Fuzzy’s Favorite Posts of 2021
Watching the Biden administration run roughshod over our great nation and our fellow Americans gives us strength, firms our resolve, and focuses our energies on combating the anti- and unAmerican radical left.
It’s that time of year when LI authors look back at our year’s work and select our favorite posts for the year. You can view my previous “Fave Five” lists here, here, here, and here.
This year has been a disaster for our great country, but oddly, it has been helpful in crystallizing and reinforcing what we all believe about our exceptional country and why.
Watching the Biden administration run roughshod over our great nation and our fellow Americans gives us strength, firms our resolve, and focuses our energies on combating the anti- and unAmerican radical left. My favorite posts of 2021 variously reflect this sentiment.
#5 To No One’s Surprise, Kamala Harris Is Not Viewed Favorably By Voters
The Democrats are in a horrible position: they have an historically unpopular president (Biden’s approvals recently dipped below Harris’, if you can imagine), and an even less likable, mostly less popular, and completely incompetent VP.
The last time the left got to play the race card with a president or presidential hopeful, the person in question was at least well-liked and had moderate to (slim) majority approval from Americans. Kamala is no Barack Obama, however, and it shows. Democrats rejected her so overwhelmingly in the 2020 presidential primaries that she didn’t even last for the first primary vote to be cast.
#4 Alaska Couple Raided By FBI Because They Attended Trump January 6th Rally
It gives me no pleasure at all to note the over-the-top and completely partisan slide of the FBI. This incident, on top of the still-boxed Lego Capital Building “find,” made me deeply embarrassed for and ashamed of the FBI.
This couple never entered the Capitol building, yet they were treated like “domestic terrorists” for attending a rally at which the sitting president of these United States spoke. The banana republic stench is strong.
#3 LA Times Columnist Dragged On Twitter For Tone-Deaf “Latinx” Tweets
This whole “Latinx” thing drives me straight up the wall. It is the epitome of everything the progressive left pretends to be against: colonizing not just one but many Hispanic and Latino cultures and imposing their leftist “white supremacy” on an entire gendered and truly beautiful and expressive language and peoples. It’s disgusting and dehumanizing, and the vast vast majority of Hispanics and Latinos reject it.
First clue you have overstepped your elitist white privilege in colonizing an entire language: the people you are renaming have no reasonable or realistic way to pronounce the new name you’ve given them in their own language, the language you not just reject but rewrite/rewhite because it doesn’t fit your own crazy worldview about gender.
#2 Liberal Author Behind ‘Demographics Is Destiny’ Narrative Has Bad News For Democrats: You Blew It
This is kind of related to the #3 post, but to be honest, this is among the biggest stories of 2021 (and will be so in 2022 if current trends hold). The power-grubbing left was so busy sorting people into identity blocs, assigning them pet issues, and then strutting around every four years promising the world to these “POC” (I loathe that term, it’s divisive, derisive, contemptuous, and evil).
Liberal (an actual liberal, not a leftist) author Ruy Teixeira has been sounding the alarm. But the Democratic Party does not appear to be listening.
#1 Time Magazine: “Well-funded Cabal Of Powerful People” Secretly Conspired To Defeat Trump
Easily the most infuriating—enlightening, and therefore empowering—revelations of the year. Every single thing about this conspiracy stinks to high Heaven. And we need to know every detail, connect the dots, and understand just how dirty the left will play to achieve their America Last goals.
Also don’t miss the influence of “Zuckerbucks” on state elections or Molly Hemingway’s expose of same.
And what’s a Fuzzy Fave Five list without an honorable mention (or three)?
I’m not a Nikki Haley fan and never will be. Nikki Haley Bashes Trump, Then Seeks Meeting With Him. Request Denied.
This post was among the most fun to research and write because it provided me an opportunity to do a “deep dive” into a topic and flex my research skills: Capitol Hill Riot: DOJ Arrest Reports Focus On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Barely Mention Parler
And finally, I almost included this among the top five because it was so much fun to write and edifying to think about what limited government and states rights mean and how they must work together to rein in the unlimited federal control our Republic was founded specifically to reject . . . and that today’s Democratic Party seeks to attain at any cost and by any means necessary.
The Constitutional Conservative Argument For State-Level Bans On Businesses’ Vaccine Mandates
I so hope you enjoyed my posts this year! Due in no small part to the strength and resolve I garner from our LI family, I am looking forward to 2022 with hope lifting my soul and with the American spirit emblazoned on my heart.
Happy New Year to all here at LI and at LIF!
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Comments
Happy new year Fuzzy. I hope enough Americans start to fight back against all the BS dumped on this country.
Happy New Year, Colonel! I believe that Americans are just getting started fighting back against the leftist crazy.
“run roughshod”
Cliche alert. Reader has to guess what the right words might be that strictly apply. A clarifying exercise for the writer, too, if cliches can be spotted and avoided early.
