Uncivil War: A New Phase

     What, you didn’t know that we’re in a civil war? Of course we are. I wrote about it ten years ago. It’s waxed and waned, but hostilities have never ceased. They’re certainly not about to cease today.

     Many of the barrages have been specifically, and more or less exclusively, about Donald Trump. Is President Trump a polarizing figure? Yes. Has he exceeded the Constitutionally specified powers of the president? No. But he’s so… so there! As has been said many times, he lives rent-free in Leftists’ heads.

     The Left’s obsession with Trump could have been a great boon to the Republican caucuses in Congress. Sadly, it’s gone unexploited. That’s made the GOP’s prospects for the midterms uncertain. But the Trump Administration has two more years to go. Moreover, a new phase in the combat is upon us.

     Trump is no longer the sole focus of the Left’s efforts. He’s been joined by Elon Musk.

     Musk has been a major contributor to the Administration’s efforts. At first, that didn’t look to the Left like a targetable matter. But with the midterms upon us, Musk has redoubled his monetary and personal efforts to persuade the electorate to support the MAGA agenda. As he’s currently one of the most admired men on Earth, he’s having an effect.

     That’s drawn the Left’s gimlet eye. Leftists have slandered Musk in many ways. They’re openly exhorting one another, and their people on Capitol Hill, to hurt Musk. The attacks on Tesla dealerships are already well known. Most recently, the venomous Robert Reich has called for Congress to nationalize Starlink and SpaceX as “vital national resources.”

     Few things could have made the Left’s malevolence any clearer.

     For the Republican Party to come out of the midterms still in the majority in Congress will require a get-out-the-vote effort of great magnitude. Democrat loyalists are already energized. An unfortunate percentage of conservatives and Republican partisans have been making dissatisfied noises and “what’s the use?” comments. It’s not looking good. The Trump presidency and the fortunes of Elon Musk would both be imperiled by loss.

     Musk can’t carry the GOP over the finish line by himself. His efforts are great and much appreciated, but he can’t do it alone, even with Robert Reich, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders to assist him with their madnesses. I’ve never been a big booster of the franchise, but if decent Americans are ever going to face a “vote or die” moment, I’d say one is upon us.

     Please don’t let anything prevent you from getting to your polling place on November 3. Congress may have disappointed us greatly these past two years, but is that really a sound argument for letting the Left take it over?

The Disadvantages Of Certainty

     The recent, brilliant movie Conclave has Thomas Cardinal Lawrence, sermonizing to other Catholic cardinals before the inception of the process by which a new pope is chosen, say the following:

     Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.

     Certainty is an enemy to more than just unity and tolerance. It’s also deadly to learning, reasoning, and correcting one’s errors. He who is certain of his beliefs cannot entertain the possibility that he might be wrong. Worse, certainty enables him to commit injustices without a qualm.

     There’s a lot of that going around, just now.

* * *

     My capacity for incredulity is under stress. The reason, as is so often the case, is political. The Left has decided that there’s no point in dissembling any longer: its masters are sending its groundlings to war against us of the Right. Consider the following:

I’m not interested in having a substantive discussion. I’m interested in my political party using its power to damage Elon Musk and his interests as much as humanly possible. Discussion ended the moment Musk did a Nazi Salute and sent DOGE rampaging. Now I want scalps.

— James Raab 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@JamesRaxz) October 23, 2026

     This… person claims to be an engineer. Most engineers are amiable sorts, uninterested in harming anyone. But the above fellow has called for a campaign to damage Elon Musk “as much as humanly possible.” Is it even conceivable that there’s a defensible rationale behind such advocacy?

     What makes such a demand possible is certainty. This man is utterly certain of his beliefs: specifically, that the political Right is malevolent, and that Elon Musk is the chief effectuator of our evil designs. I doubt he’s ever bothered to examine his convictions closely. And of course, his certainty assures him that there’s no point in having a “substantive discussion.”

     That amounts to the cessation of political discourse. Once there’s combat – i.e., active efforts to harm the other side – reasoning ceases. There may be negotiation, but there can no longer be sober discussion of rights, or what constitutes justice. Bullets and bombs don’t speak that lingo.

     But he who elects to go to war must believe that it’s the best of the choices available.

* * *

     Decent people don’t want war. We don’t even want harsh words or bad feelings. But combat is being forced upon us. There may not be a great deal of flying lead, but it will be unsparing even so. Many will be harmed. Civil peace will be set back for years.

     Certainty is the cause. The mass levels in the Left’s structure of political production have been convinced of the Right’s evil. That conviction automatically means war. You don’t argue with Satan; you defeat him. If it’s at all possible, you eliminate him.

     I’ve written about this before:

     An Art Institute of Washington professor recently declared that House Republicans “should be lined up and shot” for their passage of an Obamacare-replacement bill.

     “They should be lined up and shot,” Professor John Griffin posted to his Facebook, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by Campus Reform, even clarifying that he wasn’t being hyperbolic, saying “that’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.”

     In another post made just two minutes after his initial comments, Griffin blasted Republican lawmakers as “a f***ing joke,” then turning his attention to their voters, whom he insulted as running “the gamut from monstrous to ignorant...”

     Can you imagine that John Griffin ever entertains any tiny doubts about his exhortations? He went so far as to say they’re “not hyperbole.” He’s committed. He wants others who share his preferences to commit themselves, to the point of violence.

     That was twelve years ago, Things haven’t gotten better since then. If anything, they’re a trifle worse today, at least if we judge by what passes for political rhetoric from the Left.

     I hate to be so depressing at such an early hour. I’m sure my Gentle Readers would prefer something uplifting. Do try to have a nice day.

Last-Ditch Tactics

     Apologies for the lack of a piece yesterday. I had to go to one of the most forbidding places in America: the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The experience very nearly ruined me. I spent the remainder of the day swatting imaginary insects and chanting old Al Stewart songs. Trust me: you would not have wanted to be around me.

     Anyway, the following brief video is what caught my eye this morning:

ON UCHICAGO CAMPUS: U.S. Senator from Michigan Elissa Slotkin hopes planned political prosecutions of republican leaders will scare young conservatives from getting involved in politics. @ElissaSlotkin https://t.co/p7NBJpDcQW

— The Chicago Thinker (@ThinkerChicago) October 17, 2026

     In the realm of political competition there are only three levels of interplay:

1. Competing with ideas;
2. Competing with ad hominems;
3. Competing with intimidation and violence.

     Of course, a peaceful society would prefer that the competition remain focused on ideas. When ideas butt heads and one proves better than the other, it can become policy with general assent. Life can continue undisturbed. But the enabling condition for competing with ideas is that each side must agree to concede should its idea lose the battle. This in its turn requires that all sides agree on an objective standard for assessing ideas’ comparative performance.

     We haven’t seen those conditions agreed to in America for a long time. The animus that characterizes American political rhetoric, while not unprecedented, makes it plain that competition with and through ideas is “off the table.” Instead, vituperation rules the exchanges. Barrages of insult, often descending to slander, are the greater part of what the general public hears.

     But the ad hominems level isn’t stable either. To prevent deterioration to the level below that, there must be agreement among all the participants that no one will cast the first stone. The politicians and their hangers-on can flail one another mercilessly by day, but they must revert to amiable drinking buddies by night.

     A side observation: When we of the hoi polloi speak of the Establishment, it’s often that enemies by day / pals by night coupling that we have in mind. Such an Establishment can present a surface appearance of competition and opposition while maintaining a quiet collaboration aimed at “not rocking the boat.” But such arrangements are not eternal. If one party becomes sufficiently determined upon hegemony, it can descend to true combat.

