In political theory and theology, to immanentize the eschaton means trying to bring about the eschaton (the final, heaven-like stage of history) in the immanent world. In all these contexts, it means “trying to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now (on Earth).” –
Wikipedia
There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who’d had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called “The People.” Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men, and fools, and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People.
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.
Terry Pratchett – Night Watch
I’m hardly the first blogger to use “Immanetize the Eschaton” as the title to a post, but it seems remarkably apt given the events of the last few – very few – months. Whether you agree or not, a LOT of people believe that the 2020 Presidential election was not won by legitimate means, and the behavior of the Ruling Party doesn’t lend any credence to their “popular victory,” or their mantra of “healing” and “unity.” I am on record as saying that Donald Trump was despised by both sides of the aisle for not being one of the Anointed who believe that they have the mandate to rule. As you know, I like quotes, and I’m inordinately fond of this one:
The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the woke oligarchy that governs us.
Roger Kimball – “A Party of Faction and Fantasy,” American Greatness
Well, the Ruling Party of the Ruling Class is making up for it now.
I’m also on record saying that we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic. We live, as Roger Kimball states, in an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, run by the most powerful members of the government and the people who pay to put and keep them there. I’ve quoted Prof. Angelo Codevilla before, but this is an appropriate place to put this again:
(T)he Democrats (are) the senior partners in the ruling class. The Republicans are the junior partners. The reason being that the American ruling class was built by or under the Democratic Party. First, under Woodrow Wilson and then later under Franklin Roosevelt. It was a ruling class that prized above all its intellectual superiority over the ruled. And that saw itself as the natural carriers of scientific knowledge, as the class that was naturally best able to run society and was therefore entitled to run society. The Republican members of the ruling class aspire to that sort of intellectual status or reputation. And they have shared a taste of this ruling class. But they are not part of the same party, and as such, are constantly trying to get closer to the senior partners. As the junior members of the ruling class, they are not nearly as tied to government as the Democrats are. And therefore, their elite prerogatives are not safe.
Angelo Codevilla interviewed for Tablet Magazine October 23, 2019
Donald Trump was a shocking “Fuck You” to the ruling class from what Codevilla terms the “Country Class” – that is, all those people in flyover country who won’t vote how they’re told.
I’m far from alone in my assessment. I’m of the firm opinion that the Progressive Left believed that once Obama won his second term they were set. The eschaton night not be immanent, but it was imminent. Hillary was going to be another “great leap forward” towards the heaven on Earth promised by Karl Marx. Another repeat quotation:
The rise and fall of the Marxist ideal is rather neatly contained in the Twentieth Century, and comprises its central political phenomenon. Fascism and democratic defeatism are its sun-dogs. The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it. Political activity becomes the highest human vocation. The various socialisms are only the most prominent manifestation of this delusion, which our future historian calls “politicism”. In all its forms, it defines human beings as exclusively political animals, based on characteristics which are largely or entirely beyond human control: ethnicity, nationality, gender, and social class. It claims universal relevance, and so divides the entire human race into heroes and enemies. To be on the correct side of this equation is considered full moral justification in and of itself, while no courtesy or concession can be afforded to those on the other. Therefore, politicism has no conscience whatsoever, no charity, and no mercy. (Emphasis in original.)
Glenn Wishard, “A Thumbnail History of the Twentieth Century” – Canus Iratus blog.
Except for the premature obituary for “the Marxist ideal,” that paragraph is spot-on. Progressive Leftism is a religion, with all the attendant characteristics: Dogma, the treatment of heathens, heretics, and apostates, indulgences, all of it. Government is God, legislators are the angels (remember, Satan and his demons were once angels), the “news” media are the clergy, and we proles are the laypeople, the heathens, the apostates and the heretics. And they will drag us, kicking and screaming if necessary, into their promised Utopia.
Or kill us, if they deem us too deplorable to save.
To the people of my parent’s generation, World War II was a reality that they had lived through, and not a bunch of black and white movies starring John Wayne.
Books upon books were written on the subject, to help them digest and understand just how it was that something of that magnitude could actually happen, how it was that an entire European society could go insane and do what it did. (As for the Japanese society, it was insane to begin with, and thus more easily understood.)
Yes, as politically incorrect as it is, I stand by what I just said:
“Entire Societies Can and Have Gone Stark Raving Batshit Fucking Insane.”
