The Limits of Coercion

Government has always used some degree of coercion to get its plans in action. Sometimes raw action - death, imprisonment, wealth confiscation. Sometimes, rather heavy-handed use of social control, using other citizens to enforce their edicts.

We are now faced with a group of people - Leftists, Progressives, whatever you want to call the Assured Elite Who Know What is Best for You - who have no hesitation in applying the Heavy Hand of Government on those who would oppose their every whim.

As resistance builds up, they become more fervent about using that Heavy Hand.

The Arc of History is not a line - straight or curved. It is a chaotic mess, first one way, then backtracking, then jogging off to one side. It looks like this:

It's Life - Messy, Unpredictable, and Random.

For that reason, a Prudent Person would not make rules that THEY would not want to have to follow, should they get turned out of office. Although they might be in a position of power at the moment, that status is always open to change.

Those on the Left don't realize that truth. They are pretty much ignorant of a lot of Life's Lessons, but that's one that will come back to bite them in the butt later. When they are out of power, they can't just ignore all those rules, regulations, and laws they put into place. If they do, they will likely regret having used their power unwisely.

The Left is astonished that they may have to face consequences for their perfidy. They may spend time in court, paying expensive lawyers, face the real possibility of prison time, and lose whatever money is left to an IRS audit.

This is causing them to lose the portion of their mind that was still present. They have earned their Coat of Arms:

I would HOPE the Left would learn their lesson from this long-overdue comeuppance.

Given their history, I doubt they will.

Today's coercion is mostly a Woman's Way of Getting Power - through nagging, guilting, and public shaming. It's done culturally, not politically, and for that reason, it's really tough to stop. Women - and, those that adopt Womanly Ways - are more likely to organize a mob to assist them in getting rid of their enemies.

This rise in Mobbing demonstrates that official government action is not the only thing to be concerned about. Leftists have become quite adept at using Mobbing Tactics to get their way - see the article at the link for more. Yet another tactic - The Big Chill - is discussed here.

This is a good explanation of HOW Mobbing happens - you probably need to read about it BEFORE it happens to you. I got interested when I read the story of a person who was so overwhelmed by the effort to keep her job despite Mobbing, that she committed suicide - a not uncommon reaction to the process.

Mobbing is a fascinating phenomenon that is increasingly being deliberately used by Leftists and their Allies to force the noncompliant out of the workplace or public arena. You probably need to learn something about how it works to shut it down, before the Mob gets you.

Coercion also applies to our foreign battles - most recently, the tariffs that signaled we are going to act to support American Businesses. That is, those businesses that are based in this country AND employ American Citizens.

This link leads to an analysis of the dangers posed by China's attempt to dominate the 5G telecommunications networks, possible actions we could take, and the tariff solution. It also points out that a multinational that has little presence in the USA - other than the Elite Level of workers - loses a lot of the argument that America has to defend its interests internationally. We need to hold back on rescuing its property or people in those foreign countries, should their company get in trouble with their host country.

Let me leave you with something hopeful.

The Left better start worrying - the American citizens are Losing Their Fear - once you do that, you represent a real danger to the status quo.

There is a great movie - both edge-of-your-seat exciting, as well as provocative in the GOOD way - makes you ponder some very deep thoughts.

Red Corner - with Richard Gere - available on Prime Video.

In it, there's a scene near the end. Gere is in a Chinese court, handcuffed, and the judge warns him about a protest he is making. He says,

What are you gonna do, you gonna shoot me twice?

He has lost his fear. He is, at that moment, the most dangerous man possible.

The why of asset inflation.

Today, we are witnessing a broader asset price inflation driven by a belief that central banks will engage in extraordinary monetary policy indefinitely to prop up valuations in the hope for the always “just around the corner” wealth effect. Equity markets are near all-time highs and at extreme valuations despite weak economic growth and limited earnings growth. Bond yields are near the lowest levels (highest prices) human civilization has ever seen. Commercial real estate is back at 2007 bubble valuations and real assets such as art, wine, and jewelry are enjoying record-setting bidding at auction houses.

These financial bubbles could not occur in an environment of weak domestic and global economic growth without the migration of debt borrowers from hedge [paying principal and interest from cash flow] to speculative [paying interest from cash flow and rolling over the debt to avoid the penalty of failure to pay the principal] to Ponzi status [inability to pay interest and principal but hoping that the value of one's investment will continue to rise enough to pay off the loan].^[1]

I don't pretend to have much beyond a surface understanding of economics. Bonds are a bit mysterious to me, for example. I get it that the yield of a bond will rise if an investor pays less than the face value of the bond and decline if he pays more than the face value. Presumably, I will pay less for a 3% bond if I think there is a smidgen of risk that the issuer won't pay at maturity and I will pay more for a bond if I think it offers more security in an environment when other risk-on investments seem shaky. These purchases take place at auctions, I'm thinking. where investors basically place their bets, just as they do in the stock market.

That little detour aside, the author of the article from which the passage above is taken is making the point that relying on the central banks to kiss it better is not wise when we have "weak economic growth and limited earnings growth." Or ever, come to that.

This is right up there, but not quite, with Illinois Gov. Pritzker's idea that Chicago's fiscal problems can solved by legalizing marijuana state-wide and opening a casino in Chicago. I kid you not. I consider weed something indulged in by total losers and do not consider gambling anything that is wise or productive (though I do play the lottery). God knows where the money from gambling goes. And neither of these options has anything to do with fundamentally valuable production.

But there we have it. Central banks, weed, and gambling are our go-to solutions for deadly serious problems. Not military retrenchment and keeping out and kicking out parasitic foreigners who steal our jobs and live high on our tax money. Nothing sensible and gutsy like that but rather demeaning reliance on airy-fairy-hail-Mary gimmicks.

'Chachos, we are a failing nation.

Notes
^[1] "The Death Of The Virtuous Cycle." By Michael Lebowitz, ZeroHedge, 6/6/19.

The foreign policy of Lower Slobovia.

[Gareth] Porter notes that vice-president Dick Cheney “hoped to use the alleged [Syrian] reactor [bombed by Israel in 2007] to get President George W Bush to initiate US airstrikes in Syria in the hope of shaking the Syrian-Iranian alliance”.

In fact, Cheney wanted far more sites in Syria hit than the bogus nuclear plant. In his memoirs, the then-secretary of defence, Robert Gates, observed that Cheney was “looking for an opportunity to provoke a war with Iran”.

The Bush administration wanted to find a way to unseat Assad, crush Hizbullah in Lebanon, and isolate and weaken Iran as a way to destroy the so-called “Shia crescent”.^[1]

The dreaded Shia Crescent. How come we never hear of the dreaded Sunni Crescent?

Waging war is supposed to be serious business but you'd never know that from reading about our cartoonish takes on world affairs. Evil Russians and their "invasions" of Georgia and Crimea, neo-Nazi Ukrainians, noble Israelis, Iranian terror, loyal Saudis, Assad the Butcher, the Venezuelan threat, murderous Gaddafi, Orban the Bad, Saint Angela, the "migrant crisis," our NATO ally Turkey, and the Afghan tar baby now almost ready to start college.

Just over 100 years since the end of The Great War and Energizer Bunny Pompeo and the presidential son-in-law are making policy for this nation. Four-star generals have to listen to The Boy Adviser. And we sink further and further into the quicksand of endless war and skyrocketing debt.

Notes
^[1] "Monbiot still burying his head in sands of Syria." By Jonathan Cook, Jonathan Cook Blog, 11/21/17. (https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-11-21/monbiot-still-burying-his-head-in-the-sand/).

