A Comparison I’d Like To See

     Alice Smith’s comparison that stimulated yesterday’s piece was a clever one. It illuminated a particularly absurd fallacy, which made it useful for an old crank who needed something to write about. But equally important comparisons are being made, silently and invisibly, all the time. It’s worth bringing a couple of them out into the light and torturing them until they talk.

     As it happens, I’ve been trying to lose weight these past few months. The diet gurus will tell you that the great enemy of any weight-loss attempt is hunger. The dieter must be ready to cope with it, for a sudden surge of it can derail his intentions. Ironically, that requires that he keep his house full of foods of all kinds.

     The comparison the dieter must never make is between eating something and eating nothing. When hunger strikes with full force, not eating is nearly impossible. Insisting on it transforms his effort from a campaign of self-improvement to an exercise in self-denial. Most of us are not capable of denying ourselves for a long stretch of time. So the comparison must be among edible alternatives: the pickle versus the cream pie.

     Now, that’s a fairly clear and straightforward sort of problem. In that regard it contrasts sharply with the next one, which arises biennially and bedevils well-meaning American voters at each occurrence: Which of these useless lying parasites should I prefer to his opponent?

     A lot has been thought and said about this problem. Nearly all of it has been misguided. For there are comparisons to be made that They Who Pour The Very Best Butter over the gears and cams of our society don’t want us even to think about, much less contemplate seriously.

     The comparison of real interest, of course, is this one:

Is either of these clowns preferable
To no one at all?

     Politicians and those who gain from their machinations are terrified of that comparison. It threatens their whole game. So they palm the card and pray that no one will notice that we’re playing with a deck of fifty-one.

     After a long enough period, the political class becomes blind to the possibility that We the Sorely Tried might dispense with them. They forget that there are alternatives of any kind. This is the way it’s done, this is the way it’s always been done, this is the way it must be done… The progression is so smooth as to be unconscious.

     In 2015, an alternative arose with compelling force. It blindsided the political elite so completely that they had no idea how to defend against it. And so, in the quadrennial elections of 2016, we got a real choice for the first time in many decades. The hubris of those who derided the candidacy of Donald Trump was made plain in endless video clips. No one has asked them since then whether they might have been a bit presumptuous.

     Many in the Right are disappointed with the Trump presidencies. It’s understandable, though most of the reasons lie outside the Administration. And the political Establishment is trying its best to capitalize on that disappointment. Establishmentarians are hoping for a return to their preferred state of undisturbed kleptocracy. If they play their hand well enough, they might just get it, and woe betide these United States thereafter.

     But that only raises the comparison I’d like to see Americans making in large numbers: the one that asks How about None of the Above is Acceptable?

     I don’t know of any electoral district, however small, that has None of the Above on its ballots for any office. But isn’t that the most important of all options? The one that asks “Can you do without this office and the powers it exercises for a couple of years?”

     The very idea terrifies the political professional, from the power-hungry bloviators on their stumps all the way down to the street-level campaigners who go door-to-door trawling for votes. Politics is their life, their love, and their living. They could never do without it. Therefore it becomes imperative that they persuade us that we cannot do without them.

     Tolkien captured the mindset:

     ‘[Sauron] supposes that we were all going to Minas Tirith; for that is what he would himself have done in our place. And according to his wisdom it would have been a heavy stroke against his power. Indeed he is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind.’

     Perhaps we who understand and love freedom can reorient the national conversation to include that unspeakable comparison. Suggest it to others dismayed by the status quo, instead of merely denouncing the latest elected thief or hawking the dubious virtues of some aspiring power-seeker. Both are likely to betray us. It would only be the umpteenth time.

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.

Agenda Giveaways

     Sad to say, these days there aren’t many questions that don’t have a political component. Politics has crept into places where it never was before and – in the great majority of cases – doesn’t belong. I’ve written about the reasons for this in the past, so I shan’t bore you this morning by repeating myself.

     Among the most egregious cases of politics where it doesn’t belong are those that pertain to science and / or technology. Some of the political players manage to disguise their agendas better than others, which is why I’m writing on this subject. It’s vital that Americans who want to see clearly be equipped to detect a political agenda in an issue that “should” rest on purely rational considerations.

     One I have in mind this morning, courtesy of Glenn Reynolds, is the nature of electrical power generation and distribution. The U.S. has three distinct power distribution regions, or “grids.” One services East of the Rockies; one services West of the Rockies; and one services the state of Texas. There are people who see this as a problem. Why? What advantages would accrue to American electrical power consumers were the three grids to be integrated?

     This article in IEEE Spectrum discusses the subject – in a politicized way. It’s fairly long, but if you have the stamina I suggest that you read it for yourself rather than take my word for its orientation.

     The article is in the form of an interview, but it doesn’t take long to detect that putative interviewer Steven Cherry is entirely in agreement with interviewee Peter Fairley that the grids “should” be integrated. It doesn’t take much longer to detect Fairley’s agenda. All one must do is note the occurrences of words and phrases about highly politicized pseudo-issues:

• Wind farms
• Climate change
• Renewable energy
• “move off of our largely carbon-based sources of power”
• “accelerate the shutdown of coal-fired power”
• “U.S. administration’s connections to—devotion to—the coal industry.”
• “the oil and gas industry is definitely also a major political backer of the Trump administration.”
• “states have their own public utility commission that has to approve new power lines.”
• “making renewable energy look less competitive.”
• “the Trump administration...violates DOE’s own scientific integrity policies”
• “recognize the huge challenge that climate change poses and to change the way we live and to change our energy system”

     At several points Fairley asserts that “the financial and reliability benefits are substantial” and that the integration of the three grids would “pay for itself.” Yet he adduces no evidence to that effect. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado did a study that says so; that’s enough for him.

     Notice also that there are questions that interviewer Cherry never bothers to ask:

What’s the downside to integration?
What would it cost?
What disruptions would it involve?
How long would they last?
What new vulnerabilities would it create?
Who would be affected and to what degree?

     The failure to ask those questions is the deadest of dead giveaways. Cherry is no more a disinterested interviewer than Fairley – a journalist, not a scientist nor engineer – is a disinterested student of the subject.

     The subject is interesting and complex from a technological standpoint, but even more so from a political perspective. A single, nationwide grid would naturally come under the control of some federal agency. How would that control be used? What constraints and what oversight would apply? Would power producers have equal, unbiased access to the grid, or would there be wheeling and dealing to exclude disfavored competitors? Would the state governments have any role? Who would be held liable for anything that might go wrong?

     This has been an agenda-detection study in the public interest – the real public interest, in which the public is presumed interested in what might be done to it, under what rationales, and who would make out like bandits as a consequence.

     Beware him who offers you something for nothing, something that’s all upside and no downside, something “too good to be true.” For that, too, is a giveaway.

One Trustworthy Commentator

     Thank God there’s still at least one:

     Please watch it, listen to it, and reflect.

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     I’ve been going on about this for some time, but mine is a very minor voice. Tucker Carlson reaches a much larger audience, a vast swath of America…but who is listening to what he’s saying? Who is contemplating what’s being done to us? Is anyone thinking about resistance?

     Here in the Vampire State, no one has risen up. No one of any stature has publicly screamed that the state lacks the Constitutionally licit authority to do what it has done. New York Metro, the fringes of which extend to my own abode, resembles a grave in its immobility. The fear of this virus, which has proved to be no more dangerous than the flu – and to the same age and health cohorts, at that – is too pervasive, and too intense.