     The stones began to fly with Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential election campaign. Many were the stories of deliberate disruption of Trump rallies, often involving violence. In the aftermath, investigators such as James O’Keefe unearthed the organizers and specialists in incitement. Now and then an act of violence made the evening news, leading private citizens to wonder what was becoming of the Republic.

     We were slipping from the ad hominem level to the intimidation and violence level. The Left had decided that it simply must hold onto the power it had accrued with the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. Trump threatened to overturn too many established, longstanding agreements between the Democrats and the Republicans. Only God knew what would happen to the D.C. cocktail party circuit.

     After the election, many citizens noted increases in disturbing indicators: Mad Maxine Waters’s public fulminations; prominent Republicans and conservatives being harassed in restaurants and other public places; occasional “egging” of cars and houses; AntiFa / Black Bloc attacks on conservative and free-speech rallies. We started getting nervous. There was no way to know how bad things might get. “Buy more ammo” became a watchword.

     Well, Miss Slotkin has put us on notice: if the Left retakes Congress in the November elections, the gloves will be off. She speaks only of intimidation tactics, of course; anything else would put her in jeopardy of prosecution. But the subtext to her words is that once we’re back in power, anything goes. Should they elect to employ actual violence, Leftist activists will receive a measure of protection, just as did the disruptors and intimidators sent forth to harass the attendees of Trump rallies.

     This is the sort of piece I least like to write. But necessity spares no one. Certainly it has no special regard for an old crank from Long Island.

2026’s Most Inconvenient Question

     In the philosophical realm, arguments about meaning can go on forever. Meaning arises from interpretation, which makes it a personal matter rather than something that can be pinned down once and for all. But average persons don’t spend a lot of time in the philosophical realm, Ayn Rand’s exhortations notwithstanding. By and large, we deal with one another on the objective plane. In that plane, the meanings of the words we use must be agreed upon with a high degree of specificity.

     Consider just how awkward and irritating communication with others would be, were we all to take Humpty Dumpty’s attitude toward words:

     'As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—'
     'Certainly,' said Alice.
     'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
     'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
     Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
     'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
     'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
     'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
     'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

     The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are surely familiar with the Left’s tactic of redefining common words to give them wholly new meanings. The manipulation of language for political purposes is among their favorite ways to avoid actually confronting an issue. It’s frustrating and maddening, which is why it works. Communication is impossible between two persons who give different meanings to common words.

     But this is the Year of Our Lord 2026. The hour has come in which the Left’s unwillingness to give words specific meanings can be turned against them. It has arrived in the form of a question the Democrat Party cannot answer:

What does it mean to say “I’m a Democrat?”

     Like it? I thought you might.

* * *

     The domination of electoral politics by two major parties has many negative consequences, but it does provide one convenience: to attain political power requires alignment with one major party or the other. For power-seeking purposes, if you’re not a Hatfield, you must be a McCoy. And the Left is utterly consumed with power. Therefore, it has focused on capturing the Democrat Party and bending its stances to serve a hard-Left agenda.

     The men who determine the platform and tactics of the Democrat Party are focused on getting their candidates elected. Those strategists naturally want there to be more Democrat voters than Republican voters. All else is a sideshow. What their victorious candidates will do with their offices after being seated is almost completely irrelevant.

     This has given rise to a “Big Tent” pseudo-philosophy in which – by the decisions of party leaders – it’s unnecessary for any two persons who claim to be Democrats to agree on anything. All that matters is that they vote for Democrat Party nominees. What do those candidates stand for? Never mind that; just pull the “straight ticket” Democrat lever and go home.

     That makes “What is a Democrat?” answerable in only one fashion: “He votes for Democrat Party nominees exclusively.”

     Do you doubt this? Then read this article:

     Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin closed his party’s summer meeting in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 15 by calling the Democratic Party a “big tent” and telling members to stop applying litmus tests to one another. The speakers who followed him over the next hour demonstrated how much room that tent is being asked to cover.
     Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe told members to stop using factional labels at all. Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) claimed to be part of the “economic patriotism wing” of the party and laid out a policy agenda. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who sits on the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that progressive candidates must be careful not to hand Republicans ammunition.
     Martin, closing a three-day meeting that also adopted the party’s 2028 presidential nominating calendar, framed the argument around the size of the party’s coalition.
     “We don’t strengthen our party through stricter and stricter litmus tests,” Martin said. “You do not build a majority by constantly looking for reasons to throw people out of it.”
     He traced the point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which he said brought together big-city residents, small-town Americans, rural Southerners, northern labor unions, and working-class families. That coalition also included “people who have been pushed to the margins, including religious, racial, and ethnic minorities,” Martin said, and the party welcomed all of them into the Democrats’ “big-tent party.”

     I find it particularly illuminating that Martin cites FDR, as that president governed in a fashion diametrically opposed to his party’s 1932 platform. Yet it was that platform that got Roosevelt elected.

     Here is what Roosevelt said when confronted by that disjunction:

     The broken party platform, as an object, had a curious end. Instead of floating away and out of sight as a proper party platform should, it kept coming back with the tide. Once it came so close that the President had to notice it. Then all he did was to turn it over, campaign side down, with the words: "I was able, conscientiously, to give full assent to this platform and to develop its purpose in campaign speeches. A campaign, however, is apt to partake so much of the character of a debate and the discussion of individual points that the deeper and more permanent philosophy of the whole plan (where one exists) is often lost."
     At that the platform sank.

     [Garet Garrett, The People’s Pottage]

     This makes the question “What is a Democrat?” effectively unanswerable.

     Say, remember when Matt Walsh was asking various Democrats and Leftists “What is a woman?” They didn’t care for it much, did they? Does that suggest anything to you, Gentle Reader?

* * *

     I just looked back over this mountain of drivel and was appalled. It quotes Lewis Carroll, The Epoch Times, and Garet Garrett in a single Liberty’s Torch piece! Amazing! And probably never to be repeated… well, at least this year. But the point remains salient. There is no way to distinguish a Democrat from a non-Democrat other than by the lever he pulls in the voting booth.

     Given that distinction, is it fair to ask a Democrat “What are you voting for?” Or is it merely cruel? And to what or whom is the matter of most use?

     I may return to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a nice day.

A Word About Parliamentary Systems

     There aren’t many polities structured as is the United States. Most other First World nations have parliamentary systems, which vary from the American Constitutional model in several important ways:

1. The legislature is elected at irregular intervals.
2. The executive branch is not elected; the dominant party or coalition in the legislature determines the control of the executive.
3. Within limits, the executive determines when elections will next occur.
4. All members of the executive have seats in the legislature.

     The progenitor of modern parliamentary systems was England of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Note that its descendant, the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, lacks a written Constitution. Long ago I read a claim from a British commentator to the effect that the lack makes British parliamentarianism “superior” to the American system. His argument was that a written Constitution “can be an impediment to doing what’s needed.” I have no idea if that commentator is still alive; if so, I’d like to ask him if he feels the same today.

     Parliamentary systems are friendly to small parties. That’s because there are no national elections; the voter votes only for local officials and his member in the legislature. Thus, elections tend to concentrate on local issues. Unfortunately, there are national issues, especially in a nation which lacks Constitutional guarantees of individual rights and limits on government. So it matters very much, as you’ve probably already guessed, who controls the national executive.

     In the practical realm, such a system will have two major parties, just as does the U.S. Those major parties will differ sharply in their policy prescriptions, just as do the Democrats and the Republicans. Yet in practice no major party will exercise complete control over the national agenda, whatever it may be, because it will need to form a coalition with one or more minor parties to achieve control of the executive.

     Those minor parties can be terribly difficult to control, even after their legislators have agreed to form a coalition with a major party. They know that they can bring down the executive by defecting. That gives them outsized political power – and that gives the major parties a strong incentive to find ways to dampen the influence of minor parties that are regarded as particularly fractious or unruly.

