Endgame

This blog has been, for me, a seventeen-year exploration of other people’s ideas.  If you’ve been here long, you’ll know that I use short quotes and long excerpts from other people’s writings to make the points I write about.  Like most people, I am not an “original thinker.”  I try to expose myself to as much as I can, and weigh it against my experience and reason to determine truth.  Then I put it down in pixels to help me get my head around it.
Over these past seventeen years (hell, over the last 25), I have slowly come to some conclusions that I’m not happy about.

Remember that last nearly 10,000-word überpost?  I told you that so I could tell you this.  Hopefully I won’t be as long-winded this time.

In that last essay I (hopefully) illustrated that the Progressive movement was made up of people who fervently believed in the inevitable coming Utopia promised by Marx where everyone would be equal and no one would want for anything.  They were the Modernists.  Religion was mysticism.  Logic, reason, and Science! would take us there because Marx said so.  It was logically, factually inevitable.  Progressive Modernists worked hard in the early 20th Century to accelerate its arrival.  Of course, their interpretations were affected by the culture at the time, so in addition to universal public education and ending child labor they also promoted segregation and eugenics, but hey!  They meant well! 
In earlier essays I’ve written about the public education system and how it was initially set up by Progressive Modernists working with industrialists to create a two-tiered system designed to produce a lot of reliable industrial workers out of one path, and the people who were to manage them out of the other.  For the Progressive Modernists this was just part of the path to Utopia.  For the industrialists who were obviously the most fit of all it was just another part of Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest, which somehow merged with that Utopianism without conflict.  It was shortly suborned to become a factory itself whose output was activists.
The Progressive Modernists zealously moved into the industries that mold culture – education, entertainment, and media – to proselytize, and by the 1940’s were firmly embedded and doing their best to crank out new adherents.  By the early 1960’s they’d done their jobs well.  But by the early 1960’s it was apparent that something was wrong with Marx’s philosophy.
Exposed to the real world, Marxist economies failed.  Marxist governments were murderous.  Marxism didn’t work anywhere it was tried.  Capitalist economies were successful, and democratic governments protected individual rights not perfectly, but they weren’t committing genocide on their own people.  Marx was factually, demonstrably, unmistakably wrong.
What do you do?  You’ve invested 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life working towards giving your children or your children’s children that Utopia, and the promise is false?  This is the definition of cognitive dissonance

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as “escalation of failure”.)

Or, as I’ve put it, “Do it again, only harder!”  For many of them the philosophy could not be wrong.  Its promise was too beautiful to abandon.  Facts?  Irrelevant!  Logic and reason?  Meaningless!  And so the Progressive Modernists became the Postmodernists:  Nothing can really be proven.  Everything is relative, subjective.  Feelings are more important that facts.  Everything has hidden meanings because of the inherent conscious and unconscious biases of their creators, you just have to deconstruct them to find those real meanings.  The curtains are never just blueTwo plus two doesn’t necessarily equal four.  In other words, “My mind is made up.  Don’t confuse me with the facts.”  Or, “I reject your reality and substitute my own equally valid one!”  Or “That wasn’t REAL Communism!”

They turned their belief into a faith, a religion, with a garden of Eden (pre-civilization Earth), an original sin (either capitalism or slavery, depending on who you ask), a savior (Karl Marx), and a path to righteousness that would lead back to Heaven.  They didn’t seem dangerous, after all they were college professors, teachers, journalists, managing editors, writers, producers, entertainers, et cetera, but they were in the driver’s seat when it came to affecting culture and they were by Marx going to proselytize.
And so they passed that irrational, dangerous faith on to the next generation, and that generation passed on an even more virulent version, and the current generation born near the turn of the 21st Century is the recipient of two generations of Progressive Postmodernist evangelism, expanded exponentially.  When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1989, it didn’t matter to the Progressive Postmodernists.  That wasn’t REAL Socialism.  They’d made that decision over twenty-five years previously.  Nicaragua!  It was going to work there!  Failure.  Venezuela!  THAT was going to be Real Socialism!  But it failed horribly too.  Nobody changed their minds.  It could work HERE.  It was too beautiful not to.
There were other factions.  These were the Progressive Postmodernists who rather than going into journalism, education or entertainment, instead went into politics because that’s where real change could be implemented. Finally, those who did not go into any of those careers but still absorbed the catechism became the Faithful.  A lot of Union organizers, a lot of everyday workers, a lot of businessmen, and recently a lot of unemployed college graduates up to their eyeballs in student loan debt.  Those who rejected the teachings became The Enemy.  It took less than two generations for the two major parties to stop being “the loyal opposition” and become “the other side.” 

via Gfycat

And it wasn’t that the Right went more Right (though they did slightly), it’s that the Left has been moving WAY Left:

Author Frank Herbert wrote in his Dune novels some ideas that I think are as accurate as anything I’ve ever read:

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

And:

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class – whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Which is basically a slightly different take on Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.  And finally:

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.