     We have shackled ourselves out of fear of a microorganism.

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     There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [i.e., God]. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them. – C. S. Lewis

     Fear is the aspiring tyrant’s best tool. Fear of violence; fear of disease; fear of the infirmities of age; fear of the future; fear of one’s neighbors; fear of one’s countrymen; fear of faceless others in distant lands. He who can make you afraid can make himself your master…and your fears need not be of him.

     But fear is not an objective aspect of reality. It’s an emotion: a reaction to some perception, whether real or imagined, that we find threatening. We can choose not to cower in fear but rather to face the perceived threat and take up arms against it. Yes, even a microscopic virus.

     Note that no government, no agency, and no politician can actually relieve you of the threats that make you fear. Only you can do that. Indeed, that’s the most ironic facet of our current condition: were Americans merely to practice enhanced hygiene, and protect our most vulnerable relatives from contagion, we would be out the back end of this Wuhan virus business in a few weeks, with no more fatalities than we’re suffering under this lockdown regime and with herd immunity, to boot. Instead we’ve surrendered our rights as Americans for absolutely no gain – and that’s to say nothing of the economic devastation the lockdown has wrought.

     But our politicians value our fear far more than our lives, our rights, or our economy. They’re doing their best to keep our fears stoked high. It’s what aspiring tyrants have always done:

     The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken

     And we’ve fallen for it.

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     I can’t go on any further about this. It makes me too angry. But I’ll propose a Gedankenexperiment for those of you who still have spines:

     Imagine a public figure – any public figure. Imagine that that public figure were to proclaim the following desire, openly on national television:

“I want you to be afraid.”

     Would you respect him? Would you kowtow to his decrees? Or would you become angry, perhaps angry enough to raise your own voice in opposition to him?

     Yet keeping you afraid — almost literally paralyzed by fear – is the principal aim of the tyrants who demand that you remain immobile in your homes. At this juncture, can you reasonably doubt it?

     Time for a closing quote:

     “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert

     Have a nice day.

The Second Coming Of The Edith Wilson Administration

     Now and then, the masks come all the way off. Now and then, the Left makes plain what it has in mind for us. And now and then, a major Leftist bastion blurts it out in an unforgettable fashion:

     In the annals of political history, the week leading into Biden’s 30-point margin of victory on primary night in South Carolina will likely be recorded as the one that ultimately determined the course of the nominating battle. That Saturday night, Biden showed his unmatched power among black voters, and began to dispense with his rivals. But you sure wouldn’t have known it from the guy on the campaign trail.

     Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past—who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics—rather than for anything in his present. It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate....

     Through it all—the fairly awful campaign events and confusing statements and garbled debate performances—the idea of the former vice president has somehow remained consistent, and apparently convincing, as both Trump’s inverse and co-equal. Senator Bernie Sanders may still be in the race, but this is a detail. Democrats have chosen Biden as their vessel for Trump’s defeat, and that choice is the entire point: The vanquishing matters more than anything else.

     Let’s leave aside for the moment the seemingly trivial matter of who and what Biden is at the moment. The core thesis of the essay is that the Democrats would prefer anyone else to another four years of President Donald Trump. Biden is their strategists’ choice not because of who or what he was or is, but because, of all the candidates the Democrats have entertained, he strikes them as having the best chance to win.

     But what if Biden were to win? He’s so patently unfit for office, mentally and physically, that no one with three functioning brain cells can imagine him actually wielding the powers of the presidency. Therefore...?

     Therefore, Biden would not wield the powers of the presidency. A power or powers behind the throne would do so, using Biden as a figurehead for as long as necessary. How long that might be is difficult to determine. It might depend on the identity and character of Biden’s vice-president.

     The historical precedent for this horrifying vision is the second term of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, after his stroke. Wilson became completely unavailable. Completely! No one but Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, his wife, was able to see or speak to him. Mrs. Wilson listened to his Cabinet secretaries, other executive-branch subordinates, and Democrat Party bigwigs. She then went to Wilson’s bedroom and closed the door, to emerge some time later with “the president’s” wishes. No one could access the president himself but Mrs. Wilson and a couple of doctors.

     Even then, the arrangement engendered suspicion, but no one was strong enough to break through Edith Wilson’s “stewardship” of the presidency of the United States.

     That state of affairs lasted a little more than a year. It ended with the election and inauguration of Warren Harding. No one dared to question what had transpired for decades afterward...even though the Democrats would foist another badly afflicted president upon the nation only twelve years later.

     So I have some questions. If Joe Biden were, by some evil miracle, to defeat Donald Trump in November:

• Who would be Biden’s vice-president?
• Who would choose Biden’s running-mate?
• Would the VP be the real power behind Figurehead Biden, or would it be other, unelected persons?
• How long would Biden be allowed to live?

     Those questions are forced upon us. They compel us to look at the upcoming election in a light notably different from previous contests involving a first-term president. Trump has a strong position, but no politician’s position is impregnable. Current national difficulties will be laid at Trump’s feet, fairly or otherwise. Persons will “come forward” with accusations about Trump’s dealings, both during his presidency and beforehand. The major media will have their say – and we can foretell whose side they’ll be on. And we must expect at least one “October surprise.”

     As the title of Alex Wagner’s article says quite openly, the Left needs two things from Joe Biden:

• Stay alive;
• Win in November.

     All else is being plotted out behind a closed and securely locked door.

The Power Of Crisis

     If everything’s a crisis, where’s the crisis? -- Arthur Herzog

     Think about that word: crisis. Think about the times in your own life when you became persuaded that you were facing a crisis. What sort of emotions and motivational predispositions went along with that sense? “The wheels are coming off, lives are at stake, there’s no time to lose, we’ve got to act now!” Right? Pretty serious stuff, eh what?

     Activists’ promotion of a crisis is aimed at inducing exactly those reactions in their targets. Of course, there are requirements for the successful promotion of a crisis. In recent years very few candidate-crises have been promoted by persons or agencies that could meet those requirements objectively. Nevertheless, crisis-shouting has so much power that there will always be some persons – some innately gullible; others avid for a feeling of importance or significance; still others merely desirous of a little excitement – who will respond affirmatively to the cries.

     Crisis-shouting is a major weapon in the arsenal of the power-seeker. Why else would we have been bombarded with propaganda about world-hunger “crises,” environmental “crises,” homelessness “crises,” energy “crises,” inequality “crises,” global-warming “crises?” Those and many other supposed problems were all to be addressed with big-government solutions. The consistency among the activists’ demands is impossible to overlook.

     As it happens, there’s a new book on the subject:

     Why does government keep growing? Drawing on Mancur Olson’s Rise and Decline of Nations and Robert Higgs’ Crisis and Leviathan, we show how the negativity effect is exploited by journalists, politicians, academics, lobbyists and activists — the merchants of bad, as we call these doomsayers — to scare people into adopting policies that benefit politicians, bureaucrats and special interests while hurting everyone else. Whether you’re absorbing today’s bad news or contemplating the future of humanity, we suggest starting with three assumptions:

• The world will always seem to be in crisis.
• The crisis is never as bad it sounds.
• The solution could easily make things worse.