     So political dominance in a parliamentary system requires a coalition and mutually agreed suppression of minor parties regarded as unacceptable. This is an important political influence in Europe today. The reason is an effect similar to what’s happening in America: the major parties and the coalitions they build have demonstrably failed their peoples. Thus, new parties better attuned to popular sentiment are on the rise – and the major parties want nothing to do with them.

     The best observable example of this is Germany. Two parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), have dominated German governance for decades. But those parties, both of which are Euro-socialist, have largely lost the allegiance of German voters. The Alliance for Germany (AfD) has attracted so much support that, were free, fair, non-fraudulent elections to be held in Germany today, the AfD would outpoll the CDU and the SDP combined.

     But the AfD is explicitly nationalist. It’s also far less socialist than the older parties. That has thrown the ruling class of Germany, and indeed much of Europe, into a panic. Without German participation in and support of the European Union (EU), that union would dissolve. Continent-wide policies would cease to bind. Establishments throughout Europe would totter and fall.

     So the CDU and the SDP are straining to assemble a coalition whose sole purpose is to exclude the AfD from the selection of the German executive branch. They’re pleading for support from other European powers as well. Their sotto voce appeal is to stability. Whether German voters value stability more than national policies that strengthen Germany and ethnic Germans is uncertain.

     Analyst and commentator Haretina Kukuri, whom I admire greatly, has this to say:

     The CDU governs with a partner that blocks the reforms it needs. The SPD governs with a partner that demands them. Both leaderships are under internal fire. Neither can deliver anything, and neither can walk away, because there’s nowhere left to go.

     BUT if the AFD rules then we are talking about a divided Europe. They are against Europe as a union.

     Clearly, Haretina views that unfavorably. In a reply to a comment, she adds this:

     [B]e careful what you wish the AFD will take us some decades back

     Would the dissolution of the EU, a “mock,” pseudo-parliamentary federation of European nations headquartered in Brussels, whose policies have inflicted a great deal of damage on the Old World, really “take us some decades back?” “Us” being Germany and / or Europe, that is.

     I’d like to say that “German voters will decide,” but there’s a strong possibility that their preferences will be overridden by Germany’s courts, or ballot manipulation, or a continental “super-coalition” unprecedented in European political history. It’s happened in these United States. German nationalists must not imagine that “It can’t happen here.”

A Little Peace On The Side

     [The following first appeared at the old, much lamented Eternity Road site on September 12, 2006. I’m reposting it as a memory refresher, for everything discussed below still pertains to political discourse and the Left’s tactics today.
     The Left’s approach to hammering its lunacies into the public mind has been highly consistent. It’s had remarkable success, especially at inducing decent persons to self-censor. Yet all its tactics are founded on lies and vilification. We must challenge them on everything they say, especially their absurd notions about “social justice.” Nonsense has no place in serious discourse. – FWP]

* * *

     In its attacks on the Right, the Left frequently employs the notion of "code words:" phrases of innocent appearance that conceal sinister intentions. For instance, we have this from two prominent Embarrassments-at-large to the United States Congress:

     Politicians know this trick well. In 1994, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., likened tax cuts to racial epithets, saying, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. They just say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" Later that year, Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., used similar language to describe the Republicans' Contract With America: "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile; they're worse than Hitler." [statements made during the debate over the Contract With America]

     Ann Coulter, the great conservative provocateuse, characterized such rhetoric thus:

     When arguments are premised on lies, there is no foundation for debate. You end up conceding to half the lies simply to focus on the lies of Holocaust-denial proportions. Kind and well meaning people find themselves afraid to talk about politics. Any sentient person has to be concerned that he might innocently make an argument or employ a turn of phrase that will be discerned by the liberal cult as a "code word" evincing a genocidal tendency....

     Vast areas of public policy debate are treated as indistinguishable from using the N-word (aka: the worst offense against mankind....The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob. Truth cannot prevail because whole categories of thought are deemed thought crimes. [From Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right]

     This use of the "code word" notion as a sword is generally understood among persons of conservative and libertarian inclinations, but less attention goes to the Left's use of code words as a shield: a screen of attractive but irrelevant concepts deployed to prevent critical examination of something they favor.

     Consider the following, found at the head of this Web site:

     Finding peace in this world we live in seems like a daunting task. We watch as our own government is unmasked to reveal it's naked aggression, it's use of torture in the name of freedom and it's unholy alliance with corporate power and right wing religious extremists. Where are they taking our nation and and do we as a people even care anymore about peace, social justice and truth?

     Ignore the strange grammar and punctuation if you can. Ponder rather the implications of the statement, whose maker is undoubtedly in favor of "peace, social justice, and truth"...by her own interpretation, anyway. Read the most recent half-dozen of her posts and try to determine for yourself what her definitions of those things would be.

     They surely sound good, though, don't they?

     "Peace" by the norms of the liberals usually means surrender to socialist and communist insurrections, which they call "reform movements." "Social justice" by their lights means the erection of ever-larger transfer programs and laws that offer preferential treatment to their favored mascot-groups. "Truth" to a liberal...well, an Eternity Road reader is more than capable of judging for himself. But the terms themselves carry so pretty an aura that virtually no one is willing to compel their elucidation. So liberals get to hide their true intentions behind them: spinelessness before the march of totalitarians and thugs worldwide; exploding government spending and the ceaseless proliferation of laws that infringe upon freedom of speech, association, commerce, and the rights of private property; and the negation of objective standards by which statements of fact might be deemed pertinent to an issue and subjected to critical evaluation.

     Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek was especially harsh about the pseudo-concept of "social justice." Justice, he pointed out, refers to two things:

• A state of affairs in which each individual has that which is his by right;
• A process invoked to investigate situations alleged to be unjust and to correct them as necessary.

     The two meanings are tied together inextricably. A justice process cannot function to any advantage unless one can determine the just state of affairs toward which it must strive. But to determine that endpoint, one must concede that it once existed in reality, or that it would have existed except for an injustice that prevented it. This is impossible except by defining the rights of Man and specifying them for the particular persons in the controversy at hand. Thus, it is inherently an individualist premise; it cannot be "socialized" except by destroying the objective basis for the very thing it seeks to protect.

     Of course, socializing everything in sight is what the Left is all about. In liberals' ideal world, every imaginable human action is either compulsory or forbidden. There would nominally be "laws," but there would be administrators and commissions -- staffed wholly by liberals, of course -- with unreviewable plenipotentiary power to interpret those laws. Elections and legislatures would become meaningless; infinite power would rest in the hands of persons whose decisions could not be challenged, and who could be removed from their thrones only by death. That's the precondition for all "progress" by these "progressives'" lights.

     But for anyone to perform that analysis aloud must be prevented. It would give the game away in a rather final manner. So rather than campaign for infinite power for liberal mandarins, they prattle about "social justice," and hope that no one notices the opposition between the first word and the second.

     The thickness of the miasma that steams from such rhetoric -- accusations of "code word" employment by persons on the Right; deployment of "code word" defenses to avert critical analysis of the notions of persons on the Left -- makes it all but impossible to find a route back to wholesome, constructive discourse. Worse, calling a liberal on it is a glove hurled in his face. The fundamentally decent ones mostly lack the insight to see what their rhetoric really means. The indecent ones cannot abide the imputation that their favorite tactic is a tip to their dishonesty. Which suggests that the Era of Code Words is likely to hang around for a long time to come.

Remember The Curmudgeon’s Carbohydrate Aphorism!

     I’ve been saying this for a while – well, yes; I’ve been saying many things for a while – but it seems to need repeating more often than most of my other spoutings:

The Curmudgeon’s Carbohydrate Aphorism:
Keep Thine Eye Fixed Upon The Doughnut,
Lest Thou Pass Unaware Through The Hole.

