State of the Discussion

I can't wait for the ocean to swallow Mar-A-Lago like a bad case of reflux.
Personally, I'd like to see the site become a sewage treatment plant. (A real one, not a metaphor.) Give the cult a focus for pilgrimages.
But your alternative does have merit. Not to mention a high probability.

Well, I'm up to just under 1500 miles on the electric mountain bike. No problems with it so far (Trek Fuel EXe), and just about to change tires for the first time. Had it in the bike shop once so far to get the suspension serviced - not an inexpensive prospect, but far less expensive than replacing a shock or a fork.
Just did my favorite ride again this week - 18 miles with a bit over 2000 feet of climbing. Went in the morning as soon as the trails open and passed a Great Horned Owl sitting beside the trail and staring at me.
Just ordered a 529 Garage shield to put on my bike to protect it from theft. Have it registered at project529.com in case it goes missing.
Been doing a bit of research for gravel/ bikepacking bikes or a dropbar MTB that I might want to pick up if we are forced to retire and move someplace more flat. If there is anything good to be said for getting a full suspension emtb, it's that once you shell out for that, the price of a fancy modern gravel bike seems completely reasonable and the mechanicals seem dead simple.
Thinking of getting some bike mechanic training for retirement. Might volunteer at a community bike shop.

there are simply no "good" Republicans today, and they need to be politically neutralized root and branch, even the one's who wj avers are "good ones".
If they were "good" they would not be Republicans.
I'd agree with you that there are no good Republicans on the national level, I think the situation is a bit different on the local level. Not that there aren't a lot of terrible local Republican office holders. Just that there are also some good ones.
You suggest that, if they were good, they wouldn't be Republicans. But that's simplistic. In some areas, the Republican primary essentially is the general election. If you want to hold office and do some good, you run as a Republican. (If tilting at windmills is your thing, you run as a Democrat.) Gerrymandering has made that worse. But it would be true in a lot of places even without that.
The other thing is, most people find it hard to change parties. Call it psychological momentum or something. But even if their voting habits in the general election shift, they resist changing their party registration.
It's even harder if you are already an elected official. It can be done; my Congressman was originally elected to the state legislature as a Republican. But it's hard. And you probably need some years in office to build a personal brand to get you through.
I might accept that good young people, in a lot of places, would find it hard to look at the current Republican Party (especially as the national party is so high profile) and register with them. Twenty years down the line, that will make your observation more true. But there will still be places where you can't get elected and do good, especially the first few times, without the label.

I suspect that the question is just how bad it will get, and how long it will take us to repair the damage.
The task now is triage. The trend to start reversing extreme concentration of wealth (HSH abv.) is first on the list. Both of our main political parties (aka "elites") have pushed for policies enabling this, but only one of them actively promotes this as a positive political and social goal.
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/why-they-did-it
That is your Republican Party.
I appreciate wj's standing in for his ideosyncratic concept of "conservatism", but there are simply no "good" Republicans today, and they need to be politically neutralized root and branch, even the one's who wj avers are "good ones".
If they were "good" they would not be Republicans.
As we seem to be approaching the event horizon in our politics, those of us who care are required to take sides.
Gentle reader, I say unto you, "Pick one".

But we're still a prosperous country. People aren't pushing wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store because of hyperinflation. Unemployment remains low.
We're still a prosperous country for now. Whether we remain one rather depends on how Trump's trade wars play out. But individual areas are going to get hit hard, and sooner rather than later.
To take just one example, without USAid, the prairie states are going to get hammered starting next year. The silos are still pretty full from last year's harvest. This fall, they're not going to be able to buy what the farmers produce. Of course some of the grain might be diverted to cattle feed. Except that, with ICE rounding up all the workers from the slaughter houses, the market for cattle will be tanking also. Those states are going to be hurting big-time -- and while Trump might talk about "family farms" on the campaign trail, he's basically a city boy who just doesn't really relate.
Between that and the damage to the vegetable farming here and tariffs on imports from (mostly) Mexico, food prices will be going up. Probably not to hyperinflation levels, but enough that discretionary spending will drop, which will hurt industries far beyond the farm.
That, in turn, will join with the other side of the trade wars (why should they, or can they, buy our stuff if we won't buy theirs?) to kick unemployment up. Some of those unemployed might try some of the agriculture jobs that ICE is opening up. "Try" being the operative word. Farm work is nothing like office work -- I've done it, and I know. Some of the unemployed might eventually get in shape to do it. But even if you spend a lot of time in the gym, that's nothing like doing hard work 40+ hours a week.
Short story shorter, it's going to get ugly. Republican Congress critters may not feel the impact next year. But by 2028, they're going to join the ranks of the unemployed. (And their usual post-Congress positions as lobbyists aren't going to be interested -- few members to the next Congress are going to go anywhere near them.)
So, there's your summary predictions from the resident optimist.

