So far everything the Bush and Obama administrations have done has made it worse for the West. The US has not figured out who the enemy is nor how to deal with the threats."America has jumped from the Middle East frying pan into the fire." By Ted Belman, American Thinker, 12/27/15.
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America is Barack Obama's prey. He is tearing America apart and feeding the pieces of her life to his foreign and domestic fellow travelers. He is not transforming the nation but terminating it. Even the most transformational administrations haven't enabled the murder of Americans by declared enemies, weakened the national defense, mocked the concerns, and dimmed the hopes of average Americans as this president has. Even the highly transformational Franklin Roosevelt did not return Nazi generals to the enemy during the war as Obama did in the Bergdahl swap. Roosevelt did not entertain and enrich Nazi bigwigs as Obama has the Muslim Brotherhood. Imagine Roosevelt facilitating German atom bomb research and enriching the Axis powers as Obama has in the Iran deal. No president has erased the nation's borders at land and sea as Obama in advertising inducements for an invasion from around the world. No president in American history has aided enemies, undermined the economy and derided the American people as the current commander-in-chief."Why People Can't Face the Truth about Obama." By Deborah C. Tyler, American Thinker, 12/28/15.The immensity of Obama's disloyalty is key to why people cannot face the truth about him.
I’m inexplicably weary today, and anyway I can’t find anything that raises my blood pressure high enough to make it worth my time to write an essay about it, and the readers who come here don't do so for the pictures of kittens and rainbows, so this will be a day off for me from Liberty’s Torch. Enjoy the silence.
Well, maybe enjoy a couple of cat pictures, too. First, Chloe:
Now Zoe:
Sigh. They grow up so fast, don't they?
[The concerns of Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to China] were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.’ He added that there was also what amounted to another ‘rat line’ that was funnelling Uighurs – estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years – from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria. . . . IHS-Jane’s Defence Weekly estimated in October that as many as five thousand Uighur would-be fighters have arrived in Turkey since 2013, with perhaps two thousand moving on to Syria. Moustapha said he has information that ‘up to 860 Uighur fighters are currently in Syria.’[1]Some civil war.
Who is this prick who runs Turkey? And why is Turkey still in NATO, that grossly inflated and out-of-control relic?
Has the international order so broken down so that every half-witted megalomaniac think he's got free rein to depose whomever he wishes or to encourage mass immigration to destroy the peace and security of his own nation?
From where I sit the U.S. Constitution means precisely nothing and the U.N. is a useless waste of money and prime East River real estate. Are we back in the time of monarchies and sultans?
Notes
[1] "Military to Military." By Seymour M. Hersh, London Review of Books, 1/7/16.
CORRECTION (12/29/15): Oops. Logical error. Encouraging mass immigration has nothing to do with a breakdown of the international order. Encouraging it for other nations is an aggressive act and getting away with it is.
The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support.
"Military to Military." By Seymour M. Hersh, London Review of Books, 1/7/16.
H/t: Pundita.
Gary Leupp, a professor of history at Tufts University, is pretty knowledgeable about the Cold War, at least the European-American aspect of it under discussion in his article. But he doesn't mention to Counterpunch readers that after Stalin's death the American-led NATO cold war against the Soviet Union was actually the Saudi war against Russian oil. And I suppose some would say the war was going on even during Stalin's time.The influence of the Saudis is, however, pervasive. Perhaps massive. How influential are they?Anyhow, maybe Leupp simply doesn't know. That wouldn't be surprising. The war has continued to this day; it's just that it isn't talked about openly. I've seen the same reticence or ignorance about the U.S.-led Afghan War, and the current Syrian War. It might have been the same with Gaddafi's overthrow.
It's as if entire chapters have been ripped out of modern history to protect Al Saud.
Only very recently, since the Russian air campaign, has it become widely known that the Saudis and their Gulf allies have been fielding mercenary armies to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, but there are still gaps in knowledge about the situation and how early it began. Same with the Saudi involvement in Afghanistan and their influence with Pakistan.[1]
AIPAC clearly distorts American foreign policy. I wouldn't be surprised that Saudi Arabia's extraordinary wealth has trumped them or, at least, effectively made U.S. policy schizophrenic. Which is to say, senseless, ineffectual, and erratic.