There's New Content

...at my fiction-promotion site.

Quickies: Population And The Economic Model

     Mark “Mad Dog” Sherman makes some observations about population trends and their relation to the Industrial Revolution:

     The industrial socio-economic model required lots of employees, large factories, proximity to resources, whether raw or manufactured, and the city provided these features. During the early phases of the IR the cost of transporting steel, coal, and other parts and resources was so expensive that cities grew up to allow everything necessary from raw materials to energy to final manufacturing or assembly to occur in one place, a place with guaranteed numbers of people looking for work.

     We are at the end of the IR socio-economic model. Whatever is to come will not look like the IR any more than the IR looked like the socio-economic model, which was the Agricultural Revolution which preceded it.

     Will cities make the jump to the next socio-economic model? They were all but non-existent before the IR, why would we need the city after the denouement of the IR? Perhaps we will, I don't know, but I don't see a reason we would.

     Indeed. The city dominated the industrial economy for many reasons. Mark mentions several above. I would add that industrial efficiency militates toward geographic concentration; the costs and difficulties of running a distributed enterprise that requires large amounts of physical capital will always exceed those of running a concentrated one. Also, the typical industrial city is usually on a waterway that supports inexpensive transportation of both resources and goods.

     It’s possible that a major driver of the Information Revolution has been the desire for redispersal. Given a choice, people generally prefer to have some space around them, some green, and the sense of freedom of movement that accompanies those things. But whether that’s been any part of the motivation is irrelevant to the effects of such developments as high-speed digital communications, robotics, and the like. Those things have allowed Americans to spread out yet retain the prosperity and most of the other advantages of Industrial Era patterns.

     As the great Lawrence Peter Berra would tell you, prediction is difficult, especially when it’s about the future. But the trends in motion appear to me to indicate that dispersal will continue, at least in the near term. Some of that dispersal might even be upward, but that must await still further developments.

Quickies: Hidden Agenda Dept.

     Every so often, one is hauled into the light:

     As the school year meanders to a close, now is a good time for education departments across the land to make policy changes for the next year. One urgent step should be ending the insane lockdown drills our kids have to practice in their schools and tightening school security instead.

     In New York City, the Department of Education implemented General Response Protocols that mandate that all public schools have four lockdown drills, in addition to fire drills, per year.

     These “soft-lockdown” drills, ostensibly to prepare kids for a potential school shooter, require kids to hide in their classroom, sometimes in a closet, and remain quiet and out of view.

     It would be one thing to prepare teachers and school staff for this kind of rare emergency. But having children hide in a closet and practice being quiet is at best a waste of time and at worst a way to emotionally scar the children we’re trying to shield.

     Karol Markowitz, who wrote the above, has a very good point. Children are impressionable, and the younger they are, the more deeply the impression strikes home. The drills contribute nothing to their safety, yet terrify them that their lives could be ended at any moment – and possibly by a classmate, at that.

     So what’s the point? Sarah Hoyt has an idea:

     BUILDING SUPPORT FOR ELIMINATING OUR 2ND AMENDMENT IS THE POINT.

     Why, yes. How did we miss that? You can’t get a job in the New York City schools if you’re known to be a gun owner or shooting enthusiast. The propaganda about “gun violence,” as if guns roam the streets on their own seeking helpless targets, is unending. And of course New York City’s laws make it impossible to own a gun of any sort unless you’re both wealthy and politically connected. Never mind that those laws have had no perceptible effect on the rate of criminal violence perpetrated with a firearm.

     But there’s a lot of pressure on American municipalities to honor the right to keep and bear arms. It started with the Heller decision and has mounted ever since. Rational minds have grasped that there’s a negative correlation between the frequency of handgun ownership and the murder rate. There’s even a case pending before the Supreme Court that specifically addresses the Big Apple’s draconian anti-firearms laws. So the anti-gunners are panicked.

     But if they could just inculcate their prejudice against personal weapons ownership in the impressionable young…and perhaps by propagandizing them, sway their parents!

     I’ve said before that sending your child to a “public” school has become an act of child abuse. This is only one aspect of the thing. Think it over, and make your decisions accordingly.

Assorted

     I have some “tab-clearing” to do before my “For future columns” bookmark folder becomes too crowded to be functional, so here goes. Do not expect thematic unity from what follows.

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1. “Public” schools.

     Teachers with actual standards are increasingly unwelcome in the government-run schools:

     Last Halloween, I dressed up like a teacher — not exactly an alter ego; I have a certificate — went to the local high school, and substituted in Family & Consumer Science.

     There was a small ruction in third period; the principal and I discussed it amicably, and I barely gave it second thought. However, a couple weeks later, I received a letter informing me he was removing me from the sub list! Explanation (from said letter): he "visited with the class," and the "interactions between yourself and the students were not such as meet our expectations for substitutes."

     A parent reported that a student had videotaped me on his cell phone. So, no doubt if there were a hint of unethical practice — singling a child out for ridicule, touching anyone, or making unreasonable demands — either on the video or in student testimony, my infraction would have been fully detailed.

     Nothing.

     What students apparently objected to was me handing back their papers, hectoring them about language errors. I told them unapologetically, "This is your native language, people! Second grade mistakes — not distinguishing between 'your' and 'you’re,' misspelling ex(c)ercise, leaving off caps and periods — from freshmen and sophomores are unacceptable … "

     Those mistakes would most certainly have been unacceptable in my “public” high school when I was a freshman, but then, that was 1964. Candidate explanations for the disappearance of standards are many. All of them have some merit, and as is often the case, likely all of them participate in bringing this situation about. What’s not in doubt is the pervasiveness of the attitude, especially among administrators, that no teacher, however accomplished, knowledgeable, or capable, shall be allowed to “upset” anyone even remotely connected with the school.

     Apropos of nothing: How many fresh high school graduates know how to write a check?

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2. “Unsafe.”

     I do go on about words and the perversion of their meanings, don’t I? Yet the phenomenon is huge in extent, and more threatening than most are aware:

     “I don’t feel safe,” says a Harvard student in a video.

     What threatens her? The dean of her Harvard dormitory, law professor Ronald Sullivan, agreed to be part of accused sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense team.

     Sullivan and his wife were deans of the dormitory for years, but no matter. Now the professor is apparently an evil threat.

     A group calling itself “Our Harvard Can Do Better” demanded Sullivan be removed from his dean job.

     Sullivan is black, but black activists joined the protest, too. On the videotape, one says, “Dean Sullivan told me to my face that I should view his representation of Harvey Weinstein as a good thing because that representation will trickle down to black men like me who constantly face an unjust justice system.”

     Seems reasonable to me. But the privileged Harvard students laugh and clap when the protester goes on to say, “F— that!”

     The weaponization of “safe” and “unsafe” has reached a point that’s openly threatening toward those targeted by them. Professor Sullivan lost a part of his employment. Others have lost much more. If the trend is allowed to continue, mobs will attack those who “make us feel unsafe” with the intent to kill – and sooner or later, some will succeed.

     That black protester deserves to be hauled into court to face a felony charge and then told that no lawyer is willing to represent him…because he makes them feel “unsafe.” Given his attitude, I wouldn’t say it’s unlikely.

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3. Social Media.

     The redoubtable Glenn Reynolds has penned a column about the pernicious effects of soi-disant “social media.” I shan’t argue with his core contentions:

     On social media, a “share” or “retweet” takes but a second, and research indicates that most people never read anything but the headline before sharing. This facilitates the rapid spread of outrage mobs, conspiracy theories and hysteria.