     And it will be my first physical-volume purchase of this Year of Our Lord 2020.

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     The true crisis – i.e., a state of affairs wherein a great many lives really are at stake, and immediate action is imperative if they’re to be saved – is self-announcing. Its characteristics tend to indicate the nature of an effective, life-preserving response. Therefore, neither the crisis nor the proper solution has any need for promotion or promoters. But that’s insufficient to meet the needs of those who yearn for power, or to feel important.

     In this regard a look back at world conditions two years ago is instructive:

     Consider the U.S. just three decades ago. Our annual homicide rate was 8.5 per 100,000. Eleven percent of us fell below the poverty line (as measured by consumption). And we spewed 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 34.5 million tons of particulate matter into the atmosphere.

     Fast forward to the most recent numbers available today. The homicide rate is 5.3 (a blip up from 4.4 in 2014). Three percent of us fall below the consumption poverty line. And we emit four million tons of sulfur dioxide and 20.6 million tons of particulates, despite generating more wealth and driving more miles.

     Globally, the 30-year scorecard also favors the present. In 1988, 23 wars raged, killing people at a rate of 3.4 per 100,000; today it’s 12 wars killing 1.2 per 100,000. The number of nuclear weapons has fallen from 60,780 to 10,325. In 1988, the world had just 45 democracies, embracing two billion people; today it has 103, embracing 4.1 billion. That year saw 46 oil spills; 2016, just five. And 37% of the population lived in extreme poverty, barely able to feed themselves, compared with 9.6% today. True, 2016 was a bad year for terrorism in Western Europe, with 238 deaths. But 1988 was even worse, with 440.

     The headway made around the turn of the millennium is not a fluke. It’s a continuation of a process set in motion by the Enlightenment in the late 18th century that has brought improvements in every measure of human flourishing.

     Things are so good, and getting better so relentlessly, that the crisis-shouters are tearing their hair out. They’re in urgent need of a crisis, and there aren’t any handy! How on Earth are they to grab for more power over us, or elevate their tawdry little existences to some degree of existential significance? Something has to go wrong, and at once!

     It makes me so sad that I’ve been walking around laughing uncontrollably.

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     All right: yes, there is one crisis to be addressed with dispatch. It affects virtually every English speaking human being. Its prevalence is such that virtually every day I’m tempted to hurl a book across my living room with a scream that “Adverbs never killed anyone!”

     It’s the “on a XXX basis” crisis.

     You’ve surely read or heard this particular verbal fad in recent days. “On a regular basis.” “On a daily basis.” “On a constant basis.” Great God in heaven, people! Use the BLEEP!ing adverb without encrusting it that way: “Regularly.” “Constantly.” “Daily.” It won’t hurt you; indeed, the improvement in the concision of your spoken or written English will be to your benefit. “Forcible writing is concise.” (Will Strunk of The Elements of Style) “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” (George Orwell) Save your syllables and your breath for when you really need them – and as I’ve been feeling an ever stronger desire to strangle someone for saying “on a daily basis” or something analogous, that need might not be far off.

     Once that crisis has been successfully dealt with, I’m certain that Utopia will be on the horizon.

     Happy New Year!

The Engine That Feeds The Golden Triangle Of Corruption

     Loans made by one government to another do not answer to any of the proper conditions of credit. The money lent belongs to the people of the lending nation, not to the officials who grant the loan; and it becomes a charge upon the people of the borrowing nation, not upon the officials who negotiate the loan and spend the money. There is no collateral, and no means of collection by civil action. If the debt is not paid, war or the threat of war is the only recourse. Meantime private production is wrecked; the economy of the lending nation has to meet the capital loss; while the economy of the borrowing nation is loaded with the dead weight of government projects (buildings, armies, etc.) for which the money is spent. It is an infallible formula for disaster.

     [Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine ]

     Many have questioned the practice of “foreign aid” at a time when the United States cannot even balance its own books. They have a point, though it pales in comparison to the shattering indictment of the practice cited above. But as if we needed an additional reason to halt the scam immediately and forever more, we have these observations:

     Foreign aid often serves as a philanthropic-sounding euphemism that masks self-dealing. American elites give other Americans’ money to foreign elites often under the guise of providing it to the people of the recipient nation. In return, American elites — or, in most cases, their immediate family members — profit from business deals in recipient nations with state-sponsored, state-created, or state-favored enterprises. This scenario occurred with Hunter Biden. And given the domestic outrage over Russia attempting to influence U.S. politics, the Biden influence over Kiev surely rankled many Ukrainians.

     Indeed.

     The money that flows through the golden triangle of corruption must have a source, of course. In many a case, the source is American foreign aid. It’s isn’t just foreign autocrats who enrich themselves at that trough, as the Biden psychodrama-in-progress should make quite clear.

     It’s been observed many times and in many places how the application of American dollars in other countries has failed to achieve anything resembling the results routinely observed in America. Even with American experts to oversee construction, roads paid for by American foreign aid often come completely apart with a single change of seasons. Hospitals intended to serve the commoners of the land are staffed by political cronies and relatives of the powerful who draw fat salaries though frequently drunk on the job. Some such “doctors” never treat a single patient. The “medicines” they stock are often just distilled water in convincing vials and bottles. As for schools built with foreign aid...no, please, my stomach hasn’t settled enough for that.

     But local potentates get very, very wealthy. And to ensure that the flow of aid dollars is not interrupted, some of the swag is rerouted to influential American politicians like former vice president Joseph Biden – but discreetly, through a relative like Biden’s son Hunter, so there’s no direct connection an enterprising investigator might find.

     And it’s your money, and mine.

     Inasmuch as foreign aid, whether bestowed as loans of outright grants, is nowhere authorized by the Constitution, why is it that so few persons have even bothered to question the practice? And why is it that when a voice is raised in protest, such as Senator Rand Paul has done, he’s dismissed as a crackpot or worse? Are we still under the spell of Lend-Lease?

     Actually, it’s worse. Every dollar any American ever earns depends for its value on the scarcity of dollars versus the abundance of goods and services. Thus, the very idea that the federal government routinely prints more dollars to pay for its profligacies, thus watering down the value of the dollars we strain to earn and struggle to save, should be a cause for white-hot outrage. But to add to that infamy that billions of those dollars are “lent” or given outright to other countries where they enrich autocrats and their hangers-on should have us peasants checking our guns. That American politicians, their relatives, and their business partners are profiting from the sewer of foreign aid should be the final straw that gets the lampposts of the District of Columbia redecorated with politicians’ and bureaucrats’ corpses.

     So why hasn’t it happened? Anyone? Bueller?

Quickies: Evidence Versus “Presumption”

     To this point in the “impeachment inquiry” sessions, the anti-Trump forces’ “star witness” has been Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Sondland has striven to give the impression that President Trump had decided to “tie” American military aid to Ukraine to investigations by Ukraine into Burisma and its connection to Hunter Biden, son of former vice President Joseph Biden. Indeed, this impression Sondland has been at pains to leave is the sum and substance of the Democrats’ case for impeaching President Trump.

     But yesterday, we heard this:

     And this:

     Between them, Congressmen Mike Turner and Jim Jordan completely destroyed that “presumption.” Yet CNN – with the encouragement of Adam Schiff, no doubt – trumpeted in a headline that Sondland had testified to President Trump’s imposition of a quid pro quo.