I'll simply say that these are extraordinary times and U.S. foreign policy is inexplicable from what one can conclude from a seemingly commonsense assessment of U.S. interests. Moving a third (?) or your manufacturing base to territory controlled by a communist dictatorship was in our interest?
Open borders are patently treasonous and insane. Making Assad in Syria the locus of dictatorial evil in the world is bizarre. Dictator? Really? The accusations of use of sarin gas were bogus.
The demonization of Russia is even more bizarre with charges flying that we are witnessing the advent of a dangerous Russian military adventurism. Does anyone have any illusions what a graph of bomb tonnage released by the U.S. and Russia in the last 10 years would look like?
The search for understanding today has to broaden and we have to be willing to consider strange possibilities. Bill Clinton's presidential campaign was saved by a large donation from an Indonesian banker with ties to Chinese communist intelligence. The Clinton Foundation received $40 million from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE according to Greg Gordon who is quoted in the source in the footnote below. Did this make Bill Clinton beholden to the Chinese rather than the American people? That's sorta kinda in the past but what exactly will Hillary do in 2017-2020 for that 40 mill? And aren't there more recent Saudi contributions? Somebody's laying down a marker.
One thing is crystal clear. The wishes of the American (and European) people in all of this are irrelevant to the Treason Class. Whatever is going on is an insider's game and we're just standing there like lawn jockeys.
Notes
[1] " Pundita reporting from a trench 10 clicks north Mountains of Shadow S.W., Mordor." By Pundita, 12/28/15.
"This is a very complicated issue, not because of ISIS, because ISIS is an organization. There’s something more dangerous to be dealt with, which is the reasons. First of all, the ideology, something that’s been instilled in the minds of the people or the society in the Muslim world for decades now, because of the Wahabi institutions, because of the Saudi money that’s been paid to support this kind of dark and resentful ideology. Without dealing with this ideology, it’s just a waste of time to say we are going to deal with Daesh or al-Nusra or any other organization that belongs to Al Qaeda."~ Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria."So, this is something that should be dealt with on the long term; how to prevent those Wahabi institutions and Saudi money from reaching the Muslim institutions around the world in order to have more extremism and terrorism spreading around the world. This is first."
Diana West has her usually cogent view on what is insane about U.S. policy. This another instance of this insanity. Assad is exactly the kind of Muslim we need to be working with. It's abundantly clear that he wants a secular state and isn't dead set on killing or ejecting Christians, Kurds, Druze, or Sunnis. Clearly he has popular support. Clearly the "civil war" is being carried on by foreign jihadis with foreign money. And with support from our NATO "ally" Turkey, especially in the area of facilitating the lucrative oil trade for ISIS.
Obama would rather give up his next ten vacations to Hawaii than even utter the word "Wahhabi." He lives to carry out the wishes of the Saudi Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood swine who now operate inside our own government thanks to him. But Assad lays it right out there. The names and addresses of the enemies of civilization.
This is what is known as mental clarity.
"Agencia EFE interviews President Bashar al-Assad. 'This dark and resentful ideology.'" By Pundita, 12/11/15.
Today Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, wherein Christ was nurtured and prepared for His three years of ministry among men. It’s often made an occasion for the Mass celebrant to lecture the congregation about what families are and ought to do. Such lectures are frequently the reverse of constructive...especially when they incorporate bits of the priest’s own politics.
However, the celebrant at Mass this morning, among the several banalities in his homily, did manage to punch one of my hot buttons: the increasing tendency for persons of all ages never, ever, to put down their BLEEP!ing smartphones.
I have a serious problem with smartphone addicts. To put it in as few words as possible, they’re not “here.” That is, their attention is fixed on something other than the people and things around them – in many cases, fixed with such fanatic commitment that to deflect them from whatever their phones are doing to / with them would be treated as an insult.