     Things are made worse by the fact that social media sites operate under algorithms that promote “engagement,” which generally means emotion. And because, as tech visionary Jaron Lanier has written, the easiest emotions to engage are the negative emotions, the effect of social media platforms’ algorithms is to amplify negative feelings.

     The more you use them, the angrier and sadder you’re likely to become. (And they’re quite consciously designed to be addictive.)

     At the same time, unlike the old blogosphere with its many independent platforms, social media sites have a common platform. Censoring the old blogosphere was impossible; censoring social media is possible, which means that social media companies face demands to do so.

     Thus today’s social media world tends to give us the worst possible outcome: lots of angry, ill-informed speech, coupled with censorship of things that the platform owners don’t like or are pressured into killing. Add to that a tremendous loss of privacy as platforms monetize people's personal data, and it’s easy to see why the tech giants aren’t as popular as they once were.

     However, I would like to add an element to the equation: the “smartphone,” a device I have become convinced is designed to lower its users’ intelligence. Social media on their own are bad, both addictive and poisonous. Add the “smartphone,” which makes continuous access to such media a reality few choose to escape, and you have something whose effects are the reverse of Aldous Huxley’s “soma,” is effectively unlimited in supply, and is addictive by design.

     Yet parents who would be apoplectic were their teenagers found consorting with marijuana dealers will spinelessly award them smartphones to stop their whining. It is to laugh…hollowly, and with many a tear.

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4. Budget Balancers Won’t Balance The Budget.

     This was predictable:

     This year, Sen. Rand Paul's (R–Ky.) effort to balance the federal budget didn't even get a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

     Paul's so-called "Pennies Plan" failed a procedural vote on Monday evening when only 22 senators voted in favor of a cloture motion that would have brought the bill to a final vote. A majority of Republicans and all Democrats voted against proceeding to a floor vote on the bill. It's another sign that fiscal responsibility is all but dead in Congress, even as the national debt heads toward record highs and the budget deficit approaches $1 trillion this year.

     "We teach our children that money doesn't grow on trees, and then they grow up watching politicians pretend otherwise," Paul said before the vote. "Meanwhile, our debt soars past $22 trillion, endangers our country, and artificially limits what our nation can achieve."

     Paul's proposal called for cutting 2 percent from all federal line items for each of the next five years and would reduce federal spending by about $11 trillion over the next decade—even though spending would rise after the first five years. It's an adaptation of the so-called "Penny Plan" that Paul has been pushing for several years, though he now says an additional penny in cuts for every federal dollar spent is necessary to get the budget to balance.

     Breathes there a Congressional Republican, past or present, who isn’t stridently in favor of “balancing the budget?” I can’t name one. It’s just that they always suffix a quiet “but” onto the sentiment. The sotto voce trailing clause is not at my expense:

     Not if it would discommode some important interest group I must placate.
     Not if it would open an avenue for my opponents to attack me.
     Not if it would get me voted out of office.

     Dishonest? Of course. But that’s in the nature of the politician’s priorities and his electorally-bounded time horizon. Today’s typical legislator (“A man devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would cheerfully be in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.” – H. L. Mencken) has a single skill: getting [re-]elected. If he can stay in office long enough, he might be able to cadge a position as a lobbyist to support his retirement. And it has been established beyond argument that the legislator who spends is more likely to get re-elected than one who doesn’t.

     Dr. Paul, like his father, is an uncommonly good and honest man. It makes me wonder why he hasn’t been expelled from Capitol Hill and driven bodily out of Washington.

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5. Moral Authority.

     The memory of a civil-rights icon is being tarnished by recent revelations:

     Historians have known for many years that civil rights icon Martin Luther King had been unfaithful to his wife. But now, David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of King, has unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was genuinely sexually depraved. From the Times of London (behind subscriber paywall):

     A huge archive of documents recently released from Federal Bureau of Investigation files exposes in detail King’s sexual activities with dozens of women as he travelled the country campaigning against racial inequality. In one memo written after the FBI bugged King’s room at a Washington hotel, there is a startling foreshadowing of the videotape that came to haunt Donald Trump at the lowest moment of his presidential campaign in 2016. That tape caught Trump boasting about meeting beautiful women and being able to “grab ’em by the pussy”. William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI, wrote in the 1964 memo that King joked to his friends “he had started the ‘International Association for the Advancement of Pussy-Eaters’.” In another incident said to have been recorded by FBI agents, King is alleged to have “looked on, laughed and offered advice” while a friend who was also a Baptist minister raped a woman described as one of his “parishioners”. Details of the assault are believed to have been captured on tapes that are currently being held in a vault under court seal at the US National Archives.

     Please read it all.

     The FBI was deployed against Dr. King in an attempt to limit his national influence. Why the revelations mentioned above didn’t find air and sunlight during his years of prominence is an unanswered question. If we can trust them, he was far from the saint the Left has routinely made him out to be.

     I am put in mind of this piece from three years ago:

     A man has committed acts of sabotage to which he freely admits. Those acts have taken the lives of several persons presumed to have been innocent of all crimes. In the U.S., we would call those "felony murders," which are punished at least as harshly as any second-degree murder. His defense is to claim that the political system against which he fights justifies any and all such acts in the effort to overthrow it.

     If the story is stripped of any further details, most persons would say that the saboteur is guilty and deserves the full weight of the law. But there are further details: the saboteur was Nelson Mandela, and the context was apartheid South Africa.

     Let's stipulate that Mandela did mend his ways, to the extent of forgiving his enemies and striving for unity in post-apartheid South Africa. It remains an incontestable fact that as a young man he was personally involved in acts of sabotage that cost the lives of presumptive innocents. He was outspoken about it at his trial. That demands that we ask the core question of all civil uprisings: Does the situation Mandela fought against justify the violence he perpetrated?

     When he was tried in 1962, Nelson Mandela boasted of his acts of sabotage. Persons familiar with those events are virtually unanimous in condemning them and him. I’m one of them. South Africa’s apartheid regime was wrong, but it wasn’t murderous. Moreover, it was failing even then, as employers, landlords, and other South Africans devised ways to circumvent the apartheid laws.

     Yet another tale that tells a lesson of critical importance, deserving of big font:

The worth of a cause is independent of
The character of its spokesmen.

     Remember that.

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6. Sacrificial Lambs.

     Presidential elections this century past have had a few:

• 1940: Wendell Willkie (R)
• 1956: Adlai Stevenson (D)
• 1972: George McGovern (D)
• 1984: Walter Mondale (D)
• 1996: Robert Dole (R)
• 2012: Mitt Romney (R)

     These candidates were tossed up against incumbents who were overwhelmingly favored to retain the Oval Office. Those who nominated them didn’t expect them to win; they were placeholders, intended in each case to fill a slot, lest their party’s cachet suffer by baldly conceding the one and only national contest held in these United States. The Democrats’ candidate in 2020 will be of the same kind, which is what makes me wonder why so many Democrats are vying for the “honor.”

     One possibility is a desire to make the campaign about one core issue. For the Left, the cause that trumps all others has always been abortion. But as Noemie Emery notes, that hill is getting ever more difficult to defend:

     Did the Democrats pick the wrong electoral cycle to jump their particular abortion-cheering, fetus-destroying, and sensibility-unsettling shark? For a certain kind of Republican voter, who has problems with Donald Trump’s temperament and with the programmatic agenda of the national Democrats, the decision to vote “no” on the Democrats and on their agenda just got a whole lot easier.