     The Democrats’ drive to remove Donald Trump from the Oval Office has foundered yet again. That’s their third failure in three years, by my count. How many more iterations of this envy-and-fury-driven farce will America be subjected to?

     Assuming the Left doesn’t contrive to blow up the entire country before then, the 2020 Presidential election will be a landslide victory for Donald Trump and an epic disaster for whoever the Democrats nominate. Indeed, we might see the first major-party nominee in more than a century decline his party’s nomination. No one with any sense would willingly stand against the most successful, and most unjustly assailed, president of our time.

The Cycle Of Desire

     "In this life no one can fulfill his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man’s desire. Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God." – St. Thomas Aquinas

     I have a hot flash for you, Gentle Reader. It’s in several parts, so please bear with me as I assemble and elucidate it.

     Part One: Man possesses free will. He is individually motivated, and decides on his course of action as an individual.

     Part Two: Desires are individual and arbitrary. That applies even to what we imagine to be “needs.” Not everyone sees them or prioritizes them the same way.

     Part Three: While we possess acute perceptions and the faculty of reason, no power on Earth is capable of compelling us to use them. When it is possible for an individual to absolve or exculpate himself for some misfortune, he is likely to do so regardless of the facts. It is in the nature of things that he will then look for another agency to blame for his unhappiness.

     Part Four: The numbers matter. As Mankind expands, the sub-percentages of Mankind that:

1. Choose to do evil; or:
2. Are insane and do evil out of their insanity;

     ...will increase in proportion.

     Part Five: Those most ardent for power over others are those most likely to get it – and they’re exactly the sort of people who must be prevented from obtaining it. History speaks to this truth with an eloquence and a force that cannot be gainsaid without eliminating all knowledge of history.

     These are well established characteristics of Homo sapiens terrestrialis and the reality it occupies. No scheme, regardless of its overt aim, that contradicts them can possibly work to general betterment. Neither is it possible to eliminate adversity, tragedy, or atrocity from our experiences without eliminating Mankind itself...and let it be said clearly and concisely that I oppose that particular route to Utopia.

     (See also this collection of essays.)

     Wait here while I fetch more coffee.

---

     “My lord?” Fountain murmured from his right side.
     “Yes, dear?”
     “Is Miss Rachel a special person?”
     Sokoloff smiled. “Yes, she is. Very special. She’s a great scientist who’s done wonderful things. She’s helped a lot of people.”
     “What is a scientist?”
     He chose his words carefully. “A person who works to add to what we know.”
     “Why would anyone want to hurt such a person?”
     “Fountain, there are people who want to hurt anyone we could name. There are people who simply want to hurt someone, it doesn’t matter who. We don’t always know the reasons. Sometimes they don’t either.”

     [From The Wise and the Mad]

     Larry Sokoloff speaks an unimpeachable truth in the above: There are people who simply want to hurt other people. Some have reasons...or think they do. Others are aware that their real desire is to destroy, to wound, and to kill. Two such persons committed a pair of mass murders just yesterday, in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH.

     Those were not unprecedented events. Neither were they likely to be the last events of their kind. Once under way, there was only one way to halt them: by the countervailing use of extreme violence against their perpetrators. However, no one in the zones of impact was equipped to do so.

     What do the Five Postulates of the previous section tell you about what occurred and what power-seekers have said in the aftermath? Do they hint at a means of anticipating and completely preventing such atrocities, or do they suggest that the effort would be futile? If the latter, do they suggest a policy by which such events might be more effectively limited than they were in yesterday’s slaughters? What course would a well-intentioned Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch adopt, assuming he is not prevented from doing so by external forces, to ready himself for such a possibility?

     Yes, these are questions we’ve faced and answered before. But just now the power-seekers of the Left are thick on the ground and more vociferous than usual. Campaign season, don’t y’know. So it’s time to reassert the answers with additional force.

---

     Remember the prevalence of agendaism:

     The overarching principle of agendaism is that with the right tactics, the right publicity, and the right "slant," an event can be made to serve any agenda whatsoever, as long as the tactics are properly fitted to the event.

     There are numerous agendaists in public life today. Broadly speaking, any politically active person, whether he's a public official or a private citizen, who is indissolubly attached to his agenda, such that neither reason nor evidence could possibly sway him from it, is an agendaist. Some, of course, are more effective than others, but the defining characteristic is that unbreakable attachment to a set of unchanging political goals.

     Why would anyone be so fixated on a specific set of goals, even in the teeth of contrary reasoning and evidence? Unclear. Perhaps the only answer available is Aristotelian: action to advance those goals is what makes him happy, or what he thinks will make him happy. Always remember The Algorithm:

1. Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
2. Will this technique require you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?
   • If so, return to step 1.
   • If not, proceed to step 3.
3. Do a little of it.
4. Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?
   • If at your goal, stop.
   • If approaching, return to step 3.
   • If receding, return to step 1.

     ...and bear in mind that "what you think you want" is not covered by the above; it's beyond all rational investigation.

     Gun control is an important item on many agendaists' agendas. Never mind that criminals are the least likely persons on Earth to comply with a gun ban or gun registration law. Never mind that removing weapons from the hands of the peaceable and law-abiding cannot possibly bring about a reduction in violent crimes or crimes against property. Never mind that disarming a man renders him helpless before an armed predator. A gun-control agendaist seeks to disarm us peones because he thinks it will make him happy to have done so. You cannot persuade him otherwise.

     Agendaists are like that.

     It was true when I first wrote it. It remains true today.

---

     The title of this piece might have puzzled you up to now. Long time Gentle Readers are aware of my quirkiness with titles. Nevertheless, this one has a sharp focus.

     There are people who simply want to hurt other people. The rest of us – the men of good will – must be prepared to act against them wherever they might turn up. There are people who want to deprive us of the means by which we might do that. We must oppose those people and their gropings for power over us by any and all means necessary. For the latter group is in league with the former: perhaps not consciously but in ultimate effect, owing to the results of The Algorithm as they have run it.

     We desire peace, safety, and public civility. They desire chaos, suffering, and bloodshed...or are willing to tolerate it as long as it will serve their purposes. Each of us decides, acts, and evaluates according to The Algorithm. Note that the mass murderers only appear where we have been forced to go defenseless. By now we should have learned the lesson.

     As for the power-seekers who have allied themselves de facto with those who seek to harm others, there is no imaginable rebuff, however severe, that they do not deserve. Force them to confront our displeasure: publicly, baldly, and in the strongest possible terms. Tell them that the blood of the victims of El Paso and Dayton is on their hands. Forbid them to pontificate or self-exculpate. Weigh in upon them that they possess armed guards, whereas the rest of us aren’t even permitted to defend ourselves.

     The stakes are at their maximum.

Quickies: Saying Yes And Meaning No

     You can confuse a listener by shaking your head while saying “yes,” or by nodding while saying “no.” Your listener won’t immediately know whether to believe what you’ve said or the meaning associated with your head gesture. I’ve done it in a few lighthearted situations, entirely for comic effect.

     It’s a lot more serious when a politician is straining to answer a question so that you’ll hear what you want to hear, while avoiding committing himself – or worse, when he intends the exact opposite of what you think you hear him saying.