How long ago was it that to willfully ignore those in one’s presence was considered an insult – nay, the supreme insult, in the old lexicon the Cut Direct? Indeed, how long ago was it deemed a near-fatal breach of propriety to leave the dinner table to answer a ringing phone? And that’s to say nothing of the complementary rudeness of calling someone at an hour when he’s likely to be having dinner with his family. It’s not just telemarketers who cheerfully and relentlessly do that today. The ones who don’t have auto-calling devices, that is.
Oh, pardon me: I forgot. We don’t have family dinners any more, do we? Our schedules aren’t sufficiently compatible for that. There’s work, and school, and after-school clubs and sports, and the six o’clock news for him and yoga for her and for the kids...probably their smartphones, replete with the text messages and mindless games that really matter. So each of us grabs whatever’s on offer and totes it to his personal redoubt where that awful, intrusive, demanding family can’t interfere with what really matters to him.
That’s not a family. That’s a group of emotionally disconnected persons, possibly related by blood or marriage, that just happen to share a roof. Their true loyalties are far distant from those around them, modulated by a digital electronic device small enough to fit in a breast pocket, that no doubt coincidentally has swollen to absorb their entire lives...including their souls.
And the sociologists, the behavior therapists, and the “helping professions” maunder over what’s happened to the American family and how we might redress it. It is to laugh.
In one of his most insightful moments, Adam Smith wrote that an individual will regard a cut on his finger as of greater moment than a famine in a faraway place. Moreover, he did so approvingly. That which is near should matter more than that which is far away, even when other things are not nearly equal. What’s near has the greatest potential for affecting you, whether positively or negatively. It should command the greater part of your attention.
Attention. There’s a word to ponder, Gentle Reader. What is attention? What does it mean to “attend” to something? The Latin root tangere means “to touch” or “to hold.” You cannot touch or hold what’s distant, only what’s near. And if someone is near enough to you to touch – near enough to caress or strike you – ought you not to give him your attention?
One of a parent’s most important duties is teaching his children to pay attention – and not solely to him. What’s around you is the most important source of all things good or bad. Indeed, the great majority of persons and things are potentially good or bad, or both – and what you fail to attend to can turn bad, perhaps lethal, in the blink of those eyes you can’t detach from your smartphone.
There’s nothing that transforms proximity to hostility and contempt as surely or efficiently as being ignored. Yet what American parent of our time would “deny” his spratling the “benefits” of a smartphone? Heaven forbid! Don’t we want the little tyke to feel connected? Doesn’t he need to feel a part of that great, big, happenin’ world out there? Surely he needs to know what’s hot and what’s not, who’s in and who’s out, what fads to follow and what celebrities to celebrate! I mean, he can’t stay perched in front of the television all the time. That would be unhealthful!
Amen I say unto you, ‘twere better that a millstone be fastened around such a parent’s neck ere we cast him into the sea. Trust me, his kids will never notice.
The present generation of American parents commits innumerable sins against its children. Many of them are sins of omission. We fail to teach them about right and wrong, and how to know them. We fail to talk with them about values: where they originate, why they matter, and what one must do to preserve and defend them. We don’t bother to explain the seven virtues – for those who were poorly reared: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude – and why they’re good, or the seven capital sins – lust, vanity, gluttony, envy, wrath, greed, and sloth – and why they’re terribly dangerous. We retreat from discussions about the natures of mass appeal, popularity, peer pressure, obsession, and the worship of persons and things. Don’t bother us now, Junior; we have to respond to these important text messages, right after we finish our game of Bejeweled.
As bad as all that is, it can easily be made worse. Just give Junior a smartphone. Initiate him into the mysteries of “absent presence,” and what makes it so much more comfortable than attending to the persons and things around him. Especially the most annoying of those persons, the ones clustered most closely around him, the ones who constrain him from moment to moment, whom he can’t wait to disown: his family.