     For years, the polling in the U.S. and the world has been unchanged and unchanging: 60% or so of respondents support permitting abortion in the first trimester, 30% or so in the second, and down to the low teens in the third. For years, presidential candidates on both sides have threaded the needle, appeasing the base while giving those who dissent leeway enough to vote for them anyhow. Then, sometime in the winter of 2018, the needles were tossed, the goalposts upended, and the word went forth to any Democrat even dreaming of running for office that the new rules were unquestioned support for all abortions anywhere under any conditions, to the moment of birth and beyond.

     “The changed composition of the Supreme Court and the supposed imminent danger that [Roe v. Wade] will be overturned is the excuse that pro-abortion extremists have seized upon to do what they want to do anyway,” George Will informs us. Their aim is “to normalize extreme abortion practices expressive of the belief that never does fetal life have more moral significance than a tumor in a mother’s stomach.”

     The question now is how these views may play out against a highly beatable Republican candidate. But haven’t we seen this same story before?

     Say what you like about President Donald Trump, but by no stretch of the imagination is he “highly beatable.” He’s grown stronger with every week of his presidency. The Mueller Report and recent disclosures about the methods of the intelligence community have removed the vulnerability the Democrats were most likely to attack fruitfully. If any president seeking a second term ever looked “secure,” it’s President Trump. So the possibility that the Left’s desire to mount a full-throated defense of abortion is the animating consideration deserves respectful analysis.

     Note that not one of the declared aspirants to the Democrat nomination has waffled even slightly about abortion. They’re all wholly enlisted in the Left’s most sacred cause. Whether any one of them sincerely believes that he has a serious chance of winning the presidency is left to the armchair psychologists.

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7. Too Good Not Too Share.

     When I was a high school junior, our English curriculum included three Dystopian novels that have become immortals: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Today 90 Days From Tyranny reminds us of important motifs from two of those books:

     The combination of Orwell’s and Huxley’s methods of control suggests that our “rulers” appreciate their baleful power more than the rest of us.

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8. Freedom Fiction.

     I must slather praise on the novel I’ve just read, a captivating blend of science fiction, politics, and offbeat romance:

     Margaret Ball has a quirky way of structuring her fiction, but its appeal is undeniable. Insurgents, the first volume in her Harmony series, is especially pleasing to those of us who understand and love freedom. Highly recommended.

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     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I’ve just started a new novel-project, and I expect that it will take at least the rest of the day to plan it out properly. I hope to be back tomorrow.

Quickies: A Is For Arrogance

     And certain Democrats and their fellow travelers have plenty of it:

     Several candidates were in San Francisco for the California Democratic Party convention and a slew of other gatherings -- including MoveOn.org's Big Ideas Forum. [Former Vice President Joseph] Biden, who has sat comfortably atop the polls with a message anchored in more establishment Democratic politics, opted to stay out of the fray, skipping the convention and instead headlining the Human Rights Campaign's annual Ohio gala….

     Biden's leading challengers won those audiences over by using him as a punching bag….

     "Some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges. If they dream at all, they dream small," Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in her speech at the Democratic convention.

     "Some say if we all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses," she said. "But our country is in a time of crisis. The time for small ideas is over."…

     Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday continued the barrage of criticism aimed at Biden, casting his 2020 rival as pursuing a "middle ground" ideology and blasting him for skipping the gathering.

     Warren and Sanders are about as far to the left as anyone in the Democrats’ ranks. They do not hesitate to call for completely socialized medicine, confiscatory levels of taxation, and other horrifying, anti-Constitutional measures. Which has caused your humble Curmudgeon to ask: What are the odds that they and their supporters will ever come to their senses? And if they don’t, whence goeth the Democrat Party, in 2020 and beyond?

     Joseph Biden would never get my vote for any office, much less the presidency. However, when compared to Warren and Sanders he looks like a fount of reason and judicious moderation. What do the party’s kingmakers, strategists, and major donors think of it all? It will be at least a year before we have a clear idea.

     Meanwhile, Americans in the Right: Remember that crack about “Republicans coming to their senses,” and ponder what it implies about how the Democrats would use whatever amount of federal power they might obtain in next year’s elections.

Pearls of expression.

Calls are constantly being made for government to do more. Remaining areas of personal life are to be invaded by increased government regulation, redistribution, control, command, and constraint. The idea of the independent and self-responsible individual diminishes in the number of its supporters, or so it appears, with every passing day.

Public-policy debates concern not whether something should be overseen and managed by government, but merely how far the interventionist welfare state should go, and who is going to pay for it.^[1]

I never liked the feel of someone's hand in my pocket or of having to deal with some officious nimrod in the public or private power structure. What happened to that citizen prickliness that kept such things in check? Utter garbage is spewed from our "public" airwaves yet still the public shells out huge amounts of money to be lied to and deluged with statist, homo-globo propaganda. We accept highly restrictive ballot access laws so that new parties have a near-impossible task to get a toe in the door to challenge the Holy Duo. The write-in option on the ballot might as well not be there. Lung cancer is more popular.

Don't look to movies to teach independence and defiance. Ever wonder why the Western disappeared as a movie genre, unless it was to teach the delights of adulterous sodomy or serve as a vehicle for moronic, black revenge fantasies?

The elites have involved us in pointless military adventures in recent decades leading to the deaths of more than a million foreigners and misery and death for our military and their families. Ho hum. "They" are at it again.

Levies are in danger of being breached in the Midwest while trillions have been wasted on war and the demonstration of some airy-fairy "exceptionalism." All with utter contempt for the wishes or needs of Americans. Uncle knows best and take it from us those Russians desperately need to be straightened out. Sorry about your beloved son.

Notes
^[1] "The America That Was - The Good & The Bad." By Richard Ebeling, ZeroHedge, 5/31/19 (emphasis removed).

New Fiction (Sticky through 6/2/2019) (UPDATED)

     The conclusion of the Futanari Series is here:

     An activist group mounts a major attack on Rachel MacLachlan’s DesireCorp…
     Arcologics’ life sciences group begins the development of an artificial conception-to-birth womb…
     Sir Thomas Walsingham, recently named the Duke of Norfolk, begets a second futanari daughter…
     Futanari clone Fountain surprises everyone who knows her by displaying a gift far beyond mere culinary talent...
     And Pope Clement XV, the first American to be raised to the Throne of Saint Peter, decides that it’s time to cleanse the Church of sexual scandal once and for all.

     Onteora County, the United States, and the world are once again in turmoil, and the long awaited sequel to Innocents and Experiences is here to tell you all about it!

     Only $3.99 for the Kindle eBook, or $11.99 for the paperback, both exclusively at Amazon.

     UPDATE: For those who haven’t acquainted themselves with my Futanari series, now you can get it as a single, deeply discounted volume:

     Only $6.99 for a 930-page reading experience guaranteed to amaze and mystify you!

Why Go On? A Sunday Rumination

     I hadn’t planned to write one of these today, but something happened just before Mass that’s forced it on me. Indeed, it’s practically pulling an essay out of me.

     Please be patient, as I expect this will take a more circuitous route than my usual – and my usual is pretty damned pretzelly.

---

     Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. – Martin Sheen’s voice-over the opening of Apocalypse Now

     The recent completion and release of The Wise and the Mad has had all the usual consequences:

• A sense of completion;
• Personal exhaustion;
• Low, slow sales;
• No reviews;
• The inevitable question: “Why do I bother?”

     I’ve been asking myself that question regularly for many years, both over my fiction and my blogging. I’d imagine many other writers suffer exactly this sort of self-doubt. Difficult, sustained labor, we seem to sense from some internal source, “should” produce significant consequences. But there’s my favorite word again! “Should” has no referent in objective reality. Events are governed by Nature’s own laws, none of which we know with absolute accuracy, precision, or confidence. Apparently there is no natural law to the effect that great effort shall bring great results, no matter how often nor how ardently we “should” about it.

