Friday, September 4, 2015

Sitting Back Is Not Giving Up

     A few Gentle Readers have written to ask, somewhat plaintively, if the sentiments and flavor of this piece and this other one mean that I’ve “given up.” I understand why they ask. (In ClintonSpeak, “I feel their pain.”) But it’s not as simple as surrendering versus resolving to fight on.

     Hang in there. I do have a point. I might even get to it in fewer than 10,000 words. But I make no promises.


     As I said at the conclusion of this piece, I’m tired – emotionally, even existentially tired. Old men can get that way. It’s partly a matter of bodily fatigue, but to a greater extent it’s a consequence of the sense that time is running out.

     Time does run out for each of us. Sometimes that can sharpen a more generalized fear: i.e., that time is running out for all of us.

     I know myself pretty well. (I should hope so, after sixty-three years of close-range study.) I have a need for results – visible improvements; palpable advances; tangible gains – that forced me out of my original occupation and into engineering. I’m not built for Alamo-like last stands. Others were inspired by those heroes’ example, but the heroes themselves went to grisly deaths. If there’s no prospect of positive results, I prefer to watch, preferably at a great remove, and through an electronic device.

     I’d imagine that mine is a widely shared perspective. How many men are willing to labor endlessly in the vineyards but never, ever get a taste of the wine? Yes, there are a few such – emphasis on few. We even honor some of their names: Tadeusz Kosciuszko comes to mind at once. (What’s that? You had to look him up?? For shame!) But their willingness to fight to the death even when defeat is foredoomed is a rare temperament. I don’t share it.

     So I think I’ll just sit back, cackle, and mutter “told you so” for a bit.


     When a lifelong freedom advocate’s energies have waned, what then? He won’t – perhaps can’t – exhaust himself further. There’s nowhere to flee. Join the tyrants? Unthinkable.

     If he has anything left to protect – family; home; other material assets; personal autonomy and latitude – he’s likely to “make himself small:” to hunker down into a strictly defensive posture that has a chance of keeping the tyrants’ crosshairs off his back. He might preserve a “firing position,” from which he can launch an opportunistic round or two as circumstances permit. But he won’t march down the avenue toting a big banner. That would draw attention of the wrong sort. Besides, it reaped nothing but weariness the last 2317 times he tried it, so what would be the point?

     He might nurse a lot of regrets, huddled in his redoubt. A few will be purely practical: i.e., “Why didn’t I buy more 7.62 NATO when it was cheap?” But some will be “had we onlies.”

     Had we only realized what Woodrow Wilson was doing to us...
     Had we only realized where FDR was steering us...
     Had we only seized our chances in 1946...
     Or, for that matter, in the Eighties...
     ...today might be different.

     Or it might not. But hindsight tends to be selective, especially when one is mired in the special sorrow that comes of having waited too long.


     The dance will go on. The Ruling Class Party – Orwell called it only “The Party,” and he was wiser than we knew at the time – will continue to stage WWF-style “cage matches” of Democrat against Republican. The media will continue to ballyhoo each such contest as “the most important election in our lifetimes,” regardless of which “side” the commentator favors. Millions will flock to the polls, firmly convinced that “every vote matters.” Election night parties will be held across the Land of the Formerly Free, with families, friends, and political clubs gathered closely around the Idiot Box as county after county submits returns. But it’s all a sham.

     The true masters of this country will retain their grip. They never stood for election and never will. That’s not how they acquired their power, and it’s not how they keep it.

     They keep it by a system of quasi-hereditary oligarchy, mated to an unelected bureaucracy that answers solely to them.

     America rejected the Kennedys because theirs was too plainly a family dynasty that deemed itself above all law. It might reject the Bushes for similar reasons. But that’s what happens when a family parades its pretensions to royalty right out in front of God and everybody.

     The masters of this country are smarter than that.


     Those inside the power elite must, of course, understand power. Beyond that, they must understand what it takes to preserve and extend it. The key word is loyalty.

     A power elite is like any other sort of institution: it must operate a mechanism for perpetuation and growth – a successful mechanism – or it will die. But family lines are not the answer, at least in America. Rather, the elite must extend its boundaries by acquiring new members who are:

  1. Intelligent and capable;
  2. Power-hungry;
  3. Amoral;
  4. And can be made and kept loyal.

     In one of his books on writing, the great Lawrence Block once demurred to the phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” by countering, “It’s not who you know, it’s what you’ve got on ‘em.” That, in a nutshell, is the rule by which the power elite extends itself through time and space. New members must possess qualifications 1 through 3 above, and must be seduced into qualification 4.

     That last part involves having the initiate “make his bones:” He must do something:

  • Either illegal or universally understood to be contemptible;
  • That serves the interests of the power elite;
  • In a fashion that can later be held over his head.

     That ensures that he understands the system, is willing to serve it, and can be kept loyal to it.

     Many a new candidate for entrance to the power elite “makes his bones” as part of the unelected government: as an aide to an elected official, or a worker in an alphabet agency. Some do so in the private sector, perhaps as lawyers or in the world of high finance. Some commit heinous crimes that do no apparent service to the power elite, other than indebting the candidate to it. Whatever route he chooses or is chosen for him, it must be something he would not want brought to light at a later date. Thus he passes from “postulant” to “novice,” and becomes eligible for duties within the elite itself.

