The Long Game

 

The conventional wisdom among the conservative commentariat regarding Biden's open borders policy (which is, in effect, a no-borders policy) is that it's all about (1) adding more Democrat voters to the voter rolls; and (2) enjoying cheap, i.e. below union scale, labor. And this is certainly what it looks like on the surface. But consider this:

1. If it's all about jobs, why aren't there countless job recruiters setting up shop right at the border? I mean, even the least skilled immigrant can be taught how to operate a leaf blower in five minutes. Is it possible that our business sector sees the “new immigrants” as being either unemployable or potential troublemakers, and thus not worth the bother? (What happens when a guy who works at a chicken factory tries to break into an Army base?) Or have they just adopted a wait-and-see attitude? Let the government support these people for a few months, or a few years, then hire the cream of the crop.

2. If it's all about votes, then we have to consider the very real possibility that our electoral system is already deeply flawed and rife with corruption, and that it may not be long before the people in charge won't even bother counting votes any more. They'll just announce the winner, and anyone who objects will be threatened with jail time. (They'll be called “election deniers”.  Welcome to the Soviet Union!) So, basically, the notion of “more voters” doesn't really mean anything – or, very soon, won't.

So if it's not about jobs, or votes, what is it about? It's about changing America permanently – an idea that at least some of the aforementioned commentariat are willing to entertain. But if that's the case, how? And why?

One thing that comes to mind is simply that these immigrants are, by and large, totally ignorant of American history, and of the basic ideas, ideals, and premises on which this country was founded. And the few that might have some inkling of these things simply don't care. They come from places that are, typically, ruled by a single strongman, who has life-and-death power over his hapless subjects... and the pity is, they see this as the natural order of things. (And an argument can be made that this IS the natural order of things, if we allow history and anthropology to have any say in the matter. By the standard of world history, “democracy” and “republican government” are freakish, fragile, and an exception to the rule – not to mention a hopeful plea against fallen human nature.) Also, they are not “political refugees” or “seeking protection from persecution”, except in very rare instances. They're simply seeking their fortune, as the old saying goes – thinking they can get a better deal here than they could where they came from. And the thing is, they're absolutely right! – at least for now, in the short run. But they don't know anything about the long game. If they see America as the “gold mountain” they haven't yet encountered the wide moat that separates them from said mountain (and no, I don't mean the Rio Grande – this moat really is nearly impossible to get across, because it divides the haves from the have-nots (and the never-will-haves)).

Another way of putting this, as I've said in previous posts, is that as water seeks its own level, people also seek their own economic level – or the one to which they aspire – or at least one which is superior to the one they are turning their backs on. And who can blame them? If life in a shabby apartment with ten other people, and a leaf-blower job, is better (in their eyes) than life in Guinea, well, so be it. (Apparently they're also perfectly content with moving to a completely different culture, with a new language, strange customs, new rules, and new economic realities. Or if they wind up regretting their decision – well, let's put it this way – how many wind up wading back across the Rio Grande? I rest my case.)

But consider this. These people have already been exploited. They've been charged exorbitant fees by the cartels for their transportation to entry points. Many have been abused. Women have been raped. And yet they show up – show up, in fact, praising Joe Biden for being so kind and generous as to let them in. They will vote for him at the earliest opportunity! But, since they've been exploited already, won't at least some of them wake up to that fact and be waiting in fear of encountering some new form of exploitation? I think that's a pretty good bet. When you're accustomed to being a victim, victimhood becomes a part of your identity and your way of relating to the world.

And yet they will stay. By the thousands and millions. And will, in fact, remake the country, starting with the fact that they don't share any of our traditional values, ideas, and ideals – and customs – and sense of identity. But what is in store for them (and for the rest of us)? This is where the long game comes into play, and it's being played by the “usual suspects”, i.e. the ruling elite, who exert iron-fisted control over our government from the presidency on down, and over the mainstream media, and our academic institutions, and pretty much everything else right down to the grass roots (did I mention public schools and libraries?).

So, given that these are the people who are in charge, and they are perfectly content with the country having no functioning borders, what do they want? First, consider that they are promoting totalitarianism (call it Marxism if you like) on all fronts and with a thousand voices – with academics in the lead, followed closely by the mainstream media, “entertainment”, social media, and all other cultural trendsetters right down to the most local level. They have created a propaganda machine for this purpose that surpasses anything the Soviets or the Nazis ever came up with or even dreamed about, the idea being to have (as much as possible) a “bloodless revolution” where no one actually gets hurt, but the world is remade before our eyes, and there's nothing we can do about it. (And this process is not only well under way, but is getting very close to being complete. In other words, the “long march through the institutions” is nearly at an end.) (Exercise: Name me one institution of any significance that has not succumbed to the siren song of “wokeness”. I'm waiting... )

So where does uncontrolled and unlimited immigration come into this? For one thing, given that the new immigrants don't share our (traditional) “values”, they are unlikely to object to, or be disappointed with, pretty much anything the government (federal, state, local) does. In other words, they are “toughened up” vis-a-vis relations with authority. They know that the best strategy is to keep one's head down and stay out of the way. And if they can make $1 more per hour here than they could in Tajikistan, they're satisfied, and feel that it was worth the trouble. So they become, if you will, the new proletariat – the new working (or non-working) class, with the difference that they are satisfied with their lot. They may be exploited – slaves, for all intents and purposes – but they won't mind, because they refuse to believe they've made a horrible mistake by leaving their village in Botswana. (Cognitive dissonance triumphs again!)

So they become, by and large, the new lower class – the bottom level of the American pyramid. But wait! What happens to the people who have, up until now, been on the bottom? What happens to all of their claims... their “rights”... the victim status they have become so accustomed to, and even profited from in a way? At the very least, they will have to get used to sharing whatever it is they've enjoyed for many generations now with the newcomers. They are going to have to share that pie, which – by the way – is getting progressively smaller, thanks in no small part to the money the government keeps flushing down the toilet marked “foreign aid”. And what are they going to think about all of this? And will it matter? After all, the newcomers are the ones with all the benefits and preferences, and our traditional lower class is going to have make way (and they already are, in “sanctuary cities”). Any chance this is going start creating indignation, protests, and violence? (It's ironic that people will be fighting for privileged status on the bottom rung of society – but that's what we've come to at this point in our history.)

So when you let millions of newcomers in, it tends to dilute, in a way, the influence of those who are already here -- the “traditional” lower class. They find they're outnumbered, and no one has any more patience with their complaints, because there are all these new people to deal with, and they have rights too (more than the old lower class does, in fact).

But let's turn now to another familiar victim class – namely, the middle class. “Victim” you say? Well, consider that the middle class has, historically, been the declared enemy of most totalitarian movements, and the governments they succeed in taking over, going all the way back to the French Revolution. This is always the case with communism, and is an article of faith in Marxism. The erosion of the American middle class has been underway for a couple of generations now, and the primary tools used against it have been taxation and inflation (to which I will add the gobbling up, by multinational corporations, of small businesses and family farms, the economic and psychological mainstays of the middle class). And we also have to include the ongoing propaganda and social pressure against “bourgeois” values and “family values”, and “squares”, and “conformists”, and people who are selfish enough to want to hold on to their own hard-earned income. That's just “hate”, right? And to this one might add what I'll call cultural erosion – attacks on morals, values, even the arts, not to mention public education. The cards have been stacked against the American middle class, I would say, since the mid-60s, when everything changed.  (Heck, the middle class has even been shamed into not reproducing!  There's a long-term plan for you.)

But the main point when it comes to the middle class is that doctrinaire collectivists don't think the middle class is even necessary – that it's an encumbrance, and the sooner we get rid of the “bourgeoisie” the better. Now, as I've said on other occasions, find me a successful advanced society that didn't, or doesn't, have a middle class. Soviet Russia had a kind of pseudo-middle class, consisting of government employees, who were, arguably, better off in some ways than the hapless peasants or the factory workers – but economically, they weren't much better off; they still had to stand in line for bread for hours each day. China under Mao did its best to eliminate its middle class (such as it was), but it came back with a vengeance when Mao's successors decided to give capitalism a try – you know, just a little bit – just a smidgen – and now they have more billionaires than the rest of the world combined, and are making major inroads into the American economy. And a new middle class has been created out of, basically, nothing, in order to keep the machine running. It's housed in countless high-rise apartment complexes in the large cities, while the countryside stands deserted.

And speaking of China – it's been noted that a considerable number of “new immigrants” (formerly “illegal immigrants”) are, in fact, Chinese – and overwhelmingly men of military age. Now think about it. China is, unlike us, serious about its borders. It's tough to get in, and it's tough to get out – and you can bet than any Chinese citizen who leaves the Middle Kingdom for any reason needs (1) permission to leave, and (2) permission to go wherever they're going, and (3) they must have a purpose (or maybe a mission) in mind. So these guys are all here with their government's permission and blessing. And what is their mission? Who knows? One thing you can bet on, they won't be walking around with leaf blowers or flipping burgers.