     Recently, Ace made an interesting observation about this:

     [Concerning Democrats and many Republicans on Capitol Hill:] Their opposition to open borders is purely rhetorical; they just don't want you to call it open borders, so they can continue playing the game of, "Of course I support the idea of the border, but only the idea of it. Any attempt to make it tangible and enforceable in the real world is just ethnonationalist, white supremacist extremism. But you can pretend there's a border, just as you can pretend the GOP is a pro-life party in its leadership ranks.

     "In our boundless generosity, we will allow you the privilege of pretending that we're allied with you on key issues. But the moment you notice we're actually opposed to you on these principles, you're an Alt-Right Nazi who must be deplatformed."

     This is spot on. I am reminded of a similar observation – I’ve lost the link – about those opposed to the death penalty. The anti-death-penalty activists have lost the legal and Constitutional battle against the death penalty and can no longer oppose it for itself. So their current tactic is to oppose every imaginable method of execution as “cruel and unusual.” So far, the tactic is serving them very well.

     Ace goes on to use a word I’ve only encountered once before, and that was in a Shawn Phillips song:

velleity vel-le-i-ty
noun FORMAL
a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action.

     Another definition calls this "the weakest form of volition (a desire) that could still be characterized as volition at all."

     So, the True Conservatives have a velleity in favor of enforcing the border, as long as any enforcement never detain, deport, or inconvenience a single illegal immigrant. Ever.

     Ev-er.

     Oddly enough, this looks a lot like Obama's immigration policy, except with even fewer deportations.

     Same for cutting spending, same for curbing abortion.

     Oddly enough, this looks a lot like Obama's positions on cutting spending and curbing abortion.

     I guess that's all just a coincidence, though.

     The Fake Conservatives have a lot of velleities they claim to be champions of, but whenever someone proposes actual action to advance them, suddenly they are just full of caveats and cavils.

     Well, yes...except given the quantity of caveats and cavils, it’s hard to believe those “conservatives” have even a velleity about any of those supposed priorities of the Republican Party.

     I could be wrong; it’s happened before. But I don’t think I am.

Covington, The Media, And The Program

     I must have written it a hundred times by now, but apparently it hasn’t yet sunk into some heads:

They who value power over all else:
Will do anything to get it;
Will do anything to keep it;
And will do anything to increase it.

     In other words, the power-luster has no ethics and no inhibitions. He does not recognize the concept of morally forbidden, as that would impede his pursuit of his One True Love. Moreover, his hangers-on will bend over backwards to serve him. The health of the remora, after all, depends on the health of the shark.

     There! Now that I’ve buried the lede about six feet deep, let’s proceed to the meaty part of the day’s fulminations.

---

     I’m reasonably sure I don’t need to explain what I mean by the Covington Catholic incident, so let’s pass on immediately to the core of the thing.

     The media, Leftists in the Punditocracy, Leftists throughout the Internet, and a bunch of Democrat politicians and activists collaborated on a deception: a video clip edited to produce a wholly incorrect portrayal of the incident. Then they used that portrayal as black propaganda:

• Against the assembled group of Covington Catholic students;
• Against white Christians (especially Catholics);
• And against Trump supporters.

     And as you know if you’ve paid attention to subsequent developments, unedited videos of the actual events have revealed their deception for what it was.

     I’ve said to myself over and over that “they’re not stupid.” Yet one could easily think they believed, in this age of the ubiquitous video-capturing cell phone, that they could get away with it. Or is that a step too far? Did they merely think that even if their deception were unmasked a day or two afterward, it would nevertheless be tactically useful? If so, why?

     It took me a while, and a lot of hard thought, but I believe I have the answer. Rather than dump it on you like a truckload of gravel, I’m going to lay out the breadcrumbs I followed to reach it, in the hope that you’ll find them equally illuminating. So empty your bladder, refill your coffee cup, and fasten your seat belt. It’s about to get ugly.

---

     The annual March for Life excites hatred among Leftists like no other political event. It’s predominantly white, Christian, and conservative. It attacks the Left’s supreme sacrament: abortion. And year after year it is entirely peaceful and orderly. Compared to practically any Left-oriented event, it’s a glowing model of what a political demonstration should be.

     Therefore, the Left deems it a high-priority target. With an outspokenly pro-life Administration in Washington, it becomes an even higher priority target. They seethe at the event and strain to defame or corrupt it. But until this year they’ve done no better than to deny it significant media coverage.

     The Left has other targets, of course. The Trump Administration, the steadily blossoming popular support for it, and the New Populist Conservatism have excited its ire. To some extent it shares that ire with the Old Conservative Establishment of institutions such as National Review and the (defunct) Weekly Standard. Over the past two years the Left’s tacticians have learned that they can expect a degree of cooperation from the Old Conservative mouthpieces when an event that stimulates their superciliousness toward Us the Unwashed can be suitably framed. So they remain alert for potential opportunities.

     Along comes the 2019 March for Life, a gaggle of young white Catholics, and a scattering of MAGA hats. The confluence of targets is incredibly juicy, but what can be done about them? Can we send in a provocateur? Who’s available?

     An ideal provocateur would be non-white and presumptively non-Christian. It would be best if he were old and wizened as well, and willing to take a modest risk for the Cause. Hey, that’s Nathan Phillips standing over there with his drum. Let’s see what he can do!

     Phillips wades in. Nothing much happens. But a suitably edited clip can be used to make it look as if the Covington boys encroached on him. It will take time for an accurate depiction of the event to surface and circulate. Meanwhile our media allies can whip up the base, which as we know is fueled by hatred of Christianity, Trump, pro-lifers, and everything traditionally American. Let’s run with it!

     And they do. And for a little less than a day they get everything they want from it. The Internet explodes with fury at the Covington boys, at Christianity, at the pro-life movement, and at the “racism” of President Donald Trump and his Administration. The Old Conservative Establishment farts dutifully chime in with their own condemnations. The doxxing and death threats get into high gear. The Left’s base is satisfyingly energized.

     But here we come to the punch line: Even though the extended videos swiftly circulated immediately afterward give the lie to all this Leftist outrage, the Left’s planners still regard their tactic as having made a profit. They got enough of what their base needs to bolster its allegiance and activism to outweigh the hit on their media allies’ credibility. Besides, they reason, it’s only “our people” who think the media has any credibility left, anyway.

     They will do it again. Mark my words.

---

     Dystopic / Thales’s essay of yesterday nicely lays out the Left’s assignment of roles to its media allies. Whatever they might claim (or posture), the major media are not purveyors of facts. They are not interested in true depictions of important events. That would lose them the love of their Leftist masters, and with it all the “access” their service has earned them over the years. Their task is to spread propaganda: the blacker, the better.

     Black propaganda of the sort depicted here has several aims:

• To occupy and divert the public’s attention;
• To present a fallacious but useful slant on recent events;
• To fuel the portion of the electorate that seeks reasons to be enraged;
• To motivate that portion to undertake further action against the Left’s targets.

     Even if the propaganda has a limited lifetime – and less than a day is very limited indeed – it can still be counted as profitable if it succeeds adequately in those aims. Compare this with the newspapers’ practice of making lurid claims on the front page above the fold...and then retracting them two or three days later with a “correction” on Page A38.

     We are so far gone from a time in which Americans trusted one another to be men of good will, to dispute with facts and reason under the assumption that those are the things that matter, and to hold to the moral absolutes that have underpinned Western Civilization since the time of Christ that I can’t even see it in the rear-view mirror. We have gone from being a “high trust” society to a society in which trust is awarded only after checking the other guy’s bona fides and finding them satisfactory.