This is great advice for beginning writers who tend to use cliches as crutches to avoid thinking critically about their topic, as a means to “sound” knowledgeable (again, missing relevant and concrete points), and/or as a means to meet word count requirements on assignments.
Given that no one here, with you as a possible exception, has any doubt at all what I mean when I say that Biden has run roughshod over Americans and America, this use of a cliche is actually acceptable because it communicates quite clearly exactly what I mean (what I’ve been writing on these pages all year).
But if you worry about my ignoring basic writing principles that are taught in high school, you might note that I also tend to frequently split infinitives. See what I did there? And I also have no qualms about beginning a sentence with “and.” Oh, look! I did it again!
Happy New Year!
I claim the cliche here is a crutch. Can you do it without the cliche? You’d suddenly have to make choices. Which is the just word it replaced?
Nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with split infinitives, or ending sentences with prepositions. Fowler (2nd edition) mocked the rule. And see Thurber on split infinitives (googles)
https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/12/thurber-tonight-ladies-and-gentlemens_23.html
Your claim is duly noted, rhhardin. So let’s give this a think. Some writing rules, like splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions are now, suddenly, approved . . . because you read it somewhere. Here’s the difference between you and me, I don’t need to read “the rule” somewhere to know that it is wrong, dated, or completely fun to flout.
I maintain that no one here is in any doubt at all about what I meant by my “cliche”; therefore, it was not a “cliche” at all, but an understandable shorthand that every reader (except you, to no one’s surprise) understood.
We can agree to disagree here. But you are inspiring me to use far more cliches in my not-just-blogging posts! I don’t usually do so, but you are very inspirational. I hope you will stick around and beat your dead cliche horse (see what I did there! A cliche!) as if you know anything about writing beyond the first year of college. It’s fun!
On the contrary, you’re going for outrage but not bothering to say about what. It’s sort of like sarcasm as women do it. “Something’s wrong and you have to figure out what it is.” That happens because women don’t usually know what they’re mad about. It’s handy.
You are just a silly, silly person. Completely creamed, you pound your hairless whittle chesty and blast “Those damned women!” If only we had a world without women! What would that be like? Oh, right, dead in one generation. Kind of like your ability to discuss writing with me, so doomed, so dead. Ooops.
Funny how you can’t sustain your attacks on my writing and now try to attack me as a woman. What the hell is wrong with you?
Separately, I got you to giggle in another thread….Toobin….
Hee, I remember that! It made me giggle again just now!
Happy New Year Wombat!
Always liked reading not just your posts but reading your interactions in the comments. Especially when you are in “take no prisoner” mode.
That does add some seasoning to the posts… Definitely.
Happy New Year, amwick!
Heh, I really shouldn’t do that, but sometimes, it just can’t be helped. 😛
(Quick, rhhardin, I just used passive voice! Intentionally! Oh noes! Heh)
Happy New Year, Doc!
Active and passive voice should be about half and half, is the usual recommendation.
Aw, that’s so cute! Where did you get that formula? And on what is it based? When is passive voice okay and when is it not? How does one determine its usefulness (for isn’t the goal of a writer to communicate to his or her audience?)?
For example, what if I use passive voice half the time and completely confuse my reader about agency? But hey, I totally use active voice the rest of the time, so that confusion is . . . what? Mooted? Balanced out, like half and half? Dude, the stupid is overwhelming here.
Where’s your blog? Where are your professional writings? Let me see how you write before I accept any of your dated and incoherent “writing rules” you garnered from your high school writing courses or (more likely) from wikipedia.
50% comes from Writers’ Workbench, an early (1980) prose evaluation program to clean up technical writing. Where she (the author) got the rule, I don’t know. Try writing every sentence in active voice and you’ll see that’s obviously not right. Nor would be all passive. Somewhere in the middle is the happy spot. Like a Laffer curve.
I’ve spent a lot of time in descriptive grammar, which is the opposite of school rules. It seeks out the rules for what sounds wrong, and there are thousands of rules. Stuff you know but don’t know that you know it.
2000 pages of them in A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik. Best $89 I’ve ever spent. Price has gone up since 1988. Spend a summer reading through it sometime.
Um, yeah, no, I don’t think I will if this is the outcome of reading that book. Read this post of yours out loud. HEAR it. Does it make sense or make you cringe (as it did me?)?
Writing and talking about writing are among my favorite things, but I can’t talk to someone about writing who has no clue. “Descriptive grammar”? Really?!! Is that like social justice grammar? Or some other political grammar we pretend to know about but really have no clue?
Dude, you are ten kinds of off base. I taught writing at the college level for over twenty years, and I know that the majority of the crap you are spewing is stuff we want beginning writers to avoid in order to best flex their linguistic and descriptive abilities, to best eschew writerly “traps,” and to build their ability to write coherent arguments without relying on cliche, various tropes, and / or logical fallacy.