But this is all realism – so annoying! – and it doesn't faze the idealists, those who dream of a “classless society”, which really means a vast army of slaves, but with them in charge. This is their dream – their ideal – that which they live for, and they have said as much, right out in public, in confabs like Davos (“You'll own nothing, and you'll like it.”). It's the ultimate goal of our ruling elite – continue to peck away at the middle class until it ceases to exist for all intents and purposes, and at the same time populate the lower class with countless new immigrants who, let's say, don't believe in “ideas” any further than their own immediate material well-being. And they will, in fact, be slaves – but happy, or at least not violently malcontented. (Drugs enter in here, as part of the plan – any relation to legalization of marijuana, maybe? Therapeutic psychedelics? Think “soma” as in Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World”.) And the Soviet Union is the best model for this. They had a ruling elite, government and business had merged and become one body, and everyone else was a worker bee.

Wait a minute! Doesn't that pretty much describe this country right now? Pretty much, except, again, for that pesky middle class which, among other things, believes in “American” values and ideals, and which – even more annoyingly! – persists in listening to Donald Trump. (Note that I consider “working class” people with steady jobs and decent incomes to be, for all intents and purposes, middle class, especially since white-collar salaries overlap, to a considerable degree, the incomes of skilled labor. Another way of putting it is that middle class people, regardless of occupation, are taxpayers, and lower class people are tax receivers.) And when Trump says “They're not after me, they're after you; I'm just in the way”, he is absolutely right. And if their hero should fall in defeat, that will be the end of the last, best hope for the real middle class – those who “cling” to traditional American values. All that will be left is policing up the battlefield, which the elite and its forces have already shown exemplary skill at (witness the January 6 prosecutions).

But hold on! Our conservative commentariat (them again!) are fond of saying that the “classless society” is an illusion, and an impossible dream... and that any attempts to create one have ended in catastrophe. Well... it depends on one's point of view. The Soviet Union lasted for 70-plus years, with all of its programs and its organizational structure remaining intact the entire time. And it was not terminated by means of revolution or conquest. In fact, American liberals are still mourning the demise of the USSR, and contend that it wouldn't have ended “if we'd just given it a chance”. (Seventy-plus years?? I'd say we gave it every possible chance.) And as for China, after the economic and social catastrophe under Mao, more sober heads prevailed, and what we have now is an awake (not woke, note) monster that is making daily inroads into our own economy and well as academics and social media.

So I guess, in a sense, totalitarianism, or collectivism, or communism, is a stage of development that a society can eventually grow out of – call it an adolescent tantrum, if you will. But the economic and social costs, not to mention the death toll, makes one wonder, couldn't they have just skipped that phase, and evolved in a different way? Why did Russia and the Iron Curtain countries have to endure all those years, and decades? But that would be to discount the revolutionary spirit which seems to be built into the human DNA – that, and the tendency for a new ruling elite to rise up and lay claim to the revolution and its results – or, in our case, for the ruling elite to actually create the revolution, in a top-down fashion, the way Mao's “Great Leap Forward” and “continuous revolution” were top-down phenomena. (Consider how the sporadic outbreaks of urban violence and rioting in the U.S. all seem to originate with wealthy sponsors, members of the ruling elite who have taken it upon themselves to take charge of the bottom-up dirty work while someone else takes on the top-down stuff, like elections for instance.)

But still, given the poor track record of totalitarian governments, you'd think our ruling elite would come up with something else – a third way, or something. But that would violate their most basic premise – that only they are worthy to rule, only they are wise, and only they have the will power to bring the fractious citizenry (AKA deplorables) under control. So they have to give it another try, because who knows, this time it might work! At least that's what the grizzled, dog-eared doctrinaire collectivists in Ivy League faculty lounges think. It will work, because it has to work. There is no other possibility. And no price is too high to pay for making it work by any and all means.

So... now we have the spectacle of another presidential race, with the entire apparatus of the federal government (and many state and local governments) lined up against one man, namely the former and would-be future president. When you consider what's at stake, and the odds, it seems impossible that he could actually win in November, even assuming we have an honest election. (As was said about an American politician some decades back, nobody likes him but the people.) And is Trump a perfect person? Heck, no. But he has become an unlikely hero – the last hope for a considerable portion of the population. Once he vanishes from the scene, who will be left to fend off the vultures? Some may try, but they won't have Trump's charisma, determination, or courage (or money). All they will have is their beliefs, their ideals, and their traditions, and it's hard to imagine those will suffice to withstand the onslaught. But time will tell.

Thinking About Open Borders

 
First let us define our terms.

1.  A “border” is a boundary -- a dividing point -- between… what?  States, countries, empires, kingdoms, tribes, clans… in short, between the eternal “us” and the equally-eternal “them”.  It can be a natural border like an ocean or sea, a river, a mountain range… or, on the other extreme, it can be a purely imaginary and arbitrary line -- and I would offer the way the colonial powers divvied up the Middle East and West Africa as prime examples.  Those lines were drawn for convenience and for administrative purposes as much as anything else, typically with little or no attention paid to the more traditional territories of the native tribes.  (In fact, it has been argued that, in some cases, borders of “new” nations were drawn in order to intentionally split single ethnic and religious groups into two or more parts, thus robbing them of cohesion and thus of political and economic power.)  Some of these lines are so arbitrary as to be, basically, meaningless -- a line extending off into the desert, turning into a dotted line and then disappearing altogether.  (How upsetting for the map buff with OCD!)

2.  What, then, is an “open border”?  Is it simply a border that is not closed, i.e. is not like the border between East and West Berlin during the Cold War?  That’s one possible definition, but it’s not particularly useful.  I think most people correctly think of an open border as one where anyone intending to cross it is not impeded by either the authorities of the place they are leaving or those of the place they are crossing into.  And by “impeded” I mean not only by direct intervention by border guards and the like, but by man-made barriers like walls, fences, mine fields, moats, barbed wire, and so on.  So in dealing with the present case -- our border with Mexico -- any border that one can cross, in many areas, by simply wading ankle-deep across a narrow river, or by climbing over a nonexistent fence, or going through a gap in an incomplete wall, is an open border.  Oh, but wait -- you might say -- what about all those who are met, encountered, or “apprehended”?  Can you say “catch and release”, class?  Or catch, keep in custody for a few days, then release?  Or catch, fly to some other part of the country, then release?  So yeah -- it might not feel like an open border right away to everyone who comes across, but if their chances of being released and allowed to go their own way are much greater than their chances of being held for any significant amount of time, or even returned to Mexico or their country of origin, then we have an open border, for all intents and purposes.  (And if you don’t believe me, believe President Biden, who started welcoming any and all comers into the U.S. with open arms when he was still a presidential candidate.) (And if you don’t believe him, then believe the thousands of migrants who are convinced, based on what they’ve been told or heard on TV or the Internet, that all they have to do in order to enter the U.S. is to show up at the border, preferably sporting a Biden T-shirt which puts them on the fast track to citizenship.)    

Discussion:  If you look at the world map these days, there are very few areas that are unaccounted for or “disputed”.  Every major war includes, as part of its follow-up, some sort of “claims” commission that sorts things out, almost invariably in favor of the winners.  But that usually does not mean that large numbers of people have to be forcibly evicted from one place and transplanted to some other place --- notable recent exceptions being the establishment of the State of Israel and the division of India.  And of course there are hard feelings all around, since it’s almost instinctive that anyone occupying a piece of land of whatever size -- including the most unproductive patch imaginable (I think of the rocky coast of southwestern Ireland, when the only crop that will reliably grow is gorse (think “kudzu“ except in Ireland)) -- considers it “theirs” by right (either because “we’ve always lived here”, or by right of conquest, or by having been granted the property by a benign conqueror -- or, in modern times, by treaty).

But as for borders per se, well… other than those of the natural kind, I don’t think people in ancient times, or mapmakers in Medieval times, spent a whole of time worrying about, or creating, precise artificial lines separating one group from another.  Most of the maps from back then will show names of empires, countries, and ethnic and racial groups without including lines in between.  A bit later on you can see empires, countries, tribes, etc. designated by different colored blobs, and there are almost always spaces in between -- and this is important!  Those in-between spaces have served throughout history as buffer zones… as a form of intentional ambiguity, if you will, in order to provide a bit of flexibility and avoid squabbles.  And those in-between spaces -- no man’s lands -- have a reputation, over the millennia, for being wild and dangerous -- places for robbers and brigands -- and the part of a given country that is close to these spaces is called the “frontier” -- still wild, and only a bit less dangerous.  (Note that the United States is exceptional in that its frontier moved continually from the establishment of the original thirteen colonies until the official “closing of the frontier”.  (That was the point at which the settlement from the East met the settlement from the West, in a kind of virtual golden-spike event.))