That elected group is what I will call the Politburo.  These are the people who believe that they are the ones who can personally lead us to Utopia – or at least lead themselves to unlimited power by manipulating the Faithful. 

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.  — Daniel Webster.

Men and all the other genders, too.  That latter group is who ends up in charge of “Socialist” governments once the Revolution has taken place.  The True Believers in the Politburo are purged to their shock, horror and amazement.  The pragmatists are the ones who order the mass murders which are then carried out by their Red Guards who have been taught since birth of their own righteousness and the wickedness of their class enemies.  The pragmatists are the ones who have private dachas and servants because they do the crucial and difficult work of deciding who can do what, who needs what and when, and how much to skim off the top.  The pragmatists are the ones who can see the coming collapse of the Entitlement Ponzi scheme and intend to be around to sift through the wreckage for the choice bits.

These people ran for office, won, and kept moving up, elected by other Progressive Postmodernists,  their Faithful and anyone else they could convince they could benefit. 

The portion that was ideologically more pure pursued the dream of eventual Utopia – in which, of course, they would be in charge.  The less ideologically pure pushed harder for that inevitable necessary Worker’s Revolution where they could seize the reins.  Both were mostly unopposed.  In 1960 John F. Kennedy was their King Arthur.  LBJ with his Great Society was the greatest thing to happen to Progressivism since FDR.  In 1964 Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the Republican National Convention, A Time for Choosing.  You should give that a listen.  Nobody then apparently did.  The people chose LBJ.  Richard Nixon was a sterling example of the faults of Conservatism and the Republican Party.  Jimmy Carter’s malaise worked greatly in their favor.  They suffered a bit of a setback with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, but George H.W. Bush wasn’t even a bump in the road.  Bill Clinton was a disappointment to them. He still pushed the Progressive Postmodernist agenda, just not as far or as fast as desired.  Bush 43 was a speed bump, but Barack Obama was their shining star.  Utopia was just over the horizon.  (I knew the end was near when Obama won his second term with a majority of the vote.)  Hillary might not bring it to fruition, but she would be another Great Leap Forward.
And then Donald Trump won the election.
Already mentally fragile, the Faithful went clinically insane.
That insanity was fed and nurtured by the Politburo. The media, entertainers, and other Faithful stoked it.  I’m not going to list all the examples, but you’d have had to be in a coma to have missed the last four years of increasing insanity.  It’s been a positive feedback loop.  Everything not explicitly Progressive Postmodernist is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.  Why?  Because Marx says that a revolution of the Proletariat is a necessary step for the overthrow of the Bourgeoisie, but capitalism makes people comfortable and comfortable people do not revolt.  Everyone must be made a victim, miserable and righteously angry.  The effort over the last sixty years has been to balkanize the United States.  “Strength through Diversity” has become “Tribalism.” 
Diversity” Thomas Sowell once commented, “is not strength.  The ability to deal with the problems caused by diversity is.  America’s ability to deal with these problems has been America’s greatest strength.”  “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” has never been more apparent.
The Progressive Postmodernists have identified the Bourgeoisie as anyone not explicitly a Progressive Postmodernist, but most explicitly Caucasians and mostly males.  If you are a white Progressive Postmodernist, you’re still suspect because of your inherent racism and privilege.  We’ve gone from Two Minutes Hate to non-stop hate.  The inherent contradictions in the Progressive Postmodernist platform are starting to show as they are beginning to Cancel each other, but through it all, Donald John Trump has been the catalyst to this particular reaction.
Trump has for the last four years shrugged off every attack as if he was dressed in Teflon coated Chobham armor, but now he’s up for reelection.  Another four years of Trump will further damage the advancements that the Progressive Postmodernists have made over the last thirty years.  So here’s the point (finally) of this essay:

The wheels come off the train and the train comes off the track in 2021, one way or the other.