     I ask myself “Why do I bother;” I get the usual answer (i.e., none); and I go back to work. And it occurred to me in my pew, which no others dare to approach while I am its occupant, that the question I “should” address is why that sequence, rather than the failure of my writing to achieve anything vaguely resembling success, is so reliable.

     It’s just what I do…and that’s also the only possible answer to that “Why do I bother” question.

     Strange that a man can live sixty-seven years and not trip over that one, eh?

---

     All my life I’ve opposed every form of fatalism. I’ve refused to accept that we are limited by anything except natural law, which includes our common human natures. Man’s will is free. Man’s scope for the formation of goals and plans for achieving them is huge. Man’s capacities are great, though not unbounded. By and large, we can do what we set out to do, provided it’s not forbidden by the laws of physics…which, I must repeat, we don’t know in their exactitude.

     Yet there are many things we do, not because it’s the right approach to our current, highest priority goal, but because it’s just what we do. Sometimes “what I do” is inapplicable to the problem or obstacle before one…yet we do it anyway. And sometimes it can be startlingly effective:

Nika Boronina: What are you going to do?
Agent 47: What I do.

[From Hitman]

     Writing, both fiction and nonfiction, is just what I do. I can’t seem to give it up, and for the past two hours I’ve been seriously wondering why.

---

     You may have noticed that on the dedications page of my books always appears the phrase:

To the greater glory of God.

     That’s another item in the “just what I do” basket, along with writing, making bad puns, and buying one of every kind of power tool I encounter, the need for one (or lack thereof) notwithstanding. But in this case I do it consciously. I know why I do it. I also know that, in the exact, objective sense, nothing any human being could do would make the smallest difference to the actual glory of God.

     Man’s achievements praise and glorify God to other men. That is, what we achieve, if directed toward a worthy and constructive end, can increase others’ perception and appreciation of God’s glory as it has been instantiated in Man, who (after all) is made in His image. God Himself is not affected.

     It is my hope that what I write evokes that kind of appreciation. It’s good for you. It takes you out of yourself, however briefly, and into a special mental realm in which Man’s distinctive power – the ability to form and reason with abstractions – hints at the infinite love and benevolence of Him who made us what we are. Quite frankly, I have no other reason for writing fiction. Certainly I have no financial one! (My current rate of remuneration for it is well below $0.10 per labor hour.)

     I get that sense of appreciation when I read the works of intelligent, skilled writers of every description. It’s what I most hope to do for others. It’s the variety of service to others I’m best equipped to perform. (Which is not to say that I’m terribly good at it; just that I’m worse at everything else.)

---

     These days all my fiction has at least some tangential relevance to Christianity, Christian belief, and my own particular home among the denominations, the Catholic Church. The reason is simple: to whatever extent I can, I seek to promote Christianity as a great and good thing, and Catholicism, properly understood, as its best articulation. I am appalled by secularists’ flip dismissals of the causal connections between the decline of Christianity in Western society and the advance of every kind of discord, dissolution, and destruction.

     I know that my efforts have not garnered much return. That awareness sometimes pains me. It gets me asking myself “Why do I bother?” The answer is always the same: It’s what I do. Nothing else of which I’m capable is nearly as worth doing.

     Yes, it’s a choice. I could have chosen the path of a Nock or a Mencken. That is, I could merely hold myself above it all. I could write “for the Remnant” as Nock did, or for the chuckles to be had from mocking the “booboisie,” as Mencken did. That’s not my way.

     I go on because I must do what I can, as little as it may be, to stem the tides. Were I to hold myself apart, my life would have no value. I would have no reason to go on. Anyway, it’s what I do.

---

     A man – that is, a male human being; I shan’t speak for women at this juncture – must have a mission. Without one, he has no reason to go on. It’s a big part of the reason so many retirees just drift away, cut loose from relevance, and lapse into death

     Captain Willard wanted a mission but was unable to choose one for himself. That’s in the nature of an army; everyone except the commanders must wait upon the commanders’ orders. Agent 47 chose his own mission, and was gratified that his particular, highly developed talent for homicide was perfectly suited to its fulfillment. Most of us fall somewhere between the poles those two fictional characters occupy.

     What keeps you going, Gentle Reader? Would you say you have a mission? If so, do you know whence it came? Does it chafe you, or are you content with it? And pardon me for asking, but how well would you say you’re doing at it?

     May God bless and keep you all.

Will YOU Fight for Christianity and Western Culture?

It may, in fact, come down to that.

We may need to defy the secular culture - boldly, openly, and with the sure knowledge that it may cost us dearly.

This post will publish on what Catholics call First Friday - the first Friday of every month. Many attend mass on that day, as indicated in the Promise of Fatima.

It's a devotion that used to be quite common; in my church, about 20-30 attend on that day, each month. The priest that just left our church, Father Fabio, used to have a celebration after - for those with a birthday that month. We had cake and various snacks, along with coffee and other drinks.

It was nice. I started doing it about a year after I retired. As a kid, I used to see my friends, who attended parochial school, regularly attend. I, who went to public school (father was not a Catholic), did not. I don't make it every month - but most of them. It's something I do for me.

Free Speech has never been so endangered in my life.

For me, the real start of my reclamation of Free Speech, was when I started signing my name to the work I wrote. Fran Porretto was the impetus for that (can't remember which post he wrote that challenged people to put their name to what they believed). From that day forward, I posted and wrote with my own name, not a pseudonym.

By affixing your name to your beliefs, you draw your line in the sand - you will NOT hide for fear of reprisals. Much of the power of the Elites is due to our fear of losing our jobs, our reputation, our place in society.

Tough. It's fine to talk as though we were ready to fight for liberation from tyranny, but, if you won't use your real name, it's just talk. And, the Elite know it - that's why they go furiously after those who do put their name to their convictions - it's to terrify the rest of the Dissidents into hiding behind false names. False names are a sign - I'm not ready to die today.

And, if you proclaim that, you have signaled that you already gave up.

And, China is a major danger to America - thanks, in great part, to the chuckleheaded Bill Clinton, who sold us out with his allowing China to join the WTO.

Speaking of warfare, it will be different than what you expect - it HAS been different. This link is to a site explaining why. If that whets your appetite, there is this new book to explore it further - I'm planning on buying it.

We can't afford to wait until the civilization completely collapses. That's what has happened in Venezuela, and we can't just go in and re-start it again.

The problem isn't that they don't know anything, it's that much (OK, almost ALL) of what they "know" isn't so.

Children - and, by children, I mean those who are not self-supporting and independent of assistance from family or government - need to be put into their place. Perhaps we could restrict the franchise to those who can prove - via an IRS form/tax return or affidavit from family - that they are self-supporting? I hate to tie this to income - women who have no independent income would lose out - but it may be the best single indicator that a person is grown up.

I would, of course, exempt those on Social Security - NOT SSI, unless they had previously EARNED their living - and disabled vets from that restriction.

Any better ideas?

Quickies: Muscle Is As Important As Message

     Many gun-rights advocates found the late Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the famous Heller case to be bittersweet at best. Justice Scalia affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, which is supremely important. However, the good Justice made a critical mistake toward the end of his opinion by sanctioning “reasonable regulations” on firearms ownership by state and local governments. That word reasonable has been the bane of rights advocates for many decades. No two persons agree on what it means.