“But the deed is done!” I hear you cry. “I’ve already given him a smartphone! What now?” Excuse me? Are you a man or a mouse? Take it back. (At least cancel his “data plan.”) Explain to him that you’ve realized that you made a terrible error, amounting to a neglect of your duties toward him, and you’re going to correct it out of love and a parent’s obligation to his child. Endure the screaming and the tears; they will cease, possibly sooner than you expect. Then set an example for him by always turning off your phone when you’re at home with those you claim to love.
We want our children to have cell phones. It provides them with a way to reach us, or failing us, at least “help,” should a need arise. Very well: let them have cell phones. Not smartphones. Stop enabling their flight from their families and all else around them. When that’s out of the way, schedule a family dinner, make it mandatory, and converse with them – and not about your job. Be a parent rather than merely a source of funding.
May God bless and keep you all!
Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians – and if that’s true, he would presumably lose any fair election – the U.S. position is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring “regime change” in Syria, a long-held goal of Official Washington’s neoconservatives."Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution." By Robert Parry, Consortium News, 12/12/15 (emphasis added).
In other words, to fulfill the neocons’ dream of Syrian “regime change,” the Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United States.* * * *
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama’s choice of aiding the jihadists a “willful decision,” even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise of the Islamic State and other extremists.
Knuckles stated my own observation and I've often wondered why it hasn't been pointed out more in the past. "Peaceful Muslims" cannot complain or protest the actions of violent Muslims. They simply will be killed. Therefore the percentage of Muslims in any society who are violent is irrelevant to a peaceful majority. Any Muslim society or immigrant Muslim population is hostage to its deadliest members.Comment by orck on "Islam & The West – 'Moving Towards A Head-On Collision.'" By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 12/25/2015.
More significantly, however, the four-page "Government Assessment” of the case against the Syrian government contained not a single piece of evidence that could be checked independently. It was filled with “we assess” this and “we assess” that. To this day, the Obama administration has not released a shred of evidence that could be examined and evaluated."The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case." By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews, 4/7/14 (emphasis added).Instead, the propaganda approach has been the old tactic of repeating an unproven assertion again and again, knowing that if a charge is declared with sufficient certitude often enough, the weak-minded will simply begin treating it as accepted wisdom. That’s especially easy when the target of the accusations has been thoroughly demonized as is the case with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
It’s at least forty years since I first heard December 26 called that, and I still don’t know whether it’s because today is the day we decide what to return and strain to remember where we left the receipts, or whether it’s because the kids are still playing with the boxes as we try to fold them up and dispose of them.
Ours was a quiet holiday. Mass in the early morning – the very best time to go, in my not-particularly-humble opinion – followed by the usual animal chores and some straightening-up. We completed our morning with a fine, nutritious breakfast of decaf and Christmas cookies.
Hey, diets are meant to be violated, right? Right?
Christmas Day 2015 on Long Island proved to be an excellent day to mow the lawn. Travis the Tractor didn’t much like having his off-season slumbers disturbed – thank you, Sears Automotive Center, for that fine heuristic battery charger – but the job did get done, with one hiccough. Always make sure you’ve collected all the sprinklers before setting out to mow, Gentle Reader.
Why isn’t there ice hockey on Christmas Day? Didn’t Christ Himself say “I bring not peace but a stick, a helmet, and a set of pads” -- ? Something like that, I think. Lacking mindless non-participatory entertainment, the C.S.O. and I recurred to the participatory kind. To be specific, we fired up the PlayStation 3, loaded Diablo III, and killed a lot of Risen Dead and assorted other nasties. Great game. Highly recommended.
Sales of my books have trended downward, so I’ve reduced the prices of the novels (in eBook format) from $4.99 to $2.99. So show a little Christmas spirit! Hie thee to Amazon and buy one for someone you dislike.
There is such a thing as too much Christmas spirit – specifically, the sort you pour over ice. It seems to have been a mistake to leave the baked beans baking for 48 hours. I suppose I’ll know better next time.
If you like a good check-your-brains-at-the-door action flick, especially one with an emotional subtext, treat yourself to Furious 7. All-star cast, lots and lots of slam-bang action – especially car chases, of course – and a farewell to the late Paul Walker, who died during the filming.