But a funny thing happened about the time “civilization” evolved, i.e. that was more than just scattered castles, forts, and strongholds with surrounding peasant villages, fields, and forests.  These clans and tribes started bumping up against one other on a regular basis, hence the need developed for better-defined boundaries… borders… lines.  I always think of Germany before the unification, with its scattering of kingdoms, dukedoms, and independent cities, with boundaries carefully demarcated so that everyone knew exactly where they lived and who their ruler was -- no more “wilderness” in other words (kind of like Washington, D.C., where there are no vacant lots because the land is too valuable, and no free parking).

The situation in the American colonies was a bit different.  If you look at maps of where Native American tribes originally lived (before many were displaced and forcibly moved) you, again, see either just names on a map with no lines, or a bunch of blobs.  But enter the land companies and surveyors, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and now each tribe has its very own square, or rectangle, or polygon of some sort (again, often ignoring natural topography) because, well… it’s about property, see?  And ownership.  And pioneer settlement, hunting lands, trapping lands, cattle land, farm land, fishing rights, and so on.  And in the case of the Indian reservations, they had multiple purposes:  (1) Get the Indians out of the way of the European settlers; (2) “Civilize” the Indian tribes by providing them their own territory and, hopefully, eliminating intertribal conflict (not to mention attacks on the settlers); and (3) Imposing administrative and legal controls.  

Now, some of these provisions were, clearly, expressions of the conqueror  vs. the conquered.  Some were about grabbing all of the better land and access to waterways.  Some were about safety (for the non-Indians).  And some were, very possibly, benign -- such as the establishment of European-style schools and local (tribal) governments.  (There’s a lot of revisionism going on right now with regard to the schools -- but that’s a topic for another day.)

Borders in our time are, to a greater extent than at any time in history, firmly established, with lines drawn to a degree of precision only made possible by GPS technology.  This has its advantages, no doubt… but it also means that adjoining countries, tribes, clans, ethnic groups, etc. have no more buffer zones -- they confront each other “toe to toe” on a daily basis, and the border becomes a kind of fetish, as witness the elaborate daily gate-closing ceremony on the India-Pakistan border.  There is no wiggle room -- again with the exception of those dotted lines in the desert.  (The few remaining nomadic tribes do, indeed, tend to inhabit these “dotted line” areas, and couldn't care less which “country“ they happen to be in at any given time.)  (Back in the 1960s the Bedouins could move freely back and forth between Egypt and Israel, unlike anyone else.)  But in general even the most remote areas, such as the western Himalayas, are claimed, square foot by square foot, by someone -- and usually by more than one someone (hence conflicts in places like Kashmir).

So we see that while the concept of borders is age-old in one sense, the way in which it’s expressed can be highly fluid -- or at least has been in the past.  There is nothing at all unusual about our border with Mexico, which is part natural (the Rio Grande) and part drawn lines.  What is unusual is that the border is marked by a hodgepodge of fences and incomplete walls.  You can hardly call it fortified, but it is guarded to some extent, at least… and in this sense it’s the exception rather than the rule, both historically and even in the present day.  

The first fortified border (as opposed to a fortified city) we know about was the Great Wall of China, the remains (some restored) of which can still be seen today.  But the golden age, if you will, of fortified borders has to be the period starting with World War I and extending up to the present day -- and we all know whose borders they were and are, namely those of totalitarian (fascist or communist) states.  These also have the interesting feature of being designed to keep people in, as opposed to out -- the latter a feature of our border with Mexico.

But what is the essence of borders?  What do they all have in common?  Again, it’s the age-old question of Us vs. Them.  But it’s not just Us, it’s our cities, towns, villages, farms, homes, families, resources of all sorts (forests, waterways, lakes, trade routes, and so on).  These are all things that are -- or have been until just recently -- considered worth defending, and if they are not defended, or if the defenses are inadequate, the nation or culture in question is likely to perish at the hands of an aggressor (even if the “aggressor” is no more than an overwhelmingly great number of the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free“ -- or to breathe at all).

But what do aggressors -- invaders -- even migrants -- want?  They want what they don’t have, or more of what they do have.  So there is an economic basis for the whole border concept -- and the greater the disparity between the invader and the invaded, the more likely the invasion is to take place, and the more difficult is it to turn back.  (I won’t go into other factors like invasion for the purpose of religious conversion, which motivated much of the Muslim conquest of North Africa and parts of the Middle East, the Balkans, and Spain.  In that case the motivation was to provide the opportunity and privilege of being converted to Islam -- not that other factors were ignored, of course.)  (And by the same token, aren’t there fringe benefits when we invade a country in order to “spread democracy” and liberate people from whatever is it they need to be liberated from?  And if there aren‘t, why do we bother (some cynic might say)?)

But to return to the usual case -- whether you’re talking about an armed invasion by a modern army or people wading across the Rio Grande, it’s always about getting what you want, which basically means taking it from someone else, i.e. the people who already live there.  This is obvious.  In the short run, it’s a zero-sum game, although in the long run… well, who knows?  What’s not so obvious is what I’ll call the equilibrium point.  Just as water seeks its own level, so does poverty -- by which I mean that the poor, needy, and oppressed go from their native land to somewhere where they won’t be as poor, needy, and oppressed -- or (important point) where they think this will be the case.  And of course, human nature being what it is, people tend to be overly hopeful and optimistic in these circumstances.  They come here seeking the Gold Mountain, and instead find new and different kinds of poverty and danger.  But at least it’s not as bad as what they left back home -- or they tell themselves that (cognitive dissonance kicks in) and decide to stay and hope for the best.  

Now, in this high-tech and electronically/digitally-saturated environment, we can assume that once someone manages to penetrate our fraying border defenses and establishes themselves somewhere, they waste no time getting back to the folks back home and providing a progress report.  We can assume that this happens on a regular basis -- and that, given that it does, whatever they tell the folks back home isn’t enough to keep more of those folks from setting out on the same journey.  The people coming across the border with Mexico today aren’t pioneers, in other words -- they’ve been paying close attention for months, or years, and have decided to try their luck.  They come in waves -- contingent on weather, levels of poverty or strife back home, and, naturally, evolving expectations as to their likelihood of success.  These people are not stupid; in fact, I suspect they are among the more clever, resourceful, and courageous members of their respective societies (being at poverty level doesn‘t reflect badly on their abilities, in other words).  And now they are encouraged by various facilitators (AKA cartels) as well as by various NGOs and our own government.  They know things have changed, but they can’t be sure if the change is permanent (not being privy to all of the political nuances in play).  So many of them may feel that it’s now or never -- and if the “now” part lasts for weeks, months, or years, so much the better.  

So what would the equilibrium point be?  It would be the point at which conditions here -- in their new environment -- have degraded to the level of the environment which they left, or, once again, they perceive it to be such.  So… does this mean that the United States has to look and feel like the Northern Triangle -- like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala?  Well, yes -- not the entire U.S. of course, but certainly the areas where the migrants wind up.  The turning point will be the day when the newest migrant calls home and says, in effect, forget about it -- things are no better here than they are down there.  Save your strength (and your money) and stay put.

So at this point, poverty will have reached its own level and equilibrium will be achieved -- and not only that, but all of the migrant advocacy groups and open-borders promoters at all levels (including in the government) will, hopefully, admit that “fairness” has been achieved at long last -- that Americans are no longer being selfish, exclusionary, prejudiced, bigoted, racist, etc.  We welcomed the world with open arms and, guess what, the world showed up!  (Of course this assumes that open-borders advocates will be happy and satisfied when the equilibrium point is reached.  They won’t be, of course, because they’re never happy -- “happy” is not on the life menu for them.  They will turn on a dime and find something else to be indignant about.  Professional activists are who they are for a reason, and it typically has very little to do with the supposed victim groups whose welfare they express so much concern over.)   

But will that golden day ever arrive?  Because there are people who seriously want this -- and some of them serve in Congress, some in the current administration, and -- I’m betting -- countless in the Deep State.  And of course “fairness”, “justice”, and “equity” are not necessarily on everyone’s mind either -- there are economic and political angles as well (cheap labor, reliable voting blocs, etc.).  Not every one of our problems can be solved with open borders, but it’s a start.  

Now, there are, of course, various objections to all of this, although I doubt if most of the skeptics have carried the logic quite this far.  But even the most basic grasp of history and economics will tell you that migrations -- mass movements of people -- happen for a reason, and as long as there’s a reason migrations will happen, which is the same as saying that as long as there are inequalities among people, they will be motivated to improve their lot.  (When expressed this way it seems totally obvious, doesn’t it?)  The world is not going to be suddenly set in stone just because some people would like it that way; things change, they evolve, they morph -- and yet human nature remains the same.  And as I said, the energy… the power… behind any mass movement of humanity is the desire for something better, and the greater the contrast, or gulf, between what they have and what they see (or think) that others have, the more energy and determination they will possess, and the more likely they are to succeed.  And it turns out, again historically, that the energy and determination of invaders is often more than a match for the determination of those who want to fend them off.  Human waves have, time after time, overcome the best defenses and the most advanced weapons systems.     

