Saturday, December 8, 2018

Tired... So Very Tired...


Fatigue is setting in. No, not on the part of Donald Trump, who continues to display the kind of manic energy that was classically displayed by terminal tuberculosis patients in 19th Century opera... and certainly not on the part of the Mueller team, who are determined to see this thing through to the bitter end. (I understand they take energy drinks intravenously.) And not by the opposition, or Resistance, either, who continually tap into new energy reserves (not to mention funding from various anonymous donors with globalist tendencies) in order to fuel their crusade against Trump. And not on the part of Trump's hard-core supporters, who continue to wait in long lines and show up at rallies, knowing – on some level – that he is their last, best hope to be heard amidst the din of liberalism and globalism. (Trump could, if he were a student of history, expropriate Louis XV's line, “Apres moi, le deluge”, and he would be accurately describing the reaction of his supporters to his – at this point inevitable – impeachment.)

No, the fatigue is clearly showing in the faces, body language, and actions (or the lack thereof) of the mainstream Republicans – not just the “never Trumpers” but pretty much all of them. They never accepted this quaint notion that an elected president automatically becomes the head of whichever party nominated him; the Republicans are perfectly satisfied being, and remaining, headless. (And lacking certain other body parts has never bothered them either.) And so many of them campaigned against him when he was running – being quite explicit about their preference for Hillary over Trump – that we can't expect them to have changed their minds in the meantime. In fact, they are the prime candidates for the great desertion that will accompany the impeachment, and which – if it turns sufficient members of the Senate – could actually make it a success.

There are other aspects to this. To the extent that Trump is winning anything – succeeding in implementing even the slightest tidbit of the platform on which he ran – they are shying away from jumping on the bandwagon and sharing any credit. The image they want to project is that Trump's very few achievements were accomplished in spite of, and not because of, them – and that they would have been perfectly happy with a third Obama term. In other words, he is the lone gun who rode into town in the best Clint Eastwood tradition, challenged the corrupt and overweight sheriff, and started cleaning out the bad guys, while the polite citizens retreated into their homes and pulled down the shades. The problem is that Washington, D.C. is a big town, and the bad guys, AKA the Deep State, are everywhere. A single gunfight at the O.K. Corral might be on people's minds as the ideal, but it's not going to happen. I imagine that the last time a Deep State of any sort was thoroughly liquidated was when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia – but do we really want that? (Some might – but they can dream on.)

Then there's the fact that the Republicans are much more comfortable being in the minority, as they are about to be in the House of Representatives, where they can sit in leather chairs and collect their pay but not be held responsible for anything that happens. It's been said about the recently-deceased George H. W. Bush that he was “a good loser” – referring to the election of 1992 and his gracious and gentlemanly response to having lost (which could be a lesson for certain characters in Florida and Georgia). And it's true – Republicans in general are good losers because they tend to adhere to traditional notions of manliness and gentility, and they have a sense of proportion, whereas Democrats are lousy losers because they are revolutionaries, for whom there is no place in their theory for losing. For a Republican, losing an election is a humbling experience, but no more; the Republic will survive, and the people have spoken. Whereas for a Democrat, losing an election means that some crime has been committed, and an immediate investigation is in order, along with any number of lawsuits and court orders, and an unlimited number of recounts (during which additional ballots will turn up in the darndest places, and turn out to be – amazing! – overwhelmingly Democratic votes). Their metaphysics will simply not allow the possibility that they could legitimately lose – as witness Hillary's reaction to losing in 2016, and the reaction of many lesser lights to losing in 2018. After all, aren't they the voice of “the people” (the real people, that is, as opposed to the “deplorables” who are nothing more than haters and therefore don't count)? Don't they care? Haven't they shown their compassion in the way they govern cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc.? (Paradoxically, these are the people who constantly cry “Count every vote!” and yet they are the first to fly into courtrooms when the count doesn't go their way. Democracy is only a good idea when you win, apparently.)

But if the Republicans are good at losing, and are more comfortable being in a perpetual minority, then they are acutely troubled by winning, and – as has been shown by Congress over the last two years – constitutionally incapable of taking advantage of it. I have often marveled, in the case of either house of Congress, that when the Democrats are in the majority they act like it, and run roughshod over the Republicans, whereas when the Republicans are in the majority the Democrats are still in charge, and still run roughshod over the Republicans. Sometimes gentlemanliness can be carried too far. Not only do the Republicans get cold feet and go belly-up, they start apologizing for being so reactionary, stuffy, and mean-spirited. It's actually a miracle they ever get elected to anything any more.

So... now that the 2018 election is in the history books, more or less, we see that, far from fretting over their loss of the House, the Republicans actually seem relieved. Finally they can relax a bit, and they won't have to pretend to support Donald Trump's agenda because it won't make any difference. Of course, they still have the Senate, but that's not going to mean much when the Democrats unsheathe their long knives in the House next month. We are in for a marathon of investigations, hearings, indictments, and prosecutions that will make the Mueller bunch look like the J. V. team. (The good news if you're a libertarian is that this will bring all other Congressional activities to a screeching halt – great if you subscribe to the idea that pretty much any governmental activity or program means a further loss of citizens' freedom.)

So what we are seeing, and will see, is some relief of the fatigue factor when it comes to the Republicans, and they can settle back into their usual leisurely life style. After all, politics should not be a job, or a career – what sort of parasitic thinking is that? It should be a gentlemanly affair, take it or leave it, etc. – and leave the bomb-throwing to the radicals within the Democratic Party (of whom there is a new bumper crop as the result of the recent election, Alexandria O-C only being the most high-profile example). Of course, a party that so readily gives up power and is so addicted to the good life is unlikely to do well in future elections; expect the Senate to flip in 2020, for example. (And if Trump is still in office at that point he would be very well advised to cut his losses and go back home. Plus, c'mon dude, if half the American public thinks you're a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, that's gotta be a tough row to hoe.)

And besides, what will the Republicans have to offer in 2020? A recycle/retread of the same sorry no-faces that Trump managed to squash in 2016? Good luck with that. The Democrats, on the other hand, have a veritable army of young radicals and unapologetic socialists, who will be marching behind one of two banners, either that of the Queen of the Night (AKA Hillary) or that of Lenin's brother by another mother (AKA Bernie). Collectivism/totalitarianism only seems to be an idea whose time has come and gone; it keeps coming back to life like Frankenstein's monster, to mesmerize a new generation of believers. If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then socialism is the world's oldest political delusion; it is at once the very embodiment of concupiscence and the antithesis to Natural Law.

But in the meantime, Trump will continue to cause some fatigue and distress among Republicans as long as he remains in office (because, after all, it's their party and he was never invited), and will continue to energize the opposition to a level of hysteria and paranoia formerly confined to mental institutions (before the blessings of Thorazine and Prozac). And as such he will be doing us all a favor in that he will be preventing the opposition from pursuing more “constructive” endeavors. But they never tire, and neither does he, apparently. So starting in January we're going to be treated to the spectacle of one man against what will appear to be the world, with the Republicans snoozing on the sidelines. And of course the world will win, sooner or later, and the Republicans will be back to the sort of lifestyle they know best – permanent minority status and permanent powerlessness. It is only their delusional system that protects them from humiliation and shame.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

The Two-Year Presidency (Sad)


Trump seems to have upped his game since the election. No longer satisfied with saying, or doing, something offensive/outrageous/treasonous/impeachable (per the mainstream media's criteria) every week or so, he's now committing some sort of outrage not just daily, or hourly, but every five minutes! CNN can hardly keep up, even with 24 hours per day to work with. He's accused, tried, and convicted before even getting out of bed in the morning. (No word yet on whether he “tweets” from bed or from some other venue.) He is, in short, acting like someone who has nothing to lose – and that may well be. He is already fated to acquire lame-duck status the minute the next Congress is sworn in... but the easy impeachment that the Democrats have dreamed of for two years – their version of “visions of sugarplums” – may be out of reach. Not that he couldn't be impeached, but would the impeachment succeed? And that all hinges on whether certain Republican members of the Senate are willing to follow in Susan Collins' footsteps – and who's going to bet one way or the other on that?  Or they might feel that they are serving their party by betraying Trump, that being a better bet politically than serving Trump by betraying their party. There's no doubt about it; Trump has become a “long national nightmare” for the Republicans, who are never quite sure, on any given day, who to side with – Trump or the Republican mainstream (including the “never Trumpers”, who are holding their cards close to their chest these days).

So yes, the second half of Trump's administration, if it's even a half, promises to be a snooze fest in terms of legislation (and executive orders not immediately struck down by the judiciary – the 9th Circuit being on 24-hour alert these days). And that may not be enough to satisfy a guy who brought his up-all-night, hyperactive, aggressive style down from New York City to sleepy, complacent, ossified Washington. Never has a man so blatantly “northeastern” had to deal with a vast array of opponents who are so “southern” – if not in the literal sense then in the sense of being satisfied with zero performance and maximum pay and benefits. The incompatibility has been there from the start, and it has only gotten worse over time. And make no mistake, the Republicans who have “come around” and grudgingly support Trump's initiatives have only done so for purely political reasons; they will turn on him in a New York minute (OK, a DC minute) if they think it's in their interests to do so.

No, Trump has been an alien life form in Washington from the beginning – they don't understand him, and I suspect he doesn't understand them either, at least not fully, although he's pretty good at making them jump. But the fact remains that he's not going to get a lot done between January 2019 and January 2021, and I suspect he knows it, and I also suspect he's thinking about what to do to fill up his time during those two years. (How much golf can you play in any given day?) And if he's smart (as I believe he is) he's also starting to get real about the chances of being re-nominated in 2020. And if he's already written that off as a possibility, it's less surprising that he's becoming more bare-knuckled than before. He hung in there on behalf of the Republican candidates who were interested in his support for the 2018 mid-terms, but now that those are accomplished (except for a few freakish exceptions in Florida and Georgia) he's able to reset his priorities (with or without Hillary's “reset” button). (And BTW, didn't I see that for sale on eBay the other day?)

So what to do? Well, he can continue to bait the mainstream media, the way one baits a cat with a laser pointer (that's Rush Limbaugh's metaphor). And he can – not a trivial consideration – allow the Mueller investigation to drag on, right up to January 2021, and thus continue to expose the utter moral bankruptcy and corruption of the opposition. This could, in fact, be his greatest long-term gift to the electorate. Long after the waters have converged and settled over all memory of his economic and diplomatic accomplishments, the abomination that is the Mueller investigation will remain a blotch on our history as a nation – and rightly so. At least there was a grain of truth – and perhaps more than a grain – to the Nixon (as senator) and McCarthy investigations, despite insurmountable stylistic difficulties; the Mueller farce will, in all probability, be remembered as the time when sheer fantasy, hysteria, and political interest took over large portions of the executive branch, particularly the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA. It would be hard to imagine anything more noteworthy from a historical point of view, and one can only hope that that the madness indeed comes to an end in January of 2021, and does not persist, as a chronic and fatal ailment, unto the end, for all intents and purposes, of the Republic.