     But wait: there’s more! Supreme Court decisions sound…well…supreme. But in practice they have only as much de facto authority as other jurisdictions, and other levels of government, show them. The executive branch of the federal government has ignored Supreme Court decisions about firearms rights in several important ways. State and municipal governments have flagrantly ignored such decisions when it suited them – and in Scalia’s “reasonable regulations” language, anti-gun states have found the golden key to denying their residents’ rights without even admitting that they’re doing so.

     If a regulatory regime is instituted with the power to decide who may own a gun of some type, then there will be a “process” of some sort for making such decisions. That process will take a nonzero amount of time to reach its decisions. Who decides what factors may be included in the decision making? Who decides how long that process may be protracted? Who decides what is “reasonable?”

     When I thought to apply for a pistol permit two years ago, the police sergeant who had been made the point man for applications in my county told me not to hold my breath while I wait, albeit not in so many words. What he did say, as accurately as I can remember it at this remove, was that the wait would be at least eight months and had been known to exceed that. And by the way, the permit-process fees, which totaled to more than $100, were non-refundable.

     That police sergeant wasn’t kidding. A dear friend who applied for a handgun permit three years ago is still waiting for a decision. Reasonable? You decide.

     It gets worse yet. The Supreme Court has no way to enforce the decisions it makes. Enforcement authority was denied to it deliberately, as a Constitutional constraint on its effective power. So even if the Heller decision were a flat denial of all regulatory power to the states and municipalities, the Court would still have to deal with being ignored by other jurisdictions and levels of government. There’s no effective penalty for it.

     If there’s a way out of this maze – that is, a way that doesn't involve hanging the majority of those in high office – I haven’t found it yet, and not for lack of effort.

     Delay is the deadliest form of denial. – C. Northcote Parkinson

Saturdays Are Good Days For Bad Thoughts

     The sort of bad thoughts your humble Curmudgeon has in mind just now are his thoughts about racial inequality. I haven’t sung from this particular hymnal in a while. However, owing to this citation by Mike Hendrix and this other one from the same source, the time has come for a few more bars.

---

     First, I’m going to repost a short story that first appeared here about four years ago:

     The day had worn him down. His prior case, the fifty-seventh since he’d reached his desk that morning, had just been dragged weeping from the office, but he could not rest. He was behind his quota. The ships were already behind their sailing schedules. He had to plow onward.
     He pressed the button on his phone console that signaled to the pen outside that he was ready for his next case. The green indicator light over his office door went dark and the yellow one lit. Barely a minute had passed when the door opened and two husky guards brought him number fifty-eight. As they closed the door behind them, the yellow light above it was extinguished and the red one lit.
     This one was female. She looked aged beyond her natural count of years, though the stress of the upheavals could do that to anyone.
     The guards sat her none too gently in the restraint chair, secured her shackles to the chair’s hard points, and laid her paperwork on his desk before stepping back to line his office doorway. He reviewed the short description of her status and noted the contents of the check box. He’d seen it checked fifty-three times that day. This made fifty-four.
     She’ll have two options. No others.
     He steeled himself and faced her squarely. She seemed unable to meet his gaze.
     “Have you been informed about what happens here...” He glanced at her form again. Her given name was one of the trendy sort that he found too challenging to pronounce. “...Miss Jones?”
     She shook her head, but remained mute.
     “I’m your routing officer. You and I have the responsibility for determining the next stage of your life. I’m constrained by the law, but you will have a choice, though your choices are rather limited. The person who limited them was you.”
     He picked up the form and waved it at her. “Do you know what this paper says about you?”
     She sniffed and shook her head.
     “Were you given a chance to read it?”
     “Can’t read,” she said.
     “Then I’ll read it to you. ‘Miss Jones is 34 years old and a single mother of two sons. Son Tyrell was killed at age 18 during a police raid of a crack den. Son James was serving a life sentence for a gang-related murder when the Sterilization Orders came down. He was 16 at the time of his execution. Miss Jones has never been self-supporting. She tests positive for cocaine, syphilis, and hepatitis B.’”
     He looked directly into her eyes. “Do you deny any of that?”
     She would not answer.
     “Miss Jones, if I go by what’s on this paper, your future will not be a happy one. And I have to go by it unless you can convince me that what it says is not true.”
     “Can’t,” she said at last. “It’s right. Never got married. Got by on the welfare. My boys was bad asses. Baddest in the hood.” Her eyes rose to meet his at long last. They flashed in challenge. “Ain’t gonna cry over it. Any of it.”
     She thinks she’s hard. Maybe she is. She should hope so.
     “Miss Jones, if all this is true, then under the Separation Edicts, there are only two places you can go when you leave this room.” He rose and pointed toward his eastward window. Her gaze followed his gesture and lit on the giant ship that stood waiting in the harbor.
     “That,” he said, “is an exile ship. It’s one of your choices. If you choose it, it will take you to another continent, a place where you’ll be set free to live out your life as best you can. There are no whites there, no courts or prisons, and no welfare, either. And very little that you’d recognize from your life here in America.”
     She looked out at the giant vessel, plainly uncomprehending. Before the upheaval it had been a cargo carrier. On every trip it had ferried two hundred thousand tons of cargo in steel containers, each one filled with some item the residents of other lands valued, across the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean. Its holds had been refitted as row upon row of barred cells. Its next journey would convey ten thousand exiles to their new homeland. They would next see sunlight, if they saw it at all, when they debarked on the west coast of Africa, in the land that had once been called Liberia.
     Most of those exiles had been personally guilty of nothing. They’d merely abetted a race war. Some had promoted hatred of whites. Others, by their promiscuity and negligent parenting, had produced generation upon generation of parasites and violent predators. Still others had done nothing but subsist on the handouts of a too-generous society, indolently declining to add to its riches.
     Twenty-three of them had declined to board the ship.
     Far too many of them.
     “Are you willing to board that ship, Miss Jones?”
     She glowered at him sullenly. “Ain’t gettin’ on no ship.”
     “I see. Well, you do have another choice, but I can’t recommend it.” He nodded toward the door to the right of his desk. “It goes through that door.” He started to describe what took place on the other side of the door, stopped himself.
     It might be better if she didn’t know.
     “Would you like me to tell you about that second choice, Miss Jones?”
     She sneered and looked away. “Ain’t gettin’ on no ship.”
     “I need an answer, Miss Jones. Will you board, yes or no?”
     She shook her head.
     I suppose that’s good enough.
     He nodded to the guards. They released her shackles from the restraint chair and stepped back.
     “Then whenever you’re ready, just step through that door and close it behind you. You’ll be given instructions about what to do next.”
     She gave him one more contemptuous sneer and shuffled to the second door. The three men watched in silence as she stepped through it. As she closed it behind her, the green phase indicator above it went dark and the yellow one lit. A moment later the yellow gave way to red. The red light glowed for perhaps a minute before going out.
     Twenty-four.
     “Sir?” one of the guards said. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
     He grimaced. “I thought it might be kinder this way.”
     The guard frowned. “Maybe.” He glanced out at the exile ship. “It sure as hell ain’t gonna be kind for them.” They stepped out the door through which they had entered.
     He lowered his face into his hands.
     I volunteered. I understood the necessity. I still do. But it’s harder than anything I’ve ever done.
     Colonel John MacKenzie had led troops into battle. His battalion had been the first into Monrovia, and had led its pacification. He’d killed men who’d been trying their best to kill him. He’d weathered it all and had come home to a wife who loved him unreservedly despite it all...who refused to let him doubt himself.
     The men I killed were armed. They went to war knowing the risks. Miss Jones wasn’t armed with anything worse than her attitude.
     He felt his tears rising again and sternly shoved them down.
     Those are for the men I led who died in honorable combat. Not for the Miss Joneses of the world. They brought this upon themselves even if they were too dull to know it.
     He pressed the button that would bring him number fifty-nine.

