” And “We have to stop it.”

But there is something you’re missing. There’s the good news.

The first good news, of course, is that Trump won in 2016. it was bloody impossible. The fraud was unbelievable. But he still won.

And in the midterms — yes, they won the house, but think about it — the fraud was UNBELIEVABLE. Literally. Banana republics were laughing at our random keeping of polling stations open, of weird shenanigans with votes down in FL and of whatever the heck the chick in Georgia thought she was doing. And they won… the house. And not with a rushing majority.

Do you know why they’re going insane? Because they hear the rough music too. And they know that they probably can’t cheat enough to win in November 2020 or even keep the house. And they’re desperate. And none of their increasingly crazier gambits are sticking.

For years, they were a gerbil kept in the controlled environment of left information-complex. They could pull the right lever, and things went their way.

Arguably the last time this worked for them was making an infelicitous but in no way bad phrasing of Romney’s into a threat on women. “Women in binders.” Of course he meant women resumes were in binders, and he was signaling that he hired women but they made this sound like he somehow wanted to put women in binders. And crazy leftists all over were repeating this, as if it even meant something.

They threw everything in, they burned all their credit to get Obama elected. If they could they’d have made him the new FDR/JFK/Hero president of the left forever. They couldn’t. They couldn’t make Summer of Recovery fly. They couldn’t even make Michelle Obama fly as a fashion icon. (Arguably, she didn’t help them.) They burned everything they had. They pressed that button to deliver their progressive pellet and nothing happened.

And then they got everything and everyone, including probably controlling who the right chose, so that Hillary would have “her turn.”

… and it didn’t work.

But worse, the things they keep trying to do keep not working, including the “we’re really going into a recession NOoooooow”

Worse, traps they lay for Trump ensnare their own guys. See #metoo.

Yes, the left hears the rough music playing. But the rough music they hear, right now, is coming from ballot boxes.

Understand, everything they’ve done to us so far can be undone. Part of their madness is how much of Obama’s “legacy” Trump has quietly dismantled while they chase crazy stuff like the totally bizarre impeachment.

Worse, they’re being unmasked, repeatedly, in public. Look, guys, I’d been hearing about the Lolita express and Clinton since the early 2000s on the blogs. I didn’t even believe it. It was too fantastic. How would he keep that quiet. And then it exploded. And then Jeffrey Epstein died in a way no one in America really believes was “unforced suicide.”

And yes, there’s a feeling there’s a sluice of sewage down there, and it’s splashing most of the left. They’re keeping it quiet, sort of, but people know. You can’t unknow this stuff. And this was something that five years ago most people would have thought you were crazy for bringing up.

Then there’s Ukraine. I don’t know what they thought they were playing at. But what it keeps exposing is massive corruption in a widening circle, and Chinese influence too.

So– They hear the rough music at the ballot box.

Anyone else wonder why it’s starting this early? Why because they fear NEXT YEAR’s October surprise and are trying to defang it now. How bad can it be, to start a year ahead.

And you can see how worried they are by how social media has been trying to censor things (though interestingly, this last month has been less weird, perhaps because there are inquiries being made.) And by their sudden and bizarre sallies against… FREE SPEECH. Yep. They’re actually coming out, publicly, against the first amendment. yes, we know they’ve always controlled speech in their enclaves. But it’s not working. And now all they can do is scream “But I want you to shut up” and “Mr. Policeman, make them shut up.” This is not a position of CONFIDENCE.

In the same way, they’ve been flapping jaws about a living constitution since I was an exchange student. This is the first time they’re coming out as being AGAINST the Constitution. (Admittedly, Obama started it.)

No, this isn’t good. It makes everything feel very unstable. And it makes people on our side scream “Get them, before they get us.”

But the best thing we can compare this to is the lancing of a boil. It looked prettier and healthier while the pus was under the skin. But it would have killed us.

It would have come to the point where there was nothing else we could do but don yellow vests, and take to the streets.

Fortunately things happened. Okay, mostly the internet, which they keep thinking they can control, but which keeps blowing up on them.

It’s to cry — with laughter — a hundred years of marching to the institutions, and the AV geeks are beating them. It’s like the USSR being brought up by copiers and typewriters.