     Sounds silly, doesn’t it? The sort of farcical toss-off a no-status blatherer would emit solely for its memorability, right? So having chuckled over it, my Gentle Readers can forget it and move on to something that matters. Maybe putting pants on lamb chops or sifting the cat box.

     But no. It’s a reminder that there are reasons for things, especially the things people say and do. When a man says or does something that appears to defy all reason, we mustn’t simply dismiss it as a “brain fart.” It’s imperative that we grant him the presumption of rationality. We must probe for his reasons, not assume that he had none.

     Two days ago, a pompous ass who goes by the name of Thomas Chatterton Williams – many pompous asses sport a family name as their middle name; it suggests a pedigree the rest of us lack – penned an opinion piece for that most self-important of all East Coast publications, The Atlantic:

“Today, like five years ago, a controversial man has been transformed overnight into a one-dimensional saint, marshaled in a culture war that precludes measured thought. Once again, Americans are being asked to genuflect before an idol.” pic.twitter.com/CC1d8FG1Ll

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) October 2, 2025

     The column is behind a paywall. However, the mite of it quoted at Fox News should suffice to convey its substance:

     "In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd’s death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk’s name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents," The Atlantic's Thomas Chatterton Williams argued. "In death, Kirk has become a cudgel."
     The writer claimed that Kirk, like Floyd, was a "controversial man" who had been "transformed overnight into a one-dimensional saint" — being used to fuel a culture war that defies reason.
     "Once again, Americans are being asked to genuflect before an idol," he added.

     Fox contributor Marc Tamasco notes that Williams’s column “sparked online fury.” No doubt. But ought we to stop there?

     The Carbohydrate Axiom suggests that we shouldn’t. It’s only reasonable to assume that Williams foresaw the furor. It’s equally reasonable to assume that he desired it. We should assume that a man intends the foreseeable consequences of his actions, shouldn’t we?

     That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be angry about Williams’s paralleling of a violent career criminal with a decent young man whose “crime” was to talk to college students. Anger is appropriate. But let’s not let that anger stall our thinking processes. Why did Williams set out to provoke us? What was his aim? Even a pompous ass must be assumed to intend what he can easily foresee.

     Anger is a consuming thing. It wears us out, depletes our energy for other undertakings. It also deflects our attention. The combination makes it a lot easier to “pass unaware through the hole”... and a lot more likely.

     Leftist opinion-mongers don’t expect to influence their own devotees all that much. They’re already compatibly aligned. No, it’s much more likely that Williams wrote that column and The Atlantic published it, for the effect it would have on us.

     It’s worth remembering the advice D’Artagnan gave to Louis XIV’s twin brother Philippe, who was intended to replace the Sun King on the throne of France:

     “If you are to rule this great nation, you must learn restraint. Keep cool in battle or in sports. Be angry—but in cold blood.” [Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask]

     Don’t give the Left’s pompous asses what they want from us.

Guidelines For Survival In A Socialist America

     My secret sweetie Adrienne has posted a brief list of points that strike me as exceedingly good advice for the four years ahead:

     An interesting comment over at Gateway Pundit carries quite a bit of truth:

     SURVIVING IN A SOCIALIST AMERICA

1. Assume nothing.
2. Never go against your gut.
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4. Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
5. Go with the flow, blend in.
6. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8. Do not harass the opposition.
9. Pick the time and place for action.
10. Keep your options open.

     Print that list out and paste it to the wall over your computer, or wherever you’ll see it every morning.

Fears

     Many fear. Few are entirely aware of why.

     Three things determine all human action:

• Desires,
• Fears,
• Beliefs.

     These are the motivators. They and they alone animate all our decisions and subsequent actions. They are pre-logical: that is, they form the bedrock of human existence from which reasoning of any sort must begin.

     But the motivators themselves proceed from a still deeper source: our perception of objective reality, which C. S. Lewis called the Tao:

     The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. 'In ritual', say the Analects, 'it is harmony with Nature that is prized.' The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true'.
     This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as 'the Tao'.

     But if the Tao comprises all of objective reality, then it contains more than just what we seek, enjoy, and strive to preserve. What we fear emerges from the Tao, as well. For objective reality is not benevolently disposed toward Man in all its forms and aspects. One of its variable, not-always-benevolent aspects is Man himself.

---

     These days, there is much to fear. Usurpers have captured the federal government of these United States. Their intentions, as far as we can know them, amount to shredding the Constitution de facto and ruling by force alone. Naked power lust undergirds everything they do and have done. Anyone who dares to criticize them is their blood enemy, whom they will destroy if they can.

     But there is this as well: they fear us:

     In the days leading up to the Biden inaugural, the nation’s capital has been turned into an occupied military zone like Baghdad. Armed troops authorized to use lethal force are manning checkpoints to enter and leave downtown Washington, D.C. Green Zone and Red Zone perimeters have been established. Several bridges into the city from neighboring Virginia are scheduled to be closed next week for the inaugural.

     Quoth William Jacobson:

     You don’t need 25,000 armed National Guard troops to protect an inauguration, and you certainly don’t need that and more to protect a mostly virtual inauguration.

     Garrisoning the city in advance of a “mostly virtual inauguration” certainly seems like a fear-driven action. But fear of what?

     There are some possibilities. One is that this is a deliberate overreaction as a show of force to deter anyone even thinking about causing a problem. In a rational world, given the Capitol Hill riot, that would be an obvious explanation.

     But this massive military show of force smacks of protecting against a threat that has not yet been disclosed publicly. They seem to be planning against a military mutiny. That’s how it feels.

     Festung Washington, indeed.

---

     When your nation’s capital is transformed from a relatively ordinary urban zone to a walled, fortified citadel, you no longer live in anything resembling a representative republic. We may justifiably fear what they have in mind – and history speaks eloquently of what tyrants do with the power they seize. This garrisoning of Washington screams that the Usurpers fear the very people they claim the authority to rule.

     We can use that.

     Keeping the Usurpers in a state of fear might help to impede their plans. Festung Washington, though established to exclude us, can also be used to confine them. After all, they and their bureaucrats can’t go everywhere surrounded by a military guard. There simply aren’t enough soldiers to do so. American patriots are ubiquitous – and we constitute a soldiery of our own.

     So we must keep the Usurpers in fear. We must repeat mercilessly that we know the 2020 election was stolen. We must publicize the evidence of their crimes at every opportunity. We must emphasize that we intend to resist their ukases.

We must make every Usurper fear to leave Festung Washington.

     It might have repercussions, especially for those most vocal in the effort. But the game is now about who fears whom, and to what degree. If we can master our fears, we can exploit theirs.

     The Roman imperial army was greatly feared by those whose lands the Empire colonized. Their motto, whether or not it was spoken openly, was Oderint dum metuant: “Let them hate us, as long as they fear us.” They made sure of it, by reliable methods.

     American patriots should not care that the Usurpers hate us. That they should hate us who oppose them and want to see them cast down is only natural; you might say it’s embedded in the Tao. But hatred by itself is impotent. We should care that they fear us – and we should stoke their fears by the most reliable methods.

     Give it some thought.

The Guerrilla’s Tocsin

     What’s that? You think the cautionary sentiments in the pieces you’ve read here are excessive, alarmist, hyperbolic? You say we should calm down? You’re sure “it can’t be all that bad?” Sorry, Gentle Reader. It’s war to the knife, and there are no non-combatants:

     Roger Stone’s wife was attacked by a leftist goon while walking her dog in her neighborhood on Thursday.
     Nydia Stone was attacked so viciously that she was hospitalized and will require surgery....
     “It is true that Nydia Stone was attacked by a leftist on a bicycle in front of their home and that she was already convalescing from a very bad dog bite sustained the week before and reported Broward County animal control. This re-opened a gash in her knee which required a visit to the emergency room,” [spokesman Rev. Randy] Coggins said.