What our response is, or should be, to all of this is the question -- and again, we have the “fairness and equity” contingent saying, basically, we should let anyone in who shows up, no questions asked -- and any concerns about sustainability, or the political, economic, and social impact, are just symptoms of racism and selfishness.  People who feel this way to some degree but who aren’t as vocal about it might feel some hesitation about going all the way to the logical conclusion of open borders, but then one has to ask, where do they want to draw the line?  Because the true believers in our midst will say that no line should be drawn, and that you’re just being selfish if you try.  

On the other side of the political spectrum are those who repeat, as a mantra, “A country with no border is not a country.”  And while this is not strictly true from a historical perspective, as we’ve seen, in these times it seems more clearly to be the case.  But then we run into a paradox, as follows:  Again, historically, the Us vs. Them confrontations were based on traditional sources of identity -- race, ethnic group, religion, language, tribe, clan, etc. -- all those things which used to distinguish one people from another, because they were based on easily observable reality and human nature (in individuals and in groups).  The problem we have in the U.S. is that, “E pluribus unum” or not, we have never been united, beyond a certain point, along any of those traditional lines -- the ones anthropologists are so fond of studying.  The rage for “diversity” ignores the fact that we’ve always been diverse… mixed… hybrid… a “nation of immigrants” who are not always all that anxious to jump into the great American melting pot.  Traditional sources of identity survive, but they survive for those who value them and work to maintain them.  For the great number of Americans who have been -- voluntarily, in most cases -- “deracinated”, they may possess remnants -- family, home, hearth -- but otherwise all of the usual connective tissue that has held human societies together for millennia has frayed, decayed, and disappeared.  What’s left, for anyone who even feels a need for them, is ideas -- the American Experiment, the founding fathers, the founding documents, the flag, the National Anthem, and so on -- but these are only so consoling if the basic, organic culture is gone (or if it was never firmly established to begin with).  People down through the ages have fared quite well without all of these ideational trappings; they had their myths, legends, rituals, customs, and cultural features like music, dance, art, clothing, and so on… but again, these were rooted in reality, i.e. in the sort of reality that human beings need and instinctively respond to.  Not ideas, not abstractions, and certainly not politics as the be-all and end-all, but organic reality and a sense of place -- of belonging.  This is what is sadly lacking in our society, and the irony is that these hordes of migrants showing up at our border may well have a greater sense of all these things than we do.  And therein lies their hope, perhaps.  

Another way of expressing this is that organic culture builds resistance.  It’s a natural fortification against alien influences, especially those that are bent on attacking traditional customs or ways of thinking, watering them down, declaring them “outmoded”, “reactionary”, “racist”, etc. -- and, in extreme cases making them illegal and subject to punishment.  Among the many battle fronts in the culture wars of our time is that between those who value tradition, however expressed, and the globalists, who, despite their prating on about “diversity”, actually have as their goal the elimination of all differences and distinctions, and, ultimately, a totalitarian state composed of a ruling elite and a vast, gray army of serfs with no identity and no hope.  It’s no surprise, then, that when the globalists lay an axe to the root of any cultural tree, they always begin with religion, and then work their way up to race, ethnic group, family, and language.  All of these must be eliminated -- i.e., the idea of them must be eliminated -- the idea of them having value and being a source of identity.  Among the final acts in this drama -- the cherry on the top of the cake, if you will -- is language, and we see at this moment how language is being distorted, turned upside down, and “cancelled” of all rational meaning.  Language is the basis of thought, after all -- and a people without a functioning, reliable language is rendered incapable of rational thought -- or of any thought at all.  Try defining a value, or a tradition, without using words -- sure, you can point to things, but that’s not the same as describing them, declaring them to be of value, and adopting them as a mark of one’s own identity.  

And what about these globalists, after all?  What about the moguls of Silicon Valley and the mainstream media talking heads?  What about the denizens of the boardrooms of large mutinational corporations?  Aren’t they human too?  Well yes, in the strictly biological sense.  But somewhere along the line they opted out of any sort of traditional markers of identity and decided to be self-made -- which means that their only thing of value is themselves, and this is almost always expressed as a lust for power -- not only power over the physical world but over other people.  The natural human longing for the spiritual has, in them, been distorted to the point where we can say that power is their religion, and there is no other.  But they are not satisfied with being self-contained in their bizarre world where everything is its own opposite.  Perhaps on some deep level they realize they are living the most profound lie of all, but rather than give it up they defend it by hunting down anything that might expose it -- that might shed light on what it really is and how little it amounts to.  This is why they are constantly at war, and this, of course is what the “culture wars” are all about.    

The globalists’ weakness is not that their power is not real -- it is very real.  But it’s parasitic.  It cannot stand on its own, but needs a host -- and that host is, simply, the vast array of humanity -- confused, discouraged, and powerless though they be -- that follow orders because they haven’t a better idea, and that live always with some degree of chronic fear.  And yet they are a resource -- they work the land, if you will, whereas the globalists work… what?  Paper, electrons, images, illusions, fantasies -- all aimed at creating and perpetuating fear, mollifying it to some extent, then creating more and even newer and novel species of fear, in an endless cycle.  So any resistance to the globalists, their march through the institutions, and their assault on culture and the eternal verities must be based on that very culture and on those eternal verities, because that’s where the real power of the people resides.  Individual rights, ambition, initiative, creativity, etc. are all fine things, and necessary -- but those will not overcome the tidal wave… the onslaught… from globalists and their programs and instruments.  Only re-unifying in a solid, organic way will work -- but do we have the strength, motivation, and insight to do this?  A few seem to, but the bulk of the citizenry at this point seem to have already given up, capitulated, and retreated -- thinking, wrongly, that there is some place to hide, whereas in fact there is none.    

Just remember, the globalists fear us more that we fear them.  They may threaten our livelihood, or our very lives, but we threaten their view of the world and of their place in it; we threaten their reality.  I always imagine them looking down upon the simple folk and feeling a pang of envy and regret -- like, that’s what I once had, or could have had, but I gave it up for the proverbial mess of pottage.  So they react with blind rage, because they don’t realize that it’s not too late to repent.  

So with regard to open borders -- there are more ways to be conquered than by sheer numbers.  A weak and frail culture is ripe for replacement with something more vigorous and firmly rooted.  When we see these migrants trekking up through Mexico, making their way across the Rio Grande, and dropping from exhaustion in squalid holding centers, we may in fact be seeing our future.  Their lot will, eventually, improve -- and the resultant leveling may not be to everyone’s taste, but it will occur; it has to.          

The Republican Party post-Trump

I briefly considered being a wise-ass and just posting this title followed by nothing but a blank page. But I decided that would constitute a disservice to my loyal fans (ahem!) so am going to flesh out the idea a bit.

The point being that the Republicans do have a future, but just not on the national level. They will continue to be players in various redoubts across the fruited plain – not including the coasts, of course, nor various liberal enclaves in flyover country (cities controlled by Democrats plus university towns). They will enjoy dominance in some state legislatures and may be elected governors – although how much good it will do is questionable, since judges everywhere seem committed to reinforcing the “progressive” agenda at all costs. And they will, of course, be active at the county, small city, town, and village level. But on the national level I consider them the walking dead, and here's why.

But first a comment. Now and then someone – not necessarily a disgruntled Republican, it could be a liberal engaging in triumphalism – will contend that Donald Trump killed the Republican Party by, first, having the unmitigated gall to enter the Republican primaries in 2016, then to be nominated (aided by the Russians, no doubt), and then to be elected (ditto). And Republicans ever since then have been wringing their hands that here's this Godzilla-like creature in their midst who's ruining everything and giving Republicans a bad name, and that the nation will never forgive the Republicans for having foisted Trump off on them, and that this spells doom for generations to come, et cetera.

I have a slightly different take on this. My opinion is that Trump actually saved the Republican Party from its own boring, colorless incompetence... injected new life into it (or tried to)... and kept it, basically, alive for four more years (or however long) since it was at death's door by the end of the Obama administration, and a Hillary victory would have been the coup de grace (or coup de disgrace, whatever). The problem is that most Republicans, and especially the “never Trumpers”, would disagree with this, and contend that the party would be in much better shape now if it hadn't been forced to, somehow, support, or at least not oppose, the bulk of Trump's initiatives. Party loyalty is, of course, party loyalty, not loyalty to any one person; all we have to do is go back to the Watergate era to find confirmation of that. (And at a slightly earlier time, a lot of Democrats bailed on LBJ.) But sometimes party loyalty involves compromise – doing what you have to do. And yet there were, and are, people who disagree, the foremost example being John McCain, who took an active role in subverting the Trump administration from Day One.

