"Vic: Life is like a garbage truck. It's mostly behind me!" (opens in separate window)

dressed to kill

friday, september 26th, 2025

When Brian De Palma’s movie, "Dressed to Kill", came out in 1980, this was a different country. Like Hitchcock’s "Psycho" before it (1960), both films depicted men seeking to become women who are murderously deranged by their wishful fantasies. Now, our country has become murderously deranged by the same fantasy writ large.

These derangements are acted out now by a segment of the population that calls itself “the trans community.” This is just another manipulation of language, of course, by the same organized agencies working to turn our national life upside-down and inside-out. You call them “Globalists” or “Marxists” or “gnostic anarchists,” but who-or-whatever actually directs this action remains an abiding mystery of our time. (The runner-up abiding mystery is how the news media was hijacked to go along with all that.) You currently have one side willing to talk and extend a microphone to anyone, and one side that shoots to kill when they do

You have learned the past ten years how fragile reality can become in a society under stress. But then there is the reality of things as they actually exist, and the group’s perception of reality, which is not the same. The group’s perception of reality requires a consensus, an agreement, that certain things of this world are so. If the agreement is sturdy, and comports with how things actually exist, then you have a high-functioning society. If the agreement is flimsy and doesn’t comport with how things actually are, you get Clusterf[***] Nation, a society tortured by various compounded derangements.

It is hard to account for exactly how this happened to us, but the most visible manifestations of it these days come out of the political Left, the party that once defended the interests of the working-class, the laborers in their tough, uncomfortable lives seeking fair treatment from the comfortable class that employed and managed them. At least, that’s how things resolved for a while in our industrial society, the classes coexisting in a fruitful, balanced tension. That all peaked in the early 1960s.

Political relations between business and labor grew increasingly irrelevant after that as industry got moved out of our country, so the party of the working-class had to find something else to give its attention to. By the early 1960s, the Democratic Party had already rebranded itself as the party of the civil rights (having been previously the party of Jim Crow and the KKK). It was not an altogether cynical or insincere transformation. It was driven by a dynamic imperative: to prove that America, the self-styled Leader of the Free World after two great and ruinous world wars, was a fair and righteous country, deserving its post-war leadership role. And that imperative rode the tailwind of Franklin Roosevelt’s “progressive” legacy.

Increasingly, though, after the 1960s, the civil rights crusade lost its mojo. It disappointed the zealous. Try as it might, the effort did not lead to a nirvana of racial harmony. In fact, the miserable black underclass seemed to only grow larger and more dysfunctional, the cities they lived in (increasingly run by them) more broken.

The band-aid for that failure was multiculturalism. By the 1980s, the consensus about reality was fracturing, especially about standards of behavior. Too many “people of color” were “justice involved” -- they committed crimes. It was an embarrassment to “progressives” (liberal Democrats). Multiculturalism’s premise was that a society could have different standards of behavior and different values for different groups. Henceforth, there was no need for a broad agreement about what sort of behavior was okay and what was not okay — no need for a common culture that applied to everyone.

From there, the Democratic party had to assiduously recruit and sort out all the various multi-cultures in America, and pretend to manage and justify their special needs in order to continue functioning as a national political party. In the 1970s, it was all about feminism, the entry of women into the managerial class, the board rooms, the law firms, the professoriate. Then it was all about gay rights, Stonewall and all that followed. That movement was badly derailed in the 1980s by AIDS, which killed many of its activists and made the group’s sexual activities look less than entirely wholesome.

After about 1985, the liberals had to write off Black men. Too many were crackheads and no accounts. All they had left was the likes of Al Sharpton (of Tawana Brawley infamy) and a few hundred millionaire sports stars. So, the Dems rallied over the plight of Black women . . . who were soon joined by the indigenous people (formerly “Indians”). . . the Pacific Islanders . . . By the early 21st century, the Democrats had run out of oppressed ethnicities to recruit under the multicultural umbrella. All that remained were the “homeless” (formerly “bums,” “junkies,” and “the mentally ill”).

Actually, the mentally ill had gotten a multicultural jump-start in the 1970s when patients in hospitals for the insane were re-branded as an “oppressed minority”. Thus, the hospitals were all emptied out and closed down and the patients released to “freedom” on the streets with vague promises of “community-based treatment” to follow -- it never did, of course. After several major Middle East wars starting with Desert Storm in the 90s, more and more damaged military vets joined the ranks of the homeless. It has apparently never occurred to anyone that re-establishing hospitals for the insane might be necessary.

