The Walleye Are Biting
Too bad the GOP is too dumb to put a line in the water
My dad and I went fishing on the Minnesota/South Dakota border, at Lake Traverse. Traverse is not a lake but the reservoir headwaters of the Red River AKA Bois de Sioux River. About 25 miles long, Traverse is quite shallow, never more than about 24ft deep, with many a shallow rock bar that can rip off the lower end of your boat motor. My dad still kicks himself that he did not buy a house on the South Dakota side, 20 years ago, economic policy there being considerably more conservative, while Minnesota is going the way of California and Oregon. Fishing on our home lakes is not so grand anymore, the lakes having become a glorified water park.
Browns Valley is at a continental divide, the water north (Lake Traverse), going to Hudson Bay; the water south, Big Stone Lake (reservoir) , the head waters of the Minnesota River, merging with the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, heading to the Gulf of Mexico.
We caught our limit. Nine pounds of fillets.
Walleye bite well in the spring on Traverse, less so as the season goes on, the fishing is no good in late summer as the reservoir turns to pea soup, so thick with algae. There is so little oxygen in the water the fish barely have energy to move let alone feed. GOP or Dem policy in corn and soybean country when it comes to pollution from industrial farming is bipartisan. It would not be a good deal to buy property on this reservoir if you wanted to go fishing every morning all year in your retirement. Being a river it can be a little sketchy ice fishing.
I checked in on the website of our Minnesota GOP this morning. I was wondering what they are up to. I am still wondering.
Sign up for updates! Because who wouldn’t? Give us money! Because I just got here and why on earth would I not just automatically give you money? Recent news? Four press releases spanning 4.5 months, click on them and you get a 40 word blurb from the MN GOP Chair, signifying nothing. The “About” link will not give you any idea what the MN GOP believes in. The “Get Involved” link gives you lots of further links to get involved, but not a word as to why anyone should bother.
I have often repeated since 2020, Republican messaging is stuck in 1980, mistaking Biden for Jimmy Carter (they are both practically dead), pining for Reagan. Taxes! Immigration! Crime! It has all the nuance of a hammer.
What could the MN GOP be discussing? The first thing the Democrat party did in 2022 after they won triumvirate control of the State government, was make abortion legal in Minnesota even after birth. The second thing they did was make Minnesota a trans refuge state, so that someone, not even necessarily a relative, brings a kid here to be sterilized and sexually disfigured in the name of gender therapy, the State will protect the child from a parent in another state who is against the procedures, even a parent with custody, even a parent who has an extradition order.
Last I checked about a month ago, the State Senate had more than 4000 bills they were voting on, government getting up in our business about every last little thing.
Maybe the MN GOP might be expected to mention any of this, up front on their website? Of course the point is, the reason I am bring this up at all is, the GOP is not going to save you or America from the eugenicist, globalist, race baiting, deconstructionist, anti-Western, open borders, lawfare, WWIII fomenting Democrat party.
Although the GOP’s stalwart adherence to respectability politics may be in part an issue of cognition, the position presented in this article is not entirely based on the premise that it is merely due to biological means. It is also a question of generational culture. The existing GOP structure has succumbed to the influence of the Baby Boomers.
Present generations are still experiencing waves of generational discontent. As the Boomers continue to retire from their professional employment, they retain much of their political influence and institutional power by holding a death grip on party executive committee structures and chair seats, despite facing youthful grievances and calls for change. Younger generations of Americans aim to reconfigure hackneyed systems of power, but congressional leadership remains geriatric.
Compounding the issue of decrepit leadership in the GOP is the conservative desire to maintain the respectability doctrine in the face of moralist leftist enemy activism who hold no principle other than obtaining and wielding power.
Respectability Doctrine is not clearly defined in this article, but it can be summed up as, beholdenness to principle, while being so hidebound to that principle it paralyzes you strategically. The most obvious issue is abortion, as principle leads Florida to win the “battle” of a 6-week abortion ban, with full bans in 15 states, while losing the culture “war” on abortion, confirming for women nationally that the first thing the GOP would do, would be to outlaw all abortion nationally.
The GOP tends to be controlled on the one hand by 80 year olds, and on the other hand by hyper principled, inflexibly moral zealots. Much like the dems in that regard, but the Dems have no principles they won’t change for the next current thing, making them considerably more flexible and ruthless strategically
This has lead the GOP to be effectively happiest in the minority at the Federal level, and in purple states like Minnesota, all the easier to fleece the country or state while not having to take any actual responsibility. The RINOs in Congress are the worst, naked kleptocrats and warpigs addicted to losing.
Without Trump the GOP would hardly even be a party. Why should the GOP bother fishing when it is so much more lucrative to pollute the body politic waters?
Again, the point of this is not to restore the GOP, or even enliven it necessarily. The point is, our political salvation has more to do with our ability and willingness to organize locally, to build local institutions that are self-sustaining and resilient, that focus on the needs of what is local.
As to that I am mostly lecturing myself, fairly well along on the self-sustaining and resilient front, less on the networking, building local alternative institutions.
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On the self-sustaining front, it was summer planting day on the 20th.
The Tomato/onion/carrot beds look a bit ragged. I spent an hour cleaning them up.
I planted 30 tomato plants. I planted a few more than that last year, but I have better infrastructure this year, so probably about the same production or better.
Expanding some of the trellis beds.
Potato trenches.
Peas, peppers, radishes.
Melons and lettuce
Great post. I think you have diagnosed the situation correctly. I was raised by multi-generational republicans. That party has done nothing but disappoint its true believers. I think you are correct, no one else is going to save us, it’s up to us to figure it out on a local and communal level.
“This has lead the GOP to be effectively happiest in the minority at the Federal level, and in purple states like Minnesota, all the easier to fleece the country or state while not having to take any actual responsibility.”
I’ve been saying this for years! NJ is a Dem crap hole and the GOP barely puts up a fight at any level of government. They’re perfectly happy to be in on the gubmint grift, collect their salaries and occasionally bitch about Dem policies. No real attempts to change anything.