     But the Left is pleased. Totalitarians cannot rule enduringly over a high-trust society. The consolidation and maintenance of their power requires that their subjects be more suspicious of one another than of them. Divide et vince, divide et impera.

     With that I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

The Biggest Spanner

     Regular Gentle Readers will already be aware of my fondness for archaisms and other odd turns of phrase. (Be not afraid. I’m not about to say whence again...uh...oh, damn! Sorry about that.) A couple of my favorites derive from English slang, by which I mean terms used “across the puddle” in the Sceptered Isle. One of them of great utility is “to throw a spanner in the works.”

     For those who have never had the dubious pleasure of working on any of the products of British Leyland, a spanner in the English idiom is what we “in the colonies” would call a wrench. Needless to say, one does not leave a spanner “in the works” once the repairs are complete. That would tend to “bollocks them up” rather thoroughly. Merely starting the motor – yeah, yeah, I know the difference between a motor and an engine; it’s the way the Brits talk – would leave one with a substantial “cockup.” It would leave your motorcar as useful as a “damp squib.” It would be totally “snookered.” You might feel “gutted” enough to leave off mechanical work altogether.

     Note the mind-bending assumption embedded in the above example: that there are states of repair in which things “work” – that is, they do what they were designed and built to do – and other states – far more numerous, really; see the Second Law of Thermodynamics if you doubt this – in which they don’t. This revelation underpins all of that arcane discipline we call engineering. The art of the engineer is to apply scientific and technological knowledge to go from a state in which things don’t work to a state in which they do, according to some previously specified set of desiderata, most commonly called the requirements.

     All too often, as an engineer is plying his art, some “tosser” will happen along and “throw a spanner into the works.” The nature of said spanner will vary according to the nature of the project and the intentions of the “tosser.” With all that having been said, we come to my subject for this fine, frigid Monday morning on Long Island, New York: temperature 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

---

     Sarah Hoyt has a fine and impassioned piece up at PJ Media. If you don’t have the time to read it all – say, what are you doing here? — here’s the sockdolager:

     I attended [a science fiction convention] this weekend and a friend lamented that you can no longer be on a panel with anyone without the discussion devolving to politics. And you can barely talk to people in the halls because any topic can devolve into politics....

     It’s time we start reclaiming sanity. It’s time to say loud and clear “No, that’s not political. It’s whatever” (Science, history, entertainment.) “And your claiming it’s political is either bad faith or ignorance. Now let the adults talk.”

     Sarah’s observations got my engine turning. They’re not entirely new, mind you. I’ve expressed similar sentiments about the pervasive politicization of everything. What makes them piercing is how far that attitude has penetrated those realms into which we go to escape politics and other dreary features of daily life. Music. Art. Fiction. Sex. Sports!

     (To the best of my knowledge, chess, bridge, and canasta remain unaffected. Keep it under your hat.)

     Politics and political differences are the “spanner in the works” that’s ruining American society. Until about sixty years ago, ours was a society in which things work. That is: we knew of ways to achieve our desired ends, and when we followed them with adequate fidelity, we got what we wanted, for every imaginable value of “we.” Politics was a marginal pursuit. It didn’t figure into the overwhelmingly greater portion of the ways things work.

     Then the American Left got revved up: “The personal is political.” “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. Subject after subject acquired a political tint. People began to get strident and hostile toward those who disagree with them. Conversations about important matters between serious persons became ever more hazardous. There was no way to know a priori whether it was “safe” to introduce some topic, even in a gathering of friends.

     And one by one, a lot of things stopped working.

     The plague continues to spread. There’s no telling how far it will go, or whether any outcome other than the complete ruination and atomization of society is still achievable. But at least we can still understand what’s being done to us...if we have the stomach to face it.

---

     Politics is not a universally applicable solution to problems of all sorts. Politics is a method: a fall-back method. It is to be used only when everyone agrees:

• On the “requirements;”
• That all other methods of satisfying the requirements have failed;
• And on the “acceptance test,” passing which will terminate the use of the political method.

     In other words, politics is to be used only when no other approach to some highly urgent matter is plausible. The reason is simple:

Alone among all human methods,
Politics inevitably brings strife.

     Politics, you see, is about force. It’s force a short step back from actual violence. It imposes some scheme of things upon all persons, including those who don’t want it, with the threat of punishment to keep the dissenters in line. And force, whether threatened or actual, is the cleavage item that divides the universe of human action into morally permissible and morally forbidden.

     If you fail to understand this, no man of good will could argue with you. You are morally different from the rest of us – and “morally different” is a euphemism for evil.

---

     The Left’s project, the politicization of everything, involves tearing up and rewriting – from the Left’s preferences, of course – the entire edifice of Western thought, right down to its moral bedrock. Toward this end it has striven to infiltrate, colonize, and conquer every institution which has even the slightest relevance to human well-being. And it has made great strides in that direction. Visible manifestations horrify us daily.

     But politics is “a spanner in the works,” the biggest “spanner” imaginable. In every setting except the defense of individuals against predators and the defense of the nation against its enemies, it “bollockses things up.” It leaves whatever it touches completely “snookered.” And they who naively looked to politics as a solution to some situation they were persuaded to regard as a “problem” that must be “solved” often come away “gutted.”

     They to whom the goal is power merely snicker. They use every failure of the political method to agitate for still broader and more forceful politicization. And they succeed frighteningly often.

     It must stop. It must be stopped. And only you and I can stop it.

     Stand your ground. Refuse to bend. And remember what John Wayne said:

Dangerous Services

     We all know about the hazards involved in joining the armed forces, or becoming a policeman or a fireman. Most of us are aware of the risks to which coal miners, oil workers, and commercial fishermen are exposed. Then there are the prison guards, the bounty hunters, the ice road truckers, the high-steel construction workers, and other occupations where the degree of danger to life and limb is greater than that to which a barista is exposed.

     There are, in short, dangerous jobs. Plenty of them, too. It is appropriate that we appreciate and honor those who do them for accepting the risks involved. However, another dangerous service has recently come to light that’s seldom discussed. Rather than deserving accolades, its practitioners deserve the sort of braying, derisive mockery that’s reserved to those who’ve been caught being really naughty.

     I have in mind the practice of insincere lip service.

     The clips and quotes from Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, and others in which the speaker, a Democrat of some rank, has affirmed his fervent support for a physical barrier along America’s southern border are everywhere. Most of them are only a few years old. Each of them exposes a contradiction between the quoted figure’s position then, when a Democrat was in the White House, and his position now, during the Trump Administration.

     The Democrats whose utterances are quoted were obviously insincere. Moreover, their expressed sentiments were plainly not backed up by action. Some of us noticed at the time. A whole lot more of us are noticing today.

     That’s a position no politician wants to be caught in. It tells Us the People far too much about their agendas and their characters: information they’re desperate to deny us. But the Internet, as I and others have said, is forever.

---

     Why did the Dishonorable Charles Schumer, the equally Dishonorable Nancy Pelosi, and the Supremely Dishonorable Barack Hussein Obama express support for a border wall they now stridently oppose?