And it’s something to remember.

Totalitarianism cannot endure, not long term, with widespread peer to peer communication and the ability to communicate freely and for free across the country and across the world.

China, you say? Yeah, Hong Kong might still end badly. But that it’s lasted this long, in open defiance? It is a sign. And it is not a sign the despots are winning.

Will we have to do it? Will it come to it?

I hope and pray it won’t. I’ve said before “be careful, be prepared.” I’m hoping it won’t come here. We do after all have the internet. And Trump. And if you think that makes no difference, you haven’t been awake the last two years and change. They have yellow jackets. We have a Trump. (And does his name not make you wonder if G-d is a novelist?)

The rough music might come here. I can envision stuff like really, really obviously faked-up elections that we can’t even begin to pretend we don’t see, and trying to cram someone like Lizzy Warpaint or Kamel the Harris down our throats. Or worse. I can imagine our government actually physically divided, with the House attempting to outright arrest the president solely on their say so.

Any of these things will send up the balloon. And look, dollar stores have yellow jackets. It’s not a bad idea to stock up.

But Trump has a way of coming up with twists no one saw, twists that avoid the worst possible things… And I’m hoping he keeps doing that.

Because guys, if the rough music comes here, it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to burn short but hot. And there’s no telling what emerges. No, seriously, you don’t know. You might wish to fight till we have the real constitutional republic, but remember the young in military age never learned civics.

You toss that dice, you don’t know what happens after.

And it’s not just us. The rough music is already playing in the rest of the world. To the extent things haven’t gone completely and bizarrely insane — in the paint the room red sense — it’s because there is the US. And they can’t read us. They have no idea what we’ll do.

To an extent, despite our refusing open involvement, we’re what’s keeping the protesters in Hong Kong alive. We’re what’s keeping the antifa-like elements of the yellow jackets (not most of them, but an element) from turning this into just a pillage and rob expedition resulting in who knows what. I don’t know what our influence is in the rest of the world, but I’d bet it’s not negligible.

We’re the one sane guy, holding the gun, and watching the rest of the room burst out into inanity. To the extent the world isn’t drowning in blood, it’s because we’re here, we’re functional, and people are afraid to get our attention. Not to mention tariffs or not, we’re their best customer.

If we down into the ululating madness, there’s more than a good chance the rest of the world does too. There’s a good chance we’ll wake from any donnybrook we engage in, in whatever form we wake up, to find the world is Chinese. Which would spell the end of Western civilization and pull us into the cycle of “always burning books and restarting history” China plays.

Even with a best case scenario, do you want the US facing a world-Chinese Empire? How long do we keep the republic then?

And even if everyone emerges and the Chinese don’t have the strength to become a world power (who knows?) we’ll have lost twenty or thirty years and countless wealth and lives. And what emerges will be …. possibly very bad.

It might be unavoidable. And if we get to it, there’s nothing left but to fight valiantly.

The balloon could go up.

And yet it’s better for everyone if it doesn’t. It’s better for everyone if America keeps at least the appearance of a constitutional republic while we clean house and reset onto a better course.

It’s better if the rough music never plays, if the mob never has to deal with things in the only way the mob knows how to do it.

Trust me, exposure will still destroy most of these people, in everything that is worth it to them. Even if not one of them goes to jail, we’ll still have won a duel to the pain. (And don’t be sure they won’t go to jail.)

For years now I’ve been telling you: in the end we win they lose. Things are already headed that way. Which is already a miracle given how much control they’ve for 100 years.

What you can do right now is speak up, expose the nonsense, not let them hide.

The time for fighting might come. But it might not. At least not physical fighting. Keep in mind what we’re doing is not without dangers. And some of us have already paid a heavy price.

I can’t tell at this point if it’s better or worse for the republic if the left loses its mind faster. On the one hand, beware the wounded bear. On the other hand a spooked enemy — as we’re learning — fights badly.

Don’t let up now. Come out come out wherever you are, if you can at all. They fear our exposure of their misdeeds more than they fear our (right now) ineffectual physical violence.

Be prepared, but for now, just be aware. And don’t back down.

Stand your ground.