No, it won’t matter whether you’ve seen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. It might even help if you haven’t.
I found a couple of days away from politics and the presidential campaign quite refreshing, but from the look of Fox, Yahoo! and Google News, quite a lot of other Americans remained mired in it. Well, chacun a son gout and all that. But preserve your gray matter! The twaddle has only gotten thicker and gooier as the campaign has progressed, and that sort of thing causes cancer in white rats. Remember Arthur Herzog’s prescription for a corrective to political twaddle:
It may help dispel the armchair critic idea of a skeptic if we ask what kind of protest movement the radical skeptic will mount when, before too long, they get together, perhaps even fielding a candidate for President. The radical skeptic would make an issue out of hypocrisy, systematic fakery, exaggeration, pretense...the B.S. Factor. It’s a good issue and people will respond, only it needs to be dramatized. It needs a symbol—not an eagle or a donkey but a garbage truck, to make the connection between the garbage in the streets and in our minds. A slogan for the buttons and bumper stickers: “Eschew Obfuscation. Get Smart.” The press could be challenged to present a daily Thought Pollution Index—not that it would, but at least reporters could be encouraged to attend the daily Platitude Recognition Training Sessions, the object being to raise cliché consciousness and overcome the serious problem of cliché deafness that settles over crowds and reporters alike when a speaker mounts to the podium. In these sessions, platitudes will be flashed on a screen, and if they are allowed to pass unchallenged the participants will receive electric shocks from wires attached to their skulls....Audiences skilled in Platitude Recognition can deliver a crushing blow [to the fulsomely platitudinous political speaker]: the mass yawn. This quickly forces the speaker to take stock of himself.
It doesn’t matter what your political alignment may be, or what ideology you hold. Political flummery:
...is everyone’s enemy. Beware!
With that, we’ve had quite enough of 2015, so onward to New Year’s Eve. (Go easy on the bowl games and the salty junk food.)
Yes, yes, I said I wouldn’t be posting today...but you simply must see this:
A magnificent rant from a magnificent woman!
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During a House of Commons debate on March 31, 1930, Sir H. Kingsley Wood, a Cabinet Minister during the next war, and a Major “In the front trenches” at Christmas 1914, recalled that he “took part in what was well known at the time as a truce. We went over in front of the trenches and shook hands with many of our German enemies. A great number of people [now] think we did something that was degrading.” Refusing to presume that, he went on, “The fact is that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves there would never have been another shot fired. For a fortnight the truce went on. We were on the most friendly terms, and it was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that made it necessary for us to start trying to shoot one another again.” He blamed the resumption of the war on “the grip of the political system which was bad, and I and others who were there at the time determined there and then never to rest. ... Until we had seen whether we could change it.” But they could not."Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce," by Stanley Weintraub, excerpted in "A Will To Peace." By John V. Denson, Mises Institute, 12/25/15.
I’d intended to take today off from Liberty’s Torch. I had all the usual reasons. The season is as busy for us here at the Fortress of Crankitude as it is for any family of venom-tongued rabble rousers and hairy-eyed bomb throwers armed to the teeth and itchingly eager for...well, never mind. At any rate, I write so much of this pap that surely our Gentle Readers would benefit from a few days of my silence, in which I – and they – might “detoxify.” But as I slid the mouse cursor over the Shutdown button, I found that my hand had stayed itself. Apparently there was an essay in me that wanted, nay, needed “out,” and relief could only be secured by setting it free.
(No, please don’t send me recommendations for your preferred laxatives.)
First, a bit of verse:
Unhappy about some far off things
That are not my affair, wandering
Along the coast and up the lean ridges,
I saw in the evening
The stars go over the lonely ocean,
And a black-maned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen,
And that is Finland,
But the stars go over the lonely ocean,"
The old black-bristled boar,
Tearing the sod on Mal Paso Mountain."The world's in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,"
Said the old father of wild pigs,
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain."Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy
And the dogs that talk revolution,
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks.
Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,"
Said the gamey black-maned boar
Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.[Robinson Jeffers]
Keep that poem in mind as you proceed.