#

     MacKenzie reached his billet barely able to draw a breath. Estelle awaited him at the front door, as always. His condition was plain to her. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed him to her before he could step over the lintel.
     “I love you,” he muttered against her shoulder. Despite his efforts, a single deep sob escaped him.
     She stroked his hair and said nothing.
     Presently he said. “Mark Thorsten killed himself.”
     “I know,” she said. “I spent most of the day with Pam.” A pause. “She wasn’t surprised. She said...she said she saw it coming. John, will she be all right?”
     He looked at her in puzzlement. “Was she all right when you left her?”
     She frowned. “You know what I mean.”
     He grimaced. “I don’t know, Eppie. I hope so. If I hear anything to the contrary, I’ll...I don’t know. This is a first.”
     She nodded. “For all of us. How many today?”
     “A hundred twenty-six.”
     “How many...” Her voice caught briefly. “...for the other door?”
     “Forty-seven.” He shuddered. “I stopped telling them, Eppie. After the first twenty-three I just...stopped. I figured it would be kinder that way.”
     Her expression was as understanding and accepting as always. She nodded.
     “Would you like to, to get out for the evening?” he said. “We could go to—”
     She shook her head. “I’d rather stay home with you. Just in case Pam...you know.”
     “Yes,” he said. “I know.”
     He took her hand, marveling afresh at the contrast between the lightness of her palm and the smooth jet of the opposite side. He brought that palm to his lips and kissed it tenderly.
     What a marvel. She knows what’s happening, and accepts it. She knows what I’ve been assigned to do, and accepts it. She doesn’t know why I and the others were chosen for this duty, yet she accepts it. She does know that except for having married me, she would be in that pen, awaiting her own disposition...and accepts it.
     “You’re my lifeline,” he said. “My tether to sanity in an insane time. Without you, I might do what Mark did.”
     She smiled sadly. “I know. It’s why you were chosen.”
     He peered at her. “Huh?”
     “Hadn’t you thought about it?” she said. “The Army has plenty of colonels. Some of them would enjoy doing what you do.” She stroked the sides of his face. “I’m the guarantee that you won’t...because you can’t.”
     “You do know,” he said wonderingly.
     “I always did, John. General Lapierre told me. Let’s have some dinner.”
     She took his hand and led him to their kitchen.

==<O>==

     A great deal of what’s often called “political correctness” can be summed up in one rule: If it’s injurious to left-liberal doctrines, you’re forbidden to mention it. This has particular application to race.

     I’ve written about this subject many times. The degree of castigation I’ve received for it started out high, but has gradually dwindled to a barely audible buzz. It seems that a long-overdue realism is taking hold among American whites.

     When I wrote the story above, I expected it to draw a great uproar of condemnation. It didn’t. Indeed, a fair number of Gentle Readers have asked for permission to download it. (It appears in this collection.) There is no hope in the scenario it describes; only a great and terrible cleansing, as the remediation of a historical mistake.

     What mistake was that? C’mon! You’ve heard the snide remark “We should have picked our own cotton,” haven’t you? It’s not founded on what went down way back then, but on what’s happened roughly these past fifty-five years. I’ve been a reluctant witness to those developments. They point toward the reification of my little story with a single voice.

     You might not like it. I don’t. I’ve prayed that it might somehow be averted. But it’s coming, for a single, overriding reason: barring a miracle, there can be no other escape from our racial troubles.

---

     Here is one possible miracle: The sudden realization among American blacks that they must hold both themselves and their children to white norms of conduct. It won’t happen. Feel free to discuss why it won’t happen in the comments.

     Here’s another possible miracle: The impenetrable and inescapable walling-off – i.e., no one can get in or out – of every locale in these United States that possesses any one of the following characteristics:

• Political dominance by Democrats;
• More than 10% of the population in that locale is black;
• Promulgates left-liberal racialist doctrines and suppresses race-realist perspectives.

     (There go the universities, the media bastions, every American city with a population of 100,000 or more, and a fair number of smaller ones.)

     That won’t happen either. I hardly need to explain why.

     The third possibility – the emergence of a white identity movement large enough and powerful enough to compel the “Two Doors” outcome – is less improbable than the other two. That phrase “less improbable” is called a periphrasis. It’s intended to convey that the indicated development is improbable, but not so improbable as to be dismissed out of hand.

     The likeliest path of development is the collapse of American civilization. A nation cannot endure covert warfare among its people. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening as we speak:

• Why A Race War?
• It’s On
• It’s On Part Two
• It’s On Part Three
• A Great Light Dawns
• A Great Light Dawns Part Two

     Ponder it. Think about what you would do, were there to be only a continuing degradation of our society into racially-propelled chaos. Whatever it is, would it really be preferable to ending the problem once and for all, restoring civility and public order for the enjoyment of all Americans of good will?

     So much for bad Saturday thoughts. Now to turn to more pleasant ways to spend my day, such as washing the mud off my dogs and my furniture, and repairing the holes Sophie and Precious have made in my fence.

U.S. strategic genius.

What about Western political meddling?

The State Department had run a democracy promotion program since September 11, 2001 and many activists were supplied with media training and equipment to help them capitalize on the moment when it presented itself. March 2011 was that moment.^[1]

March 2011 marks the start of the rebellion in Syria.

Of course, the rebellion was more than a merely local phenomenon. See here, here, and here.

Since then America has sought to characterize the Assad government as a "brutal dictatorship," there being no other kind of dictatorship at the kindergarten-level of U.S. government foreign policy thinking. The solution to which the stuperous mavens of Foggy Bottom thoughtfully propose "more democracy" a la various iterations of the "Arab spring."

The excerpt above from the article by Ehsani does not do his analysis justice. His thinking is what you'd hope would be typical in official U.S. circles but it's not. What we get is cartoonish thinking and bankrupt military involvement that make Larry, Moe, and Curly seem like deep strategic thinkers.

Onward John, Mike, and Donald. Let us piss away our vital resources and what good will we have remaining and advance to new heights of exceptionalism. If Syria has to endure more killing and destruction in the process well certain sacrifices just have to be made for a bright U.S. vision of the New Middle East.

Notes
^[1] "Peak Fragility: Why The Middle East Is Doomed." By Ehsani, Syria Comment, 4/10/18.

No Rain In The Forecast

     The above title both expresses my fondest wish for the coming week, and is coupled to a prediction that, sadly, strikes me as a sure bet.

     The New York Metropolitan Area, which includes (unfortunately) Long Island where the Fortress is situated, has been getting soaked this spring. It’s caused the usual train of inconveniences and irritations: dampness in the basement, grass that grows faster than I can cut it, and worst of all, the postponement of Yankee games. Fortunately, we’ve just had a spot of waterproofing done where the worst of the moisture used to seep into our abode, plus new and better gutters for the whole house. However, that does nothing for the lawn, and the Yankees haven’t suffered this many postponements in thirty years. So I and my neighbors are all praying (it’s a Catholic neighborhood) – for a nice long stretch of dry, sunny weather so we can scrape the moss off our north sides and keep it off.

     But there’s one area of current interest where a good “hard rain” would be my fondest wish:

     The skies are growing dark and increasingly ominous for dirty officials at the top of Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Leading the “I’m really worried” list are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and their senior aides, all political appointees. They expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 and bury any traces of malfeasance, just as they had buried hers. It didn’t work out that way.