And so it has gone, from one “marginalized” and “oppressed minority” after another until all that liberalism (and their official org, the Democratic Party) had left in the 2020s was the tiniest subculture in the country: people who fantasized about becoming the opposite sex. That group was much encouraged by the medical establishment so narcissistically enchanted by their surgical skills and manipulations of hormonal chemistry (and the money it generated) that they recruited ever more subjects for their experiments.

The doctors and their therapist partners, in turn, egged-on the teachers, professors, and school administrators to recruit “patients” for “treatment” of the new condition called “gender dysphoria”. The cheerleaders of the political Left coalesced behind all of that, promoted the hell out of it, went as far as inviting “drag queens” (men portraying women as monsters) into the third-grade classrooms. And that is how deranged humans like the characters in Dressed to Kill and Psycho became the role models for the Democratic Party.

A Day In The Life.

Awake at 8a on Friday, I rolled over and went back to sleep until 10, and finally got up; I needed that extra 2hrs. A nice 65°F day ahead. I made the new coffee, tried to shake the cobwebs from my brain, and tuned into the ongoing "CP Show LIVE", scanned the news headlines and weather forecast. Weis Pharmacy called to notify me that 4 Rxs were waiting, so I decided to go over after the scheduled Weis grocery delivery, 12-2p. Coffee was great, and I got ready for the day.

I had a Weis Market (Enola PA) delivery on Thursday, and got a sleeve of 6 Thomas' Pre-Sliced Onion Bagels, but can't taste the onion. I used Onion Powder and Garlic Powder, can taste the Garlic, but not the onion. At 65 (almost 66), I'm worried that my taster/sniffer is going south. Damn.

Q: What's the last thing a bug sees when it hits your vehicle's windshield?
A: It's own asshole.

I had some minor chores to do at the condo, and left at 2p for the pharmacy. Traffic was light, despite being a Friday afternoon, and I was back within an hour. I started feeding the squirrels, chipmunks and bluejays again, but NOT out front where the Jeep is, rather now in the back yard area, in front of the patio, where they have nothing to chew on and destroy. After a short, less than 2hr snooze, I watched the evening news, made dinner and switched to History's "Ancient Aliens", and Discovery's "Gold Rush" until 11:30p, and unplugged.

I slept-in until about 9:30a on Saturday, a sunny, light overcast, 66° morning. I made coffee, fired-up the HP desktop, scanned the news and weather, and fed the various critters, made breakfast and tuned into the local WSBA's replay of one of ;last week's "CP Shows" Podcast. The mews is as crazy today, a it is, every day. Hard to read and rationally digest, let alone make sense of. So I quit for the day. The demonKKKrats are mentally-ill. I checked email, and answered some of it. The rest I just flushed. I made a nice breakfast of Poached Eggs In a Bowl w/ Toast, and put of 2 niggling errands until Monday.

Some days, you're the windshield. And some days, you're the bug.

No TV all day or evening. I worked in the basement, on the 17 5-tier "Prepper Shelves", going thru the semi-annual inventory and re-arranging of "newest to oldest" canned/jarred items' expiration dates, which I'd started a few months ago, and hadn't gotten back to finishing. I scanned the news and weather forecast 3x during the day and evening, so TV's really mostly unnecessary. By 10p, I'd had enough of inventorying, with th project 90% +/- complete, I pulled the Jeep into the garage for the night, and headed upstairs for some sleep at 11.

Up at 7:30a on Sunday, I'd overslept and missed the first 18 (of 51)laps of the FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX, in Baku, but after making coffee, I joined ESPN for the race. Very good race. I scanned the news and weather, made another carafe of Blue Batavia Coffee (Arabica), a few smokes in the garage, and enjoyed the 61° temps. I lounged around, had breakfast and at 11:30a, went up to get ready for the day.

1st Day of Fall

I went back to the Prep Inventory project, got more done, as I put thru a single load of laundry and vacuumed out the Jeep. I made Fettuccine Alfredo w/ Sweet Peas for dinner, tuned into the evening news, and it was all about the Charlie Kirk memorial event in Arizona. No Fox News news. Meh. I switched to NEWSMAX; bingo, they had news. I backed the Jeep out,of the garage earlier, so I could get the garbage bag and recycle bin out to the curb, and found that my key fob's battery was dead, as was the spare in my desk. I found 2 nickel-sized CR2032 batteries, and after taking the 2 fobs apart, got thew batteries replaced, and Mt Jeep was happy again. Meh.