Many of us have spent a lot of time watching and listening for news about the presidential race: specifically, the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Many of us have invested money, labor, or both in some candidate. Given the colossal failures and villainies of the Obama Regime, many of us are hopeful that the nation will spurn whichever Democrat gains his party’s nod, give the GOP complete control of the federal government, and watch as we return at least somewhat toward the limited, Constitution-bound government that the Founding Fathers envisioned.
I must admit that I was one of the many. Was. Past tense. I’m becoming ever more certain that what we’ll get won’t please us at all.
Famous coach John Madden has said that the outcome of a football game is nearly always determined by “big plays and turnovers.” In his years in the game and watching it, he’d become convinced that playing sound, methodical or “fundamental” football was of less importance than capitalizing on the infrequent opportunities for a big gain or a reversal of possession. Now, like most of us, Madden is a devotee of contemporary football, which is dominated by the forward pass. Before the pass became two-thirds of the game, things were quite different: the team that excelled at the rushing game – “five yards and a cloud of dust” – was far more likely to prevail.
So also with politics and government. If you’re exceedingly old or exceedingly well read, you might be familiar with the political dynamics of the era before the mass media. In those days, voters put some effort into learning what a candidate had said and done during his time in the public eye. They had only one way to do it: they read about him in the newspapers.
Yes, the newspapers of the Nineteenth Century were as likely to be biased toward or against a particular candidate or party as are the papers of today. However, there were far more of them, including a host of local dailies that would be financially non-viable today. The “big” papers with regional influence were few, and their influence was heavily counterweighted by their local competitors.
I speak here of the era before Celebritarianism. Politicians’ faces and personalities were generally unknown to the public. What was known about them came from the newspapers. It focused on their records as mayors, governors, or legislators. That made it possible for a man whose appearance and personal charm might be somewhat lacking – a Grover Cleveland or a William Howard Taft – to rise in the esteem of the electorate, perhaps all the way to the presidency.
The mass media, particularly television, changed all that. Today a politician of national stature – one who has at least a Chinaman’s chance at the presidency – must be telegenic, personally charming, and “ready on his feet.” Yes, there have been unattractive persons who’ve aspired to the presidency – one such is likely to be the Democrats’ nominee – but the odds are against such candidates. They don’t possess the requisite appeal to the visually-oriented, sound-bite-paced, television-consuming public.
The mass media don’t absolutely control national politics, but their influence is considerable. When married to another, equally weighty factor, it might well amount to control.
There’s been so much talk about “money in politics” that the reasoning behind large political donations is seldom adequately analyzed. There are three questions to be answered:
Question #1 is the one for which everyone is certain he knows the answer: influence over policy decisions. In the main, this is correct, but not always in the “corruptocrat” sense. Some donors do attempt to purchase the candidate’s future support. Others will only give to a candidate who has already espoused positions they deem favorable to them. Still others – and there may be more such than we generally believe – give on the basis of what they think is best for the country. Telling these categories of donors apart is dauntingly difficult.
Questions #2 and #3 must be addressed together. If the donor’s aim is to achieve a particular policy outcome, his candidate must have:
Therefore the ideal candidate, from potential donor Smith’s perspective, would be one who already favors the desired policy, has a good shot at victory but isn’t a “sure thing,” who could be elevated to near-certainty by Smith’s money, and whom other major donors have treated with indifference. But how shall Smith sift among the prospective presidential candidates to find such a man?
He watches television.
Talking to the candidates will achieve little, as every one of them is likely to tell Smith “what he wants to hear;” it’s the quintessential political art. No, what Smith must do is watch TV, and the associated polls. They’ll tell Smith who favors (or might be induced to favor) his policy aim, who is in the seriously contending group, and who could use additional television exposure that might put him over the top. Moreover, Smith will reserve his donation for as long as possible, so that:
Of course, all the big-money donors will be playing for the same advantages, so additional power accrues to those who have the most to give. But that’s actually a smaller influence than most persons think.