To add a side note, based on one of the current Internet memes – namely the notion that Trump is using his position to enrich himself and his family. I've always said that the best person to elect to the presidency is someone who is already so rich that they can't be bribed – and I think Trump fits that description. If he had wanted to continue to make the big bucks, he would have stayed in New York, and ditto the rest of his family. They're probably giving up millions, if not billions, by mucking about in the fetid swamps of the Potomac – and yet there they are. And no, I can't figure it out either. Of course, if they were Democrats the answer would be that they merely want to serve their country, and selfish considerations don't come into play. (Right – tell it to the Clinton Family Foundation.)

So... where does this leave us? There are subtle signs that Trump may have already given up on 2020, despite all overt activities and claims otherwise. And yet I don't see him bailing out at any time prior to that; totally not his style. Even if he drops out in 2020, he'll no doubt declare victory – kind of like what we did when we left Korea in a stalemate.

But who knows, maybe he thinks he can get something done over the next two years after all; judicial appointments come to mind, as do military ventures which don't require the approval of Congress (which means pretty much all of them). If he bailed now it would leave the presidency in the hands of the saintly, white-haired Mike Pence, which would certainly give the Evangelicals cause for rejoicing (Israel is already perfectly happy with Trump). And Pence might well get nominated in 2020 – and he might well lose, for the same reason Ford, Mondale, and Gore lost; they were still infested with too many “cooties” from their previous bosses.

It's hard to imagine American politics being any more bizarre or grotesque than it is right now – but, as I said, we have 2 more years of Trump to go, and I suspect he has weapons he hasn't tried out yet. In any case, fatigue is setting in (for the citizenry, not him), and the question in 2020 will be, do we vote for one of the seemingly endless parade of colorless, boring Republican candidates – you know, the ones Trump managed to knock off, one by one, in 2016 -- or do we take a walk on the other wild side and vote for the likes of Bernie again, or maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? She is at least the voice of youth, whereas Bernie is stuck somewhere back in the 1960s with the rest of the Birkenstock/NPR/New Yorker crowd. Sometimes I think that the best way to deal with the fear of what the younger generation will “do to the country” is to just turn it over to them and see what happens. I mean, why wait until they're old enough to have sold out?


Wednesday, October 31, 2018

White Twilight


“Trumpism” is probably the least negative term applied to the Trump movement, or to the world view of the “deplorables”. What we hear more often are terms like fascism, Nazism, racism, sexism, hate, etc. – those terms that have become so ubiquitous that they have lost all meaning, and all one hears is a faint buzzing. While the level and vehemence of hostility and hatred toward Trump and his supporters remains unexplained (although I do have some theories), it is objectively true that Trump has a solid base among the electorate for his programs – and, perhaps, even more for his oft-expressed opinions on the media, economics, foreign affairs, politics, immigration, and whatever else strikes his fancy at the moment. He has, indeed, become the voice of the voiceless, having assumed that role at the very beginning of his campaign for the presidency, and since they have no other voice, they're sticking with Trump through thick and thin.

I mean, think about it – liberals and anti-Trump people in general can take comfort in the fact that they are part of what seems to be an overwhelming and vocal majority... a countless, deafening chorus which includes the mainstream media, the entertainment industry, academia, every political party except the Republicans, half the Republicans, and pretty much the entire population of the U.S. living within 100 miles of an ocean. Clearly, it takes no courage, much less independence of thought, to belong to this legion of demerit. The “deplorables”, on the other hand, are huddled in the interior... the heartland... flyover country.. and are constantly having to dodge and deal with incoming assaults from the coasts and from the federal government. Being relatively simple people, they can't understand why their desire to simply be left the hell alone is such a bad thing – why it puts them in every negative category the Establishment can come up with (the most recent being “transphobic”, but a new one will be along any minute, you may be certain). Paraphrasing George W. Bush, they can truly ask, “Why do they hate us?”

And what, by the way, is “Trumpism”, after all? It seems to have a lot to do with what, up until recently, were considered “conservative”, and not particularly controversial, values – respect for the flag and for the National Anthem, nationalism, patriotism (not the same thing, although Trump seems to think otherwise), a “muscular” foreign policy (AKA empire building), self-reliance, reduction in the size of government (or at least keeping it from getting any bigger), a certain preference for states' rights, a certain preference for local (town, city, county, etc.) autonomy, a tendency to deregulate... and so on; all the traditional earmarks of conservatism, in other words. The problem Trump had when he was clawing his way up the ladder during the primaries was that the Republican Party is no longer conservative in any meaningful sense; that pretty much went out the window after Reagan's time and was replaced by globalism, soft socialism, and – much to their shame – a shuffling, apologetic attitude vis-a-vis the Democrats/liberals/progressives when it came to “social programs”. (Saying, over and over again, that “we're almost as compassionate as our opponents” is no way to win elections, as I've pointed out before.)

So – once again, post-Reagan – a large portion of the electorate had to suffer through a cold night, and a kind of political exile, which Bushes I and II did nothing to alleviate, and much to aggravate. (What would you expect from people who put the fate of this country firmly into the hands of the globalists?)

But then along came Trump and his – some would say reactionary – message. And I imagine that any number of people were saying, or thinking – with great exasperation – that while they basically agreed with what he was saying, why did it have to be him saying it? This high-rolling real estate tycoon from New York City, with his NYC accent and manners... and that hair? Couldn't anyone else have taken up that challenge, and those positions? Well... there were plenty of opportunities, weren't there, over the years, and yet nobody did. No one wanted to rock the boat (even if it was sinking anyway)... globalism was the future, and there were no alternatives... patriotism was passe... and it was better to occupy the mushy middle than to take a firm stand on anything. Plus, occasionally members of the mushy middle wound up winning elections, because their opponents were too obviously radical in some way, making people uncomfortable and challenging them in ways they found distasteful. But Trump said, in effect, screw the mushy middle, it's time to shake things up, go big or go home, etc. – and lo and behold, enough people responded to his message to get him elected. He may not have taken over the Republican Party, but he certainly took over its ticket. And frankly, no one but Trump could have pulled it off – any of it – not getting nominated, not getting elected, not getting inaugurated, and not getting everything he's gotten done (albeit still a fraction of what he hoped) since. For the Republicans, he basically raised them from the dead – and received very little thanks for it. All they do now is try and figure out which “stance” – either pro- or anti-Trump – will make them most likely to win the mid-term election. A pathetic bunch. “Sad.”

But in any case the voiceless found a voice, and those who already had a voice are squandering it on screaming fits of hysteria. And as I said, the sheer energy behind that has yet to be satisfactorily explained; the mere fact that Trump is orange is not sufficient.

Which brings us up to the present day – and, as I said, Trump seems to have held on to his hard-core supporters... his base... through thick and thin. But the opposition has proven to be solid and tireless as well, which is a bit of a surprise; you'd think a few of them would have dropped out by now and gone back to being productive members of society, but that doesn't seem to be the case. George Soros' Antifa and Hillary's flying monkeys are out on the streets every day stirring up trouble... and the mainstream media, entertainment industry, and academia have grown thicker skins than ever; they are not only ready for the long war, they are already fighting it. In other words, there are no visible cracks in the facade, which means that it's not a facade at all, but the real thing. And – lest we forget – Robert Mueller and his minions continue to tirelessly toil away, looking for that magic kryptonite that will, at long last, render Trump weak and powerless (and, most importantly of all, silent). The Deep State chugs along, like the engines of a great ship, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way.

(Some might argue that the opposition has already won the long war, and all that remains is to police up the battlefield. But that would be to misunderstand the totalitarian mindset, which insists on total victory, total surrender, and the extermination (or at least enslavement) of all opposition. As long as there is anyone out there who persists in wrong thinking, the struggle must continue. “To learn more”, refer to the Orwell classic, “1984”.)

But if this is the status quo, the question is how long it can persist. Right now, we have a country in which half the populace is at knife points with the other half, and that is an extremely unstable situation, almost in the physical/chemical sense. Something's got to give, in other words – and the 2018 midterms are not the answer, no matter how they come out. The day after the election, the same groups will still be around, with the same attitudes, motivations, and methods as the day before. Oh sure, there might be some triumphalism floating around, but it won't change the basic situation. Lest we forget, the “deplorables” didn't come out of nowhere. They've always been there, and in fact there were proportionately more in the old days than there are now. True conservatism has never been fashionable, and yet it persists – as witness the Goldwater campaign and the Reagan years. It can be debated whether Trump is a true conservative, and yet his “rhetoric” – so-called by the opposition – seems totally in line with at least neoconservative values. If he says what he means and means what he says, and acts accordingly, he should be given credit for having a conservative administration, even if not for being a lifetime conservative himself.

But to get back to the upcoming elections, let's consider a scenario, with both short- and long-term implications. In the very short run, a power shift in Congress would open the floodgates for impeachment of Donald Trump, which has, up until now, been a talking point of the radical left, but shied away from by mainstream liberals, who are forever obsessing about “positioning” and “optics”, and invincibly ignorant when it comes to any issues of principle. As has been pointed out by a number of commentators, a successful impeachment would be meant to, among other things, teach the “deplorables”, and anyone who considers representing them, a damn good lesson – namely, don't mess with the Establishment, don't mess with the Regime, and don't mess with the Deep State, because if you do, this is what's going to happen. The goal is to put the “deplorables” in their place, and shut them up, and teach them that politics is a game for the elites and the sophisticates, not the peasantry.

As such, impeachment of Trump would be the equivalent of the show trials in Soviet Russia, which likewise taught everyone a damn good lesson – those who survived, that is. And please note that the Mueller investigation is part of this – a warm-up exercise, if you will. You can expect the Mueller witch hunt to seamlessly transition into impeachment hearings, if it should come to that. (And at least the Mueller enterprise is, supposedly, based on evidence, whereas impeachment would not be subject to that constraint.)

This would satisfy the opposition – well, as much as they can ever be satisfied, being addicted to revolution – but what would the effect on the “Trumpists”... the “deplorables”... be? Will they “go gentle into that good night”? My guess is not only no, but hell no. They have had a taste of visibility, and of power (or of what appears to be power). They have found a hero, and have raised him on high, only to see him defeated and brought low by evil forces. So they, or some of them at least, are likely to fight back. How, and to what degree, they fight back is a matter for speculation, but it would be a mistake for the opposition to expect them to simply retire from the battlefield and slip back into the hollow logs from whence they came.