“New Jersey Voters, Redux” – Musings of the GeekWithA.45, November 11, 2003
The Progressive Left has gone stark raving batshit fucking insane. It wouldn’t be so frightening if they didn’t have control of the news, the schools, the entertainment media, and now the government:
The 2016 election was stolen by Trump with the aid of Putin, but the 2020 election was unquestionably fair and even-handed, and there’s something wrong with you if you do not accept that.
Violence is speech, but silence is violence, but free speech is violence. Rioting is “mostly peaceful.” Two plus two equals racism and racism is bad, and all white people are racists, so President* Biden believes that minorities somehow can’t figure out how to use the Internet. Segregation is cool again as is discrimination in hiring. Defunding police departments is anti-racism. People who were never slaves should get reparations from people who never owned a slave, but the children brought illegally in to the country should not suffer for their parent’s crime. Genocide is bad, except in China where it’s just a different cultural norm.
Someone who was biologically male for most of his life can “identify as female” and defeat biologically female women in sex-segregated sports, and they’re brave for doing so. Dr. Rachel Levin, Biden’s transgender nominee for assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to answer questions regarding gender reassignment performed on minor children during approval hearings. (There are, at present, apparently 112 genders.) If you’re heterosexual and don’t date trans you’re a transphobe, but if you’re homosexual and won’t date outside your gender (whichever of the 112 you are) you’re OK.
“Equity” now means “Equality.” All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Cows, pigs and sheep are among the greatest threats to the environment. We need to go to all electric cars, but we’re going to charge them using wind power on distribution systems that can’t support the load. Those clean electric vehicles run on batteries, but the Left seems to have no concern of where the materials for those come from. Mining is bad, but electric vehicles will require a massive increase in mining, not to mention the expansion of the power distribution infrastructure necessary to charge them. But math is racist, and I’m sure everything will work out fine.
And people who own guns are murderers just waiting for the opportunity, but insulting them in public is perfectly safe.
If you dare to point out the insanity, you’re a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic deplorable who must be CANCELLED. You’re a heretic, or worse, apostate. Oh, and Ben Shapiro is a Nazi.
I wrote many years ago that both liberals and conservatives were necessary for a healthy society, but the Left is no longer interested in debate and compromise. Cancelled philosopher Stephan Molyneaux has postulated that “Cancel culture is a dress rehearsal for mass murder.” It’s not that far a reach. As soon as you see people as things to be measured, they don’t measure up. But the Progressive Left goes one step further – they don’t see people, they only see groups. And there are only two groups – those of the Blue Church, and those who are not – and we have a long history of bloody religious warfare to reflect on.
“Longshoreman Philosopher” Eric Hoffer wrote in his 1951 seminal book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements that:
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.
There is an abundance of hatred, and Satan is currently Trump. His supporters are demons. Example (one of millions):
Mr. (Did I just assume zir gender?) Pound deleted the post, but not before there were screenshots. Can’t you smell the love, the tolerance, the healing?
Smells like burning flesh to me.
Some of the things Progressive Leftists have written in the wake of the Left’s Beelzebub, Rush Limbaugh’s passing are as bad or worse. Love trumps hate, don’t you know.
Another Tablet magazine piece much more recent makes this point:
There’s no “Democratic Party” that may have a few radical kooks like Ilhan Omar but is really a solid bastion for good liberals. There’s no “Republican Party” that may have been hijacked by bad man Trump but is really a fortress of principled conservatism. We no longer have institutions—like television networks or newspapers or universities or political parties—that respond to anything approximating reasonable persuasion. There’s no point in trying to argue with, apply pressure on, or rebuke the likes of Michael Che, because the likes of Michael Che actually do hate you, and they’ve been telling you they hate you for quite some time now.
“Thank You, Michael Che!” – Tablet Mag, 2/22/21
“Politics” it is said, “is the art of compromise.” “War,” said von Clausewitz, “is politics by other means.” I have repeated and repeated the observation that has made itself manifest in the nearly 18 years I’ve been writing this blog: Charles Krauthammer noted in 2002 that “To understand the workings of American politics you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
You don’t debate with evil. You don’t negotiate with evil. You don’t compromise with evil. You don’t tolerate evil. You DESTROY evil. You pat it on the head until you can find a rock big enough to bash its skull in.
And control of the culture, education, and the government makes for a big damned rock.
Here’s the tinfoil yarmulke part of this essay: The preparations are underway. When debate and compromise are no longer possible, then force is the only thing left. They know it, and they’re projecting it on their enemy, us.