Clearly, the mass media influence the donation game quite as heavily as they do the opinions of TV-minded voters. The mass media, both by presenting the candidates to us and by their treatment, in polls and editorial output, of those candidates, exert considerable sway over who the big givers will regard as a serious contender and who will become an also-ran footnote. Their influence over donation timing is so obvious that it needs no explanation from me.
Santa won’t be bringing us a new, “unbiased” mass media this year; there has never been such a thing and there never will be. Neither will he drag a donor class that’s sincerely and solely concerned with the good of the country down the chimney; they’d get stuck and you’d never again be able to open the flue. However, reflecting on the previous segment does suggest some measures by which voters who’d like to be unaffected by the mass media and the donor class can have their wishes.
First and above all else: don’t watch political TV. Avoid the debates. Avoid the Sunday-morning talking-head shows. Avoid, to the extent possible, the candidates’ ads for themselves. Instead, familiarize yourself with what those persons have done in public office (if they’ve ever been there), what positions they’ve espoused, and when they’ve changed those positions and why. Read the papers, except for the editorial pages, and do your best to separate fact from opinion -- anyone’s opinion – as you read the “news” sections.
Second and nearly as important, familiarize yourself with the big donors. Their agendas are as important as the agendas of the candidates. Their constancy about such things, and the possible contrast with the past positions of the candidates they choose to support is a weathervane that points toward the “rentability” of those candidates. They say that “money talks.” Let it talk to you.
Third, pay attention to the statements of the major interest groups and their mouthpieces. This is a great help in deciding whom to vote for and against. Interest groups of size and power almost always have a one-issue focus. You might not have such a focus, but knowing where the more wealthy and vociferous groups stand, whom they like and dislike, can be an aid in helping you make up your own mind.
That’s about the best anyone who’s determined to vote can do. But I’m not quite finished yet.
There are two other things Santa won’t be bringing this year. The first of them is a completely servant-minded politician.
Ann Barnhardt has argued that the pursuit of high office is sufficient reason to classify the pursuer as a sociopath. There’s some substance to her argument: there’s no such thing as a politician who 1) seeks high office, but 2) believes himself unfit for it, or that the office itself should be abolished. Thus, politicians as a class suffer from a deficit of humility, perhaps the most important virtue one could ask for in a man who will wield power.
This paradox of the democratic electoral process was much on the minds of the Founding Fathers, which is why they decided that state legislatures would select United States Senators, and state-legislature-nominated electors would select the president. They were willing to allow the mob – remember, “democracy” means “rule by the mob” – to elect the Members of the House of Representatives, but no other federal office. Putting as great a distance as possible between the mob and federal power was deemed the best possible safeguard that could be contrived for individuals’ rights in a government that had to have some popular base.
While that system lasted, federal offices were occupied, by and large, by honest men who possessed a service ethic. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it was superior to what followed. After Martin Van Buren, the presidency became ever more the property of demagogues and creatures of the donor class. After the Seventeenth Amendment, the states lost any substantial part in federal decision making. The dynamics of demagoguery synergized powerfully with the emergence of national media: first with the national newspaper “chains;” thereafter with the burgeoning scope of radio and television broadcasting.
Some aspirants to high office are better than others, but none is entirely free of the vanity that propels one to seek the adulation of the crowd and the prestige that goes with power. As for immunity to the lure of material profit from political height, the closest any of our current crop of pols come is a plagiarist and an idiot...and we’ve contrived to install him as vice president to a traitor and a villain.
The second thing we mustn’t expect from Santa is any great change in the true federal government: the millions of bureaucrats in the alphabet agencies, all of whom are protected from dismissal or serious discipline by powerful unions and federal law.
Washington’s hirelings have gone beyond the ability of the political branches of the federal government to control. Remember what was reported by David L. Boren, for some years a United States Senator from Oklahoma:
Boren, formerly a state legislator and governor, went to Washington expecting to make some changes. "What impressed me most is the great power of the bureaucracy compared to that of elected officials. All the talk about growing control by the bureaucracy is not exaggerated. The shift in power is very real.... There is almost a contempt for elected officials."...Senator Boren found, to his surprise, that a Senator has great difficulty even getting phone calls returned by the "permanent" employees, much less getting responsive answers to his questions.