And yet, theirs is a lost cause in the long run, no matter its merits of the moment. The reasons for this are many, and the one that comes most readily to mind is simple demographics. “White” people are already a minority in this country, or soon will be (depending on one's definition of “white”), and this change is only going to become more dramatic over time, because no amount of “native” reproduction (even if above replacement level) is going to make up for the uncontrolled invasion from the Third World which is already occurring, and would only become more acute post-Trump. (This isn't a value judgment, note – it's just hard, cold fact, and it's as inevitable as the barbarian invasions and takeover of the Roman Empire.)

So if the “formerly voiceless and soon to be voiceless again” are barely clinging to some level of power and influence now, once their hero has been dethroned and brought low (and perhaps jailed) they will feel like orphans again... and if realistic, will realize that their days as a political factor are numbered, and the the night is coming on. So will they fight on, to the last man if need be? As someone once said, the most dangerous enemy is one who has nothing left to lose.

And please note that there is nothing new about any of this; it should not come as a surprise. The battle lines were firmly drawn (or re-established) in the 1960s, and pressure has been building ever since. As the globalists, and globalist thinking, have taken over more of the American Establishment, the people Hillary Clinton described as “deplorables” have become more alienated – from popular culture first, then from the entertainment media, and most recently from the mainstream media. If it took Trump to break the ice, and stimulate this group to speak up and express themselves with courage and self-confidence, be assured that, once again, and despite of his many flaws, no one else could have done it, because if they could, they would have. (And if Trump hadn't come along the pressure would have continued to build, and a new, supersized Trump might well have emerged. This is why getting rid of Trump won't get rid of what the Establishment sees as the “problem”.)

It turns out that demographics is destiny after all. The elites of this world have been trying to do something about this for decades, with the help of globalist organizations like the United Nations. But whenever U.S. citizens or E.U. citizens look to the south, all they see is a population tsunami – from Central America for us, and Africa/the Near East/South Asia for Europe. And if there's anything “inevitable” in world affairs, it would seem to be this. (Trumpists could take comfort in the idea that they are not alone in the age-old demographic struggles.) And notice that the elites, having pretty much given up on Third World “population control”, are now embracing the mass migration phenomenon because they know it will destroy the old order (of nations with defendable borders) and also add to the reliable (i.e., liberal/globalist) voting population and constitute a new source of wage-slave labor. Another way of putting this is that, whereas the traditional model was one in which the “First World” exploited the “Third World” economically, we are now moving into an era in which the “First World” is becoming part of the “Third World”, and so it too can be exploited economically by the ruling elite. The ruling elite is no longer tied to nations, national identity, or any form of nationalism or patriotism, but is truly international, globalist, and interested only in creating a world-wide totalitarian slave state, and confiscating the resources of the (former) First World is a key part of this program. This is no secret, and is certainly not a “conspiracy theory” since it's happening in plain sight, and the globalists are bragging about it.

So what we may be seeing is the early stage of “white twilight” – not only here but in Europe as well. It kind of reminds me of the now-classic five stages of death and dying made famous by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross:

  1. Denial – “Surely the white race isn't doomed, or even on the decline! After all, haven't we colonized the world, and aren't we still in control of a large portion of it? And aren't we dominant in areas like industry, trade, transportation, finance, technology, etc.? Surely the doomsayers must be wrong. Sure, there may be countless black and brown hordes clamoring to move into our countries, and mounting what amount to invasions on a daily basis – but surely we can stem, and roll back, that tide, and reassert our dominance and superiority!” (We are firmly in this stage at this point in history – and yes, this is a big part of what's on the minds of the Trump loyalists.)
  2. Anger – “If the white race is declining and on the defensive, it's not our fault, but the fault of our traitorous politicians, globalists, totalitarians, and bankers. And it's also the fault of the coastal elites and the mainstream media.” (We are well into this stage as well. This has more of a conspiracy “vibe” than Stage 1, obviously. They are distinct but overlapping.)
  3. Bargaining – No sign of this as yet. People are either on the opposition/resistance side or the cheerful acceptance side – although the latter could be seen as bargaining in a sense, in that that cheerful acceptance is predicated on the premise (perhaps unconscious) that “I can be totally in favor of anything that I don't expect to hurt me personally.” Which brings to mind the old saying, “A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.” Another way of seeing it is that many people who fancy themselves members of the ruling elite may be in for a rude awakening, once the criteria for that designation have shifted upward and they are left grubbing about like any of the people they formerly despised and looked down upon.
  4. Depression – Nope. Not in any quarter. All sides have been awakened, all are fully armed and ready to fight. And this is unlikely to change. Passivity is passe, in other words.
  5. Acceptance – Totally true (with the above caveat) of liberals and progressives, totally untrue of conservatives/traditionalists/nationalists. Well, when half the populace happily welcomes revolution and the other half resists it with all its strength... I recall that the period just after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia is called a civil war, and it went on for quite a while.

So we see how a model intended to apply to individuals can, with very little trouble, be applied to a nation or society as well. It can, in fact, be applied to pretty much any “living system”, just as another classic model, that of Expansion/Consolidation/Decay can. (American society is definitely in the “decay” stage; the question is no longer “whether” but how this is to be manifested, and how long it will last – because after decay a society becomes “history”.)

And as I've pointed out elsewhere, it's all well and good for academicians to sit about in faculty lounges in their tweeds, puffing on pipes (well – maybe out on the sidewalk), and ruminating on how historic trends impact the small and insignificant (i.e., the vast majority) of the human race. But again, for the individual, whether they are the least bit interested in “the big picture” or not, there are stresses involved – economic and social certainly, and political if their concerns extend to politics (which everyone's do these days). But the biggest source of stress – and the greatest casualty – may boil down to intangibles – those ideas, concepts, notions, and images embodied in what is called patriotism, and which I'll also call the sense of place and time, and the sense of meaning and significance that is rooted in that awareness.

I've often felt that, despite all the frenetic flag-waving and celebration of national holidays we indulge in, the United States, and “America”, are abstractions – constructs designed to foster some sort of loyalty or willingness to make sacrifices, with relatively little in the way of rewards other than the feeling of being a “good citizen”, whatever that means. It's much easier to find genuine loyalty to a region of the country, or to a state, county, city, town, or even neighborhood – and this is a completely natural thing because it's an essential part of the makeup of the human species to prefer the familiar and the here-and-now to some abstraction. Abstractions have to be “sold” – they have to be marketed through propaganda campaigns – whereas loyalty to one's group and to one's native place – to “blood and soil”, if you will – is natural and, despite the best efforts of the globalists and their collaborators in the media and politics, is something that survives and remains vigorous, even or especially when under attack.

So in a sense, maybe “whiteness” is also too big a concept. Maybe there are too many shades of white for it to have any meaning. And, please note, many of the great wars of history have been fought between white people. The odd thing about our time, of course, is that any form of national, ethnic, or religious pride is acceptable except white and/or Christian pride, especially when combined with patriotism. The nostrils of all Democrats/liberals/progressives flare when they see tapes of a Trump rally. Non-white, non-Christian pride is embraced because it represents “diversity”, and also provides an easy avenue for the divide-and-conquer strategy of the globalists, whereas white and/or Christian pride represents nothing but hate, fascism, Nazism, racism, etc. etc. – you know the drill. (Note that whereas “nationalism” is frowned upon by the elite, “white nationalism” is roundly condemned – although no one bothers to define either term.)

So yes, the white race is under attack and under siege; can there be any doubt? And any attempt to defend it in its own right is dismissed as hopelessly atavistic. One response to these attacks is to point out all the fine things white people have achieved over the millennia, starting with ancient Greece. “Western Civilization” is cited with the full expectation that it will be a conversation stopper. All well and good, but since when has merit or worth of any sort, either real or alleged, necessarily driven the forces of history? If that were the case, the barbarians would have stopped, frozen in their tracks, before the walls of Rome, unable to take one step farther because they were in complete awe of the achievements of the Empire. But, as it happened, they couldn't have cared less, any more than the Third World hordes converging on the United States or Europe care. They don't respect or value American achievements any more than cows appreciate scenery; if anything, they see Uncle Sam as the oppressor (“Yankee go home” and all that).  Even if they care about their own culture, they either find it impossible to stay home in order to defend it, or they prefer to leave everything behind and take their chances in a foreign land.  So they pull up stakes and become rootless, and thus valueless except in the most rudimentary, survival-oriented way.  But even that cannot remain the status quo forever; the Goths did eventually build cathedrals, after all. As has been pointed out, invading armies eventually settled down and became farmers. Perhaps the same thing – or the equivalent – will happen in this case.

Plus, it seems a bit odd for conservatives to be constantly criticizing “identity politics” when the alternative is the continued dominance of the white race. Aren't we an “identity” as well? And wouldn't it, in fact, be preferable, in these times of turmoil, to concentrate more on individual virtues than on the merits (real or alleged) of a given racial or ethnic group? And what, after all, is the predominant social unit, down through the history of the human race? No matter what other structures are superimposed over time, the basic unit has always and everywhere been the family. And if you're going to pick a battle – or a war – the most consequential one, the survival of the family, should be your first choice, it seems to me. Once that survival is assured, one can always move on to other things – but without it, those other things will have no foundation and will soon decay and crumble to dust, as we are seeing all across the landscape in our time.


Saturday, September 1, 2018

Make Social Media, Not War


There's a grain of truth to the notion that “the Russians” (including NGOs and private citizens as well as the Putin regime) “interfered” or “meddled” in the 2016 election. But there's a mountain of falsehood to the notion that their goal was to put Trump into office. Based on the evidence that Inspector Hound, AKA Robert Mueller, and his team have assembled (or chosen to ignore), it can just as easily be argued that their goal was to put Hillary Clinton into office. But if the real goal – as is becoming more clear with each passing day – was, as has been noted by many, to demoralize the American public and shatter their illusions as to the soundness and legitimacy of our electoral system, and of our political system in general, then one has to admit that they've succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Mission accomplished! And while Russia stands securely as a political monolith with Putin at the top, American politics has been shattered into a million pieces, and Americans have been politicized, fragmented, and set against one another in a way not seen since the run-up to the Civil War. Even the 1960s pale by comparison. And this has been accomplished without a shot being fired.

The main instrument of all of this has been – irony alert! – the so-called social media, which didn't exist in Cold War times, but which have been effectively weaponized by countless parties, and none more effectively than those seeking to create havoc within the American enterprise. After all, didn't we invent the social media? I clearly remember when the Internet was no more than a gleam in the eye of DARPA (no, not Al Gore). It began with ARPANET, which was intended as a tool for the Defense Department, and was dreamed up by the smartest people on the planet at that time. (Well, OK, the smartest people in the U.S. Or the smartest people in the government, whatever.) Back in the 70s when I was working in DoD, DARPA was this mysterious place right across the street, and it was spoken of in hushed tones, like these are the people with huge brains who are way ahead of the technology curve and who are sure to make a difference. And what a difference! Whenever you hop on the Internet to play around with Facebook or Twitter, just remember that you are mere fleas on the backs of giants.

So here we are 40 years later, and it seems like our old enemies have moved in and used our tools against us. And there's no doubt as to what benefits this provides to the new post-Soviet Russia – and to China as well, for that matter. In the current version of The Great Game, the sides have come into sharp focus over the years since the end of the Cold War – or let's call it Cold War I. We have, first and foremost, Russia, which staggered through the drunken haze of the Yeltsin years when the new oligarchy was being created, and emerged – tanned, rested, and ready – to once again assume a dominant role on the world stage. Then we have China, which has done the impossible, namely come up with a hybrid system of political communism plus aggressive economic capitalism. It's almost as if they've taken the main platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties over the decades and merged them; how do you beat something like that?

Another major player in all of this is the EU, which, along with its predecessor organizations – let's give credit where credit is due – has kept the Western European nations from cutting each other's throats for many decades now. Now, one can quibble as to whether the EU is an organization of equals, the way the U.N. is supposed to be; some will say that it's simply the latest manifestation of the German Empire – call it the Fourth Reich. But if so, it can at least count peaceful coexistence among its accomplishments, unlike the previous Reichs. (This may simply be a sign that, at long last, economics has emerged triumphant as the main motivator and model for Europe, as opposed to the nationalism of old.)

Then we have what are called “non-state actors” – globalists on the one hand (not unrelated to the EU, but with a much larger vision and a more comprehensive strategy) and “terrorists” on the other. It turns out that Islam was not taught a lesson as a result of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire; and sure enough, the radical Islamists have a renewed caliphate as their long-term objective.

Then we have Israel, which is the sine qua non of American foreign policy, having been unceremoniously dumped in our lap by Britain. And their continued existence is not unrelated to terrorism, since it constitutes a thorn in the sides of Muslims everywhere. And after all, don't all of our politicians regularly recite, like some kind of litany, that there is “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israel? So why shouldn't anyone with a grudge against Israel also have a grudge against the U.S. (and against lesser “crusaders” or “Franks” like France and England)?

But wait – doesn't this add up to at least seven distinct entities? Isn't that kind of messy? After all, the Cold War had the merit of being, basically, two-sided, with China pretty much sitting it out, the globalists quietly drawing up their program in Brussels, the Islamists hitting the books in madrasas, and Israel making do (up until 1967) without the West Bank. And the Cold War was fought relatively quietly like the chess game that it was, with overt conflicts confined to proxy wars (Vietnam being an exception since it was "proxy" for them but first-hand for us).  It was by no means a calm, peaceful era; it just seems that way compared to what's happening now.

If you insist on sticking with the two-sided Cold War model, you can say that Team A is us, the EU, globalists in general, and Israel... and Team B is Russia and China, who have apparently sat down and divvied up the “turf” like gangsters in Old Chicago. But you still have the “terrorists”, who seem to be bugging everybody, but Team A more than Team B. (Maybe it's because Russia and China have time-tested ways of dealing with that sort of thing, whereas we and the EU are still groping around trying to figure out “why they hate us”.) Israel, of course, knows full well why the Islamists hate them, and are completely unapologetic in dealing with them in any way that seems appropriate – much to the occasional dismay of the U.S. (not so much the EU, which is famously non-judgmental about these things).

But there is one thing that everyone but us has in common – an overriding shared interest, if you will – namely to cut the U.S. down to size. (And actually, a large portion of our political class wants the same thing.) So Russia makes inroads in the Ukraine... and China buys up the lion's share of our national debt... and the EU continues to take advantage of our largess dating from the post-WWII era. And the terrorists manage to stir up trouble faster than we can dispatch troops or bombers to deal with them. (It is they who have, in effect, provided us with an excuse for waging perpetual war and keeping our economy on a war footing. And they don't seem to mind. In fact, they like it, because it vindicates their rationale for waging war against the West.)

The rest of the world is, in effect, treating us like some senile, doddering billionaire in a Hollywood movie – basically clueless and hemorrhaging wealth, but dangerous nonetheless. It's a war of attrition, if you will – and China, patient as always, is waiting for the day when it will be advantageous to call in their chits. Great bites have been taken out of the Soviet Empire of old – but they're being cagey, so far, when it comes to reclaiming them (the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine being the only exceptions – call them trial runs if you like).

So, bottom line, everyone is waiting for Uncle Stupid to break his hip and be moved into the dementia ward – but in the meantime they're doing everything they can to hasten the day, and that includes – ta-da! – using our very own social media to sow doubts among the citizenry.

It's been said that the reason the Soviet Union collapsed was that “the termites quit holding hands”. But we have our own termites in the form of political movements, some dating back more than a century. The American Experiment ran aground ages ago; some will argue that it ended with the Civil War. But there was a tremendous amount of energy that persisted, and that ultimately took the form of the American Empire. But that too has run aground, and some will give the war in Vietnam credit for that. And yet the energy persists – and the most remarkable thing is that the American economy can continue to support, and the American people continue to put up with, the continuing high level of folly and catastrophic loss of national wealth attributable to our foreign policy. Any other empire would have collapsed, been carved into pieces, and been put up on the auction block long since – and yet here we are. (Anyone who spends any time thinking about “sustainability” has to look upon this phenomenon with awe; it defies all the laws of economics and politics and yet there it is.)

So yes, to the extent that the Russians (and who knows who else) mounted an “attack” using the social media (and other media as well), it was designed to disrupt, and to cause consternation and dismay, but it was indifferent as to the results of the 2016 election, because that didn't matter. Trump may turn our home-grown “Resistance” types into gibbering psychotics... and he may step on a few toes in the EU... and he may huff and puff at Russia and China, but in the long run it's the same dreary story. Russia and China can put up with the huffing and puffing, and the EU can put up with a few bruised toes, but the terrorists are undeterred... and the globalists seem to get their own way no matter who's in charge. Can anyone seriously claim that Hillary would have done anything significantly different? Oh sure, if you're talking about domestic policy, but to the powers that be – those who play The Great Game -- America's domestic woes are noise level. What counts is not who does what to whom, or to what degree, but the level of fragmentation and – most importantly – the loss of national identity and political will (factors intimately tied to the immigration controversy). Identity politics, on the other hand, will be with us no matter who's in the White House, and it's only going to get worse. (Please recall Obama's, ahem, success at promoting racial healing.) Identity politics is a fragmenting, alienating, divisive phenomenon, which means that our enemies are all for it, and will encourage it as much as possible.

So we have, in a sense, a paradox – we are eating ourselves alive, which seems to be a domestic political matter... but it's being aided and abetted by powers and entities beyond our borders. And even at that, think of how many times over the years we've mounted our own “interference” campaigns against other countries, regimes, and leaders. There are karmic factors in play here. And why are we always the ones who talk about “regime change”? It's because we like the idea and because we're good at it (or, at least, used to be). Other nations and leaders who talk about “regime change” in the U.S., as they are doing non-stop these days, are missing the point. If there's a Deep State that is bent on sabotaging Trump, or anyone else who might occupy the White House, it's hidden in the bowels of the EU, the Kremlin, and the Forbidden City. Our own Deep State is simply, knowingly or not, doing their bidding.

The idea is to get the U.S. out of the way once and for all. Then the rest of the world can go back to doing what it does best, namely trying to kill each other.

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Epitaph for “The Trump Era” – A Fantasy in One Act


Trump isn't a lame duck yet, but he is in the sense that he only enjoys minority support in Congress, even though Republicans are in the majority. As a result, pretty much everything of significance that he's accomplished has been done by way of executive order, that most fragile of instruments. For what one president can do via executive order, another president can just as readily undo, as has been amply demonstrated. So one descriptor of The Trump Era will be the very brief half-life of his executive orders, and the lack of any significant and long-lasting legislation.

The Democrats already have an extensive laundry list of things that will be done immediately, upon their rightful (as they see it) reclaiming of the Executive Branch.  (Mark it on your calendars – the new Congress will be sworn in on January 3, 2019.)  Among them: Moving the United States Embassy back to Tel Aviv (or, more precisely, canceling its removal to Jerusalem, since that has not yet been fully accomplished); reaffirming the Paris Agreement; reaffirming our membership in the TPP; reaffirming our abject subordination to – oops, make that “alliance with” – the EU; and, of course, bringing the treaty with Iran back to life. (These constitute a big chunk of the globalists' list to Santa.) The Democrats will undo all that the Trump presidency (they may refer to it as a pseudo-presidency) has done, the way Trump has tried – with mixed success – to undo all that the Obama presidency did. Of course, two years of executive orders are easier to undo than eight years of legislation, but they will still give themselves credit for having rescued – just in the nick of time! – America, and civilization in general, from imminent doom.

The goal, in short, will be to make the Trump administration into, basically, a blank spot in history – an interregnum – a time when nothing happened because there was no one with the proper credentials to make it happen. In this they have already gotten plenty of practice, “1984”-style, in rewriting history and in brainwashing the citizenry. Look for the Trump presidency to be declared not only illegitimate, but null and void; it never happened, therefore everything that it allegedly accomplished never happened either. This will, by the way, cover things like Supreme Court appointments, which will likewise be declared null and void, as well as any of the pathetically few pieces of legislation Trump has signed, and any agreements with other countries, formal or informal – including “peace initiatives” (which are never worth much anyway, truth to tell).

Another way of putting it is that the ultimate goal is not, as is widely contended, the mere removal of Trump via impeachment, but the de-legitimizing of his entire administration. And if you want an example of “uncharted territory” that goes way beyond the Constitution and the wildest imaginings of its authors, get ready. Because if not only is Trump impeached, but his entire administration is as well, in effect – what are the consequences? His election is declared null and void, and the states are asked to re-submit their electoral votes minus those for Trump (or minus those for Trump that electors are unwilling to change). The result? Hillary! Yes – the Queen, Empress, and Suzerain of all the known Universe and beyond! She will be declared the winner and will take over the White House in triumph, while the Trumps make their way out of town in a broken-down jalopy like the Joads in “Grapes of Wrath" while being pelted with rotten eggs by the jubilant citizenry.  

Among many good questions – what will this do to our foreign relations, particularly to our image as a more or less stable, reliable country? I imagine it will, basically, render us a kind of renegade, or outlier, that is never to be trusted again. But this is not something that concerns the Resistance in the slightest, because they want nothing more than to see the U.S. rendered impotent and prostrate like a beached whale.

At the very least, it will be a reprise of the Obama era where we were squabbling with Israel but still, basically, following orders like an obstreperous child who's being pulled along by the ear. Perpetual war will remain perpetual, and our military budget will continue to dwarf those of all other countries combined. (Except for the Space Force, that's DOA.) These are, at least, the unchangeables – things you can count on no matter who's in charge. North Korea will once again be designated as a rogue state that is beyond the pale, because we need enemies as much as we need friends. As for Russia, well... that's going to be a bit trickier, but at least on the surface they will be declared personae non grata for the unpardonable sin of putting Trump into office. NATO, on the other hand, will be sent to a Vic Tanny gym in order to get totally “ripped”, after which we will establish a modern-day Maginot Line along the entire western border of Russia. (Not to be “provocative” or anything, of course.) And as for China – well, since Trump has been equivocal with regard to the Middle Kingdom, you can expect the next administration to follow suit. In diplomacy, the opposite of neutrality is more neutrality.

Domestically, well... the long knives will come out when any issue of religious freedom is involved (“Bake that damn cake or die!”); religiously-based organizations will increasingly have to choose between capitulating to government regulations (and thus staying in business) or adhering to their beliefs (and thus being forced out of business). ICE will, indeed, be abolished as will any hint of a wall or any other semblance of border security. The result will be a flood of undocumented immigrants that will pretty much overwhelm the Southwest and make serious inroads elsewhere. But hey, they all vote, right? (What the Regime seems to forget is that most of them are also Catholic; this could have unanticipated consequences down the road.) And what was quaintly termed “political correctness” will be turned into law – with the SPLC doing all the writing -- and enforced by a policing body modeled on the Gestapo. Things that won't change include the mainstream media and the technology sector, since they've been with the program from the start. But they may find that being on the winning side isn't all it's cracked up to be; recall that once the Russian revolution had been consolidated, one of the first groups to be shot or dragged off to the gulag were the “old Bolsheviks”.

And as for “academic freedom”, the Regime will be, more than ever, on the side of the total suppression of any non-liberal, non-progressive, non-totalitarian, non-collectivist points of view. “Conservatism”, if it survives at all, will have to go deep underground on college and university campuses, just as it will elsewhere in society. (Freedom of speech is already nonexistent on most campuses, but that has yet to be made official.)

But what about the non-mainstream media, and the non-Resistance social media? Well, the latter are already being dealt with, through censorship and suppression, by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and as to the former – well, remember the “hush Rush” (re: Rush Limbaugh) bill that didn't make it through Congress the first time around? Expect it be dug out of the grooveyard and infused with new life like Frankenstein's monster. (Plus, don't forget sponsor boycotts. And the re-weaponization of the IRS will have a profound effect as well.) “Net neutrality” will pave the way for all of this – the ultimate goal being that only one voice will be heard in the land, namely that of the Regime, disguised as Democrats, the Resistance, progressives, liberals, etc.

We also have to consider the things that, at least according to some measures, have significantly improved under Trump, for whatever reason. Will unemployment, especially among blacks and Hispanics, remain at an all-time low? Hardly. The Democrats depend on misery, and the more unemployment the more misery, so expect policy changes that will put us, with nary a bump, back into the Obama era economically. (Expect the next administration to be equally as adept as Obama's was at promoting a “post-racial” society.)

And how about the stock market? This raises, perhaps, the biggest mystery of our time, namely why Trump hasn't gotten more enthusiastic public support from big business – you know, those entities whose fates are daily traced by the fluctuations of the Dow. You'd think they'd be ecstatic, but apparently they aren't, and it may be because, other than being globalists in principle, they are better than anyone else at seeing the handwriting on the wall. They know the Trump Era is not long for this world, and so are bracing themselves and, you may be sure, engaging in a lot of profit-taking while the time is ripe. I think you can depend on the stock market to nose-dive the minute the Democrats win enough seats to take over Congress, and anyone who's the least bit smart will have gotten safely away from the deluge long before. The losers will be – as usual – the poor chumps who have their retirement money in mutual funds. It will be 2008 all over again, just in time for the 10th anniversary – and not even with the help of sub-prime mortgages.

And as for the national debt – whoo, the sky's the limit! One thing that is long overdue (in some people's minds) is for Congress to disqualify itself from any future legislative powers to approve raising the debt ceiling. It's pretty much turned into a rubber stamp anyway, so this will not be a major change.

And then there's the “regulatory state”. One of Trump's more successful efforts when it comes to “draining the swamp” has been to chip away at the oppressive mountain of regulations that are designed to stifle free enterprise and innovation, not to mention – gasp! – “profits”. You can expect this monolith to rise again, like Godzilla rising out of the murky waters of Tokyo Bay to wreak further destruction. How does this relate to the “swamp”? Simply because regulations do, in fact, generate jobs – namely all of the jobs that are required in order to enforce regulations. So the Deep State has a vested interest – nay, a downright existential interest – in maximizing regulations and in continually looking for new activities that “need” government regulation.

And as for taxes, well... the Democrats are already primed to claw back all of the so-called “crumbs” that Trump's tax-reduction efforts have put back into the hands of the citizenry. But wait, if these really are “crumbs”, then why is it so important to take them back? It's the principle of the thing, don't you know... the idea, as Bill Clinton memorably said, that the American people simply can't be trusted with their own money. Why, they might spend it on the wrong things! And this has to be prevented by, as much as possible, relieving them of the burden of discretionary cash.

But then what of the hard-core Trump supporters – the “deplorables”? They've had their day in the sun, their hero has been raised on high, but he is now as defeated and wrecked as a Confederate statue. Their dreams are as crushed as were the dreams of Hillary supporters on election night. How are they supposed to react? Well, I've already discussed this issue in a previous blog, “Impeachment and Revolution” (Feb. 7). To provide a hint, just ask yourself who has all the guns, and no, it's not the “snowflakes” or the cry babies who insist on “safe spaces” and on being protected from “triggers”.  The immediate aftermath of the removal of Donald Trump could well be riots and chaos comparable to 1968, if not worse. (And the “peaceniks” of the 1960s will be in charge of crushing any revolts – thus, the ironies of history.)

And what – just in case anyone even cares – of the Republican Party? They will, of course, be blamed for having allowed Donald Trump to be nominated and then having allowed him to be elected; the Democrats managed to knee-cap Bernie, why couldn't the Republicans knee-cap Trump? The few who supported Trump will be sent into exile (figuratively at least), and the “never Trumpers” will be allowed to remain in office as long as they agree to act in a totally bipartisan way (i.e., do whatever the Democrats tell them to do) and promise to never, i.e. never never never, in a million years, come anywhere near nominating anyone like Donald Trump ever again. Or else! So they will, in effect, be “nutted” and turned into eunuchs and geldings (if they aren't already) and relegated to second-class political citizenry for as long as the Republic shall last. And no one will mourn their passing. (And by the way, anyone who had anything, no matter how remote, to do with the Trump administration will be told, in no uncertain terms, that “they'll never work in this town again”, so they may as well start packing.) (Who said the spoils system was a thing of the past? It's more with us now than ever.)

One consequence of the liberal counter-counter-revolution that is, perhaps, unanticipated may be the revival of the libertarian movement, which reached a peak during Ron Paul's campaign. As Seth McLaughlin recently pointed out in a Washington Times article, the libertarian movement Ron and Rand Paul “spawned is a shell of what it once was, torn asunder by the twin forces of Donald Trump on the one hand, and frustration on the other.” Trump has co-opted much of the energy behind the libertarian movement, in other words – even if the results have been of questionable value when compared to the libertarian agenda. But with Trump out of the way, there will be no reason for the libertarians not to go back to their roots and be re-energized.

And as the rest of the world looks on in awe, the United States will undergo the biggest meltdown in its history – and they will have to ask, do we really want to have anything to do with these maniacs any longer? Can't we get along without them? Can't we at least try?

Sure, it's a fantasy – but it's amazing how often dreams (and nightmares) come true.

Monday, August 27, 2018

To Hell with Hell!


It should have been the story of the month… or of the year… or of the century… or of all time!  But if you were asleep or otherwise occupied for that 48-hour period just before Easter you would have missed Pope Francis’ supposed announcement -- albeit to a highly prejudiced interviewer -- that Hell does not exist.  Which, by implication, means not that it once existed but is no longer open for business, but that it never existed.  This was a world-wide news story for 24 hours, and then the response and the Vatican’s “clarification” was a world news story for the next 24 hours, and then the story vanished -- poof! -- just like that, although it is alive and well on the Internet and in various traditional Catholic outlets, both Internet and “traditional media”.

The mainstream media, for their part, jumped on the story like a pack of starving wolves.  Aha!  The Pope -- “our” pope, to the extent that the totally secular media can be said to have favorites among popes -- has let the cat out of the bag!  He’s decided it’s time to quit pretending, and to quit telling fairy tales… and to wake the Church up to what should always have been it’s true mission (if any), namely to quit prattling about a non-existent “afterlife” and start being a social service organization and start supporting diversity and niceness.  

And the response of the, let’s say, materialist, or non-churched -- not to necessarily say anti-Catholic -- community was notable.  One facet of it was, basically, “Well, thank goodness, the Catholic Church isn’t teaching/preaching ‘that stuff’ any more“… and, by implication, that, well, who knows what’s next?  Maybe all the other “stuff” they’ve been teaching/preaching all these years (centuries, millennia) is no longer operative.  Bottom line, the Catholic Church is just another organization with no special merit or moral authority and so now it can quit bothering everybody and let us get on with the business of making the world a better place on a purely materialist/secular basis.  Let the New World Order commence without harassment!    

The long-term agenda -- not much change here from what has been the case for centuries -- is that if the Catholic Church cannot be put out of business entirely, to turn it into nothing more than a harmless social club, on the model of many Protestant denominations in our time.  But the distinguishing mark of any church ought to be not political activism, but moral authority -- that which applies at all times and in all places (unlike politics, which is ephemeral).  And there is more to moral authority than “scare stories”, which is what secularists accuse the Catholic Church of peddling whenever it speaks of Hell.  Another way of putting it is if fear of Hell is the only thing keeping people in church, then there is something seriously wrong with their moral upbringing.     