     Do you have a spouse, children, or a home, Gentle Reader?

---

     If you know the term guerrilla warfare, you probably associate it with insurgencies that are too weak to confront their targets in open battle. Historically, that was the principal significance of the term. However, guerrilla tactics can be applied to any combat situation. They’re especially effective against an opponent that has a lot to defend and can’t defend all of it all the time.

     Terrorism is a variant of guerrilla warfare. While the terrorist may have aims that go beyond simply defeating his opponent militarily, his tactics are parallel to those of the “conventional” guerrilla. The terrorist selects a target unlikely to be defended. He musters just enough force to do severe damage and strikes the target by surprise. If possible – it isn’t always – he gets away while his target is still reeling from the strike. The differences between the terrorist and the “conventional” guerrilla are motivational.

     The attack on Nydia Stone qualifies as left-wing terrorism by guerrilla methods. The tactics were as described above. The motivation was and is to terrify major figures in the Right into silencing themselves.

     Strategically, the Left seeks to destroy as many of us as it can, and to compel the rest to go into hiding. For the moment, at least, Leftists cannot do that openly, with the force of the law at their backs rather than against them. Until their strategists are certain that “law enforcement” will not act against them, they’ll rely upon stealth ambushes and vandalism.

     Anyone in the Right with a significant profile could become a target.

---

     As I’ve written before, no one has ever won a war by remaining on the defensive. When there are so many people and things to defend, the terrorist/guerrilla has a huge advantage over his opponent – especially if the defense, such as it may be, is centralized.

     Centralized defense – defensive forces organized along conventional military or law-enforcement lines – will always lose to a diffuse, guerrilla-style threat. That’s the why of terrorism: it inflicts damage on the opponent without incurring open-warfare battles that would allow a centralized defense to use its forces effectively. Even if the damage is relatively slight, its emotional impact is significant. It imbues the opponent with the conviction that no one is safe.

     The Left’s guerrilla tactics have been getting them what they want. Not only are they inflicting damage on the Right, at this time the media are more on their side than otherwise. Successful tactics tend to be emulated. Clearly, they must be countered, swiftly and devastatingly...but how?

     The Israeli approach is to militarize the whole of the populace: “Every Israeli is a front-line soldier.” It’s a grim way to organize a society, but a small nation surrounded by a legion of blood enemies that seek its destruction has no alternatives. Israelis may not be “safe” in the customary sense, but they are armed, ready, and aware of the threats to them individually and nationally.

     Abraham Lincoln spoke of something similar in his 1838 “Lyceum Address:”

     At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

     At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

     The “nation of freemen” of which Lincoln spoke was a nation of armed men. In his day Americans understood that “to be free” means “to be armed.” Men habitually went about with a gun near to hand. They were not inherently violent, but they were prepared for violence. An attacker had to reckon with the high probability that he would lose his life in the attack. Moreover, the man who took it from him would be hailed as a hero who had done his community an important service.

     Sad to say, things are no longer as they were in Lincoln’s time.

---

     We speak all too easily of our rights. We lament what’s been done to them these past few decades. But a right cannot be maintained unless it is defended against those who would infringe, abridge, or destroy it. And too many Americans think that defending their rights – including their right to life – is someone else’s job. But it’s not that way and never has been.

     If we wish to be free, we must once more become an armed society: one in which every able-bodied adult is presumed to be armed, ready to defend himself and others, at all times. Needless to say, our political class dislikes the idea. Armed men, jealous of their rights and aware of the threats to them, would have no truck with 99% of what the political class has done to us this century past. Besides, the attitude of dependency upon “law enforcement” to “protect us” is exceedingly useful to the Establishment. It conduces to the steady increase of the Establishment’s power over us.

     Yes, there will be costs. But no one ever said that freedom comes for free, nor that it can be maintained at no cost. If you don’t think the costs are worth paying, ponder this:

     My wife works for the Catholic Church. Recently, several of the nuns with whom she works have received anonymous threatening phone calls that ran something like this:

     “We know you’re a Republican. Unless you change that, you won’t be voting any more.”

     Such calls have been received by nuns in New York, Florida, and elsewhere. The tocsin is sounding loud and clear.

     Have a nice day.

Recapitulation

     The Fortress is having its entire heating and hot water system replaced today, which will make it a cold, waterless, generally difficult period here. Moreover, the work is scheduled to begin early, just an hour or two from now. So rather than blather in my usual fashion, allow me to present a few links and two highly instructive graphics.

     First, the links:

• Leftists always attempt to exterminate their opposition.
• The pre-criminalization of the President.
• This is who they are. This is what they do.
• American “liberals” are alone in their support for this.
• I’d ask him “what was your first clue?” but...
• The atomization of Americans continues.
• Sit down and shut up, Citizen.

     All good stuff, and all highly relevant to our current situation. But what nails it down are these two graphics, which have appeared at several other sites – enough so that I can no longer remember from whom I stole them:

     And:

     Ponder it all. And do have a nice day.

You Can Unscrew A Lightbulb...

     Can you unscrew a country? A country that’s just been hijacked by a gang of Usurpers who lack all sense of morality and restraint?

     I’ve written many times about the importance to our nation of mutual trust. I keep repeating this powerful quote from the late Benjamin M. Anderson:

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace.

     I mourn when I see the relics, the little reminders of the trust we once had for one another. It was the seldom noticed, never mentioned bedrock on which our forebears built the greatest nation in history. And now we have this, from Larry Correia on Facebook:

     Oh, we are so fucked. Today is nothing. It's probably going to get worse, because we're on a road that I can't see any off ramps.

     Sorry, here comes a rant.

     People are confused and constantly bombarded by conflicting information, some correct, some bullshit, and nobody knows what to believe because nobody trusts the people we are supposed to be able to trust. Then we have a super powerful global media complex that straight up gas lights everyone, and we're shocked the people have lost trust in information sources.

     Then when people have valid concerns, they get mocked, belittled, and insulted. They get gas lighted and told what they've seen with their own eyes didn't happen, and then they're "fact checked" with things that are basically a list of excuses generated by partisans who have zero clue what they're talking about.

     Repeat that daily, for literally every topic, and you get to a point where nobody trusts anybody and we have massive competing groups that can't even agree on basic pieces of relative truth anymore. And social media then rubs that in everyone's face, so we don't feel any commonality with our countrymen.

     But that's basically because we are several different countries crammed into one. As a people we've got two primary philosophies with a bunch of offshoots of those two, except they are mutually exclusive and cannot exist at the same time. So instead we get a muddled mixture of nonsensical bullshit that isn't really either, but is primarily a vehicle that exists to benefit the same people who benefit from our totally untrustworthy information sources.

     Then let's have a global pandemic, make everybody poorer, put them out of work, make everything they would normally do to blow off steam illegal, and once again if they express any concerns about this situation and the conflicting information presented to them, they get insulted, belittled, disparaged, and disrespected.

     Then let's have riots and looting and arson and murder for months on end, where the rule of law appears to be a one way street.

     Oh, and let's have a bunch of scandals with our political betters that tell everybody we have a two tiered justice system, where we're peasants, but our moral betters can do pretty much anything and get away with it.

     All while our information sources obviously lie and conflict with each other and run interference for their powerful friends, but giant soulless mega corporations will straight up destroy regular mundane people if they feel like it.

     And then at the very end of this shitty year, let's have [an] election that is insanely anomalous in a bunch of ways, but let's not actually investigate it in any meaningful manner, and instead let's just insult anybody who is concerned about it.

     Because nothing bad could possibly happen from tens of millions of people believing that their votes will never matter again and the system is irreparably rigged against them in a country with billions of guns and nuclear weapons.