I watched "Discovery's "Homestead Rescue" until 11:30p, and bagged it for the night. Lights out at 1a.

Up at 8:15a on Monday, the meteorological First Day of Fall, a cloudy, very damp and cool 62° morning, I fired-up the furnace briefly, made coffee, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", and scanned the news headlines and weather forecast. Fall is here. I had 3 errands to do, skipped breakfast, got ready for the day, and left at 1p for points south of York.

Traffic was heavy in some spots, very light in others, but I made good time. Back by 2:30p, I was feeling a little sick, but unloaded the Jeep, skipped lunch, and laid down on the LR couch. I drifted-off to sleep again 2-3x during the afternoon and early evening and, before long, it was after 7p. I moved to the comfy leather lounged in front of the TV, and fell asleep again until 11. Lights out.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

Up at 6a on Tuesday, 0-DARK-THIRTY, 66° and humid, with severe t-storms forecast for the afternoon. I made coffee, tuned into the "CS Show LIVE", and at 9, into the "CP Show LIVE", until 10:20a, when I left for my 11:00 haircut app't, down in south York. Traffic was light, the haircut went well, I stopped at Weis Market on the way home, to p/u a waiting Rx and some fruit and vegs.

Home by 12:30. I made some lunch, and left at 1p for Sis' condo northwest of here, in Manchester Twp, and we drove into York, to East Ninth Ave, where our Mom, her 3 sisters and brother, grew-up, to get some more accurate pics of that elegant old, well cared for home. I had Sis back home by 2p, and was home by 2:30. After a quick smoker on the back patio, with t-storms and rain coming, I readied the patio, and hit the LR couch for 2hr. HEAVY RAIN and thunder/lightening, but I slept thru it, although I could hear it above the background sleep music, playing on the desktop.

Back up at almost 5, I enjoyed the 2nd carafe I'd brewed this morning, but never got a chance to have, with running all over the area. More t-storm cells moved thru the area, with heavy downpours, and by 5:30, it looked as dark as sunset, as a big one moved into the York area. I watched the evening news, made dinner, and settled-in for an evening of "NBC" -- Nothing But Crap -- where I used to enjoy History's "The Mystery of Skinwalker Ranch", there is nothing worthwhile, now. I channel flipped for a while, but gave-up at 11, and unplugged.

Up at 7:30a on Wednesday, a foggy, heavy overcast, 64°, drizzly morning, I made coffee, fired-up the HP desktop, scanned the weather and news, had a couple of smokes in the garage, and figured out the day's schedule. I tuned into the usual "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12, placed a delivery order for tomorrow, from Weis Market (Enola PA), and relaxed until it was time to get ready for the day.

I watched History's "American Pickers", had dinner, watched part of the news, and switched to Discovery's "Expedition X" until 12:30a; lights out.

Awake at 4a, 5a, 6a and back to sleep each time, I finally got up at 8, made coffee, scanned the news and weather. A heavily overcast, foggy, rainy, warm and humid 70°, with t-storms and showers forecast all thru the day. After tuning into the 9-12 "CP Show LIVE", I checked the day's schedule: just a delivery from Weis Market (Enols PA), so I can finish-up the basement Prep Shelves' Inventory project. I spent almost 3hrs finishing that up, grabbed a hour's nap on the LR couch, and went out to the back patio with a final mug of the morning's coffee, to have a smoke, when the skies opened-up and we got a massive deluge of rain and wind, and after a short cleaning break, another even bigger downpour hit the area. Wow, everything (hardscape) was under water for 15-20mins. Streets and gutters overflowing.

I made Crabcake Fettucine w/ Mushrooms, watched the evening news on FNC, and switched to History's "Ancient Aliens" and for some levity, Discovery's "Caught" until 11p. Lights out.

Tomorrow starts a new week, here in the "Journal", and I have another clear week, so Sherry and I will talk over the weekend, and see what her schedule's like, so we can get some time together.

Reflections on the Coming Days of Rage.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was already positively impacting the world with his indefatigable, peaceful, joyful, godly work to change hearts and minds, but in mere days, his assassination by a cowardly sniper’s bullet has already launched a tsunami of change he likely could not have imagined. The world is entering a different epoch now, and as with all shifts into a new age, there will be birthing pains.