The Progressive Left has created and exercised its Sturmabteilung (yes, I know I risk Godwinization, and they loathe such comparisons, but this one’s apt. Their outfits are black instead of brown, but the actions are the same.) They’ve been set loose in the Pacific Northwest and some other cities and have been allowed to riot, commit arson, loot and occasionally murder with little to no legal consequence (violence, after all, being free speech you know.) Andy Ngo has studied Antifa, itself with roots in radical Socialism, in depth, and says that they are preparing for war, generously supported by the more mainstream Progressive Left. Black Lives Matter, an organization founded by two open Marxists, is also part of the preparations, but these are in my opinion just the Progressive Left’s “useful idiot” shock troops – the first to go against the wall after the Revolution.
This was, in my opinion, a calculated political move. Create widespread unrest and destruction and dare the Trump administration to respond. If he sends in the National Guard, it proves he’s a tyrant. If he doesn’t respond, he appears weak in the eyes of his supporters and the general public. It was an effective tactic, especially combined with the total lack of support that local police departments received from their Democrat superiors.
That was effective, too. A lot of police resigned or retired early when it became apparent that doing their jobs would mean arrest and prosecution. Many have since been replaced by new hires. Who wants to bet that these new hires have been screened for Wrongthink? More troubling is the ideological cleansing of the United States military – the Officer class under Obama, and the enlisted ranks now under Biden/Harris.
Have no doubt, “extremism” means “Wrongthink.”
As I said previously, nothing says “incipient civil war” better than loyalty checks for your military.
Good question.
The tradition of the Progressive Left is to use psychological projection, to accuse the right of what they’re already doing. This piece, for example:
If Trump wins, these unofficial paramilitaries, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, the state militias, all these other groups, are essentially going to become semi-official Brownshirts [the original paramilitary of Germany’s Nazi Party] of the Trump campaign,” he said. “If Trump loses, these people are going to become the Iraq insurgents. They’re going to go underground. They’re going to be furious and, over time, with the Trump campaign leading as the political wing of this insurgency. With a president in exile, those people will resort to armed violence, political standoffs, and terrorism.
“Democrats Are Stuck With a Republican Party Rife With Conspiracy Theorists, Anarchists and Terrorist Sympathizers” – Terrell Jermain Star, The Root, Feb. 18, 2021
Do read that whole thing. It’s projection in 70mm IMAX. But here’s the killer quote:
Democrats introduced a resolution calling for an investigation into white supremacy earlier this month. This week, the NAACP, civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) are suing Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and two white nationalist groups over the coup. While these are promising steps, Democrats have few options to get to the heart of white terrorism because their Republican colleagues in Congress benefit from it politically. We have to view the GOP as enemy combatants because, for years, they have proven that Democrats are theirs.
(My emphasis.) James T. Hodgkinson got the memo, apparently.
Look at this chart of things that most concern GOP voters:
Now look at this one:
The Progressive Left is absolutely convinced that racist White Nationalist Trump supporters are going to revolt against their enlightened, Progressive society. They are the reasonable ones, it’s the RIGHT that won’t compromise (that is, give up half of what is demanded of them, and keep doing it until they lose it all.)
And what are they going to do about it? Silence them. Disarm them. And if that isn’t enough, kill them.
Calling today’s Leftists hypocrites requires endless contortions. It is simpler and scarier to see that the Left has rejected the standards of common citizenship. The Left is rejecting equal protection, equal treatment of the laws, and the rule of equal laws and opportunities for all. Its principle of justice is to help friends and relatives while harming enemies.
Double standards sown into law enforcement and culture, with the rulers defining the boundaries between the two standards, is the hallmark of oligarchy. Oligarchy is not just the rule of the rich, though that is part of it. Oligarchy is the rule of the few for their own interest. Oligarchic justice demands that unequals be treated unequally, as Aristotle writes, and it extends the idea of human inequality way beyond its legitimate scope. Friends of the oligarchy are treated one way because they are presumed better. Enemies or non-friends of the oligarchy are treated another way because they are presumed worse.
The Left is not hypocritical to its standards: help friends, harm enemies, unequal justice. So, the Left can practice what was hypocrisy openly and without shame. What, from the standpoint of common citizenship, amounts to hypocrisy is, for today’s Left, an edge of their attempt to transform the regime from a republic of equal citizenship to a woke oligarchy.
“The Left’s ranks are full of revolutionaries, not hypocrites” – Scott Yenor, The Washington Examiner, 1/28/21
No, they aren’t hypocrites. They’re engaged in a war and there are two sets of rules. Yes, they’re revolutionaries. They’re running a revolution to immanentize the eschaton, and that has driven them insane, but even the insane know that blowback will eventually come. They must do everything in their (extensive) power to delay, deflect, diminish that blowback. The attempt to control the flow of information is critical component. (Can you imagine the outrage if, under the Trump administration, a similar letter had been issued pointing out the lies and falsehoods put forth by the “mainstream” media, asking why they were still being carried?)