     Whew... And that's just this year, after the last two decades of escalating tensions in a country filled with people who hate each other's fundamental beliefs.

     Which brings us to now... Which is why when buildings start exploding and politicians get beheaded, I won't be in the least bit surprised.

     And I'm usually the optimist. I'm seeing people I would consider boring vanilla normies, not gun culture people, not Trumpkins, not preppers, not even that political, now talking about violence and revolution like those are perfectly normal topics. Twenty years ago that was reserved for us internet gun nuts and taboo crazy talk for everyone else.

     Yeah...we are basically fucked.

     And I say to myself, what more is there to say?

---

     Forget the Constitution. Forget “democracy.” Forget “the rule of law.” These have become “inoperative,” to borrow a word from the Watergate years. They’ve been reduced to passwords: “shibboleths,” if you will, that if deployed skillfully and in the right circumstances, will get a member of the Usurper Class thirty seconds of coverage on CNN. No longer does any vestige of their original meaning inhere in them. There are now only Rulers and Ruled.

     The Rulers have excavated a gulf to separate themselves from the Ruled. It’s intended to be uncrossable. Indeed, there are persons whose sole function is to prevent any of the Ruled from crossing it. Yet a tiny trickle will construct bridges of money and influence that they’ll pull in behind them. The tech barons. The identity-group demagogues. The elite among the talking heads.

     A great and indefinite struggle has begun. Some individuals will maneuver to attain a position within the Rulers: some to slake their power-lust; others merely to secure and expand their personal interests. Meanwhile, the rest of us will strive to remain out from under their crosshairs.

     George Carlin’s analysis will soon reach its ultimate expression in reality:

---

     If there is to be no armed uprising, no military effort to take the country back from the Usurpers, then America is lost...quite likely forever.

     Laws will be passed late at night, sometimes in complete secrecy. Federal agents will be granted ever broader powers to interrogate, imprison, and despoil private citizens. Those of us who want only to be left alone will find any degree of personal privacy difficult to achieve. Those who have a little something to defend will be forced to elaborate, clandestine measures to defend it. Those who are targeted for destruction – a class that includes everyone who has spoken out against the Usurpers – will find it all but impossible to evade or placate their attackers.

     Elections? You can forget about them. The Usurpers have already captured the election mechanisms – the Boards of Election and the Secretaries of State – and they will do whatever it takes to retain iron control of them. There will be no salvation from that front.

     The Usurpers’ campaign to suborn our public institutions, our channels of information and communication, and our educational systems began more than a century ago. It has come to fruition. All that remains are our arms and our willingness to use them...if we’re willing to use them.

     Q: How many politicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
     A: Politicians don’t change lightbulbs; they prefer to operate in the dark.

     And so it will be, unless the spirit of resistance that gave birth to this country should rise afresh.

Nice People (UPDATED)

Two all-important checklists:

1. Nice People Dos:

• Nice people do as the police tell them.
• Nice people are always polite and orderly.
• Nice people conform to the dictates of the law.
• Nice people accept the authority of elected officials.
• Nice people petition peaceably for a redress of grievances – and if denied, they go home quietly.

2. Nice People Don’ts:

• Nice people don’t accuse others of lying or cheating.
• Nice people don’t defy properly constituted authority.
• Nice people don’t condemn those who have wronged them.
• Nice people don’t form mobs and go about demanding justice.
• Nice people don’t tar and feather their oppressors and run them out of town on a rail.

     Remember these lists. There’ll be a test on them later.

---

     A little C. S. Lewis always goes down well at times like this:

     “Come in,” said Dimble in his rooms at Northumberland. “Oh, it’s you, Studdock,” he added as the door opened. “Come in.”
     “I’ve come to ask about Jane,” said Mark. “Do you know where she is ?”
     “I can’t give you her address, I’m afraid,” said Dimble.
     “Do you mean you don’t know it? “
     “I can’t give it,” said Dimble….
     “What do you mean?” he asked. “I don't understand.”
     “If you have any regard for your wife's safety you will not ask me to tell you where she has gone,” said Dimble.
     “Safety from what?”
     “Don't you know what has happened?”
     "What's happened?"
     “On the night of the riot the Institutional Police attempted to arrest her. She escaped, but not before they had tortured her.”
     “Tortured her? What do you mean? “
     “Burned her with cigars.”
     “That's what I've come about,” said Mark. “Jane–I'm afraid she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That didn't really happen, you know.”
     “The doctor who dressed the burns thinks otherwise.”
     “Great Scott!” said Mark. “So they really did? But, look here...”
     Under the quiet stare of Dimble he found it difficult to speak.
     “Why have I not been told about this outrage?” he shouted.
     “By your colleagues?” asked Dimble dryly. “It is an odd question to ask me. You ought to understand the workings of the N.I.C.E. better than I do.”
     “Why didn't you tell me? Why has nothing been done about it? Have you been to the police?”
     “The Institutional Police?”
     “No, the ordinary police.”
     “Do you really not know that there are no ordinary police left in Edgestow?”
     “I suppose there are some magistrates.”
     “There is the Emergency Commissioner, Lord Feverstone. You seem to misunderstand. This is a conquered and occupied city.”

     [From That Hideous Strength]

     If Dimble were an American citizen alive today, he would be speaking of Washington D.C., our nation’s soi disant capital city. That story ended with a Divine intervention. We might not be so lucky.

     God does help those who help themselves, don’t y’know.

---

     Yes, I’m in a bad mood, if so mild a phrase applies to a state of mind that contemplates mass assaults and bombings of government facilities nationwide. The presidential election was stolen. Two elections for United States Senate have been stolen. Other elections, for other offices, were probably stolen, though the ones I’ve just mentioned have received all the coverage.

     The last vestige of legitimacy provided by electoral mechanisms has been ripped away from government in these United States. And our would-be conquerors demand that we sit quietly and accept it.

     Many will do exactly that, especially as the police have shown a demonstrable partiality toward the conquerors. The events of yesterday make that perfectly clear. And nice people always do as the police tell them.

---

     Political authority in these United States has dismissed the constraints of the Constitution for many decades. Nice people, unwilling to make a fuss, have gone along with it. Some have adjusted their behavior. Others have found ways to “play the angles.” Still others have “gotten into the game,” maneuvered for control of the levers of power, and have used them for their own purposes. After all, in America the political game is “open;” anyone can play.

     The dynamic of politics and the nature of power have caused political authority to move into ever more concentrated, ever more ruthless circles: circles utterly devoid of nice people, though some of their denizens are adept at faking it.

     Those non-nice people have a terrible weapon to use in our subjugation. It’s a weapon we have put into their hands: our niceness. They’re banking on Americans’ love of peace and order. They hope and expect that our niceness, and what it demands of us, will keep us from mounting any but a shallow resistance to their usurpations.

     Given the events of November 3 and January 5, it’s time to invert the checklists in the opening segment: i.e., to stop being nice people.

     God forbid we should be twenty years without a rebellion. What country can preserve its liberties if the rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? – Thomas Jefferson

     It’s been a lot longer than twenty years.

     Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved of any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. – John Locke

     Verbum sat sapienti. Oh, and do have a nice day.

     UPDATE: Have a few words from Ragin' Dave:

     You shut down people's speech. You commit blatant fraud during the election, and when people try to deal with that the right way (i.e. through the courts) the courts dismiss the lawsuits either because of "standing" or by saying "Well, too late for you to file this now!" You've taken away the soap box, the ballot box and the jury box.

     In the meantime, the Left gets to run rampant, burn down cities, attack people on the right, literally attack them in public, violate the law multiple times over, riot at the drop of a hat, and what happens to them? Nothing. Not a damn thing....

     Did the powers that be think that we the people weren't watching?