In spite of that, another facet of the reaction to Pope Francis’ alleged statement -- especially relished and promoted by CINOs (Catholics In Name Only) -- had to be one of relief.  Because if you grow up in the Church and find that you can’t handle the Ten Commandments, and find it all just too judgmental, rigid, and moralistic -- well, maybe you can remain a CINO or a “cultural Catholic” without having to worry about the consequences of your behavior.  And yet there are those lingering doubts -- “What if?”  What if all that the Gospels, Epistles, and Church Fathers have said is true?  What if actions have consequences, not only in this life but beyond?  But these doubts are too readily smoothed over by the temptations and reassurances of popular culture, which the Church is forever being urged to “keep up with” and adapt to… or, at the very least, resign itself to.    

And then we have traditional Catholics, many of whom were up in arms about all this.  I think they may have been overreacting --- but in a way they were primed to overreact.  It’s not as if Pope Francis has been a bland, unthreatening figure up until now; quite the contrary.  And to that we should add his personal style, which includes a good deal of spontaneity.  He may say what’s on his mind from time to time, without subjecting it to vetting or “peer review” (and a pope has no “peers” anyway, for that matter).

(Hmm… kind of reminds me of another world leader.  And please note, they both have to “walk back“  things that they say on a fairly frequent basis.  And yet, one might ask why a pope should need a “handler” the way most presidents seem to.  Shouldn’t they, by virtue of their office, be given the grace to not drop verbal bombs on a regular basis, even if we are not required to take everything they say as holy writ?) 

Now, we can debate all day long and into the night as to what Pope Francis actually said, and what he meant, and how it was interpreted by his friend Eugenio Scalfari -- and the point has been made many times that it was not a direct quote, but an “interpretation” in the impressionistic sense… and besides, it would have gone directly against many other statements Pope Francis has made, not to mention the unchanging teaching of the Church of which Pope Francis is head. 

Scalfari’s agenda is not too hard to discern.  I’m not saying he set a trap for the Pope, but you have to admit that when a pope and an atheist get together for a casual conversation that is subsequently reported out by the atheist, there is likely to be a certain amount of “drift” in what was said and what its significance is.  (The Pope would be well advised to avoid any more tête-à-têtes with this guy, friend or not.  Or if they do get together it should be in a public place surrounded by video cameras.)

The major monotheistic religions, so-called, have many things in common (despite all of the struggles and hostility over the years), and one of them is the simple premise that actions have consequences, and that actions in this life, which is bounded by time and space, have consequences in the next life, i.e. the eternal life.  This idea is not exclusively Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, but it has to be counted as a major point of emphasis.  Buddhism and Hinduism have the concept of karma, which is also a way of saying that actions have consequences, but the connection seems to be a bit fuzzier, and there is a collective element there as well.  The actions of not only individuals but of groups have consequences, and those consequences can impact other individuals and groups for many generations.  But I have yet to hear of Eastern religions presenting anything like the Four Last Things of Catholic teaching -- Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.  This is a stark reality which the Catholic Church has, traditionally, recommended that people meditate on on a regular basis.  It is sobering, and attention-getting, and seems to allow for very little “wiggle room”.  (One recalls the anecdote about W. C. Fields, who was found reading a Bible on his deathbed.  When asked what he was up to, he replied “looking for loopholes”.) 

This doctrine is, in other words, not at all relativistic; nor is it merely symbolic or metaphorical, and it’s certainly not “nuanced”.  It’s black and white -- or absolute.  But it has always seemed to me that anything with eternal consequences has to be absolute, in that one cannot eternally be in more than one state at a time… and if one is in a certain state eternally, that would seem to rule out being in some other state also eternally.  This plane of existence -- in time and space -- is the place for relativism, nuance, and shades of gray; in eternity it’s either total light or total darkness.  At least that’s my impression.   

The whole issue, of course, is predicated on the notion that our material lives are not the whole story.  On this plane of existence, we have free will and are responsible for our choices, but those choices are “leveraged”, if you will, into the eternal.  It’s not as if someone just turns out the lights, or that we just sort of evaporate or slide into some kind of void, as some Eastern religions would contend.  Because if we do just sort of evaporate or slide into some kind of void, that calls into question morality -- which is from God -- if not “ethics” -- which is from man.  Yes, it is possible to lead an ethical -- one might say righteous -- existence while alive on the Earth, with no reference to what, if anything, is beyond… and many people seem to be doing this, or at least trying to (just as Christians try to live in the right way, frequently fall and fail, but then get up and try again).  In fact, one almost might say that we are living not only in a post-Christian world (a point made by many) but in the Age of Ethics, which is an outgrowth of the materialist/secular humanist revolution, which in turn was an outgrowth of the Protestant Revolt (a more accurate term than “Reformation”). 

But OK, fine -- and everyone agrees as to what “ethics” entails, right?  Except that they don’t.  One man’s “ethics” may be highly offensive to other people for any number of reasons.  Highly “ethical” people have started wars against other “ethical” people.  I once challenged a friend of mine to prove that the Nazi program was wrong and evil, without reference to God-given morality; they weren‘t able to do it (and this was a lawyer, by the way, for what that’s worth).  The problem right off the bat is that without morality, “evil” turns out to be virtually impossible to define.  Again, one man’s evil is another man’s good.  So after extensive debate over cocktails, it boiled down to opinion, and -- in the collective -- politics.  And politics is man-made, of course -- a regrettable necessity, I would say.  But if politics is the basis for your morality, you’ve got it backwards.  Morality has to come first; it has to be “a priori”… and the only way it can be a priori is for it to come from somewhere other than the endless struggles of mankind… other than from “history”, in other words. 

Another acquaintance of mine, when he was still in grade school, used to respond “Prove it!” to pretty much any bit of advice he was given.  And there’s the rub, as they say.  One can’t “prove it” with any reference to, once again, the material or to human history, or even to anthropology (e.g. the supposed universality of the “Golden Rule”, which is blatantly violated at every turn).  If humankind, left to its own devices, is incapable of coming up with a sound and reliable ethical system that enjoys universal agreement, doesn’t that say something about the competence of people to come up with a code of behavior on their own -- one that will withstand all argument, logic, and reason?  Even the greatest tyrant believes he is doing good things.  He sleeps soundly and, yes, can look at himself in the mirror each morning.  Criminals believe they are doing good things -- for themselves, at any rate.  Even the psychopath, since he believes, on some level, that he is all that exists, or at least all that has a meaningful existence, feels he can do whatever he wants in his own interests, since he is the sole standard of value -- and no one else counts, and their opinions don‘t count either.  And what is “medical ethics” other than a  convoluted attempt to come up with rules that apply always and everywhere, but that enjoy no moral foundation?  And that is just a small subset of the larger areas of politics, economics, and law.  People can reason themselves into pretty much any set of convictions, but are those convictions any more valid than those of the guy sitting next to them on the bus?  They may be more elaborate and more “thought out”, but in the end it still boils down to subjectivity for the individual and politics for the collective. 

And yet that seems to be enough for most people.  No one dares say “Prove it!” because there is an implicit understand that nothing can be proven -- that it’s simply about “what works” for most people most of time, according to strictly material criteria.  (This is also known as utilitarianism.)  Our ethical systems cannot stand up to strict reason and logic, and yet they are not only all we have, but are accepted as a perfectly good basis for all other decisions -- by the individual or by the collective.

Ayn Rand -- an avowed atheist, but no slouch when it came to logic -- used to say, with regard to any argument or point of view, “Check your premises”.  OK then, what are the root premises of the secular/materialist world?  Let us consult the men who pretty much created the world as it is today.  Marx said that it was all about economics, which is usually interpreted as “the greatest good for the greatest number” (utilitarianism again).  Darwin said that we are animals who evolved through random mutation and the all-hallowed “survival of the fittest” -- and strict Darwinism has been criticized over time for being “heartless” the way Nature is “heartless”.  It is, in other words, morality-free, and ethics-free as well.  Freud took things a step further, agreeing that we are animals but that sex (sexuality, as opposed to gender) is the primary determinant of our behavior.  It is not so much that we are immoral, but that we’re amoral -- that we simply fancy that there is some sort of creator or “god” who cares one way or the other.  He referred to religion as an “illusion” -- which some materialists have at least termed a necessary illusion -- i.e. what we call “morality”, though fanciful, has its uses -- it is a civilizing force, if you will (utilitarianism again).  (But then the strict Darwinist has to answer the question, how did it evolve, i.e. this drive to define universal rules of conduct?  It is because people who thought this way had a leg up when it came to survival?  And if so, why?  What were the mechanisms that made this work better than the alternative?  We know that in our time it’s the secularists who always seem to wind up on top, whether in politics or economics or social status, so one could just as well contend that it’s the lack of religious belief that is adaptive, not the other way around.)   

So you line up these premises and you get what is basically the world view of, I would say, much of the Western world, if not of the “unenlightened” elsewhere on the globe (or of many of the “deplorables“ here at home).  And, as they say, “How’s that working out for you?”  Do these premises -- this entire package -- make the world a better place?  They certainly promise as much.  “Hope and change”, and all that.  But can anyone argue that the world is a better place since we’ve internalized the collective wisdom of Marx, Darwin, and Freud, as well as many lesser lights?  Some will say that it’s always a good thing when “illusions” are discarded -- but  they would argue that morality is an illusion as well. 

And some will argue that technology is sufficient proof that life without morals can not only be lived successfully, but that it is superior to lives lived under the cloud of “superstition“.  But there is a backlash against technology in our time (as there has been at various other times over the last couple of centuries), as if we’ve all been sold a bill of goods.  The “god that failed” is a non-god… or, more precisely, when man becomes god failure is inevitable.   

There is a marvelous ending to the film “The Score”, where the character played by Robert de Niro asks the character played by Edward Norton -- over the phone -- “What have you got?”  This is in response to the Norton character’s boast that he’s the one who got away with a priceless antique.  But when he checks his bag, he finds nothing but scrap metal, which de Niro cleverly substituted for the antique.  Then he starts to threaten and bargain, but to no avail.  De Niro has the goods, and Norton has the dross.  Too few people in our time even think to question whether they have given up the treasure in favor of the dross.  And even if they suspect they have, they feel that it’s too late, and it doesn’t matter anyway.  And if they now think Pope Francis is on their side they may have another think coming. 

Monday, August 20, 2018

Questionable Character


In a recent post (“It's Springtime for Trump and America!”), I speculated that “...we are a deeply troubled, dysfunctional society on many levels, and that pathology both percolates up from the citizenry and trickles down and impacts them in their daily lives.” In other words, there is a vicious circle at work here – and to try and find the end of that tangled ball of yarn would be a daunting task. Of course, the adherents of the “homo economicus” school (of which the current expression is “It's the economy, stupid!”) would contend that, ultimately, everyone “votes their pocketbook” (or, I would say, everyone votes their pocketbook except those few who can afford to do otherwise) – and that idea has to be qualified by pointing out that people vote for whatever, or whomever, they think will most benefit their pocketbook. (According to that model, even the otherwise ordinary citizen who claims to believe in, and who supports, communism has his pocketbook in mind above all – the general welfare being a secondary consideration if it even comes into play.)