After more than a decade of record gun sales, the U.S. population has accumulated a huge number of firearms:
That’s over three hundred million background checks in thirteen years. A check does not mean a sale, and a sale does not mean a new gun, but we were told in 2007 that the number of guns in private hands here was between 250,000,000 and 290,000,000:
I’ll leave it to you to estimate the new total, but the UN put it at 393 million in 2018. I think that’s light. Very light. We’re told we’re paranoid about “the government taking our guns away,” but H.R. 127 is a gun-grabber’s wet-dream. Apparently whoever wrote it for Congresswoman (did I assume zer gender?) Sheila Jackson Lee read Donald Trump’s book Art of the Deal. Demand the ridiculous, settle for 80% of it. One percent is unacceptable. But we’ll be pilloried in the establishment media for “not compromising” and “being unreasonable,” and arming up for revolution. Just another step along the path. But:
Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.
Stanislav Misin, A Russian View on Gun Ownership
Indeed.
First we’re “The Other.” Then we’re “Deplorables.” Finally, we’re DANGEROUS. Have you noticed how the Left is treating the events of January 6? It was called “1000 times worse than 9/11” and “it became clear that the United States is involved in a generational struggle to save our democracy.” Not our Republic, our Democracy. The “mostly peaceful” riot in the Capital has been called an “armed insurrection,” except nobody apparently was armed. We were told that the plan was to “capture and kill” members of Congress. Apparently not. We were told that a Capitol Hill police officer died after being “hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.” Apparently not. But there’s going to be a witch-hun… an independent investigation of the events of that day, events that by all evidence were made possible by the (in)action of certain members of the Ruling Party.
The Progressive Left has made the January 6 Capitol “mostly peaceful” riot into the equivalent of, well, a reader of Instapundit explained it:
And why not? The oligarchy thinks that the CCP is doing it right. Senior Biden advisor Anita Dunn once said that Mao was among “her favorite philosophers” and that the Wuhan virus was the “best thing that ever happened” to Biden, largely responsible for his election. How long before China’s “Social Ranking” system is implemented by Big Tech here, no legislation required?
Anyone not of the Blue Church, especially gun owners, are dangerous reactionary maniacs waiting for the right time to rise up in counter-revolution! AND MANY OF THE LEFT BELIEVE IT. When you’re asked how you could believe the election was stolen, they’re asking you how crazy you are:
(Q)uite a few people I know who don’t ordinarily discuss politics with me – or, in the case of one, much of anything with me – have interrogated me (there really is no other word for it) as to whether I believe the election was fraudulent. I have given essentially the same answer as Anton, which in its summary form goes like this: the rules were changed so that we can never know; there was reason to think in advance that the results would be suspect, and then things are reported to have actually happened that do make them suspect, and the courts have never ruled on the merits and almost certainly never will.
Here’s is my own theory as to why my own interrogators and those of Anton are asking – nay, demanding – that we agree with them on the fairness of the 2020 election: they see our answers to the question as a test of our sanity as well as our judgment. The question they’re really asking is: how far gone are you? Have you lost your mind? Do you not see what’s obvious to every thinking and decent person who hasn’t been taken over by QAnon fantasies: that Joe Biden won fair and square and everything else is a baldfaced and pernicious lie?
They’re not looking for reassurance about the fairness of the vote; they feel they know for certain that it was fair. They’re not looking for Anton’s opinion because they plan to respect it, although they obviously respect his intellect. They are asking in order to test his opinion: has this previously intelligent person (whom they used to somewhat respect despite the political differences they have with him) gone stupid as well as mad? Is he that gullible and disordered in his thinking?
They start with the premise that they are correct in their beliefs, and work backwards to see whether he will come up with the right answer. No other answer will do.
“Michael Anton has a question: Why Do the Election’s Defenders Require My Agreement?” – Neo blog, 2/25/21
So how crazy, how dangerous, are you?
In a previous Quote of the Day, a commenter on Facebook put it this way: “…if we wanted to really be violent, there would have been special elections.”
They want us to be violent. They need us to be violent. They have to have an excuse to crack down and violate the Second Amendment with the blessings of the populace and the full cooperation of the police and the military. They actually think they can pull it off.
Keep fucking around and they’ll find out.
Updated to add:
