Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The Convergence Of The Fears

The list is growing very long:

  • Islamism on the march.
  • Russia remilitarizing as it absorbs Ukraine and eyes the Baltics.
  • China preparing its long-awaited invasion of Taiwan.
  • Israel beleaguered by Middle Eastern Muslims, principally through their "Palestinian" cat's-paws.
  • Hordes of illegal aliens swarming across America's southern border.
  • The accelerating rise of the inflation-driven cost of living.
  • The jobless "recovery."
  • The surging tide of government dependency.
  • Federal and state harassment of political adversaries.
  • Economic strangulation by regulation.
  • Judicial assaults on freedom of religion and expression.
  • Vote fraud and voter intimidation.
  • Resurgent union militancy.
  • Rising black-on-white violence.
  • The use of the "Justice" Department to prevent the prosecution of injustice.
  • Deliberate weakening of our military and alienation of our allies.
  • Unceasing deceit from the circles of power and their media annexes.
  • Refusal to close our borders against Ebola.

Perhaps I've left something out, but those are the "big ticket" items that occur to me as I write this morning.

From the above list, I'd say we have a lot to fear. What about you, Gentle Reader?


"The State is based on threat." -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

The critical thing about the list above is that every item on it was either originated by our federal government or is being encouraged by it. Not one of the phenomena above could sustain itself in the absence of federal support.

What other implication could there be than that Washington wants Americans to suffer an elevated sense of threat? And what other implication could that inference have than that our federal elite wants us to fear as many people and things as intensely as possible?

It is flatly impossible to subjugate a people whose confidence in themselves sufficiently exceeds their fears. To rule, you must create fear, or fears, of sufficient variety and intensity that John Q. Public will turn away from his fellows in search of a protector. If you can plausibly represent yourself as such a protector, and faceless "others" as those to be feared, you can win his compliance with your demands.

I contend that that dynamic is all the explanation we need for the nightmares of our time.


A recent series of urban fantasies, John Conroe's Demon Accords, provides a fictional look at how the power elite views forces outside its control. Superhero protagonist Christian Gordon is a sterling example of American manhood as we once knew it: he knows right from wrong and unerringly chooses the right, even when it might cost him his life. More, he loves his country and works, tirelessly and without compensation, to combat both natural and supernatural threats to it. When he appears at a crisis site, people's fears are dissipated; the general sense of justice is restored.

So what's Washington's response to the emergence of this powerful paragon? It bends all its efforts toward gaining control over him.

When that proves impossible (for reasons beyond the scope of this tirade), the Feds change their approach. First, they attempt to bend him by kidnapping his goddaughter. When he thwarts that approach, they strive to kill him. Their tactics repeatedly demonstrate that they're determined to do so even if it should cost the lives of many thousands of innocents, including federal agents unaware of that vicious intent. The regime is simply unwilling to allow the existence of a protector who's not firmly under its thumb. They will not countenance the existence of power that lies beyond their control.

Conroe's depiction of this ongoing conflict between private and political power strikes me as appallingly true-to-life. Our power elite is just as jealous of its primacy as Conroe's fictional regime. Were a Christian Gordon to appear among us, Washington's reaction might well exceed that of the fictional version in amoral brutality.

It's not just the Muslims who seek to subjugate us at any cost.


"When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more at work than sloppy arithmetic." -- Me.

I've only just returned from a brief vacation during which I was (involuntarily) without Internet access for four days. A hiatus of that sort can be an important perspective restorative. In my case, it's refreshed my sense of just how bad things are getting.

I'm one of the fortunate: materially well off, a resident of a placid, low-crime locale, surrounded by agreeable neighbors, prepared for a multitude of contingencies, and personally capable of standing off quite a number of threats out of my own resources. Yet I, too, am beset by fear. I have little confidence in the future of this nation. The multiplicity of the threats we face makes planning a campaign against them a daunting challenge...perhaps an impossible one. The latest one, the Ebola threat, is separating Americans from one another as nothing but a lethal pandemic could do. A high-powered rifle is no defense against a virus, no matter how good one's marksmanship. Where are we to turn for a protector?