     At the time of their earlier, pro-border-wall statements, those Democrats were in a pickle. Popular anger over the illegal tide was rising. It was no longer possible for any politician to remain unexpressed on the subject. It had begun to look as if a politician’s future prospects would depend on whether he spoke on it sympathetically to the concerns of the electorate.

     However, it was already Democrats’ strategy to turn a blind eye to the illegal influx. Then as now, they regarded the migrants swarming up from Central and South America as future Democrat voters. Get them in, get them hooked on federal benefits, and encourage them to bring all their relatives. Make sure they know to whom they owe their admission to the Land of Milk and Honey. Collect on the debt at the ballot box.

     But the transformation of America’s demographics could not be accomplished swiftly. The existing electorate was fuming, and the Democrats had an ambition neither party has been able to achieve since FDR and Truman: decades of uninterrupted Democrat hegemony in Washington. So the existing mass of American voters had to be placated somehow, albeit without compromising the overarching strategy. The cheapest approach, as always, was with words.

     Carefully chosen words, the Democrats believed, would suffice to pour oil on the troubled waters of popular sentiment. Such words would buy them time to complete their demographic project. There would be no attempt to act on them, of course. Once Hillary Clinton was in the White House, they could afford to turn away from illegal immigration and focus on their true agenda. So they allowed themselves to speak strongly but insincerely, about the urgent need for a border wall and their support for it.

     But Donald Trump is in the White House, and the Internet is forever.

---

     No one can argue plausibly that the Democrats’ earlier statements about the need for a border wall were sincerely meant. Their subsequent stances, especially the most recent of them, contradict those statements too dramatically to permit such a claim. Their demographic project was all that mattered to them. That’s still the case.

     But the information is immensely valuable to Us the People. The exposure of political mendacity always is. The question remaining is what we’ll do with it.

     Far too many persons are “heritage voters.” According to at least one source, in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt was pursuing a return to the White House on the Progressive “Bull Moose” ticket, a heckler stood up in the crowd at one of his campaign speeches and shouted: “I’m a Democrat! My father was a Democrat, and so was his father, and his father before him!” Teddy replied, “Well, sir, if your father was a jackass, and his father was a jackass, and his father before him, what would that make you?” The somewhat flustered heckler thought for a moment, then smiled and replied, “A Bull Mooser, sir! A Bull Mooser!” History does not record Teddy’s reaction to that reply.

     The Democrats’ coalition strategy, which depends on their hold on various racial, ethnic, and special-interest voting blocs, is key to their persistence as a power at the federal level. It has been extremely difficult for Republicans to penetrate those blocs. But the massive demonstration of the Democrats’ complete insincerity on the foremost political issue of the day might be the lever with which to pry some of them open. American Negroes and legal Hispanic immigrants have suffered economically because of the illegal tide. Should it continue unabated, it will threaten their children’s futures as well. If this point could be brought home to them, it might win the GOP enough new voters to reduce the Democrats to minor federal players for a decade.

     Let’s get behind it and push.

The Satan Trick

     I forget who originated this notion, but it’s been said for many years that the Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing so many humans that he doesn’t exist. In homage to this insight, I’ve christened the ploy of persuading people to not see evil even when it’s in plain view the Satan trick.

     The Left has been trying to pull off the Satan trick for some time now. Just recently, a Leftist addressed me on Gab with a soliloquy about how the Left “doesn’t exist.” It was a thousand words or so of self-serving, hyper-tendentious (and rather paranoid) nonsense, but he probably figured that was the sort of verbal prestidigitation that would work on a wordy bastard (i.e., me). It didn’t, of course, but you probably didn’t need to be told that.

     The Satan trick also appears in somewhat reduced forms. For example, Barack Hussein Obama, inarguably the most anti-American person ever to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, recently gave a speech in which he claimed that the well known story about the disgraceful inaction of the federal government during the Benghazi episode is “a conspiracy theory.” I have no doubt that his most ardent admirers swallowed his proclamation wholesale. But here’s a bit of testimony from Kris “Tanto” Paronto, former Army Ranger and one of the six principal defenders of the Benghazi CIA station on September 11, 2012:

     This is a particularly difficult case of the Satan trick to pull off, as five of those six defenders are still alive and talking. But leave it to Obama, who’s never backed away from a politically useful lie no matter how implausible it might be, to feed such nonsense to those still willing to listen to him.

     On the more immediately political front, we have the “Russian collusion” investigation. This farce has turned up zero evidence that the Trump for President campaign ever had any dealings with the Russian government, much less colluded with Russian agents in an attempt to sway the election or corrupt its results. What it has turned up is tons of evidence that various highly placed officials in the Justice Department and virtually the whole of the office cadre of the FBI did their damnedest to sway the election by a coordinated “leak” strategy and the use of salacious but totally fabricated rumors about supposed Trump misbehavior. Which federal Democrats have admitted that with such results after a year and a half of “investigation,” the thing should be shut down? None of them: from them it’s a constant drumbeat of “Russia” and “impeachment.” This is the Satan trick protracted to the limits of human endurance.

     “What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” has become a tag line of sorts in political discourse. Sadly, there are many Americans who refuse to see evidence laid out plainly before them. Equally sadly, they condemn those who present them with such evidence as “racists” and “Nazis.” The most extreme of them strive to silence anyone who dares to contradict their dogmas. Between those who ponder evidence and those who swallow absurd proclamations as an act of political faith, there lies a gulf nothing can bridge.

     Yet people still ask why they can’t have a calm and reasonable conversation with persons of the other political persuasion. It is to laugh...hollowly, and with many a tear. Except for Satan: his laughter is genuinely jolly and quite sincere.

Does Anyone Remember “Anonymous?”

     Today, concerning the “anonymous” author of the New York Times’s recent op-ed by a self-described “senior administration official,” Byron York writes:

     Anonymity is good marketing. What if the author had simply identified himself? Not only would everyone be able to evaluate his position, they would also look into his background and try to draw connections between his past and his role as self-appointed, in-house Trump resister. Instead, by remaining anonymous, the author — and the Times — have not only avoided scrutiny but have added an irresistible element of mystery and suspense to the story. That means more attention.

     But York concludes his piece with the following:

     We'll know more soon enough. The Times wrote that it granted the author anonymity because his "job would be jeopardized" by disclosure of his name. It seems hard to believe the author truly thinks he can remain anonymous — and keep his job — in the white-hot public attention his article will attract. One way or the other, his identity will likely come out, probably sooner rather than later. And then the story could become even more interesting.

     Indeed. Joe Klein couldn’t keep his identity secret for as much as half a year, and publishers have a much stronger incentive for securing an author’s secrets. The author of the Times piece, if he’s what he claimed to be, will be exposed in short order. When that occurs, we’re likely to get quite a bit of information that was strictly sub rosa within the author’s circle of collaborators.

     Of course, the possibility exists that the piece was a fabrication by someone sufficiently skilled to persuade the Times of his elevated stature, despite being no more than an under-deputy assistant junior attendance trainee in the Department of Thinking Good Thoughts. In that case, we may have a good laugh at the Times’s expense...and President Donald Trump, who continues to make good on his campaign promises and to inspire millions to whom politics had become nothing more than a carnival of impotence married to corruption, will have the biggest laugh of all.

Does A Headline With A Question Mark Imply Its Own Answer?

     You could certainly be forgiven for getting that impression. But in the meantime, such headlines beckon to us in tones of sweet reason that isn’t consistent with the record.