But the point is that Trump, simply by being who he is and doing what he did, at least kept the Republican “brand” on the market, even though it was an operation not unlike the process of keeping a disembodied brain alive in a jar like in some horror movie. (Except in the case of the Republicans, he was keeping a body alive without a brain.)

So Trump gave the Republicans a new lease on life, except they didn't want it and didn't appreciate it. They would rather be dead (as a party) than be seen as supporting Trump, as many of them said quite explicitly during the 2016 campaign. Distance from Trump = virtue and respectability, is the message. He is as much an outsider to them as he is to the liberals/Democrats/progressives.

All of which is going to make a very interesting election season next year. Assuming that Trump survives impeachment, and doesn't simply leave office of his own free will (a very real possibility in my opinion, but not too many other people seem to have considered it), the Republicans will be faced with a bizarre dilemma – let him run again (primaries, convention, campaign) even though their support for him is lukewarm at best, and in most cases nonexistent – or call an end to the Trump Era by either not letting him into the primaries, or into the convention, i.e. by not nominating him for a second term. They are, after all, already feeling the pain of having lost the House of Representatives, which they blame squarely on Trump... and their chances of regaining it next year are nil, and they stand a good chance of losing the Senate as well, which they will also be happy to blame on Trump.

So what are they supposed to do? Hang on to Trump (or allow him to hang onto them), as troublesome as he is, even if it means losing all control of Congress and reasserting their status as irrelevant and moribund? Or try someone new and hope that all will be forgiven, and that they will be restored to (this time legitimate) power in the White House, and win back the Senate as well?

And if not Trump, which candidate is going to save the day for the Republicans? I don't see anyone out there who has even the vaguest presidential “vibes”. If they stick with tradition, I guess they could nominate Mike Pence, but like Gerald Ford in 1976 no amount of decontamination and no number of hot showers is going to rid him of the “cooties” of his old boss. So what will most likely happen is that they will, in a state of tacit despair, nominate some empty suit who can't possibly win just as a place filler, the way they nominated Bob Dole in 1996 and Mitt Romney in 2012 just to stay in the game. “Hey, it's not our fault, we nominated a fairly normal guy this time.” And then they get to return to the soporific creature comforts of minority status, except this time for keeps. Which means, incidentally, that the U.S. finally capitulates and converts to a one-party system on the national level, which is an inevitable characteristic of tyrannies and dictatorships everywhere, and that the Democratic primaries become the equivalent of the election, assuming that the Republicans even bother having primaries any longer. (Many states, cities, and counties already have a one-party system, and you can generally tell which they are by measuring their level of incompetence, corruption, and downright failure – not to mention less-exalted measures like the number of homeless and the incidence of fecal matter on public property.)

But why else, aside from their general demeanor and appearance, are the Republicans the walking dead? It's because they have become a minority party that can barely capture enough independent and “swing” votes to win elections, except in certain “deep red” locales. And why, in turn, is this? One reason is the power of ideas; the Democrats have them, and the Republicans don't. Say what you like about “AOC”, she has ideas. They may be wrong-headed, foolish, and delusional, and reflect profound ignorance, but they are ideas, and they serve to energize and inspire. And when revolution is in the air, ideas are all that count; cold reason and pragmatism can take a hike. And, of course, youth must triumph! By definition! Of course, the youth of the 1960s are now the grizzled products of the culture wars, whether they consider themselves to be on the winning side or not. They may have won many battles, but the culture war is still on or Trump would never have been elected.

Is there a Republican AOC out there anywhere? Some talk-show hosts might qualify, but they already have paying jobs and are not about to enter politics. We are, once again, in a time of revolution, the way we were in the 1960s, and the Young Turks in Congress are at the forefront, with the Old Guard forced to deal, cope, dither, rationalize, whatever it takes to hold on to their weakening grip on power. (The 60s were not just about “sex, drugs, and rock & roll”, although those were the loss leaders. They were about more profound cultural changes, which took root then and are being promoted to new levels at the present time. Anyone who wonders when this process will stop – when it will be “mission accomplished” – has missed the concept of continuous revolution, of which the most prominent advocate was Chairman Mao, but which has plenty of lesser followers, including the present-day governments of Cuba and Venezuela. For them, the revolution is not finished until Utopia is realized, and since Utopia can never be realized, the revolution is never over. Call it a full employment act for “agents of change”.)

Another reason – and this is old news, but still – is that the Democrats are busy importing new constituents from other countries, primarily Central America but other places as well. And these people are willing to do work that Americans just won't do – namely reproduce. So... to over-generalize just a bit, you have self-sterilizing Democrats, and liberal eunuchs, bolstering their numbers by letting in people who have a vested interest in their programs, i.e. “benefits”. It's a smart move, for sure. And even if Republicans do have an edge when it comes to reproduction (it would be more accurate to say that traditionalists of many different kinds have an edge in that department), there's no way it can make up for what amounts to a siege from the Third World. There is a human wave – nay, a tsunami – coming across our southern border every day. History will record this as one of the great migrations of humanity, but it's hard to appreciate historical significance when you're getting overrun. (One consolation for those who don't believe in the American Empire is that this may be the biggest single factor in its demise; time will tell.)

Then you have good old generational differences – and, as always, the revolutionaries are on the young side and the conservatives are on the old side. This is not to say that the conservatives will some day be totally replaced by the revolutionaries, because even in the worst of times there are people who, somehow, manage to engage in rational thinking... but we are, basically, looking at a revolutionary society on the national level (a process which has been building slowly over a century at least, but which is now coming to full fruition) which will do everything in its power (which is considerable) to silence and neutralize all opposition, if not engage in its outright extermination. (As things stand, the liberals are busy exterminating themselves through abortion, which is ironic to say the least. So the race is on – do they cease to exist before, during, or after the revolution? Time will tell. And if they do cease to exist, who keeps the revolution going?)

So, to sum up, Trump arguably saved us from a headlong rush into this fate for... maybe not even four years, depending. But it does seem inevitable, and that applies in any case – Trump getting re-elected, some other Republican getting elected, or a Democrat getting elected in 2020. The long-term trends are what they are... and I haven't even touched on aggravating factors like the national debt, crony capitalism, environmental degradation, infrastructure, the cost of empire, the collapse of our public education system, social media turning us all into robots, corruption in general, and so on. Everything else that's happening at this time can be considered an accelerant; there are no counter-trends that I can think of. Trump's hard-core supporters will continue to be so until the day he moves back to his golden palace atop Trump Tower, but they're not going to matter as long as Trump loses the narrow edge he achieved in various states in 2016. Those weren't all Trump supporters; there were also “never Hillary” voters in the mix. But they won't be a factor next year (unless she runs again – and yes, she's thinking about it). And there were also independents who cared for neither candidate but figured Trump might be preferable, or more palatable, for some reason. (For one thing, he's rich enough not be bribed, which is no small consideration.) Well, now he's had a chance to prove himself, at least in terms of initiatives, if not actual accomplishments – and it's up to people to decide whether that's good enough, and I suspect that enough of them will decide that it's not good enough and thus flip some of those states that delivered for Trump in 2016. As always in any election, the hard core tends to remain the hard core; what changes (and who the candidates are really trying to appeal to) are the independents, “undecideds”, and plain pragmatists – how does it affect my quality of life, my pocketbook, etc.? These are what we might call the non-idea people – not that they're uneducated or ignorant, simply that they are not into ideas or ideology. They are bottom line-oriented, in other words. And yet they're the ones who really count. Trump can have all the enthusiastic, high-energy rallies he wants – as can Biden, Sanders, Warren, Butti-whatever, et al. – but a minority is still a minority. I'm not even convinced that the Democrats can patch together a majority out of true believers either; that's why they need to recruit new voters from other countries. Those voters, I imagine, are much more pragmatic and “bottom line” than most citizens; if you can vote other people's money into your own pocket you'd be a fool not to. Traditional American notions of self-sufficiency are simply not on their radar.

So what we may well see next year, in one fashion or another, is the final death rattle of the Republicans on the national level – an event which will be celebrated far and wide, no doubt. And the conventional wisdom will be that Trump was what did it – he was the bull in the china shop, the disrupter, the destroyer. But if that's true, once Trump leaves the political stage the Republicans should expect to recover whatever respect they enjoyed before he took that fabled escalator ride. The problem with that idea is they didn't enjoy any such respect, except possibly in their own deluded world view. And remember that Trump's hard-core supporters didn't vote for him because he was a Republican; they voted for him because he was who he was. (He might even have won as an independent candidate, the way Ross Perot tried to do.) So without him to prop them up, the Republicans are going to collapse – said collapse being long overdue. And Trump's hard-core supporters will fade back into the fields and forests of flyover country, satisfied that, for one brief shining moment, their voices were heard and their values were honored. They will hunker down and wait out the revolution, hoping that one day they, or their descendants, will once again have a voice.