I can’t recall whose insight this was, but someone online observed that Charlie’s murder was an “Archduke Ferdinand moment” –- referring to the assassination that triggered World War I. I think that captures the sobering magnitude of Charlie’s martyrdom (yes, literal martyrdom; as others have pointed out, Charlie was killed not for his politics but for his Christian faith, which shaped his political positions). But his brutal murder drives home the point that we are already in a hot civil war in this country – not just a culture war, not a figurative civil war, but a hot civil war. Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.

But so far only one side has been waging that war. From the assassination of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson at the hands of a terrorist-turned-Left-wing-folk-hero, to the slaughter of Catholic schoolchildren at the hands of a demonic trans terrorist, to Charlie Kirk at the hands (allegedly) of a Left-radicalized young man (with a trans partner) who declared that “some hate can’t be negotiated out,” the Left has already declared war on the political opponents they deem to be fascist threats to democracy who must be exterminated like vermin (hence their dehumanizing rhetoric over the years since the reign of Barack Obama, intensified under Joe Biden).

I am old enough to remember another time when the Left normalized political violence in America. As Bryan Burroughs notes in his book Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, “radical violence was so deeply woven into the fabric of 1970s America that many citizens, especially in New York and other hard-hit cities, accepted it as part of daily life.” Burroughs quotes a retired FBI agent who noted, “People have completely forgotten but in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States. It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.”

My record at predictions is mixed at best, so I hope I’m wrong about this one, but I believe we are about to enter a new Days of Rage. Political violence is about to become even more “commonplace.” The Left’s repugnant response to Charlie’s murder has already demonstrated that they are not going to be shocked into policing themselves and de-escalating the violence, much less their demonizing, vicious rhetoric. Some Democrat leaders, like Barack Obama, have issued obligatory, tepid statements denouncing political violence, but do not expect that any “moderate” elements on the Left will prevail. The Democrat Party is controlled by the radical Left, and has been since well before the calculated, meteoric rise of Barack Obama.

And the Right is going to have to be prepared to confront that and take the necessary steps to shut it down. I interacted personally with Charlie only a couple of times and didn’t know him that well, but I do know he would not be calling for violent retribution over his killing. And I’m not calling for it either. Nevertheless, those of us on the Right are going to have to come together and get on the same page regarding a just and appropriate response to a political movement that gleefully embraces assassination as a tactic.

We didn’t want this civil war, and we didn’t start it, but we need to be determined to end it. We can and should have many open conversations about what that might entail, but ending it has to be our end game. Our nation cannot sustain itself as things currently stand politically and culturally.

What about finding common ground and calling for unity, you ask? In an address after Kirk’s murder, Vice President JD Vance forcefully delivered a dose of hard reality about the possibility of reconciliation between Left and Right:

“There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents’ politics. There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder. There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination. There is no unity for the people that fund these articles who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagreed.”

Vance went on to note that unity is only possible “with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.” True, but this is essentially saying that unity is impossible, because the Left by and large believes not only that such violence is acceptable, but that it is a necessary tactic to dismantle what they see as the fascistic, systemically white supremacist, Trump regime. Indeed, they believe violence, when they wage it, is a form of speech, while speech, when the Right exercises it, as Charlie Kirk did, is violence – against their designated, “oppressed” victim categories.

I have written and spoken about this often in recent years: bridging the gaping political chasm in America is not possible because there are two distinct Americas today, each side passionately supporting starkly opposed and irreconcilable worldviews.

One side acknowledges that America is imperfect but still takes pride in our exceptionalism; the other side believes America is the villain of history and must be fundamentally remade from the foundations up.

One side wants secure borders, legal immigration, and America First; the other wants open borders, amnesty for millions of illegals, and submission to globalist institutions.

One side holds to the principles of the Constitution and our God-given rights such as freedom of speech; the other believes the Constitution is outdated and unwoke, that God is dead anyway, and that free speech only empowers fascists.

One side believes in the sanctity of unborn lives; the other considers the unborn a mere clump of cells that can be discarded when inconvenient.

One side believes fairness means equality of opportunity; the other believes the remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination.

One side believes nothing justifies rioting and looting; the other defends rioting and looting as reparations for slavery, and considers the terms “rioting” and “looting” themselves to be racist dog-whistles.

One side believes the news media should strive for objectivity; the other believes objectivity is a racist Western concept and that journalists should openly embrace social justice activism.

One side believes, like Charlie Kirk did, in reasoned debate; the other believes that words are violence, that there are no universal truths, and that reason itself is an oppressive tool of white privilege.