     Flash back to 2009. A number of Republicans, stunned by Obama’s election as President, begin a grass-roots movement to take back their party. The movement gains momentum and, over the next several elections, Republican officeholders find themselves in the fight for their political lives. Except it’s not against Democratic rivals but against members of their own party. Voters took to the polls and long-term incumbents soon found themselves tossed out of office. Sound familiar? It should. Except it isn’t Republicans seeing their party torn apart. This time, it is the Democratic Party, thanks to the Democratic-Socialists. It’s time to get out the popcorn and to sit back and watch what happens in the next installment of “How the Democrats Turn”.

     No one batted an eye when Bernie Sanders, self-described “independent” and hero of democratic-socialists around the country, ran for president on the Democratic ticket. Not even the Democratic National Committee seemed bothered, In fact, it embraced Bernie, offering him up as their sacrificial lamb to the anointed one, Hillary Clinton. What they didn’t foresee was that, by giving Bernie a national platform, they gave his political ideas legitimacy. In doing so, they brought on their own form of the Tea Party and, if you don’t mind my saying so, it couldn’t happen to a “nicer” political party.

     But the Tea Party – supposedly the “Tea” was an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already” was fiercely resisted by the GOP Establishment. Republicans in high office had been defaulting on their promises to restrain and (hopefully) downsize the federal Leviathan. The Democrats’ analogue, if such persons as Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez really do represent an “uprising” among Democrats, merely exhorts the party to go further, faster, in the direction in which it’s been headed for a century.

     I rather suspect that the “Not Taxed Enough Party” -- Thank you, Sarah Hoyt, for that translation – is a fabrication by the Democrat Establishment. They could well be using it to slide the Overton Window further to the left. Such a leftward shift of the window of acceptable public discourse could be seen as a way to limit the ambitions of the Trump Administration and to pre-constrain those of its successors.

     A great part of the art of politics, including the machinations of its media handmaidens, is prestidigitation: luring the public’s attention away from what’s really being plotted and planned with well timed distractions of all sorts. For politics is the pursuit of power. Ordinary people don’t like it when others assert power over them, no matter how high-minded the representations of the power-seeker might appear. Therefore, those who seek power must constantly work to disguise their intentions. As we mathematical types like to say, Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

The Elites And The “Populist” Canard

     We’ve been hearing quite a bit about the current “populist” moment in American politics...mostly from the political elite and the major media, but also from a few persons associated neither with the elite nor with the media. I’d like to spend a few minutes on this word and its implications, and give my Gentle Readers the reasons why we should reject and deny it.

     Here’s the dictionary.com definition:

populism: any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.

     Note the juxtapositions in that definition. Compare them to the connotations of “populist” and “populism.” These are terms through which the elites elevate themselves over us the hoi polloi. We’re “anti-establishment” and “anti-intellectual.” Our notions appeal to the “common person,” with emphasis on “common.” Doesn’t that evoke memories of the “Know-Nothings” of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries? Doesn’t it just scream that we ought to have more respect for the superior erudition and intellects of our “betters?”

     Note how many of the detractors of our “populist moment” are willing to see us grubby groundlings suffer, if it will result in our rejecting Trump and his agenda. Bill Maher, that fount of left-wing venom, has openly wished for a recession to "rid us of Trump.” Nancy Pelosi has promised to cancel the Trump tax cuts should the Democrats retake Congress in November. Others have expressed the hope that Trump’s upcoming sit-down with Kim Jong Un will be a colossal failure, perhaps even a catastrophe.

     Note also the persistence of prominent conservatives and Republicans among the “NeverTrump” brigades. Note in particular their openly expressed preference for a continuation of the “Deep State” over the “Trump State.” [Bill Kristol]

     Whether peaceful or bloody, a rebellion will always be disparaged by the establishment as somehow unworthy, ill-mannered...vulgar.

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     At one point during the early part of the 2016 presidential campaign, I voiced my concerns over Trump’s temperament to a friend who supported him. The friend listened until I ran down, then said quietly, “You have to give him this: he loves America.”

     It wasn’t quite enough at that point to allay my fears. Yet as the campaign progressed, it became ever clearer that whatever one might have to say in favor of any of Trump’s competitors, he listened to the yearnings of ordinary Americans – and he respected them. His huge rallies were a confirmation that he’d “connected” with the common citizen. The attempts by the Left to disrupt them were another – and a sign that the Hillary Clinton camp was aware of how out of touch it was.

     Americans had nurtured a sense that the federal government was less concerned with our well-being than it was with the “interests:” the establishments in industry, commerce, finance, the media, and above all else the government itself. Trump resonated to that sense, that desire to see a little more “government for the people.” Clinton, arguably the least attractive politician of the Twentieth Century, could barely stand to address us, much less to speak sympathetically about the things we genuinely care about.

     The Left and the Democrats characterized us as “deplorables.” The insinuations of our racism, sexism (of course), and xenophobia came from every corner of the media. Little attention was given to the swelling of Trump’s support. Still less was given to the specifics of his proposals or why his supporters found them good. Of the Republican Establishment, which did everything it could to prevent the victory of its nominee, nothing more need be said.

     And when on November 8, 2016 we flocked to the polls and dethroned the lot of them, it guaranteed their illimitable and unending enmity. That they’ve chosen to camouflage their hatred as ill-concealed supercilious disdain for “populism” changes nothing.

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It's fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen and ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.

The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age do allow,
Through groves of white blossom, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true love.

The fields they are empty, the hedges grow free,
No young men to tend them, all pastures to seed.
They've gone where the forests of oak trees before
Had gone to be wasted in battle.

Down from their green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There's a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

There's a row of straight houses in these latter days
Are covering the Downs where the sheep used to graze.
There's a field of red poppies, a wreath from the Queen.
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
And the ladies remember at Whitsun.

[Austin John Marshall, “Dancing at Whitsun,” 1918]

     War is of particular importance to both the prevailing sentiments and the elites’ disdain for “populism.” Wars aren’t fought by the elites or their children, but by common men who’ve chosen to serve in America’s military. Not since the Civil War (a.k.a. the War Between The States / War Of Northern Aggression / Late Unpleasantness) has America gone to war over anything that mattered even slightly to the common American...and one could question the logic that powered that nightmare as well. A case could be made that those wars were fought, and Americans’ blood and treasure spent, for the benefit of the political elites and their hangers-on and no one and nothing else.

     President Trump’s desire to see the U.S. reduce its military involvement in other lands might be the most “populist” element of his agenda. May God bless and keep him for it. Our sons have died in enough foreign conflicts to make us extremely skeptical of talking heads’ representations that some “national interest” is at stake in some distant, mold-and-mildew-ridden land presided over by a “little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.”

     How vulgar of us to want our children’s lives not cut short by wars in which America has no stake. War means jobs, don’t y’know.

---

     And so to close, have a somber bit of music about a tragedy from the war whose strategies, tactics, and politics I studied for twenty years, straining to comprehend the incomprehensible, and a nation that’s second only to America in my affections: Australia.

Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said: Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli

Well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was ready, oh he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell
He nearly blew us back home to Australia

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
And we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again

Those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, and I wished I were dead
I never knew there were worse things than dying

For no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

So now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Renewing their dreams of past glories
I see the old men all tired, stiff and sore
The weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year, their numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

[Eric Bogle]