     Possibly. More likely they're counting on our remaining passive and accepting subjugation. Either way, all the chips are in the middle of the table now.

After The Fall

     "For centuries Galactic civilization has stagnated and declined, though only a few ever realized that. But now, at last, the Periphery is breaking away and the political unity of the Empire is shattered. Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where the historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say: 'This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.'
     "And they will be right, though scarcely any will recognize that Fall for additional centuries."

     [Isaac Asimov, Foundation]

     The destruction of a political entity as large as a contemporary nation-state is not a discrete or “digital” event. It’s a process that stretches over years, sometimes decades. During that process, great forces contrive to present an appearance of normality and “everything under control,” even as still greater forces work to hollow the edifice and render it susceptible to toppling. when the final collapse arrives, many are shaken by its “suddenness.” Many more pretend to be, though they were aware of the process, and its probable terminus, all the while.

     I have come to believe that the fall of the constitutional federal republic called the United States of America began some decades ago. Despite America’s appearance of world-bestriding power, the process probably started well before the World Wars, no later than the Wilson Administration. What we’re witnessing now, as a corrupt Congress prepares to certify the takeover of the federal executive branch by America-hating insurrectionists while a corrupt judiciary looks on indifferently, is something akin to Cheyne-Stokes respiration. There may still be life in the patient, but the odds are great against its return to true vitality.

     Some will attempt to resuscitate the patient. Others will do their best to prevent them. Most will watch in helpless bewilderment, baffled at how the greatest sociopolitical experiment in human history could have come to this. And yes, afterward a semblance of normal American life will continue, for most if not all.

     Not many will be aware that the process began long ago. It could have been halted at its inception, had our forebears had a modicum of foresight and the willingness to act. But lack of awareness of a terrible fact doesn’t affect the fact itself.

---

     I’ve only just learned of this development:

     WASHINGTON (AP) — Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.

     Trump’s supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.

     It’s a typical, scurrilously Left-slanted Associated Press article. Nevertheless, it leads with an important fact: military forces are being deployed to prevent any protest of the stolen election. Note that nothing of the kind happened when Antifa / BlackBloc forces assaulted pro-trump celebrations in Washington four years ago. The insurrectionists are maneuvering to prevent even the appearance of resistance to their coup. They must feel a need to preserve a facade of “the consent of the governed” against any suspicions to the contrary.

     The District of Columbia is but a few steps from transforming itself into a walled city, a citadel in which the power elite are secure against the outrage and protests of the hoi polloi. The Establishment surely desires that outcome. The use of soldiery to prevent the massing of opposition is the penultimate stage of their coup. The final stage is the disarming of the citizenry: a stroke the usurpers have already announced as their intention.

     As many others have already observed, the Founding Fathers would be shooting and erecting gallows today. But they would have started doing so long ago.

---

     This morning I am gripped by a terrible foreboding. I’d hoped that President Trump would have a clinching move to play, a rabbit out of the hat that would set the coup at naught and bring its plotters to justice. It appears that no such move is in prospect. Certainly we can expect nothing from our cowardly jurists, who would rather watch the nation burn than accept any hazard to themselves. But then, what is left, other than a mass uprising by We the People?

     Will a great mass of We the People confront American soldiers armed with military grade weaponry and pre-assured – quietly, no doubt – that any casualties to “rioters” will be quickly and cleanly swept under Washington’s voluminous rug? If so, what would follow? How many are willing to stake their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the possibility of replevin from this blatantly stolen election?

     To you who plan, in the face of all the disincentives, to go to Washington tomorrow and confront the usurpers and their Myrmidons: I salute you. I hope there are millions of you. I hope your numbers so intimidate the usurpers that they flee in terror before a round can be chambered, much less fired. I pray that it won’t cost you everything you hold dear.

     But that, sadly, is a hope against hope. The usurpers have pushed all their chips to the center of the table. They have come too far, and have nowhere to retreat; they must win or die. If the mass murder of American patriots is required to preserve their gains, then the mass murder of American patriots is what will be.

     Stay tuned. And pray.

A Resolution For 2021 And Beyond

     Shamelessly stolen from Bookworm:

     That’s a New Year’s Resolution I’m sure I can keep.

For This Time Of Tumult

     The Feast of the Nativity is two days away. Most people “prepare” for it by shopping. We do things a little differently here at the Fortress...but then, I suppose you’d have expected that.

     Amidst the shopping frenzy of the pre-Christmas weeks, there’s the Sturm und Drang about the theft of the presidential election. Make no mistake about it, Gentle Reader: a number of earthly powers, apparently including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of these United States, conspired to ensure that Donald Trump would not get a second term in the White House. As the presidency is the most powerful post in the First World, they who have stolen it undoubtedly intend to use it to advance their interests against us the hoi polloi. However, the swag they coveted might yet be snatched from their grip, so stay tuned.

     It’s got a lot of us on edge, with good reason. Many fear a reign of terror by usurpers hostile to every American value and tradition. That they were willing to steal a national election in so bald-faced a fashion tells us how determined they were and are to have their way with us. As has already been said by others, the Founding Fathers would be shooting by now. They’d be stacking corpses like cordwood.

     Where, then, is mental comfort to be sought? Where can we find respite from our anger and our fears?

     Perhaps not in any Earthly refuge. America has always been that refuge. That our land should fall to the tyrants and exploiters was unthinkable before this. Now, with the prospect visibly upon us, leering through our gates, where are we to flee?

     Should we flee, we would be pursued, doubt it not. That’s what those who seek absolute and unlimited power do. But the point is moot, for there is nowhere to flee. All the frontiers of old have been closed. We must either submit, or stand and fight.

     In either case, we will need sustenance, especially moral and emotional sustenance. The Christmas season can provide that.

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     Permit me, please, a tangential digression.

     Among persons not charged with any offense under the penal statutes, I can think of no one I revile more than the late Saul Alinsky. However, I must concede that he had strategic and tactical insights of importance. He proffered them to those who adhered to the Marxist revolutionary philosophy he advocated, but they are of utility to us as well. One of them is of particular importance at this time:

     Power is what you have, and what the enemy thinks you have.

     Match that to another thought about the nature of power over others. Wherever, whenever, and by whomever it originated, it is a sovereign remedy to fear of what the political usurpers might have in mind: their power consists almost entirely of our willingness to concede it. Were we to stop conceding it – in other words, refuse to accept their claim to it – we could go about our proper business in something approaching tranquility.

     “The State is based on threat,” said Robert Anton Wilson. The threat, of course, is that unless we submit, our rulers will exercise coercive force to bend us. Police, guns, courts, prisons, and so forth. They work tirelessly to make us think of that threat in Tyrannosaurus Rex terms: gigantic, terrifying, and unstoppable. Yet it is not so. Compared to us, they are few and weak. Were we to deny them the power they claim merely by refusing to submit, they would be helpless.

     Think about it in numerical terms: there are approximately 6 million persons in the direct employ of the federal government. Imagine that every last one of them is armed and ready to be deployed against us. But there are approximately 100 million armed private American citizens. Moreover, those armed Americans have been alerted to the ascension of evil and are ready to act should the occasion warrant. Thanks to the protections of civil privacy that remain, the usurpers cannot know who among us might fire upon them...or when, or where. Henry Bowman had the arithmetic right.

     The usurpers cannot afford to be overbearing. A significant attempt to abridge our rights would provoke the largest and bloodiest insurrection in the history of the world. When it was over, every one of them would be dinner for crows. They can try further salami tactics, and I have no doubt that they will, but any major incursion against Americans’ rights would be the end of them. They’re evil, but they’re not so stupid that they’re unaware of the size of the deterrent they face. The demonstration planned for January 6 will remind them.

