Before I launch into the coming tirade – and it’s gonna be a doozy, Gentle Reader, so bear with me – allow me to express my gratitude to Co-Conspirators Linda Fox and Colonel Bunny. They’ve manfully kept this place hopping while I commiserated with myself and lamented the follies of a nation that’s now one Renaissance Man short of salvation. May we have a round of applause for those worthies, Gentle Readers?
This time I’ve spent (mostly) away from commentary has led to a restoration of clarity, a sharpening of borders, and an increase in contrasts, all to the effect of seeing what’s there to see rather than what I’d like to have seen in its place. Most important of all, it’s reminded me of a key truth, one that altogether too many on the Right have ignored...if they haven’t willfully dismissed it as “not in our interests.”
No, I’m not going to state that key truth baldly, right up front. You might read it and say, “Well, if that’s his point, I can turn to the sports news now.” Anyway, it deserves a foundation, and I shall therefore lay one for it.
It “should” be “obvious” (and I really have to make that a macro) that to destroy is far easier than to create. It “should” be equally “obvious” that there’s a lot more destruction than creation going on in America in this year of Our Lord 2018. But we have that nasty habit of averting our eyes from such things. We say “it’s not my problem,” or “I can’t do anything about it, so why get exercised?” And there is a grain of truth in both those self-exculpations: proportionately speaking, few individuals are personally responsible for the chaos being wrought as you read this. Also, most of us are reasonably well insulated from it.
But what does it mean when black-clad, masked thugs mass in city streets with the overt intent to inflict harm upon peaceable others? What does it mean when the “forces of order” – in the usual case, municipal police – do nothing about them? And what does it mean when the peaceable others almost unanimously refrain from violence in self-defense? What state of society is characterized by those three conditions?
There are historical precedents...oh, excuse me, I forgot my lessons for a moment there! It’s wrong to bring up Weimar Germany and the rise of the Third Reich, isn’t it? It’s wrong to mention the Sturmabteilung and Mussolini’s Blackshirts. There’s some sort of satirical “law” about that, isn’t there?
Fuck that noise.
The “NeverTrump” community includes a great many members of the Punditocracy who style themselves “conservatives.” It might comprise a majority thereof. And that community is contemptuous toward President Donald Trump and scathingly condemnatory of those who support him, with particular venom allocated to commentators who do so. The president’s smashing defeat of the “inevitable,” “invincible” Hillary Rodham Clinton hasn’t moved them a nanometer. Neither has his exemplary performance of the responsibilities of his office since January 20, 2017.
Ace reminds us of their attitude prior to the election:
Trumpism exists at odds with conservatism, and the party as reconstituted in 2017 must be one built up around conservative ideals of limited government, free trade, an internationalist foreign policy, and an unqualified rejection of identity politics. In short, Republicans of all stripes must be made to acknowledge and accept that Trumpism is an experiment that failed. That’s the price of admission, and it’s a modest one given the great costs associated with sacrificing a winnable race for the White House.
Their attitude, its expression infinitesimally gentled since then, continues to this day. Kurt Schlichter has issued a devastating counterblast:
The problem is not people with criticisms of Donald Trump – he’s not an ideological conservative, so we need to keep him focused. It’s the people who hate the Normals who now use the GOP as their vehicle for representation. They should depart. We’re seeing a great sorting – to put it in terms millennials can dig, think of a Harry Potter Sorting Hat that says, “Hmmmm. You won’t fight hard to defund people who are killing babies, think it’s cool to diss the flag at football games, are happy about non-submissive conservatives being silenced by liberal tech companies, write stuff no one reads, and have strong opinions about Star Trek. Yes, you are Never Trump. I know you want to be GOP, but you are a Democrat.”
It was comprehensible that many on the Right would be uneasy about Trump before his nomination. His personal character flaws were being trumpeted in the streets, he was considered a guaranteed loser in November, and he had yet to fulfill any of his pledges. I was dubious about him, and I admit it freely. But the GOP nominated him.
After Trump secured the nomination, you’d have thought that self-styled Republicans and conservatives would rally around him, if only in the name of supporting the “lesser evil,” one who had not yet betrayed an oath to the Constitution or corrupted a political office, and who might never do either. They did not. They worked for his opponent. Some openly prayed for his defeat.
Since Trump’s election, he’s turned in a performance that would have Ronald Reagan on his feet and applauding wildly. He’s cut into confiscatory federal taxation on the middle class. He’s restored traditional levels of economic growth. He’s reduced unemployment sharply, by the most meaningful of metrics: labor force participation. He’s made strides toward a reduction of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. He’s gradually bringing Red China to heel. He’s put the European members of NATO on notice that the free ride is over. He’s jettisoned the NAFTA treaty and is working toward improved North American trade policies.