The voters can't "throw the rascals out" anymore, because the main rascals are not elected but appointed....
Regulatory bureaucrats have extra power because they can outlast the elected officials. "Often," Boren explains, "I've said to a bureaucrat, 'You know this is not the president's policy.'
'True, Senator, but we were here before he came, and we'll be here after he leaves. We're not in sympathy with his policy. We'll study the matter until he leaves.'"
[From Armington and Ellis, MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense.]
Who’s elected president won’t matter to that huge, unaccountable juggernaut of regulation and regulatory enforcement unless he takes the boldest imaginable step: agitating for the repeal of the federal laws that shield Civil Service workers from dismissal and reinstating the ban against the unionization of federal employees. Such a president would need like-minded majorities in both Houses of Congress, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to have a fighting chance. He’d also need his Congressional supporters to be staunch in the face of the vilification, and possibly the violence, that would follow such a proposition.
Suffice it to say that I won’t be holding my breath. The entire population of Africa is more likely to turn white tomorrow at Noon.
Many other members of the Internet Commentariat have written that “there’s no voting our way out of this.” Indeed. Substantial reversal of course, back toward limited Constitutional government that stays within the bounds of Article I, Section 8, simply isn’t in the cards. That having been said, there’s nevertheless some good we can do.
First, by withholding our money and our votes from any candidate who’s displayed a willingness to waffle, to fudge on his supposed convictions, to logroll with the Democrats, or to negotiate with the interest groups, we can at least attempt to educate the political class about how we feel toward them. It’s simply not sufficient to vote for so-called outsiders. There are outsiders and outsiders. Some of them I’d chase off my stoop at gunpoint; others I’d shoot at their first step upon my driveway. Character trumps all else, and constancy of conviction is the best indicator of character.
Second, by seeking and implementing non-political solutions to common problems, we can reduce government’s scope for intrusion into matters where private action is possible. This is not easy. For one thing, politicians hate it and will attempt to prevent it. For another, far too many Americans are inclined to allow government to address any problem that doesn’t affect them personally, or that strikes them as too burdensome for them. There’s a lot of inertia in “the way things are.” Some of it will manifest as “this is the way it’s always been done;” some as “this is the way it must be done.”
Third, to the extent possible, protect your children from the virus of statism. The most important component of this is avoiding the “public” schools. Today, the government’s school system is nothing but a massive indoctrination machine. Its inputs are your kids and your property taxes; its outputs are deluded young adults oriented entirely opposite to freedom and limited government. When the “public schools” aren’t indoctrinating your helpless young’uns, they’re abusing them or encouraging them to abuse one another – abuse that might occur within the school building itself.
Fourth, be armed. Be heavily and conspicuously armed. Resist any suggestion that being armed is somehow wrong or excessive. Remind objectors that an armed populace has never suffered an adverse coup – that the first step taken by any aspirant to dictatorial power is to disarm the citizenry. Shoot frequently, and teach your kids to shoot. Invite your neighbors to join you for a day at the range; you might be surprised how ready they are for an adventure of that sort.
Fifth, keep talking. You never know when what you say will strike home with someone who’s “on the fence” about something of importance. Internet chatter deserves much of the credit for the current drive to secure the borders and stop immigration from countries that hate American ideals and the American way of life. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are eager to “supervise” your political advocacy. Even some of the ones who claim to stand foursquare for freedom of expression are at least partly insincere about it.
That’s all for today, and for tomorrow as well. I’m really, truly going to spend Christmas day away from the keyboard. Indeed, I have a problem / opportunity that comes once in a century, and I intend to make good use of it.
The weather forecast for Christmas day here in the Northeast is:
That’s a continuation of the weather we’ve been having for some time, which has caused certain...untoward conditions in my back yard. However, all is ready for remediation. Therefore, after Mass tomorrow morning, I’m going to take an hour to mow my lawn.
Merry Christmas. May God bless us each and all.
All my best to you and yours,
Fran