The End of America has been predicted by many people for quite some time.  The Progressive Postmodernists appear to have decided that the time is ripe.  The national debt cannot be ignored forever.  The projected entitlement spending is unsupportable.  All their preparation of the battle space through balkanization has brought us to this point.  Black Lives Matter, itself organized and run by self-proclaimed Marxists, is the hinge on which the lid is swinging, but Pandora’s Box is certainly opening.  I don’t think we’re going to stop the greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death that will come flooding out of it, and there most likely won’t be much around afterward to put them back in.
Here’s my prediction:  The 2020 election is going to be a clusterfuck.  The Left does not intend to lose, and will do everything in its power to ensure that. As I said in March, I don’t think Creepy Uncle Joe will be the nominee, but I could be wrong.  Honestly, I expect the October Surprise to be an accusation of Donald Trump carousing with Jeffery Epstein and underage girls.  Why else would Ghislane Maxwell  have turned up now?  She might cost them a few low-profile Faithful, maybe a Politburo member or two, but if they lose, the “peaceful protests” we’ve seen recently will seem like a walk in the park.  All those “defunded” demoralized police who are now terrified of doing their jobs, won’t.  And the Left will discover to their horror that the police aren’t there to protect the citizens from them, but to protect them from the citizens.  All those guns and all that ammunition that has been purchased since 2000?  Well, when Americans get to fuckery, it will be fuckery unlike anything seen before.  The question is, will that shock return them to sanity, or will it be all-out war?  I wouldn’t bet on sanity.  I’d bet on them doubling-down.

If the Democrats win, and they probably will since they’ll be cheating as hard as possible, they’ll take it as a mandate to really crank up the Progressive agenda, and the millions of us who haven’t swallowed that ideology will be their sworn deadly enemies.  They have already weaponized the IRS and the Justice Department against Trump supporters, expect that to be cranked to 11 because the Deep State is deeply Progressive Postmodernist.  There will be a breaking point.  It might not be in 2021, but it won’t be long thereafter.  In the mean time, our position as a World power will be greatly diminished, and other hostile nations will be taking full advantage.  China will most probably annex Taiwan.  Russia will take over Ukraine and as many of its other former satellites as it can.  China and India may exchange nukes.  Iran might nuke Israel and/or set one off in the continental U.S.  And who the fuck knows what L’il Kim in North Korea is going to do?  In short, the 2020 election could be the match that lights off the next World War.  

Either way, the United States of America as we know it will no longer exist, and I see no way to stop it.  We could have a few decades ago, but we didn’t.  We didn’t realize the opposition had gone crazy.  Well, Ayn Rand and a few others did, but nobody in a position to do anything listened.  By the time Ronald Reagan won the Presidency I think it was already too late.  He was too concentrated on defeating the Soviet Union to look into his own back yard.

As Robert Heinlein wrote some time back in the 1960’s, “The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization is knowing that you are.”  As on most things, he was right.

Somebody cheer me the fuck up with cat videos.  At least this one was only 2,400 words.

Update, 8/3/2020:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN9pdj3GHWk]

Pushing an Agenda

Foreign Policy magazine comes out with a shrieking Gloom-‘n-Doom piece, A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope subtitled “We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent.”

What has so frightened author John Allen, “president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan”?
Well, this:

The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens. It was a stunning moment. But, in particular, it was notable for three important reasons.

First, Donald Trump expressed only the barest of condolences at the murder of George Floyd, but he also said nothing about the fundamental and underlying reasons for the unrest: systemic racism and inequality, a historic absence of respect, and a denial of justice. All of these factors are centuries old and deeply engrained in an American society that systematically delivers white privilege at the expense of people of color.

Yes, he mentioned George Floyd, but he did not touch on long-standing societal problems at all. He sees the crisis as a black problem—not as something to be addressed by creating the basis and impetus for a move toward social justice, but as an opportunity to use force to portray himself as a “law and order” president. The reasons were irrelevant to the opportunity. Remember the supposed invasion of the southern border and his deployment of federal troops ahead of the 2018 midterm elections? The president’s failure to understand the reality of the problem was on full display when, on Saturday, he attempted to explain that his supporters, the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, “love African American people. They love black people. MAGA loves the black people.” Evidently his movement, MAGA, is a coherent thing, and it’s white, which leads to the next point about his speech.

Second, Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy. He said so, ostensibly as justification to deploy the U.S. military to apply federal force—his “personal” force—against the riots.