     Now they need protection themselves. House Democrats and anonymous leakers are busy providing it. Many are delicately called “current and former senior officials” by the New York Times, Washington Post, and other legacy media. Gee, I wonder who they are?

     These defenders of the old guard are sliming Attorney General Bill Barr, who heads the investigation into their actions. They have good reasons, if not clean hands, for their attack. First, they want to keep as much secret as they can. Exposure can only harm them. Their main argument is that any disclosures will damage U.S. national security. Second, they want to paint the disclosures and forthcoming indictments as President Trump’s revenge, the illegitimate use of powerful agencies that should be nonpartisan. That, of course, is precisely what they are accused of doing.

     Barr won’t be deterred. He did not return for a second stint as AG to pad his résumé or protect Donald Trump. He returned to clean out the Augean Stables. He needs to muck out the mess left by his predecessors and find the horses that left it.

     If only. There are at least two reasons why the malefactors that ignited the “Russian collusion” hoax against newly elected President Trump will face no penalties. First comes the “collegiality” armor worn by every member of the Washington Establishment. (Britons would call this the “a member of my club” defense.) Damned few Republicans and no Democrats will agree to the prosecution of these people. Virtually everyone in Federal office is guilty of some abuse of power and position. Thus, to see their former colleagues and cocktail party guests in orange jumpsuits would strike too close to home. The pressure they’ll put on Attorney-General Barr to refrain from pursuing criminal indictments would turn coal into diamonds.

     Second, and even more potent a deterrent, is the array of mechanisms these formerly prominent Federal officials could use to take revenge. They range from revealing secrets their tormentors cannot afford to have revealed to the incitement of FBI, CIA, and NSA campaigns of harassment against them, their loved ones, and their professional associates. Those three agencies have been shown to be above the law de facto. Their middle managers and low-level workers can get away with virtually anything. If Ruby Ridge and Waco may be admitted as data points, the mass murder of innocents is entirely within the spectrum of possibilities. And while Comey, Brennan, Clapper and the rest are no longer in high office, they continue to command the loyalty of many within their former demesnes…in some cases for the same reasons their nominal enemies fear them.

     An organization that stands “above the law” is an unstoppable weapon in the hands of whoever controls it. The best known such agencies are state and county-level “child protective services” and “family courts.” These answer to no one, can treat their targets as guilty until proven innocent – yes, really – and are unbound by any of the strictures the Constitution and Anglo-American legal tradition place upon normal jurisprudence. The IRS looks upon the power they wield with envious eyes – again: yes, really.

     During the “Red Scare” years, the FBI often harassed persons who declined to testify to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, as was their right, out of jobs, homes, and marriages. Employers feared what the Feebs could do to them far too much not to bow to the threat implied by an FBI visit to their places of business. It was a grotesque abuse of power – and the FBI got cleanly away with it in every case. Today, with the legal cover of the PATRIOT Act and the information-gathering power of the CIA and NSA at its disposal, there is no doubt in my mind that the FBI could arrange for the incarceration without trial of any American it might choose to target.

     Therefore, my money is on there being no penalties for any degree of involvement in the “Russian collusion” hoax, the pervasive and totally unwarranted spying on the Trump campaign, or the various acts of fraud and deceit under oath the involved persons have committed in the defense of their positions and reputations. I could be wrong. Indeed, I hope I am. But if so, I also hope that Bill Barr and everyone else in the Trump Administration are braced for impact. Any “hard rain” they drop on the anti-Trump conspirators could fall just as hard, though undeservedly, on them as well.

An Important Omission

     In the foofaurauw over the Mueller investigation and Mueller’s ponderous, tendentious, meandering report, the critical facts are all too often glossed over:

• The extent of “Russian interference” in the 2016 election was a modest amount of entirely legal advertising, mainly on Facebook.
• Robert Mueller could not show that any American had colluded with any Russian agent or agency.
• Therefore, Mueller could not establish that any crime had been committed.

     The investigation began, not because a crime had demonstrably been committed, but because of the Democrats’ allegations of such. They could produce no evidence to that effect; they merely shrieked it at the top of their collective lungs until Attorney General Jeff Sessions unwisely decided to recuse himself. That allowed the acting AG, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint a special prosecutor. What followed departed radically from normal prosecutorial procedure.

     Consider: If Smith were to allege that Jones had committed a prosecutable crime – i.e., an offense defined by the penal laws of the United States or one of its interior jurisdictions – he would be expected to provide the district attorney’s office with substantiation that a crime had indeed been committed. If Smith were to allege a murder, he would have to offer some evidence that a murder had occurred. If he were to allege a robbery, he would have to present a credible victim who could at least show a loss. And so on, for whatever accusation Smith might lodge against Jones. Lacking such substantiation, neither the police nor the D.A. would be disposed to get out of bed.

     President Trump’s accusers could not provide any such substantiation. Indeed, over the three years they’ve been screaming for his head, nothing of any relevance to the possibility of a crime has come to light – and you may be sure that Robert Mueller, as much an Establishmentarian as anyone in the Washington orbit, looked most diligently for it.

     President Trump was justifiably incensed about the smear against his victory. He said so on many occasions. Yet he did not do one single thing to impede the Mueller group’s operations. He did stand on his right not to testify against himself, as any American in legal jeopardy is entitled to do. Otherwise, he merely criticized the investigation as what it has proved to be: a fishing expedition whose true aim was to undo his unprecedented national victory against fearsome odds.

     So Mueller’s recent statement that he could not prove that the president had not committed obstruction of justice is both laughable and contemptible. What event occurred that could be construed as an impediment to the investigation?

     That hasn’t silenced the Democrats, of course; nothing could. They want Trump out of the Oval Office at any cost. They’re terrified not only that he’ll win a second term, but that the national mood, owing to his successful implementation of his policies, will be so good in 2024 that he’ll be able to pick his successor. So they’ll continue to shriek until they lose the assistance of the media and the attention of the general public: events about as likely as the Earth crashing into the Sun this coming Tuesday at 9:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time.

     David Horowitz summed up the Democrats’ allegations rather pungently: they can’t establish that he committed the crime they allege, but he’s obviously guilty of protesting his innocence, so hang him anyway. Welcome to American “politics,” 2019 edition.

An Oldie, But Worth Re-Reading

The Flight 93 Election.

The election in 2020 will likely not be as critical. Many people have no idea how close to the edge of the cliff we were at that time. That does a lot to explain the enduring appeal of Bernie Sanders, and the rise of AOC.

Look, those guys aren't BAD people - just unbelievably clueless. They are - morally speaking - people of good intentions, people with generosity of heart, people who strive to live their lives with purpose and sincere desires to improve the world.

They are also quite dangerous.

Because, they don't recognize the evil that permeates the atmosphere around them. They assume that everyone acts from honest and pure good intentions.

The wonder of the last several years is that many citizens GOT IT - enough of them to elect Trump. They had that defining moment when they clearly saw the reality - and Trump was the response to the perceived danger. I don't know about anyone else, but my expectations of his performance were low. As long as Trump didn't actively work AGAINST America, I was gonna support him.

He has exceeded my expectations. He has reversed the decay of the institutions, put America's interests FIRST, and continued attacking on a variety of fronts. When they block him with one tactic, he feints, then parries with another. He is not a one-trick pony - years of working against opposition - strong opposition - have honed his skills. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Accidentally, we elected a Guy Who Knows How to Get Things Done. He isn't always going to win - some of his failures are spectacular - but he isn't afraid to get into a fight.

Update on Leftism for Beginners

I finished the chapter on Marcuse here.