     If we remain armed and ready to act, and if we can keep the usurpers aware that we’re watching them closely, we can keep matters stable. So it’s reasonable to be confident that a major stroke against our rights won’t be coming. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

     Here endeth the digression.

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     Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
     Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.
     The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

     [Isaiah, 40:1-3]

     Georg Friedrich Handel chose those verses from the Book of Isaiah to open his famous oratorio The Messiah for a reason. They are the clearest and strongest of all the Old Testament prophecies of the coming of the Savior. Moreover, they say, quite plainly, that He who is coming will be God. Not a temporal ruler, a commander of armies or a giver of laws, but the Ruler of All Things. The classical Hebrews who dismissed the Redeemer because He was no temporal king, not a warlord come to free Judea from Roman rule, missed Isaiah’s most important point.

     And surely Jesus of Nazareth could not have been a temporal king:

     [W]hen God came to earth there was no room in the inn, but there was room in a stable. What lesson is hidden behind the inn and the stable? What is an inn, but the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the residence of the worldly, the rallying place of the fashionable, and those who count in the management of the world’s affairs? What is a stable, but the place of outcasts, the refuge of beasts, and the shelter of the valueless, and therefore the symbol of those who in the eyes of public opinion do not count, and hence may be ignored as of no great value or moment? Anyone in the world would have expected to have found Divinity in an inn, but no one would have expected to have found It in a stable. Divinity, therefore, is always where you least expect to find it.

     If in those days the stars of the heavens by some magic touch had folded themselves together as silver words, and announced the birth of the Expected of the Nations, where would the world have gone in search of Him? The world would have searched for the Babe in some palace by the Tiber, or in some gilded house of Athens, or in some inn of a great city where gathered the rich, mighty and powerful ones of earth. They would not have been the least surprised to have found the new born King of Kings stretched out in a cradle of gold and surrounded by kings and philosophers paying to Him their tribute and obeisance. But they would have been surprised to have discovered Him in a manger laid on coarse straw and warmed by the breath of oxen, as if in atonement for the coldness of the hearts of men. No one would have expected that the One Whose fingers could stop the turning of Arcturus would be smaller than the head of an ox; that He Who could hurl the ball of fire into the heavens would one day be warmed by the breath of beasts; or that He Who could make a canopy of stars would be shielded from a stormy sky by the roof of a stable; or that He Who made the earth as His future home would be homeless at home. No one, I say, would have expected to find Divinity in such a condition; but that is because Divinity is always where you least expect to find it.

     Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the greatest of American Catholic preachers, never delivered a more telling stroke than in those few words. When we seek power, whether for ourselves or to act for us, we look to palaces. We look to the high and puissant of this world, those who wield weapons capable of destroying an enemy or bending him to their will. We never think to look in stables.

     But there is no enduring power in palaces, nor in the men who inhabit them for a little while. Their time is brief. They fall and are forgotten like Ozymandias’s statue. All that truly endures is God Himself: He whose mortal form was born in a stable, whose first resting place was a manger.

     On Friday we shall celebrate once again the Feast of His Coming in the flesh. Take heart, for He is with us always, just as He said to His Apostles.

     Even unto the end of the world.

Bitter Winds, Bitter Words

     I am paradoxically an admirer of the short fiction of the late J. G. Ballard. Paradoxically, because his stuff is so downhearted. The endings of his stories are quite reliably negative; his protagonists are always anti-heroic. Yet his imagination was wide and versatile, and his prose has an undeniable elegance. As I am deficient in those qualities, I envy him. I study his oeuvre for hints to how I might improve my own work.

     But I prefer positive, upbeat stories: stories in which good people defeat bad people, and good values prevail over bad ones. So for me, reading Ballard is a bit like taking a purgative. I know I’m not going to like the process even if I expect to be better off once it’s behind me.

     Now and then, we in the Right must adopt a comparable attitude.

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     The Democrats’ coup against the Constitution was meticulously planned and masterfully executed. They knew which stages must precede which others, and how to time the sequence so as to minimize the danger of defeat. The whole constitutes an invaluable lesson in how to suborn a republic.

     They made sure that the institutions that might have thwarted them had been brought to heel well before the final strokes of their campaign. The news media had already fallen to them. The schools and the entertainment industry were secured by colonization and propagandization. They suborned the organs of officialdom that might have denied them victory – i.e., boards of election, prosecutors’ offices, secretaries of state, and the courts – through electoral chicanery, intimidation, and miscellaneous “conventional” forms of corruption. Thus, when it came time to steal the 2020 presidential election with avalanches of phony ballots, they had no other barrier to surmount.

     We in the Right must summon our will, swallow our gorges, and study their campaign – not to mimic it, but to defeat it when our opportunity comes for vengeance. Assuming, that is, that such an opportunity should ever come.

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     As I’ve said before, to comprehend an enemy’s intentions it is vital that we reason backwards:

• From tactics,
• To strategy,
• Thereafter to objectives,
• And finally to motives.

     For it is almost perfectly “obvious” that The Democrats do not intend that Joe Biden be president in reality:

     Joe Biden is not meant to govern....

     Biden was nominated because the Democrat establishment thought he was the only one of the original field of two dozen or so who had a chance of winning against Donald Trump. In that the DNC was correct. All the others vying to take on Orange Man Bad were either too inexperienced and unknown or too far to the left of the party, and so would scare the horses of the centrist American electorate.

     It was tactically critical that Biden be the nominee. But the Democrats’ strategy dictated that he must not campaign – that the Biden for President campaign be almost nonexistent. Information about Biden, his declining mental health, his family – especially his son Hunter – and his depth of corruption as a political insider had to be suppressed, at least in the major media. The alternative media could be dealt with through “deplatforming,” imputations of low motives, and scorn from “on high.”

     The objective was to win the presidency, not to make Biden president. But what point is there in winning the office with a candidate so manifestly unfit for it? Arthur Chrenkoff has some thoughts about that:

     Joe’s much-suspected advancing dementia has been painfully exposed over the past few months through a series of misstatements, gaffes and ramblings on the campaign trail (such as it was).... With the issue of physical health and mental acuity of our leaders – and God knows, being a president requires a lot of energy and brain-power – now slowly sipping into the respectable mainstream media discourse, the ground is being slowly laid out for such questions to be gently asked and gently answered in due time of the Commander-in-Chief. They won’t be vicious, personal attacks; it will all be done with love and concern for the ailing Joe, and with all the gratitude from thankful progressive Americans for his long service and his crowning achievement of ending the four-year national nightmare that was the Trump presidency. Farewell, happy warrior.

     Add a giant sarcasm tag. And really, what other explanation could there be that now, with the election secured, the media are finally reporting on Biden’s fading mental acuity and the several scandals tied to him and his family?

     The objective was to win the presidency. Biden was only a figurehead suitable for obtaining control of the office. The motive was twofold. Yes, power for the Democrats was certainly part of it. However, protection for their lawbreakers and malefactors was equally important. With a Democrat in the Oval Office, they who conducted a treasonous, Deep State-driven coup against President Donald Trump can breathe easy at long last.

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     Bitter words? Yes, they are. But bitter winds are blowing. Unless by some miracle the state legislatures of the contested states should set the balloting aside and select their own electors for the College, all that will remain to prevent a successful theft of the 2020 presidential election is the use of force. That doesn’t look likely from where I sit. Too many people have too much to lose.

     Some are hoping that President Trump will declare martial law and decree a fresh election under new, more fraud-resistant rules. He might. Certainly the country would be better served by such a move than by permitting the Left to get away with its thievery. However, it would set a precedent with grave implications. I don’t think I’d care for the way it would cloud future presidential contests.

     As for the other possible use of force – armed insurrection by a massive wave of pro-Constitution Americans – it seems unlikely, but we shall see. Stay tuned.