I’ll admit, I was initially wary of the invocation of the Insurrection Act, until I discovered that, although passed in 1807 it has been used by several Presidents, mostly Democrats, since passage.  An incomplete list:

Rutherford B. Hayes (R), October, 1878 — to suppress the Lincoln County War
Grover Cleveland (D), July, 1894 — the Pullman Strike (look into that one.)
Woodrow Wilson (D), April, 1914 — the Colorado Coalfield War
Herbert Hoover (R), July 1932 — the Bonus Marchers in D.C. (definitely look into that one)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (D), July, 1943 (while the military was already quite busy with other things) — the Detroit race riot.  Hmm, sound familiar?
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R), September, 1957 — Protecting the Little Rock Nine
John F. Kennedy (D) – twice:  September 1962, and September 1963 — the first for The Battle of Oxford, the second to enforce desegregation of Alabama public schools.
Lyndon B. Johnson (D) – FOUR TIMES: July, 1967 — ’67 Detroit Riot, April, 1968 — Washington DC riots, April 1968 — Baltimore riots, April 1968 — Chicago riots.  1968 was a year of widespread riots.  Sound familiar?
George H.W. Bush (R) – twice:  September 1989, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, May, 1982 — the Rodney King riots in LA.
I had to go look these up, because no major media outlet bothered to inform me.  For them, history started yesterday.

As far as MAGA being a white thing?  Look here.  If the media won’t tell you about how the Insurrection Act has been used in the past, what makes you think they’ll admit that not all black people live on their plantation?

General Allen (Ret.) further states:

Finally, the governors have sufficient law enforcement capacity—and, if necessary, the combat power of the National Guard—to handle their respective crises. If not, they can ask for federal assistance. There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor.

Neither Eisenhower nor Kennedy got the permission of the governors involved.  Those governors were quite happy with the status quo.  “No precedent in modern U.S. history”?  Pull my other leg.  And the gist of the phone conversation Trump had with the various governors was “You have all the law enforcement capacity you need – use it, or I’ll send in troops who will.”  Seems it worked.

FUCK I’m tired of this shit.

Another Plastic Turkey Story

So the media has been ranting about Trump’s march through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the victim of arson the previous night. 
I could go on, but it’s not necessary.  The story is bullshit, like so much coming from the media.  These days, nearly everything.
It’s another Plastic Turkey! story, so good, so juicy it just HAS to be true!  ORANGE MAN BAD!!

“Our first purpose was not to be noticed.”

A long time ago I read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first of many, many times.  I’m pretty sure I was twelve or thirteen at the time. 
For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, the Earth is governed by a United Nations of sorts, and has turned the moon into a penal colony much like England did with Australia.  Subtle difference, though, without certain drugs and strenuous exercise, spending too long on Luna will result in irreversible physiological changes that prohibit living on Earth again except as an invalid.  The moon, through hydroponic farming using water from lunar pockets of ice, has become the breadbasket of humanity.  A massive linear accelerator is used to send cargo packages of grain down the gravity well to feed Earth.
The population of Luna is only partially convicts as the story begins.  Most of the residents have either served their sentences or been born there as “free people.”  Free being a relative term.  The Authority runs the colonies, and there are several. 

The crisis is that if projections are accurate, Luna is going to run out of water soon, and Earth doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know.  And they want “the convicts” to just do their jobs and feed Earth.

So a small group decides that the only way to save Luna is to have a revolution.  Here’s the passage that struck me so many years ago:

Our first purpose was not to be noticed.  Long distance purpose was to make things worse as much as possible.  Yes, worse.  Never was a time, even at last, when all Loonies wanted to throw off Authority, wanted it bad enough to revolt.  All loonies despised Warden and cheated Authority.  Didn’t mean they were ready to fight and die.

This popped up over on FB a day or two ago, a Tweet from Jeremy Boreing, one of the producers of Ben Shapiro’s podcast and other Daily Wire things, I think:
  1. Instill fear
  2. Lock people in their houses
  3. Drive tens of millions out of work
  4. Remove the pressure valves:  sports, concerts, bars, theaters. lunch with friends
  5. Close the churches
  6. Dehumanize through masking the healthy
  7. Wait
  8. Strike match
I don’t think this was orchestrated, any more than I think the WuFlu was a bioweapon, but the groundwork had already been laid and full advantage is being taken.
Marx defined revolution as violent overthrow of state and economic system when workers would come out of their false consciousness and would realize their exploitation done by the capitalist society. According to Marx, capitalism will eventually dig its own grave but the working class should not wait for it to happen on its own and rather catalyze the process to end their misery through revolution.
The next stage after revolution would be Socialism.  We have had more than one generation “educated” in our places of “higher learning” that Capitalism is Bad and Socialism is Good:

I’m not saying that this is that “revolution.” I think it’s another “wet firecracker,” but there will be more of this, more often, until the entire system collapses, because a significant portion of the population, many working in government and media, want it to and are actively, quietly working towards it.  Things have to get worse before Joe Sixpack will be willing to fight and die.
Thing is, I don’t think the Socialists are the ones expecting to die.

