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?

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"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.

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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.

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"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?

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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?