Whose Manifest Destiny Is It Anyway?

You’ve seen it -- or if you haven’t I’ll show it to you (see below).  A very large, pink, fleshy woman drifts over the landscape in a diaphanous gown like some kind of Macy’s Parade float, and in her train come railroads, a stagecoach, covered wagons, a Pony Express rider, farmers, hunters, prospectors… and (implied but not pictured) troops.  And she is holding -- believe it or not -- a “school book”, and pulling a telegraph wire along.  And before her there is a cringing, terrified band of Indians -- oops, I mean Native Americans -- and vaguely in the background one sees an Indian village with the natives dancing about, presumably calling upon almighty forces to rid them of this nightmare vision and impending doom.  There is even a herd of buffalo, likewise panicked and hightailing it westward (to no avail, of course -- you‘ll notice the remains of two of their number who have already succumbed to the forces of progress).  The artist even added a snarling bear and a fleeing deer to the mix.  The title of this work is American Progress, by John Gast, and it is the iconic image of what is called Manifest Destiny -- the notion that the conquest of North America by Europeans (Euro-Americans if you like) was meant to be -- that it was inevitable (the same way Hillary’s election in 2016 was inevitable, come to think of it).  Not only inevitable, but a matter of patriotic duty.  This was, in effect, the program of the 19th Century, and there was no other -- until we discovered imperialism, that is. 

Here she is!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_progress.JPG

If you look closely, you can see the East Coast, and New York City, and even the Brooklyn Bridge (which was started in 1869, three years before the painting was done) -- the starting points for the inexorable westward march of the white race.  It’s crudely done, frankly -- except for the floating woman, who might just as well have stepped down from an Italian fresco.  But one would be hard pressed to find another work that packs in as much symbolism as this one.  And it sums up the mindset of America (OK, white America) in the 19th Century, and in a sense is prophetic when it comes to our current woes -- the conflict between white supremacy on one end of the spectrum and the struggles of the Third World on the other end, as manifested by immigration (legal, illegal, and ambiguous), with everyone else in between -- good-intentioned and otherwise -- arguing endlessly about issues like how much illegal immigration is enough.  (And here we also have a continuum ranging from slamming America’s doors to eliminating America’s borders.  Our history shows both, at various times.)   

And Manifest Destiny, I might add, was an at least unconscious assertion of the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest -- that the conquering race was succeeding, and bound to succeed, because it really was more fit (but also because it was white) -- that being a sufficient reason for taking over what, in another more recent context, was called “a land without a people”.  But of course America in pre-Columbian times was most assuredly inhabited.  And yet their claim on the land and its resources had to yield to the forces of history and of human destiny, although I’m betting that few saw it that way.  (The Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel and the resulting ethnic cleansing is “nakba“, or “catastrophe”. )

And Manifest Destiny, however one might argue about the validity of the concept, did work -- it succeeded as an idea (and ideas do have consequences, after all ) beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters.  North America was conquered, from sea to shining sea, and the losers (those who survived) were herded into reservations, and eventually compensated with casino licenses (“Now we’re even, OK?  So shut up.”). 

And yet, in the great flow and fluctuation of human events, migrations, invasions, and so on, an antithesis was bound to arise, and arise it has, in the form of a human wave crossing, relatively unimpeded, our southwestern border (and showing up by other means elsewhere, via boats, planes, trains, and automobiles).  And this new wave, unlike previous waves of immigrants, has shown little interest in being “assimilated”, which was always the first criterion for immigrant groups until recently.  Thus we have a change of immigrant mindset, from “assimilation is the key to becoming a full-fledged American citizen” to “we’re going to hold on to everything we had before, including our language, and if you don’t like it, tough”.  And in the case of the Southwest, you might almost call it a re-colonization (note that prior to 1848 Mexico extended as far north as Wyoming), but this time it’s the descendents of the pioneers who are bearing the brunt of it.  The “land without a people” is now populated, but that population is being threatened by the descendents of the non-people who were forced out many generations earlier.   

And there is a school of thought -- adhered to primarily by liberals, progressives, and the open borders crowd -- that this is all good, and proper, and that “it’s about time”… and that white America is getting its comeuppance.  (And you’ll notice that it’s mostly white people who are saying this.)  Again, this is Darwinism with a vengeance, with the addition of karma and “social justice” and, yes, self-loathing to the mix.  A new immigrant, without passport or portfolio, now enjoys the same rights as people who’ve been here since the first rowboat crunched into Plymouth Rock -- nay, more rights in some cases.  Not only that, but vast tracts of our cities have been turned into, basically, no-go zones for law enforcement -- not in as extreme a way as in Europe, but still significant.  So we have, on one side, the “conservative” mind set, which boils down to the idea that the U.S. should, basically, be frozen in time, and stay just the way it was a couple of generations ago, or even earlier, depending on one’s notion as to when things started to go wrong.  (Some will go back as far as the time when all those damn Irish Catholics flooded our shores in order to escape from genocide at the hands of the British.)  And on the other side, we are lectured day and night on the charms of “diversity”, and “inclusiveness”, and being “welcoming”, and how we should stop being so selfish, etc.  (And notice that Christians and Christian organizations tend to be caught in the middle -- between compassion and charity on the one hand and desire to preserve some semblance of law and order, not to mention Western, i.e. Christian, culture on the other -- with the latter losing pretty much every battle.)

Nowhere in this discussion is ever found any consideration of sustainability, i.e. can our social welfare system accommodate, basically, an unlimited influx of people who at least start out dependent -- though many have already shown a lot more ambition, energy, creativity, and gumption than the people who are being told they have to make way and be “tolerant”.  In the age-old struggle between ambition and complacency, complacency tends to wind up on the losing side unless it’s bolstered by substantial firepower.

If one adopts a ten-mile-high view of things, it appears that, yes, this is just another case in the long history of human migration, occupation, and conquest.  At ground level, it boils down to more immediate concerns -- the “haves” who want to hang on to what they have, vs. the “have nots” who want to get their piece of the mythical pie, which means (according to the zero-sum model, which everyone seems to agree is the correct one) that someone else has to give something up.  So there is pain and conflict -- but I can’t imagine any case throughout human history where pain and conflict have not been inevitable consequences of human migration.  There have always been people who were “born there” vs. intruders, invaders, aliens, etc.  People flee from hardship and move toward what they see, rightly or wrongly, as a better life.  And their drive toward the better life is going to result in someone else having a not-as-good life (by their own standards at least).  It’s a simple concept, really -- and based on nothing more complicated than limited resources.  America as the Gold Mountain has paid off for immigrant groups in times past; the question now is whether the very fact of massive immigration will turn that gold into dross.  After all, if the pie is shrinking with each passing day, it becomes less effective as a motivator -- to the point where we may, willy-nilly, reach a kind of parity.  But the mythology will outlive the actual point of parity, as it always does, just as western expansion in some form didn‘t come to a screeching halt with the official closing of the frontier in 1890.   

Now, the ultimate ideal, or goal, of the open-borders crowd seems to be a sort of Utopia where resources are equally available to all, and equally distributed to everyone on the planet -- and where everyone winds up with pretty much the same standard of living (the real goal, vs. intermediate goals like equal pay, non-discrimination, full employment, etc.).  This has, in fact, been the stated goal of various movements over the years, of which international communism provides the best -- “purest”, if you will -- example.  Equal opportunity, equal outcomes -- and, magically, everyone will get along, wars will cease, swords will be beaten into plowshares, and so on.  But like all Utopian ideas, this tends to ignore human nature with all of its quirks and dysfunctions -- fallen human nature, if you will.  It ignores the natural tendency of human groups of any size to form hierarchies, with leaders and followers, winners and losers, the doers-to and the done-to.  It ignores the natural tendency of any human group to divide itself into the In Group and the Out Group; check out any middle school if you want proof.  It is, in effect, an urge to remake human nature and to create -- to provide another example from 20th Century history -- the New Soviet Man.  And opposed to this is the equally venerable drive to not only establish hierarchies but to justify them on the basis of -- you name it -- skin color, ethnicity, national identity, language, and so on, from which you get concepts like the Master Race, or (in our time) white supremacy.

Again, from the ten-miles-up perspective, this is all sadly inevitable, and repetitive… and possibly intractable.  “Liberty, equality, fraternity” on the one side and a fixed social hierarchy on the other, with a ruling elite whose right to rule is based on, again, race and ethnicity, but also blood lines (and don’t think we’re immune to that consideration in this country -- far from it -- we even speak of politically-inclined families as “dynasties“).