Your bleating at me with this crazy word soup . . . is just sad.
You can google descriptive grammar. It’s a field in linguistics. It’s usually contrasted with prescriptive grammar, which is what you learned in school. It happened well before political correctness.
Dude, this is nonsense. Absolute crazy nonsense, and I am done.
Stay tuned for my cliche-ridden posts, though. I’m all over that now.
This is the crazy girlfriend effect.
What is the “crazy girlfriend effect”? You stalking me with your unsolicited, sophomoric writing “advice”? I already told you, as politely as I could, that I have no respect for your opinion of basic writing “rules” and whether I do or do not abide by them. What more do you want?
I read what you wrote, and I know better, so what now? You keep writing inanities all day long?
Lots of sad people with nothing in their lives do the same thing. The more I think about this bizarre discussion, the more I pity you. I am so sorry that your life is so meaningless and devoid of . . . well, anything, that you fixate on me and my 2021 Fave Five blog post. How did you get here? I mean, what tragic events took place in your life to land you in this time and place that you find your purpose in pretending you know anything about writing in some doomed attempt to diminish a blogger at LI? How pathetic and empty is your life?
I am so sorry for you, truly. I can’t even imagine what tragedies must have befallen you to make this matter to you at all. I’m getting paid to be here, but you, you are just a sad little man. I’m so sorry for you. I hope you find something that is far more meaningful and lasting in this new year than fretting about a cliche you read online. That’s just sad. Maybe adopt a pet or go to church or take up yoga? Maybe a nice hobby to fill your days with sunshine and joy? Wouldn’t it be nice to be happy person for a change? Imagine the possibilities!
It’s a good thing to call out cheap outrage. We get enough on the left. It’s a clickbait genre but unaccompanied by any authorial work.
Outrage comes from French outre, beyond what is proper. Wrong salad fork. Made into a noun with -age, English sees “rage.” What is beyond what is proper deserves rage because the word itself says so. This is so politcally useful that the word was reimported back into French.
Not a person in a hundred realizes that “outrage” is two different things. First, it’s the beyond what is proper, the wrong salad fork. Second, it’s the reaction to it, rage.
It’s enough to describe the first to produce the second in this universe. They are that tightly joined.
“Funny how you can’t sustain your attacks on my writing and now try to attack me as a woman. What the hell is wrong with you?” (reply field missing)
It’s the same attack. Your cliche “run roughshod” is a something wrong and you have to figure out what it is. It’s the same instinct as sarcasm.
It happens that women get mad for no reason and that’s their expression of it. I’m suggesting taking the time to be more exact about what you’re mad about, and maybe outrage would make sense after you find the right words to explain it.
A fog of outrage isn’t good writing. You get that everywhere.
Stereotype and cliche are the same word, as a printing press part.
Happy New Years
Mostly a great list I just have one critique
While it is true the Parler stuff was all fake I personally would be careful of advancing the lefts agenda by blaming youtube, facebook and twitter. Firstly because that would be like blaming Verizon or At&t because a criminal used their utility (which very much is what social media is today). And second because I think the riot was the result of spontaneous anger with a variety of people on the ground responsible (including FBI agitators) which Youtube is not responsible for. I detest twitter, it is the worst big tech by far I will defend Jack Dorsey against any claim he is responsible for a minor riot on January 6th because he wasn’t censoring enough.
Blaming Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter also has the natural implications that they should all ban us from being there. I like your other posts
Thanks, Danny! I always appreciate and value your perspective and critique. 🙂 The trouble with pulling posts out of their moment in time is that you lose that moment in time. Remember, at the time I wrote this post, back in January of 2021, the left was in full freakout mode over the J6 riot and used that as an excuse to deplatform Parler (and, as we now see, pretty much destroy it as a viable competitor).
The stated reason that Parler was booted off the app stores and then off of AWS was that the nascent “Twitter alternative” had played an outsized role in the organization of and subsequent Capital breach on J6. The actual truth is that Parler played a very minor role in the events of Jan. 6th, so my point was that if culpability in organizing J6 was sufficient to deplatform Parler, it was even more compelling that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube be shutdown.
This was about hypocrisy and Big Tech’s attack on right media, not about who was “responsible,” as I make clear in my concluding paragraph:
Your point is a good one if that is what I was doing, but I wasn’t. I don’t blame social media for anything anyone does, that’s just crazy. But I do think that those who do so should be held to the same standards as right media. If Parler was deplatformed for some role in the J6 events, then FB, YouTube, and Twitter should have ALL been shut down since they were clearly much more “to blame.” They weren’t, so the reason for deplatforming ONLY Parler was clearly political/ideological, right?
Happy New Year, Danny!