The original pathology of voting in such a way as to increase one's personal income or standard of living is two-fold. One is the notion that it's the government's job to provide, and insure, a certain standard of living for the citizenry. Needless to say, this idea does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, unless we take the phrase “promote the general Welfare” from the Preamble and stretch it way beyond any imaginable breaking point (which has, of course, been done on a chronic basis since at least as far back as the New Deal). The second point of pathology is the oft-overlooked fact that in order for me to have more, someone else has to make do with less – not that it's always a zero-sum game, but that at any given time you can't put money into one person's pocket without taking money out of another person's. (Simply printing more money is not an exception to this, because that causes inflation which makes everyone poorer.) But this is generally considered to be perfectly acceptable – i.e. the substitution of government coercion (at the point of a gun if need be) for more traditional charity – to the point where the government is currently engaged in putting “private” (religiously-based) charities out of business when they fail to fall into line with government “guidelines”.

One can even make the claim (as I do) that the history of modern economics is based on a single central question – how much in the way of liberties and freedom are we willing to give up in order to achieve economic leveling, i.e. economic (and therefore social) Utopia? And if this is true, then economics simply becomes a subset of politics – the implementation part, if you will – and, sure enough, this has clearly been the case, again, since the New Deal if not since the Progressive Era.

The libertarian, and more especially the anarcho-libertarian, will contend that government (of any size) requires some form of taxation (by that or any other name), and that taxation is theft, simply because it involves the transfer of wealth from people who neither want nor need government “services” to those who do want, and do need (assuming there are no alternatives). This can be seen as an extreme view, “extreme” not being a moral judgment but simply a way of saying that it's on one end of a scale, with the other end being totalitarianism (with no private property, and everything collectivized as much as possible, which means there is no need for personal income or resources).

I won't, at this point, go into the question of which of these extremes nonetheless provides a better fit with human nature, but it's a very interesting issue. But of one thing you may be quite certain – the opposition or “Resistance” is populated mainly – I daresay overwhelmingly – by people of a collectivist mindset, and their behavior says much more about their totalitarian impulses than it does about their economic sophistication, sense of history, education, and just about everything else. We suddenly – seemingly overnight – have a large part of our citizenry seriously campaigning in favor of eliminating national boundaries and unlimited immigration – and those aren't even the “Bernie” supporters, who, basically, want the government to provide everything to everyone for free (you might call this totalitarianism with an occasionally smiling face – “occasionally” being as often as Bernie smiles, which isn't very often).

Thus we circle around to what is motivating many of these people – and no, it did not start with Donald Trump's now-legendary ride down the escalator. (You'd almost think he could have arranged it so he rode up, but whatever... ) It started... well, like any “trend”, you can trace it back as far as you like. “Modern” communism, or communalism, on a mass scale (as opposed to small, and voluntary, communities holding everything in common, which have always been with us) began, in spirit at least, with the French Revolution. The theoretical underpinnings were supplied by Marx and Engels, and then the first “experiment” on a national basis was Soviet Russia (followed soon after by less-successful ventures in Bavaria, Hungary, and other locales). But at the same time, you had “socialism”, which is watered-down communism and thus more palatable to the timid among us, and that got its start in the U.S. with the Progressive Era, which receded a bit in the 1920s then came back with a vengeance in the form of the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society, etc., right up to the present day. (Please note that the “ratcheting effect” of governmentalization has resulted in a permanent bureaucracy, AKA the Deep State – and that the vast bulk of most government programs initiated from the Progressive Era on are still very much with us. It helps to keep that in mind when budget arguments at the margins flare up; we're never talking about more than 1% or 2% of the federal monolith.)

Now, I've often thought about what an amazingly durable thing national character is. Russia survived 70+ years of communism and yet Russians are still Russians. The Chinese are still Chinese even after the cultural auto-genocide of Maoism, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Red Guard. The minute the iron hand of totalitarianism is lifted, old ways, customs, and traditions come out of the woodwork where they have been carefully hidden and preserved, sometimes for generations.

But can the same thing be said of America, i.e. of the U.S.? Well, for starters, we have to think about whether there is, or ever was, an American “national character”. There are certainly sufficient iconic quotes, ideas, concepts, and characteristics – and any number of adjectives – available to constitute a national character or at least an image of one – or so it would seem. But these collectively constitute a vision or an ideal... or, let's say, a shared opinion. And it may have been the opinion of the majority at one time, but that is clearly no longer the case. Now, every American iconic word, phrase, or image – if expressed in public or exposed to public view – is immediately met with argument, contradiction, hostility, and scorn, and that type of response extends right up to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (the Bill of Rights in particular) – not to mention the flag and the National Anthem. So among many of the things one could say, or claim, about the American mindset, “unanimity” is not among them – nor, I suspect, has it ever been.

And what, after all, is a national character other than a mindset – not that there aren't other components (race, ethnicity, religion, etc.), but the sum total of attitudes about one's nation and one's role in it, about one's fellow citizens, about the history of the nation and its significance on the world stage, about its current role in the world... even about its ultimate fate – this has to be the foundational aspect of national character if we are really talking about “nation”, as opposed to race, tribe, or religion.

It's also true that at the founding, the American national character was not only assumed to already exist, but was fully expected to override all other considerations, particularly that of social and economic class. The irony here was that the Founders were all, or nearly all, landed gentry, and yet they seemed – on top of a good deal of self-congratulation – to be including all other classes and occupations in their vision – merchants, craftsmen, farmers, hunters, trappers, etc. It was to be a unified America, but with them in charge, of course – a premise which went unchallenged until the time of Andrew Jackson.

But did the non-landed gentry – the non-elite – worry too much about not having a sufficient “voice” in the running of the country, the way countless aggrieved minorities do now? It seems that they didn't, and I suspect it was simply because, one, they did have the right to vote (never mind, for now, that said right has become more and more illusory over time), and two, the federal government and its scope of action was minuscule compared to what it has become. Somebody one commented that the only time, outside of war, that the average citizen ever encountered the federal government in earlier times was at the post office. Now its unavoidable, as the regulatory state has enabled the government to intrude into every imaginable aspect of life, and into every nook and cranny of the environment. The citizenry is now reduced to a life of timidly walking on eggs – of the legal and regulatory sort as well as the more obvious political-correctness sort.

Another way of putting it is that the dreaded “government shutdown” would probably have been noticed by very few people, say prior to the Progressive Era; some might have gone months without noticing. Now it would take about ten seconds. And of course, the collectivists and totalitarians among us will applaud this fact, and say that this is the way things should be – “mission accomplished”. But what on earth it has to do with the intentions of the Founders is anyone's guess. Their premise – implied if not always spoken – was that Americans would continue to be self-sufficient... free and independent within the very broad limits set by the Constitution. The main threats to this freedom in the first century-plus of our existence were those caused by war and the early, gradual growth of what is now called the “warfare state”. This was followed, out of sheer necessity, by the regulatory state and the taxation state; if “war is the health of the state” it is also, in the long run, the death of freedom, independence, and the self-sufficiency of the citizenry.

It's an interesting question whether gradual growth of any government is an inevitable process – one of the iron laws of history – or whether it was somehow built into the Constitution in our case, or whether it was (and remains) an inevitable consequence of our national character, or whether it's a consequence of human nature in general. Arguments can be made for any or all of these, but right now I'd like to get back to the development of our own national character (or lack thereof) and the consequences.

Given that we started out with a relatively benign class structure with the landed gentry on top (add rich merchants and shipowners if you like), we could at least brag that we had lopped off the topmost layer that the rest of the world was so prone to – namely royalty and rule by inheritance. (One can quibble about whether our landed gentry were the American equivalent of European nobility.) And for a while we could boast a relatively uniform culture – the colonists were, after all, Englishmen either by inheritance or adoption, and remained so in many respects even after the Revolution. And of course there were always minorities of various sorts – Dutch, Catholics, and, yes, slaves – in the mix. But the great American quilt became more of a patchwork over time, as it continues to do... and the success of “assimilation” (AKA the “melting pot”) came more and more into question. At this point in our history, it would appear that the melting pot, assuming it ever existed in reality, has grown cold and is no longer functioning – and that, or course, can only be bad news for anyone who wants to claim that the “American national character” still exists in any coherent or significant way.

That's one major trend. The other is in what is termed “class consciousness”. Now, there has always been such a thing as class consciousness; I consider it a part of human nature for one thing, and for another, all attempts to eradicate it down through history have been miserable failures. The most that ever happens is that an old social/economic/political hierarchy is replaced by a new one.

So in our case, the first significant eruption, if you will, of class consciousness was Jacksonian Democracy, if I correctly recall my high school history. And events from that point on have served to amplify, diversify, and in many cases aggravate things – to name a few: Irish immigration in the early 19th Century, mass immigration from other parts of Europe later in that same century, industrialization and the rise of unions, concentration of wealth, communications, technology... and, oh yes, the abolition of slavery. These have all been fragmenting influences, against which the ideals of the Founders have been weakened almost to the point of non-existence in our time.

And what influences, if any, have been unifying? I can think of only one, namely war. And this, by the way, is not an insignificant motivation for governments to go to war – the Regime is well acquainted with human nature, and knows that nothing unites people, and serves to mask or put off all other issues, like war. So the increased frequency of wars in our time, which have now converged into continuous war (the current term being “the War on Terror", which is designed to be unwinnable), is no accident; as the nation fragments more day by day along countless fault lines (race, social class, occupation, geography, gender, etc.) war is seen as the only reliable counterbalancing force (although it would appear that it can't keep up with the fragmentation process – at least not until it becomes much bigger and more difficult to ignore).

Now, some might argue that economic crises (depressions, stock market crashes, etc.) are also unifying forces, and it might seem that way in that everyone is impacted to some degree (most in a negative way, but some in a positive way). But in the balance, I think economic crises tend to bring class distinctions (the doers-to vs. the done-to) into sharper relief; witness how readily blame for these crises is heaped on not only government, but also big business, the stock market, and the banking industry (both national and international) – and deservedly so, I might add. So no, good economic times might unite to some extent, but bad economic times can only divide.

So if the fabled, and fanciful, Great American Melting Pot has run up on the rocks, and if class consciousness – a most un-democratic impulse – is growing more with each passing day, does that exhaust the major trends that we encounter in our search for the elusive American national character? No – there is at least one more, and I will term it conditioned helplessness, with the leading edge being the “snowflakes” who currently infest our college and university campuses – and who threaten to spread out into society upon graduation, assuming they don't perish of fright first.