     Doubt it if you like. I’m certain of it. And reflect on this: before his sociopathic / homicidal nature became too obvious, the Republican Party was grooming Ted Bundy for political office.


     The power elite has all the characteristics of a dominant organism within its optimum ecological niche. No other organism – certainly not a patriotic American who loves and understands freedom – can compete with the power elite within that niche. There is only one countermeasure. It’s one too few Americans are willing to embrace:

Destroy the niche.

     Literally eliminate the government as it stands and start fresh. The new basis might be the old Constitution, amended to preclude at least some of the crimes of the last century. It might be a more dispersed form of organization. It might be outright anarchism. But whatever form it takes, it must be utterly cleansed of the power elite and its bastion in the unelected government. Not one stone of that edifice must be left standing on another.

     It won’t happen. There’s a stout, high security fence around the status quo. It’s composed in part of the millions of Americans who are partly to wholly dependent on government for their occupations or sustenance. Those millions will never agree to the amputation of the hand that feeds them. Alongside them are the many millions who believe, whether they express it or not, that “the way things are” is the way things must be. And standing just a little way off are the many – a frightening number, really – whose dearest desire is to gain admission to the power elite and work the system for themselves.

     We have the weapons. We have the numbers. But we haven’t the will.


     I’ll keep writing; it’s what I do. But I no longer expect sociopolitical improvements in my lifetime. I don’t expect the electoral process to produce anything but further shams that assist the power elite in retaining its grip. I certainly don’t have any powerful new ideas for combating it.

     I still have hope; hope springs eternal in this breast. I haven’t “given up.” But I’m going to sit back. Focus on personal priorities and pleasures. And laugh a lot.

     That, too, is what I do. I must remember.

5 comments:

Adrienne said...

I call it "flying under the radar." Having a blog doesn't exactly fit that motto, but I'm such a little guy, I doubt I'm on anyone's radar. And if I am? So what? At my age, I couldn't care less.

HoundOfDoom said...

Hope springs eternal. All it will take is a sizeable minority to say 'phuckit'. An old man like you, all I can do now is keep my powder dry and take every opportunity to fight the system by subverting every government contact that it makes sense for me to.

Manu said...

While I share your outlook regarding the elite, how to destroy them, and the inefficacy of using the voting booth as a weapon against them, I have have considerable more optimism regarding the fight to come.

As I indicated in my post earlier this week on my own blog, the Right has acquired a bevy of what I call "edge fighters." They are morally Grey individuals who, in normal times, we might even decry as evil themselves.

The film Chronicles of Riddick had a great line to this effect: ”In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil.”

We have edge fighters like Vox, Roosh V, Mike Cernovich. Donald Trump may even be one such *within* the power elite who has grown large enough to escape their clutches. These are not nice men. They are perfectly willing to use the Left's own weapons against them.

I can say that I am not far from them, strictly speaking. The end does not justify the means, but in war you cannot long refrain from using a tactic your enemy has successfully deployed against you time and time again. Look at Vox's book, SJWs Always Lie, shooting to the top of political reading on Amazon. Look at Return of Kings, poking a finger in the eye of Progressive media. Watch Leftist Gawker Media crash and burn as we deliberately destroy it.

There are other operations in progress I cannot disclose publicly (though I would be more than happy to discuss them with you via email), but suffice it to say we are striking back, and striking back hard in the 4th Generation Warfare sense. And if this ever becomes a shooting war, we WILL win that one, possibly without even trying.

I will not hunker down. As the fight grows closer on the horizon, I am getting louder, more inclined to battle the Progressive enemy. I risk a lot in doing this, for I have a family, a regular job, etc... I may lose a lot.

But preserving Western civilization is worth it, else what Progressive shithole would I leave behind for my son? Personally, I think it is too late to save America as we know it, but Western civilization can survive.

Still, it is as they say in the Gamergate community: we cannot all fight, constantly, and at this level, forever. Even if you did hunker down on the sidelines -- and I understand your reasons for doing so -- you have contributed a great deal to the cause already, far more than my own meager contribution.

But have faith. Even as we speak, the Gamergate and Sad/Rabid Puppies are destroying another evil Progressive, he/she/it being an admitted incestual pedophile, and having been caught red-handed by diligent Conservatives and Cultural Libertarians. Many of them are going down, trying to defend what cannot be defended.

We were driven to the wall, but we're advancing now.

Richard Raymond said...

And loyalty is what we lost, if we ever had it. To God and what He represents first and foremost, to family especially kids, to the people who came before us especially
the founders who gave up virtually everything.
We allowed ourselves to become disunited and divided especially those in power.
Solzhenitsyn said it best in 1982 at Harvard "we have forgotten God".
America kicked Him out.
We are about to reap the consequences and they are not just temporal but eternal as
well.

chasmatic said...

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily. Any force strong enough to displace the elite will be uncontrollable by the populace. What may start out as a liberation, lifting the yoke of subjugation and servitude, will soon lose its luster as the dead are bulldozed into shallow graves. The same strength that made the purge possible will keep the liberators in power. A new elite will form. Rebellion and civil war did not bring good results for Russia, Cambodia, several African countries. Their stories did not have happy endings.

The United States is indeed unique for breaking away from the country that ruled it and forming a new government that looked after the life - liberty - pursuit of happiness of its citizens. We're not going to see that again.