In short, he’s doing what the members of our political class so rarely do: he’s making good on his promises. And despite this wholly unprecedented break from the betrayals of the century behind us, the NeverTrumpers of the Punditocracy are furious about it.
Despite? Excuse me, did I really type that? I meant to type because. The ersatz conservative NeverTrumpers of the Punditocracy hate President Trump because he’s proving to be a great president. And Gentle Reader whom I love almost as much as my cats, you know it.
Why else would they go on as they do?
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the “key truth,” stated baldly:
This is unpalatable in the extreme, yet another reason for not stating it plainly at the outset. It’s why I wrote about the difference between morals and standards. It’s also why many of my Gentle Readers didn’t grasp the point.
You look upon black-clad, masked thugs in the streets inflicting violence upon peaceable others, and when the suggestion is made that those peaceable others should respond with even greater violence, you recoil. You say “we mustn’t descend to their level.” I know the impulse! I’ve succumbed to it on other occasions. But it’s inappropriate to current conditions, especially as the “forces of order” have leagued themselves de facto with the thugs.
You read venomous denunciations of President Trump from persons who’ve achieved nothing lifelong except a newspaper or magazine column, and you flinch...but you recoil. You can’t imagine campaigning to have those fifth columnists unhorsed by a popular campaign. “We mustn’t descend to their level.” Again, I know the impulse. But it’s wrong for the context of the day.
You learn of the most important communications channel in history, the Internet, being censored de facto by its major powers, and you grow angry...but when the suggestion is made that those powers be subjected to legal constraints, a kind of First Amendment for the Internet that applies to private as well as governmental actors, you recoil. Here I really know the impulse, because I know how a power once granted to the State can be used to our detriment when our foes retake its corridors. But the survival of some semblance of freedom demands that we overcome the impulse and act in our own interests. Shoot first, in other words, and straighten out the paperwork later.
The context requires it.
I have a tendency, to which I surrender all too often, to speak indirectly rather than to state my case plainly. I did so in this brief piece. A few readers got the point, I suppose.
Today there has been no indirection, no speaking in parables, no averting the blunt talk. Today there shall be clarity to the very last iamb, dactyl, trochee, spondee, or anapest. And clarity, as I was reminded not long ago, benefits greatly from concision.
I’ve written on several occasions of the war analyst’s foremost inferential principle: Reason from tactics to strategy to objectives to motives:
“Of all the musts and must-nots of warfare, this one is paramount: you must conceal your motives. Unless he is insignificant in comparison to you, once your opponent knows your motives, he’ll be able to defeat you. He’ll probably even have a choice of ways to do it.
“You must move heaven and earth, if necessary, to discover your opponent’s motives. His tactics will be determined by them. If his motives change, his tactics will follow. There lies your opportunity, if you can get him to adopt tactics unsuitable to the conflict. Of course, he could try to do the same to you.”
“What’s the countermeasure?”
“Constancy. Refusal to let yourself be diverted. Of course, that can be a trap, too. Motive is partly determined by objectives. If your adversary’s situation changes but his objectives remain the same, he could find himself committed to paying an exorbitant price for something that’s become worthless.”
“And that’s the time to stop playing with his head?”
His grin was ice-cold. “You have a gift.”[From On Broken Wings]
The Left, the Democrat Party, the Legacy Media, and the NeverTrumpers of the ersatz Right are at war with decent Americans – with us whom Colonel Schlichter calls Normals. It’s a war of conquest, of utter and permanent subjugation. Their near-term objective is to thwart the Trump agenda, and if possible to have him removed from the Oval Office. Their long-term objective is to ensure that hegemony over the American political order is never again threatened by such an upstart.
I’ve done the first part for you. It’s time for you to complete the exercise.
Boy, do I feel inadequate to this task!
ReplyDeleteHowever - one of the things that I'm involved in might have some value - I'm working with the radio guys, and hope to set up a DMR - a Digital Mobile Radio connection. It gives the ability to communicate at long distance - no matter what the weather or magnetic conditions.
With just a Technician license, and a relatively inexpensive setup, you can communicate 1:1, or with larger groups, under the radar, so to speak. If I can get up and going with this, it might be a quick and easy way to communicate without drawing too much attention to our activity. Although the Deep State COULD monitor this, they are unlikely to waste the time and energy doing so, as it is such a small subset of the communications network.