Michael Shultz @Shultzhillside

(Warning: long rant) My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue. I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues. Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious. And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left. Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly. I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own. Here are the facts: Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over. Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept. Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it. These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements. Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this: These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not. These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened. When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice. They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit. And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety. When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.” They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep. And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes. When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person. And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them. For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit. In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations. In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism. > “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.) > “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.) > “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?) > “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.) In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection. > “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.) > “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.) All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells. You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it. Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do. If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.

@panotiller I guess it must be dry outside? First year “Spark arrestor” might be to get added to the maintenance checklist in the morning to make sure it’s in good repair.

I sincerely hope that @elonmusk sees this. I don’t have to have a reply but thank you. Isolation is hard, isolation in a disaster is something that’s hard to describe. We got a star link form @TheShawnHendrix and Elon gave us data to save people. Thank you Bestway Drone team

@EthanMidkiff @panotiller Agree more and more with Ethan. Camping without the kids is easily the most relaxing thing I’ve done in 20 years. Not bad with kids, but definitely not a relaxing.

USDA just released their 2022 Ag Census. (last was 2017) It's 757 pages long... so I've barely scratched the surface. But, found these producer stats interesting: → 1.9 million farms → 880.1 million acres → 3.37 million producers Producers By Age: → 300 thousand younger than 35 (↑3.9%) → 1.78 million age 35-64 (↓9%) → 1.29 million age 65+ (↑12.1%) 30% of all producers have been farming for 10 years or less. 62% worked "off-farm" either part-time or full-time Finally, 42% of producers said their primary occupation was farming, and 58% said farming was a secondary occupation. I did find USDA's definition of "Producer": The term producer designates a person who is involved with making decisions for the farm operation... The producer may be the owner, a member of the owner’s household, a hired manager, a tenant, a renter, or a sharecropper. It's on page 706 if you're curious.

I’m convinced there’s nothing harder than convincing bankers that farming is a business. Only thing that I’ve seen rival that, is convincing some farmers that farming is a business

@ben_peckman And the alfalfa is a weevil infested mess. But at least we’re making a few loads of good first cutting dry hay for the first time ever…. Sure wouldn’t think things would be as dry as they are after 5” of rain 2 weeks ago, but the dust is flying in cover as the planter goes by.

Farm show 2023 log splitter or bust - great group of kids getting it done tonight. Looking forward to a productive week. #paffa

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

Excellent work Danville FFA Horse Evaluation team! You represented your chapter and #paffa well, earning 25th place out of 50 - a silver award. Great work!

@EthanMidkiff Best of both worlds at the beards!

@EthanMidkiff If you’re into hard root beer, Three Beards (spy glass) behind Sunbury has a fantastic root beer. It’s probably our favorite local brewery at the moment - very cool place. I believe that they’re canning the root beer now, but we’ll need to go down and see for sure.

@EthanMidkiff I agree - I’m in Danville, have a former student who works at a New Trail. Just wondering if they have it out at beer distributors closer to home?

This was my 4th of July party 2022. Machine was a S770 with 23 sep hours. I am being told by my dealer @LandProEq that they want almost $50000 on top of my insurance value to purchase a new machine that may not arrive till month late for fall harvest start date @JohnDeere 🤬

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

@Josh06364264 My brother's place of employment is requiring the vax for new hires. Existing employees who don't get it will be charged $1,200/year extra out of pocket on their health insurance.

@dfaber84 Supposedly they've all been found.

@panotiller

A trailer carrying 100 monkeys collided with a dump truck this afternoon just off I-80 near Danville. According to state police, four of those monkeys got loose. The PA Game Commission is looking for the monkeys.

This! 🙌