But where does this pathology come from? – especially if we are carrying the same DNA as did our forefathers – you know, the brave explorers, colonists, pioneers, and settlers of song and story who opened up the West and put the Indians in their place, etc.? Aren't we all pretty much descendants of a bunch of rugged, bad-ass, no-nonsense ruffians who found Europe much too stifling and so decided to try their luck in the uncharted wilderness of America? Even these “snowflakes” must have a few people with functioning gonads in their background. What the hell happened?

Well, one thing can be assumed right off the bat, and that is these sorts of rugged, early-American attitudes are not programmed in; they are not part of our DNA. Because if they were, we wouldn't see the dramatic changes that have occurred in just a few generations. People respond to their environment, after all – and if your environment demands that you chop wood, hunt deer, and fight off Indians... well, you either do it or you perish. And if your environment demands that you do nothing more than sit on your flabby butt behind a desk, eat junk food, watch TV, and trudge off to the polls every couple of years to vote for the corrupt political hack of your choice... well, you do that. Very few are inclined to rebel against things as they are, in other words – even if it's the rebels who get all the attention (and who, occasionally, manage to change things for the rest of us).

But if people are so conditioned by their environment (which includes their upbringing, schooling, choices of entertainment, etc.) then how do you explain change? How do you explain “progress”? Why aren't we just all floating lazily in a warm bath of contentment at all times? It's because – thank goodness – there are a few rebels in our midst, just as there have always been... and they are responsible for pretty much anything that changes, either for the better or for the worse. (Whether their rebelliousness is in their DNA or is a product of their environment is a good question.) And you'll notice that in any given society only a certain number of rebels can be tolerated; there's a sustainability issue here, if you will. A society with no rebels will eventually sink into the ooze, and a society with nothing but will self-destruct – so in an odd kind of way there is an almost Darwinian phenomenon going on here. A society with the right proportion of “trouble makers” – or let's say within a certain range – with show a kind of vigor... restlessness... inquisitiveness. Too little, and you get stagnation... too much, and you get fragmentation and endless infighting -- a "Mad Max" world, if you will.

That's on one level. But these rebels are not content to simply sit around in coffee houses talking revolution. They hit the streets (and the airwaves) – they become demagogues, college professors, authors, movie directors, talk-show hosts, comedians... they use any and all means of persuasion to awaken the sleeping masses, and they succeed to some extent – or at least to a sufficient extent to keep the program going. And you'll notice they all wind up leading a mob of some sort – a group of, basically, unthinking dullards whom they have managed to stimulate by appealing to some generally materialistic, if not explicitly carnal, motives. So yes, the sleeping masses can be awakened – but not by “ideas”, as is so often contended by the marketers thereof, but by base motives disguised as ideas. Also true – the masses can be put to sleep again through any number of means... not as readily as they were aroused, but just as effectively. This is the job of what is called propaganda. Everyone assumes that “propaganda” is all about rising up and revolting, but that's just half the story. It can also be about relaxing and not worrying (“Nothing to see here, folks.”). What are called the “mainstream media” in this country are currently engaged in rabble-rousing to a degree not seen since the early days of World War II, but if you think back to the 1950s they were, basically, doling out tranquilizers and opioids. They will do, in short, whatever fits the needs of the Regime. If the populace has to be aroused from its slumbers, it will be; if it has to be lulled back to sleep again, it will be. This is Job One for the media, and always has been. (Someone once commented that “the media are more snooze than news”.)

So, basically, if it weren't for the rebels of this world, nothing would ever change. But if they just minded their own business nothing would change either. They have to become missionaries, in other words – and it is this missionary work that creates societal evolution (again, for good or ill). So if you take a broad-brush look at American history, what have the revolutionaries in our midst been up to all this time – what have they attempted to do, and where have they succeeded? Again, we have to go back to the Progressive Era when, basically, the Constitution was turned on its head. All of a sudden, it was not that the federal government had certain strictly delimited rights and functions; now it turned out that it could do anything it was not expressly forbidden to do – and that covered quite a bit of ground. And this trend – this mindset – has continued unabated up to the present day; government gets bigger not only because the country gets bigger (population-wise), but because new things keep getting discovered that – why, of course – the government simply has to get involved in.

Now – to the libertarian-inclined among us, this is a sad and dismal trend, and a clear path to serfdom, collectivism, and totalitarianism. But the populace in general is easily seduced by notions of cradle-to-grave care, security, entitlements, and free stuff... and yes, these are the descendants of the hearty pioneers. Call it human nature, concupiscence, whatever – the Regime has a way of tapping into the Seven Deadly Sins, Original Sin, and our “sin nature”, and using them all against us, and it becomes easier with each passing day to capitulate rather than resist. “Political correctness” is nothing more than conforming our actions, speech, and desires to the agenda of the Regime; it has no moral validity whatsoever. And as government intrudes into even the most trivial minutiae of our lives, political correctness becomes omnipresent, like some great suffocating blanket that has descended upon us.

So we have a classic example of the vicious circle here – take the “gateway drugs” offered from the Progressive Era through the New Deal and you create a nation of partly-addicted citizens. Drugs – even “good” drugs – are habit-forming, and that dependence leads to a kind of self-assumed and self-imposed helplessness: “I” am no longer “the master of my fate and the captain of my soul”; I now depend on the kindness of strangers, like Blanche DuBois. And – again like the relationship of the junkie to the pusher – this dependency leads to a demand for higher doses, which the pusher is only too happy to provide, in exchange for one's freedom, liberty, and self-respect. So in the long run we wind up with a nation of slaves – happy slaves, by and large, because the drugs have a numbing effect – but slaves nonetheless. And because of this conditioned (over time and many generations) helplessness, we become easy victims of the Regime and of its propaganda apparatus (AKA the media).

Every once in a while someone wakes up, like the cow in the Gary Larson cartoon who hollers to those around her, “Hey, wait a minute! This is grass! We've been eating grass!” But troublemakers like this are, at the very least, told to hush up because they're upsetting everyone – and they may wind up on jail (or in the cow's case, on the barbecue grill).

And at this point, you might say “But, but... what about all the protests going on every day? Surely those people aren't asleep.” Oh, but they are – no one ever said that their slumbers were quiet and untroubled. Their problem is not lack of energy, but total lack of insight as to who's in charge and who's manipulating and exploiting them, and using them as pawns. They enjoy freedom of speech all right, but just try and talk about the Regime and its activities; no parade permits for you!  And no more media coverage, no more nothing. Consider the total blackout the media imposed on the Ron Paul presidential campaign, for example. No – rioting, looting, and burning in the streets are not anti-establishment activities; they are precisely what the Regime wants, and the more the merrier. Please note, for instance, that the “antifa” types who are always in charge of these protests are very disciplined and very methodical. They are clearly following a well laid-out plan. They are well-armed. They even wear uniforms! They are inserted into the midst of every group of “useful idiots” in order to facilitate things; it's a classic tactic which has been around since the early days of the anarchists in the 1800s, the Bolsheviks, and the Brown Shirts. If the mob is the dynamite, then they are the fuse.

Which brings us back to the question that stimulated this post – what is wrong with these people? Why the hate? Why the vitriol? Why the raw fear? Why the borderline (or not so borderline) psychosis? All referring to what is called the “Resistance” to Donald Trump and his administration, which – amazingly enough – includes large segments of said administration, particularly the FBI and the Justice Department (and, I suspect, the State Department as well). Can it possibly be that the Resistance rose completely spontaneously “ex nihilo” on the day Trump declared his candidacy? Of course not – the foundations had been laid for many generations... the minds of many generations had been brainwashed... the fears and anxieties had been stoked... the words, catch phrases, and memes had been drilled into otherwise empty heads. You'll notice that the dominant feeling tone of the Resistance is not indignation (although there is plenty of that), or anger (ditto), but fear – raw, cold sweat-inducing fear. And frankly, when I look at Donald Trump I don't see a particularly fear-inducing character. I see a loose cannon of sorts... a bit of a boor... an egotist, for sure... but also a guy who's pretty damn smart and whose negotiating skills can put to shame all the “diplomacy” those wimps in the State Department can come up with. What I see is a winner in many areas of life who decided there was one thing left to conquer, and dominate, before he retired – namely the presidency. The presidency was on his bucket list, in other words! (Frankly, I can think of worse reasons to run for said sacred office.)

But the point is that, being the ultimate outsider and not by any stretch a charter member of the Regime, or cabal, or what have you, he is considered to be an annoyance and a roadblock – someone who can thwart, at least for a while, the agenda of the globalists, and who, in particular, can seriously slow down their momentum by gumming up the works in the U.S., which is clearly the foremost player on the globalist team (by which I mean the biggest, not the smartest and not the one in charge). As Hillary said during the campaign (channeling pretty much any black preacher you can name), “We've come too far to turn back now.” This was her being a good and faithful servant of the Regime, not of any oppressed minorities. She was their mouthpiece – but in that she has plenty of company, like most of Congress, most of the judiciary, and – once again amazingly – much of the Trump administration, AKA the “Deep State”.

So the reaction to Trump was, and is, no more than the Regime plowing fertile ground – made fertile over the generations by successive increases in the reach, scope, and power of the federal government along with a myriad of entitlements designed to placate the citizenry and make them forget (assuming they were ever conscious of) their historical/political roots. It is, in the most general sense, a phenomenon which partakes of fallen human nature – susceptibility to temptation of the masses, and a lust for power of the ruling elite. And as such, it has reduced this country to the questionable status of being pretty much indistinguishable from any other country or nation or empire, past or present. I have speculated before that the American Empire is the ultimate – and possibly terminal – expression of what is termed American Exceptionalism. The seeds of what is going on now were sown over 100 years ago, but the fatal flaw in our self-image as a nation has been there from the beginning. It was supposed to be a secular Utopia, and it did get off to an impressive start in that respect – but the cracks started forming early on, the way they will in a poorly-designed and constructed building. The Civil War should have been a wake-up call, but it wasn't – and neither have all of the wars we have fought since. Give this nation credit for depth and durability if you like! And for the persistent resourcefulness of many of its citizens in the face of overwhelming temptation from the Welfare State. Our strength and dominance in the world only makes our decline more pitiable, in a way – but what empire has ever easily moved off the world stage? I can think of none, with the possible exception of the British; everybody else had to be thrown out of wherever they had managed to set up colonies. We were thrown out of Vietnam, but have managed to hang on elsewhere – at least so far. But I suspect that those days are numbered. And frankly, the end of spending more than the rest of the world combined on “defense” (AKA empire) would be most welcome – and yet you don't see these street protesters dealing with that issue, precisely because they are working for the Regime, and the Regime wants the American Empire to persist as long as possible, regardless of its moral and economic impact on the American citizenry.