One side believes political violence is a sign of Third-World lawlessness; the other believes pre-emptive violence against political opponents is self-defense and anti-fascist.

I could go on, but the obvious point is that on literally every issue facing America today, there is a Grand Canyon-sized gulf between Left and Right perspectives. There is no way to bring these two Americas together, not even in a contentious coexistence. Matter cannot exist in the same space as anti-matter. To borrow from the tagline of the 1986 movie Highlander, “there can be only one.” For the country to survive, one of these worldviews must resoundingly defeat the other in the marketplace of ideas, in the halls of power, and if necessary, in the streets.

We are way past the point where the Left will heed pleas for unity and civility; their lust for total power has vaulted them beyond law and order, beyond morality itself when it comes to crushing political opposition.

For the two Americas to find any common ground to work toward unity, they must share at least a few essential points of agreement like a love for country, a respect for law and order, and a shared sense of American identity, among others. But as long as the country is stretched to the breaking point between such ideological, existential, and moral opposites, the two repelling poles cannot come together. There can be only one.

The Left Is Desperate For The Right To React.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was an act of desperation for the far left, the equivalent of a cornered and dangerous wild animal lashing out. And make no mistake: The leftists cheering on and celebrating this act of political terrorism were there in essence with the murderer. Those who silently cheered instead of condemning tacitly agreed without being overt in their ghoulish glee.

Charlie Kirk was killed because we have better ideas. That isn’t a boast; it is a statement of fact. Political entities don’t attack when they are winning; they lash out only when they are losing. This makes them even more dangerous.

We’ve recently begun discussing the severe flaws in the far left, if for no other reason than as a warning. This is not to gloat over their decline, but to look at why they are headed down a dead-end road. Two of their biggest inherent flaws are habitual dependencies on force and falsehoods. Their incessant lies are effectively a form of mental coercion.

Leftists are their own worst enemies. They keep on demonstrating in no uncertain terms that they cannot win in the free marketplace of ideas, so they have to use force and then lie about it without any remorse, as they have in recent days.

Their core philosophy of collectivism is completely unworkable. The horrific history of the left has always been trying to get their collectivist flavor of the decade to work, and they are perfectly willing to murder millions of innocent people in their ever-failing efforts. They are ideologically bankrupt, which makes them doubly dangerous, because there is nothing worse than someone trying to force a failed solution on the people with a ghastly combination of bullets and Bolshoi.

A couple of recent, little noticed news stories concerned two disturbing polls showing a tendency of younger voters toward collectivism. But events have changed all of that, almost overnight. This explains why the left targeted Charlie Kirk, and it explains its subsequent reactions. The collectivist left cannot abide a rearguard action in its indoctrination centers. It cannot deal with someone telling the basic and brutal truths about the ancient concepts of collectivism: You’re never going to reach that perfect “Communist Utopia,” where it’s going to be “distribution according to need.” And if you dare complain, the CHEKA, Stasi, or Gestapo will haul you away. Those are the facts and history that the left cannot reveal, and one of the other reasons it’s running straight for a brick wall.

Even worse for leftism, the left is supposed to favor “change,” whereas the right is supposed to favor the status quo. Remember the Obama mantra of “Hope and Change”? “Reactionary” is a synonym for the right. The left is supposed to be for “new” ideas. “Conservative” was meant to be a pejorative, for people who resist these wondrous new ideas, like communism.

This sort of made a little bit of sense in the societies of a few hundred years ago, but what are the “new” ideas now?

The alphabet soup scheme and the events of this past week are a prime example of how they are quickly going to run out of things to change. First, it was “gay marriage” and all the ancillary issues around the first two letters of “LGBTQ.” Lefties had a “cause,” and it upset society, but eventually everyone essentially accepted this, so the activists had to find something else. Along came the trans issue with similar results. True to form, the left isn’t satisfied with just trans, and now it’s pushing “furries” or something.

Leftists are rapidly reaching a point where their change mantra is indistinguishable from insanity, running out of degeneracies that will engender a reaction from the right.

The big problem for the left these days is that it has flaws on all fronts. People are horrified by leftists’ political violence and repulsed by their celebrations and lies. There are cracks appearing in the left’s collectivist façade — people who openly oppose Mamdani the commie or refuse to endorse the candidate.

Leftists must go to outrageous lengths to get us to react to their insanity, but that only works against them. This points to letting them destroy themselves and not playing their reaction game.