So -- getting back to the floating pink lady -- she seems to have run up against a brick wall at this point.  Not just the West Coast, which has become the reductio ad absurdum of American ambitions, but the reality that a lot of other people on the globe have their own ideas of entitlement, and of the way things ought to be.  She has run up against Hispanics in the Southwest United States and Muslims in Europe, and, I’m sure, comparable phenomena elsewhere on the planet.  And what these new contenders have in common -- it hardly needs mentioning -- is determination, self confidence, a strong sense of identity, and… drum roll, please… a willingness to reproduce.  Yes, demographics is still destiny after all these years (the response of the Regime to this being unlimited access to abortion and contraception -- if we can‘t keep them out we can at least keep them from reproducing).  And as far as the new immigrants are concerned, their destiny is every bit as “manifest” as the destiny that those involved in the westward expansion considered theirs to be.  Plus, those old timers were, at least, not obsessed with “getting even” with the Indians; all they wanted was resources -- land, water, game, and so on.  The Indians were an inconvenience and yes, certainly considered to be inferior human beings, but there was not the overlay of politics and activism we see with the current struggles.  The propaganda of those times mostly revolved around liberating the land from all those “naked savages”, and with justifying that effort -- not unlike the propaganda used to promote and sustain black slavery.  And yes, there were the humanists and those with compassion who wished for a better way -- and who eventually won out in the case of slavery (less so, perhaps, with Native Americans, who had to wait a lot longer).  They were, if you will, the philosophers of their time, and it was an uphill battle every time they went up against those of a more materialistic bent -- settlers, merchants, traders, trappers, buffalo hunters, plantation owners, and the like -- this group being strikingly non-philosophical, though on occasion an apologist would appear who would provide “intellectual” justification for it all, the way the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany produced its own intellectuals and apologists.  (Even the white supremacists of our time have their “theorists”, who hold forth on the Internet and at rallies -- at least until the police show up.)  (And I always say that if this is what “white supremacy” looks like I’ll pass, thanks.)   

No one likes to be the one left high and dry when the tide goes out -- or to be on the losing end of a historic phenomenon.  And yet that’s what seems to be happening to Americans with nostalgic tendencies (highly correlated with Trump‘s “deplorables“ is my guess).  More and more of them are finding out that, indeed, you can’t go home again -- because that’s now someone else’s home.  (You need go no further than the history of “urban renewal” to see this in action.)  And I don’t expect them to be philosophical; their pain is real.  No one wants to be a part of “history”; they’d prefer that history stop the minute they were born.  But that’s not the way it is, or has ever been.

And yet -- also with many historical examples -- there is, eventually, a settling down of sorts -- not the mythical “melting pot” which satisfies no one except the most abject globalists and collectivists, but at least peaceful coexistence.  There may even be, eventually, a cause to celebrate real diversity, not the endlessly-mouthed pabulum that the term signifies in our time, which is really a code word for enforced conformity.  Even intermarriage cannot completely erase the ancient memories of origins.  (If “diversity” is so damn important, why are so many Americans signing up for DNA testing, from which they can brag about their more-exotic-than-they-thought origins?  Why is no one satisfied to simply be considered (by themselves and others) “American“?)  (Full disclosure -- I recently had one of those tests done and guess what, after always thinking of myself as nothing but British and Welsh, it turns out that my DNA has more in common with Lithuania than anywhere else in Europe, and more in common with Libya than anywhere else in the Middle East and North Africa.  Talk about hybridization!  I think I‘m going to try another DNA outfit to see if these results are robust or just the result of some accident in the biology lab.) 

So there is hope.  And it doesn’t take a whole lot of investigation to come to the conclusion that pure blood lines are a myth -- save, perhaps, for the few remaining truly isolated cultures and gene pools around the globe.  But again, these are ten-mile-high considerations, and most people most of the time live with “ground truth”, which is always more difficult to deal with than any theory.       

The Year to Come in Review

Well, the Peasants' Revolt will be a year old on Saturday – although it could also be dated from Election Day 2016, but we were by no means assured, at that point, that the will of the people was not to be thwarted by the forces arrayed against Trump, including, but not limited to, Obama, Hillary, the “Deep State” (i.e. the bureaucracy), the intel community, Hillary, the Democrats, progressives/liberals of all stripes, anti-Trump Republicans, Hillary, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry... and some other categories I'm probably forgetting to mention. (Throw in the E.U. if you like.) (And Hillary! Wow, almost forgot... ) And by the way, his election gave American Jews a splitting headache, because he is much more pro-Israel than his predecessor was, and yet when they look at him all they see is Hitler, and all they hear is the strains of the Horst Wessel Song and the sound of jackboots tromping on cobblestones. The cognitive dissonance is deafening! But they haven't fallen for the Resistance propaganda any harder than anyone else, particularly if we're talking about the “snowflakes” who infest pretty much every college and university (except, perhaps, those with a serious religious foundation).

(The “snowflakes”, BTW, are a good example of karma, or chickens coming home to roost, since many of them are the grandchildren of my generation, i.e. the restless pre-boomers and boomers, who tirelessly campaigned to make the world safe for neo-Stalinism and Maoism. So for all their efforts on the barricades, in picket lines and protest marches, my generation now has to survey the spectacle of their grandchildren turning into fragile, delicate flowers who are threatened, offended, and “triggered” by everything and nothing. We may regret having raised “sensitivity” up as the highest human value.) (Although now it turns out that many iconic liberal “sensitive men” are every bit as lecherous as anyone else. So perhaps the reports of the demise of testosterone have been greatly exaggerated.)

So what can be said at this point? Trump finally managed to get a major piece of legislation passed and signed, namely tax reform, just in time for the holiday he persists in referring to as “Christmas”, much to the offense and chagrin of the Resistance. And it will be interesting to see if said reform survives the 2018 election, and, if it does, the 2020 election. Anything that Congress can do, it can also undo; that's how it works. Today's “law of the land” can wind up on the trash heap tomorrow. But it will be interesting to see if the Democrats' tactics come back to haunt them in the following way: They knew that if they managed to get Obamacare passed and signed into law, it would create an instant entitlement for millions of people, and that would make it virtually impossible to repeal, reverse, or modify in any significant way. All Trump has been able to do is work around the margins by attacking some of the regulations that were not required by the law but that were ginned up in order to amplify its impact and further expand the bureaucracy. So a lot of the minor annoyances have been dealt with, either partially or in their entirety, but the core of Obamacare remains in place, and is alive and well (if that is the word) despite Trump's protestations to the contrary.

But now the tables have turned, and just wait until the Democrats, if they take back both houses of Congress later this year, try to repeal, reverse, or modify in any significant way the tax reform bill, when it has already (hopefully) demonstrated that it has great benefits not just for the “rich” but for the middle class, who constitute the majority of voters, after all. You want to play the entitlement game? Fine – how about the radical notion that people are entitled to keep more of their own money? How much of a reception are the Democrats going to get this fall when they start telling people, as Bill Clinton did, that they don't trust people to do the right thing with their money? It ought to be great fun to watch.

Frankly, though, there are so many intractable problems facing Trump, and anyone else in a position of political power, that it's hard to be optimistic. If Obamacare was an example of the “ratchet effect” whereby nearly every action taken by the three branches of government only serves to increase the size and scope of the bureaucracy, and said actions are rarely reversed because they include built-in non-reversibility features (being habit-forming for both the beneficiaries and the administrators)... what about the “dreamers”? Now there's the ratchet effect with a vengeance! Take a few million illegal immigrants, including minors who, through no fault of their own, are smuggled across the border by their parents or by people acting in loco parentis, let them grow up here, go to school here, work here, and then try telling them they have to go back to wherever they were born and start over. Impossible! Even if we had had the political will to guard our border more diligently in the first place, it takes a lot more political will to punish the innocent for our negligence. So one way or the other they will be allowed to stay, and, yes, they will pretty much all vote Democratic because, after all, the Democrats are their friends, and the Republicans are the party of hate, racism, etc. etc.

If you adopt a broad historical perspective on the whole immigration issue, you realize that this sort of thing (large-scale migration) has been going on all throughout human history, and probably long before “history” became a scholarly pursuit. What's different in this case is that immigrants no longer wash up on our shores with only the clothes on their backs, and have to work their way up from nothing. No, they are presented with a stunning package of entitlements – said entitlements having been originally intended for U.S. citizens of course, but the courts in their infinite wisdom have decided that that is grossly unfair – let's call it “citizenism”, which will put it in the same category as all of the other bad “isms” floating around – and that a person, simply by virtue of having both feet on U.S. soil, has all, if not more, of the same rights as anyone who was born on said soil. It is already clear that there are many laws that the newcomers are not expected to obey – and the list grows on a daily basis. This is, truly, something new under the sun – and I imagine the long-term effect will be to accelerate trends that are already well underway, by which I mean economic leveling (AKA the gradual merging of the middle and lower classes into one great lower middle, or upper lower, class), cultural dilution and diffusion (referring to the end of what, at one time, could at least be claimed to be the American cultural mainstream, including shared values, a shared sense of history, etc.), and of course the triumph of “diversity”, which, as I've said, is really gray uniformity and, ultimately, slavery disguised as something totally groovy and worthy of “celebration”. (I might also have added, “bankrupting the government”, but that's already the case. Heaven help us if the termites ever stop holding hands... )

Oh, and by the way, how are we supposed to maintain our status as the world's policeman under these conditions? How many of these newcomers are going to be interested in joining the armed forces, for example – with a good chance that they'll be sent back to their countries of origin, this time in uniform and heavily armed, to fight for those people's “freedom”? And heaven forbid the government is reduced to having to reinstate the draft; I can smell the Molotov cocktails and tear gas from here...