It's all too clear to me that Washington's masters have engineered our plight, by deliberate action here and deliberate inaction there. It's steadily becoming clear to ever more of our countrymen. Yet we do not act. Why?

A bumper sticker I saw recently makes the point in the sharpest imaginable way:

The Founding Fathers
Would Be Shooting By Now.

Why are we content to be separated from one another, huddling in family-size groups, as the fears mount around us?


When I wrote Which Art In Hope, I had the dramatization of an important moral-ethical conflict in mind, nothing else. Quite a few readers took it as a manifesto. At first I tried to dissuade them from that view. No longer.

The midterm elections don't promise much relief. Indeed, no election for more than a century has noticeably altered the vector of Omnipotent Government. The few truly decent, principled men in high office are treated by the establishments of both parties as irritations at best, mortal enemies at worst. The "permanent government" comfortably ensconced in the "alphabet agencies," uncorrectable by external forces and protected by Civil Service rules against changes in elected or appointed "supervisors," has proved immovable.

It is vital beyond the power of words to express that the Leviathan marshaling all those fearful forces against us be put down. I know, I know: Who will volunteer to bell the cat? The dangers inherent in the enterprise take nothing away from the urgency thereof.

What, then, must we do?

7 comments:

Historian said...

One more fear to add: a high altitude nuclear explosion producing a continent wide electromagnetic pulse. HEMP.

North Korea and Iran are both working hard on this, so it seems.

Anonymous said...

The founders would have been shooting, yes, but they realized that then, like now, it was very likely they would die in the fight. But then they believed that sacrifice would be rewarded in the hereafter, and that such a sacrifice could make things better for their descendants.

Do most Americans believe these things today? I don't think many do.

Anonymous said...

Um, ... surveillance?

Anonymous said...

I think you left mass warrantless (in both senses of the word) government surveillance of the citizenry off your list of fears.

I think it might also be the answer to your two later questions:

1. Washington's masters have engineered our plight, by deliberate action here and deliberate inaction there. ... Yet we do not act. Why?


2. "The Founding Fathers Would Be Shooting By Now."
Why are we content to be separated from one another, huddling in family-size groups, as the fears mount around us?

Pascal said...

As do you, I see no simple answer to the gathering storms.

My less than a certainty but more than a guess answer to your question: Be brave, not brash. Then pray that come the Susnuts' eleventh plague (by which Justice has it boomerang on its architects) that my honorable stance garners me and those like me a passover. You and others ought understand me. But who will take this sense seriously? I pray many more than I expect will do so.

Mark K said...

Fran,

Unfortunately, it does seem that the failure of civilization is "baked in", and we are merely the latest in a long train of human organizational undertakings to run through this cycle. If this is the case (and a strong case could be made, and indeed makes itself every news cycle) then perhaps the best we can do in the declining days of our civilization is to work small-to-big in very much the manner that you have described; secure your family -> your circle of friends -> your neighborhood -> your church -> your village -> your county -> your state, etc. The social redoubt you secure will likely never reach even the "state" level, but each level you manage to secure will leave you better situated than before.

One of the topics that regularly come up in dinner conversation is the "Free State Project", its viability and whether or not it might be a possible answer to the forces you describe. It is an interesting notion and makes for lively conversation.

Mark K.

Pascal said...

Re: Voter fraud and voter intimidation.

Generations have been mouthing the last lines of the National Anthem while ignoring their implications.

...the land of the free and [because it is] the home of the brave.

Today, who is brave enough to put an end to voter fraud? It is likely the most fatal of all frauds to any republic. While I have tried to get reforms via traditional channels (gag) I did nothing like stand in front of my local polls and demand that proof be provided. Why? It's terrifying to stand alone. Not so brash, but not so brave either.