Oligarchy

I knew that D.C. was corrupt, but I was unaware just how bad it actually is.  Elect someone new to Congress or the Senate?  They can’t represent the people who elected them because they have no power.  That is in the hands of the Power Elite, and through them the staffers and the lobbyists.  And if they don’t toe the line, the RNC and DNC will do everything in their power to make sure that they don’t get re-elected.  We don’t have a Representative Republic, we have descended to an Oligarchy.  Watch all four parts of The Swamp.  If that doesn’t piss you off, nothing will.  And note that the only members of Congress that agreed to be part of this documentary series are Republican House members – no Democrats, no Senators.

Part 1:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZqPo6R4WAc]

Part 2:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czKKwwnm_Oo]

Part 3:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMzVFYvx7VI]

Part 4:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLOs2ebwc34]

Torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers anyone?

“…what country can preserve its liberties…”

…if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? – Thomas Jefferson

Not exactly “the blood of patriots & tyrants,” but I like the cut of this man’s jib:

Greenwood man hangs trailer from tree in front yard to prove point

GREENWOOD, Ind. (Mar. 2, 2016)– Greenwood councilors will hold a public hearing Wednesday evening to hear about a property rights issue after a resident decided to hang his utility trailer from a tree to make a point.

Claude Tate suspended his trailer from a tree in his front yard to express his frustration with a City ordinance.

Last year, he received a notice from the City telling him he was violating an ordinance by parking his trailer in his yard. That ordinance prohibits residents from parking trailers or RVs on top of grass.

“The City can tell you what you can and can’t have in your yard,” said Tate. “I find that outrageous and oppressive!”

Instead, Tate was told he’d have to put pavement down if he wanted to park in his backyard; a task that would cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

So he hung up his trailer just high enough above the grass to make a point.

“What you do in your backyard oughta be your own business.”

“When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril.”

This is the second post I’ve given this same title. The previous one also dealt with the state of New Jersey, and referenced an earlier case, State v. Pelleteri from which the quote originated. In that case, an instructor, gun collector and avid shooter was found to be in possession of a Marlin Model 60 tube-fed semi-automatic .22 rimfire rifle with a magazine capacity that exceeded the arbitrary limit of fifteen rounds as established by the New Jersey legislature. That made it an “assault weapon,” and verboten to possess in that “dark and fascist state,” as ex-New Jerseyite GeekWithA.45 has characterized it.

The New Jersey Superior Court proclaimed, as it upheld Mr. Pelleteri’s conviction, “When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril.”

Many residents of the dark and fascist state have learned that lesson since.

The most recent is 72 year-old Gordon Van Gilder, arrested for transporting a pistol without a concealed-carry permit. A 300 year-old flintlock pistol. An unloaded 300 year-old flintlock pistol that not even the BATFE considers a “firearm.”

Someone on Facebook posted the graphic below. I think it needs to be tattooed on the foreheads of every member of the New Jersey legislature and every sitting judge in the New Jersey court system:

 photo flintlock-arrest.jpg
It’s not about guns. It’s about control.

UPDATE:  As of 2/25 the prosecutor in question used “prosecutorial discretion” to drop the case.  So they’re not completely insane there, just close.

“In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

That’s from George Orwell.

This is from Bill Whittle:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGTUcS-yQtQ?rel=0]

Open racism is simply not tolerated in white America today, but black racism is the toxic glue that holds the progressive coalition together. Tolerance of – in fact, as we see from the events in Ferguson, open encouragement of black rage at a narrative that not only does not exist but reverses the daily outrages that do exist, is what defines modern progressivism. It is the politics of envy, anger, entitlement, lawlessness, violence and bald-faced lies.

And of all the promises broken by this man, surely none is more heartbreaking than the one promise that got him elected in the first place: the promise of a post-racial future. He and his racist progressive cohorts can never surrender the weapon that has gotten them everything, not the least of which is personal political power and trillions of dollars of redistributed wealth. And this latest outrage in Ferguson is yet another example – as if another was needed among the economic wreckage, creeping totalitarianism, and foreign-policy disasters — that he and his leftist cohorts would rather rule over ruins than disappear into the dustbin of a healthy and healed nation.