Moving right along, we have the Perpetual Warfare State, which Trump seems committed to maintaining, and preferably expanding. His first broken campaign promise – or campaign talking point at least – had to do with getting us out of unnecessary, pointless, and winless wars. Well, he obviously got “the talk” on that issue some time between taking the oath of office and showing up at the first inaugural ball. All that a certain someone had to do was to say “Fuhgeddaboutit!” and Trump, being a New Yorker and knowing full well all that that phrase implies, was quick to snap to. Unfortunate, but for what it's worth Hillary would have done the exact same thing. (Don't you think she dreamed of being the first female war president? Don't you think she still dreams of that?) There are powers as high above the presidency as the presidency is above the wage slave who trudges off to the polls every four years in order to show fealty to his masters. (Who was it who said that any political office that depends on the whims of the voters has no real power?)

And speaking of intractability, how about “climate change”, formerly known as “global warming”, and before that “global cooling”? This is intractable whether we “believe in it” or not. If we do, then we're faced with the fact that, thanks in great measure to our technologies and economic/business concepts which have been spread around the globe, the former “Third World” is now in the throes of building up their economies and their middle class, transportation systems, quality of life, etc., all of which depend to a great extent on, guess what, fossil fuels! See what happens when we set an example? Somehow we expected that the rest of the world could ease gently into the 21^st Century while holding on to a 19^th Century “carbon footprint”. Once again, “fuhgeddaboutit!”

And for whose who don't “believe in” climate change, the intractability comes in the form of a never-ending battle with those who do... and they aren't about to give up the fight, any more than the Resistance is about to give up the War on Trump. In both cases, the battle lines have hardened, and each side is showing the ability to endure, persist, and hold out. And both battles will continue to rage up to, and beyond, the 2018 election, and up to, and beyond, the 2020 election, if Trump should (1) manage to stay in office up to that point; (2) be nominated for a second term; and (3) win a second term. But even if Trump should, at some point, be kidnapped by aliens and whisked off to some other planet, it would only reduce the panoply of issues by one. Trump is, at present, a convenient symbol and scapegoat for everything that is wrong with... well, pretty much everything. If some “snowflake” stubs his toe while stepping into the shower, he blames it on Trump. Imagine the dismay if Trump should vanish but all the problems now attributed to his baleful influence turn out to be still with us.

And how about the ongoing, and accelerating, cyber wars, when any halfway intelligent high school kid in Russia, Romania, Israel, or Kazakhstan can hack into the Pentagon computer system (not to mention the DNC)?

And you can add to the Basket of Intractables things like pollution of the seas (against which the world community appears to be, basically, helpless), storage of nuclear waste (no, it hasn't gone away, and it's not going to), abortion, the predatory behavior of the international banking/financial cartel, food waste, the American diet, homelessness, obesity, the cost of medical care (which Obamacare seems to have done, basically, nothing to remedy and much to aggravate), racial strife (which, again, Obama seems only to have aggravated), and... well, fill in your favorite hopeless issue here. (And if you're the nostalgic type, you can always bring back that old chestnut, “If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we... (fix the problem of your choice)?”)

And yet, as insurmountable as these problems are, we still cling to the fanciful notion that there is, indeed, one individual who has the power to fix it all, if only he would stop Tweeting and do something about it. Yes, he is the all-wise, the all-powerful, the omnipotent, the reigning deity of the secular world, namely The President of the United States. He is the one the world looks to to bail them out of any and all predicaments (mostly of their own making). He is the creator of employment, of jobs, of health, of prosperity, and especially of tolerance, understanding, niceness, and consideration for others. He will end war, disease, racism, hate, homophobia, sexism, transphobia... and if we're really lucky, he will end phobiphobia – i.e., fear of phobias.

OK – I admit it, I'm not talking about Donald Trump there (except for the Tweeting part). I'm talking about Barack Obama, and I think you could find, somewhere in his campaign speeches or in the adoring words of the lackeys in his administration and the media, references to pretty much all of the above qualities. His awesome powers were nowhere better demonstrated than his having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize on his first day in office. And what's even more amazing, his “legacy” is constantly touted as being the Best Ever, even with ample and growing evidence of apathy, mediocrity, incompetence, and corruption. Not to mention elitism! A radio talk show host recently commented that Obama considered the presidency beneath him; so true!

And yet, this set of expectations is pretty much standard fare when we're talking about the president, whoever he (or, in theory, she) might be – and it's always a grave disappointment when the holder of that office turns out to be, after all, simply another member of homo sapiens and has nowhere near the powers that people anticipated or that they feel ought, by rights, to come with the office. So we have moved on from the Obama Era, when a demigod inhabited the White House along with his demi-demigod wife and demi-demi-demigod children, to a situation where, according to the daily talking points of the Resistance, the Oval Office has been taken over and occupied by a fraud and usurper, who lied, cheated, and stole his way to the presidency with the help of a mere handful of ignoramuses in flyover country who would have voted for a yellow dog rather than for Hillary (and they would have been perfectly correct in making that choice).

You see, the problem with a democracy is that we still long for a king – and the problem with a secular society is that we still long for a deity. So we project these deep longings onto the president, no matter how hapless an individual that turns out to be. So the president becomes the sin eater for the rest of society, and, in fact, for the world. And he is, as a result, expected to spend most of his waking hours apologizing to the world for the great and many sins and offenses of America (past, present, and future) – and, in fact, this was the part of the job description that both Bill Clinton and Obama spent most of their time performing – and probably enjoyed more than any other duty, aside from bombing innocent civilians overseas.

Oh sure, a president may get credit, on occasion, for some real or alleged achievement, but his real value is as a scapegoat. What would the Great Depression be without Herbert Hoover to blame? It would just seem like a random event – a blind catastrophe. But thinking of it as, basically, the work of one man brings things into focus – it fulfills, again, a deep longing. The war in Vietnam was all the fault of Lyndon Johnson if you're a Republican, and of Richard Nixon if you're a Democrat. Once again, clarity and simplicity.

So, again, it must be a sure sign of insanity to even want to be president. The office doesn't drive men mad, it just takes the madness that is already there and amplifies it. And how many of them turn down the opportunity to run for a second term? (LBJ, to his credit, was one of the few who bailed.) So... the Resistance is right, in the sense that we have a madman in the White House. But we always have a madman in the White House; it just goes with the territory. It's how we've allowed things to evolve, morph, and mutate over the years. The longing for a “strongman” is hard-wired into the human race in the aggregate. The French killed their king and wound up with an emperor. The Russians killed the czar and wound up with a parade of dictators. And so on. Show me a society without a strongman and I'll show you a society of people who are truly capable of self-government and whom their neighbors are, at least for the time being, content to leave alone; examples of this are rare indeed. (We were an example up until the Civil War, at least.) 

I guess a sign of the merits of the Constitution is that it is still, at least nominally, in effect after all this time. But that could also be taken as a sign of its weakness and ambiguity – that it's capable of being stretched, interpreted, and massaged to an extreme degree without having to be actually replaced. Or, as someone put it, the minute you start calling the Constitution a “living document” you've killed it. This may be; we may be running on pure inertia at this point, and yet things continue to tilt in the direction of bigger, more powerful, all-consuming government. It is a gravitational force like that coming from a death star, and is augmented by the percentage of the electorate who have, basically, given up on the American Experiment, and who now long for a return to a more ancient model. Call it political masochism if you like – and that was, without a doubt, a big part of Hillary's appeal.

The Trump Era may be seen by future historians as a temporary setback to this process along the same lines as the Reagan administration. Or – Trump may not even be able to stay in office long enough to constitute an “era”; we may be talking more about a Trump Episode, or a Trump Minute. This might actually be a collective nightmare, from which we will awaken to find Hillary comfortably ensconced in the Oval Office while Bill hangs around the White House swimming pool channeling the ghost of Hugh Hefner. This is certainly what the Resistance is hoping for. In fact, they are grievously offended that Trump has managed to hold on this long. But regardless of duration, this administration does represent something significant in our political history – possibly the last gesture of defiance by those who were “silent no more” before we are finally drawn into the black hole of totalitarianism.