We're building gulags and far too many people think it's just great because immigrants are ruining the country. But we're still a prosperous country. People aren't pushing wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store because of hyperinflation. Unemployment remains low.
What is happening more insidiously is the continued acceleration of the concentration of wealth. Too few people care about that ... because too many people want to blame immigrants for their perceived problems. (I could go on again about the $80K pickup trucks and nice, large fishing boats with tRump flags flying from them, obviously owned by people who have been ruined by immigrants, the woke agenda, and all the socialism happening everywhere.)
It hurts my head.

I sincerely appreciate, as always, your unflagging optimism, wj
I truly wish I was optimistic at this point. But, while I have hopes, I don't really have expectations. (At least, not positive ones. :-)
I suspect that the question is just how bad it will get, and how long it will take us to repair the damage.

The US doesn't really have a single, common, consensus culture or history. New Englanders are not the same as folks in the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest, or the Southeast, or the Plains. And none of those folks are the same as each other.
I think we actually do have a common culture. Or did. Certainly we have different subcultures, both regional and otherwise. But there is, or was, far less difference from one region to another than there is from anywhere in the US to, for example, Australia.
Even now, I don't think the biggest cultural divide is geographic. As a first approximation, the difference is between those who get their information primarily from Fox News and those who don't. (There are newer, more disconnected from reality, news sources. As I said, a first approximation.). That's why I don't see partition as a viable future; the two groups are just too intertwined geographically.
I'm not sure how we restore some kind of national unity. What I hope is (and I know it's a faint hope) is that the Fox News aficionados get burned enough, personally, by this administration that they recoil back to reality. Many are all in unto death, as we saw during covid. But if anywhere near half come to their senses, we're back to a single culture with variations.

To put something of a point on my previous:
What I'm feeling lately is just a kind of crushing disappointment in my own country. It's just unbelievable to me that, after all the work that generations of people put into overcoming the horrible legacies of the worst of our history, we're back fighting the same damned fights.
Again.
Which makes me feel like we never really got past them. They've just been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to re-emerge.
Predatory capitalism, misogyny, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, xenophobia. Open hostility to gays and anybody who is in any way unusual or atypical. I'm sure you can add your own items to the list. All front and center, once again. And the freaking cruelty of it, the appeal that has for way too many people, just shocks me.
We have to fight this reeking pile of crap once again? Still? I'm just so freaking tired of it all.
Some of it is just human nature, for sure. But other places seem capable of at least maintaining a stance that it's wrong. We appear to be inviting it all in to have a seat at the table. As if it's all just another "point of view".
I thought we were past a lot of this. Turns out it's apparently bred in the bone. It turns my stomach.

Btw, I just looked and Welsh’s most recent posts are about Trump’s crazed tariff policies towards Brazil and the other one is about Epstein. Neither sounds rightwing. He despises Trump as vehemently as anyone here.
And regarding freezing bank accounts, do you support it without first going through a trial and convicting someone of committing a serious crime? I don’t and I think Welsh states it well here—
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Back when the Trucker Protest happened in Ottawa Canada I opposed freezing their accounts, even though I thought they were a bunch of fools and opposed their agenda. Why? Because it is punishment without a trial or facing a jury. It’s devastating. And I understood that if it could be done to people I disagree with, it could be done to people I do agree with.
———-
Makes sense.
To repeat, I’m not endorsing Welsh in general. Sometimes I just think he is wrong. Though his extreme pessimism about our trajectory is looking more plausible in the past six months.

“ kind of feel that the attitude that Welsh puts out is the same attitude that has someone like a Robert Kennedy or a Tulsi Gabbard effortlessly slide from left to right.”
I don’t agree with that. As for the German government, , they have been repressing pro- Palestinian voices for awhile, certainly since Oct 7. I would expect them to tread very lightly when it comes to criticizing Israel, but there is a sense that they atone for their history on the backs of Palestinians. But again, this is on the long list of things I don’t care to argue. There is more than enough hypocrisy in this country to talk about.
Regarding Welsh, this sort of conversation drives me nuts. I suppose if there is another occasion where Welsh makes a point I find valid, I will spend time looking for some mainstream source making the same point so I can avoid irrelevancies. I very quickly learned that with Chomsky decades ago. Any mention of a human rights issue that cited him as a source became about him and not the issue. I don’t honestly give a crap if ten years down the road Welsh becomes David Horowitz. Or Christopher Hitchens or Matt Taibbi. I don’t expect it though. Still, Hitchens wrote some great stuff when he was still a lefty and occasionally even afterwards.
On Epstein, I have no attachment to any specific conspiracy theory but I would expect, given his associates and activities, he would have attracted intelligence agencies and potential blackmailers like flies to rotting meat. Intelligence agencies are not always the most ethical bureaucracies in the world and given what they are, they would be incompetent not to look for some way to take advantage of Epstein, his associates, and the way some of them spent their time.

From the article bobbyp links to:

Mr. Fuentes, 26, is a white supremacist, Hitler fan and vocal antisemite. A far-right influencer who hosts a weeknight streaming show called “America First,”

Fuentes?!?!? Somebody alert Stephen Miller that there's a Hispanic in our midst! Get him on the next flight to South Sudan!
For all I know, the guy's family has been in the US a couple of centuries. Does anyone think Miller cares?

You didn’t explain what is wrong with taking on Welsh’s bias in this case.
I'm not really sure we are talking about the same thing. I'm talking about Welsh's overall bias in that he wants to be right and he wants to tell everyone so. Neither of us knows anything about Hüseyin Doğru, so neither of us can comment intelligently, but if Germany is going too far, stepping back a bit, we can see how it comes about. Germany, given its history, not only the Holocaust, but also Munich, has a lot to overcome and it is understandable that pro Israel bias, along with the forceful campaign to equate any questioning of Israel with anti-semitism makes me wonder about the idea that Germany is simply doing this as a way of repressing voices. Making this out to be simply an argument about what levers government should use misses that whole problematic history. So it's hard to ignore that bias for me. YMMV
I kind of feel that the attitude that Welsh puts out is the same attitude that has someone like a Robert Kennedy or a Tulsi Gabbard effortlessly slide from left to right.
About LGM, I have noted that I avoid the comments and I've also posted about how I feel uncomfortable with Loomis' take no prisoners attitude. I don't know how the other front pagers feel, though when things get really bad in the comments, it does bubble up to the front page. It's pretty remarkable to have the situation where it looks like a front pager is trolling the commentators, but I do think a lot of their issues are not their political position, it is the speed at which conversation goes on over there, and the underlying snarkiness, which tends to magnify a lot of differences. So when you talk about the blog in that aspect, as I think you are when you talk about a 'certain atmosphere', I agree, but when you say "I fall about halfway between him and the LGM lefties" it sounds to me like you are suggesting the bloggers there occupy a point on the political spectrum, which I don't see.
About Epstein, your link says this
There are so many explanations and unanswered questions raised by the release, which also says that there is “no credible evidence … that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” That means that the theories alleging Epstein was operating some kind of operation to collect incriminating information for a foreign government (most notably the Israelis) has also been dismissed by the U.S. government.
A friend on facebook noted that Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, was given a state funeral in Israel and that what Epstein did bore all the marks of what an intelligence agency would do to get leverage. Being in that framework, there was another post that zoomed that was someone posting a tweet from someone saying that they lived in an area where there were a lot of Russian émigrés and there was a noticable absence of ICE agents. So I do wonder.

I would push back a bit on lumping LGM all together. I won't do a deep dive into each poster, but it's not really fair to suggest that there is one viewpoint when there are multiple authors.
Welch, on the other hand, is one person, so presumably (unless he has guest posters) his blog represents his view. The question of what kind of financial levers the government should use is an interesting question, and the case of Hüseyin Doğru seems pretty bad, but the problem is not the government using those levers, it is that what is happening is basically piggybacked on possibly the most incendiary question, the I/P one, which has a longer history than two other hot questions, abortion and the issue of trans There are others, the question of how much government is appropriate might be another, what racism is, what sexism is, but those problems have some definitional issues, where it is difficult to draw a line around what evidence should be considered.
Welsh seems more interested in being right than in understanding. He starts off with well, he didn't like the truckers strike, but he was opposed to freezing their accounts. and now, 10 years later, he has been proven correct! So yeah, you can learn a lot from other sources, but you need to be careful about taking on their biases.

I was just teaching my son who just discovered music about playing on top of the beat vs. behind, etc.
The force is strong with this one!!! An advanced topic for a youngster - does your son play an instrument, or is he just listening?
Not a complaint, but in reality this just isn't possible.
You could be right.
:(

TP: Thanks, and back at you.
russell: a day or two late and therefore considerably out of the pocket so to speak, but I’ve appreciated your insights into Ringo (there was a past conversation I recall). I was just teaching my son who just discovered music about playing on top of the beat vs. behind, etc. He listened because it was on one of “his” songs and he really liked the song and didn’t know why that particular part had such good energy.
I’m listening to “Love” for the first time (came with a bunch of CD’s from an estate sale) on my “new” high-end vintage CD player on a good system. I know it’s probably sacrilegious but I rather like the mix.

Just to be clear, my point wasn't about using cryptocurrency, it was about the fact that a government has to control transactions for a number of reasons that are necessary and working with my student about how the EU is looking at controlling cryptocurrency suggests you are going to have the ways to control that will end up like Chekhov's gun.

I hadn't seen or didn't remember Ian Welch. The information about Hüseyin Doğru (love the diacritics!) is interesting, but I'm working online with a masters student who is researching how cryptocurrency legislation should be handled and Welch is not really thinking why the German government can do what it can. Like Donald, I don't know anything about the case, but I don't think it is realistic to expect nations to simply stay with cash money. One thing I like about Japan is that it is much more a cash economy than what Germany sounds like, but it's not clear to me if he wants Germany to be more like Japan, which I guess he imagines would clear up the problem, or wants the Government to put some guardrails because that will deal with the problem? It's not really clear.
Here's a website where Hüseyin Doğru is discussing it
https://diem25.org/en/author/huseyin-dogru/
But I can't get the page to load.