Adrift without a map, we are, in the sea of current events. Especially after this last week, which brought us a ground war in Gaza and the shoot-down of a passenger airliner over Ukraine; both situations a little out of the depth of the past experience of Chicago community organizer, even one who spent his grade school years in Indonesia. Quite a large number of the blogs and commenters that I follow have speculated over the last couple of months – at least since last year – and have predicted disaster. They know not the day nor the hour, but they have read the various augurs according to their inclinations, suspicions and particular expertise, and gloomily speculate on the odds of various events occurring. There is something bad coming, the air is thick and heavy with signs and portents, never mind the cheery cast that the current administration and its public affairs division attempts to put on it. It’s like a makeup artist, plying the art on a six-months-dead corpse; it’s just not working.
The list of possible events speculated on begins with some kind of dirty nuke on a major (or even a relatively minor) American city, or other terrorist act, sustained racial riots in inner cities leading to violent resistance when the rioters spill out into the fringes, an epidemic caused by the recent accession of thousands of Central American illegal aliens and the administrations energetic dispersion of them everywhere, violent resistance to any number of ham-handed actions on the part of the federal government spiraling out of control as in the BLM-Bundy Ranch scenario, complete devaluing of the currency to the point of a ten-dollar bill having the value of a used bus ticket – I can come up with any number of issues which might potentially provide a flashpoint, and commentators likely can come up with as many more, even as we grimly acknowledge that the ignition point might be one which we won’t even see coming.
Today, Governor Perry of Texas announced plans to send 1,000 National Guard troops to the border area – an area which has always been about as porous as a wet sponge, but which troubled no one much beyond those law enforcement in border counties, and residents whose ranch properties were essentially highways for the human traffic. The trickle of illegal immigrants (take THAT, PC Police, they’re illegal immigrants!) has become a gusher in the last year or so, and many on the conservative-libertarian spectrum suspect that it has been deliberately engineered, in an effort to Cloward-Piven our national borders. Darker prognostications have it that this is an attempt to stuff the ballot-boxes with sufficient voters to ensure a Democrat Party majority for the foreseeable future, to destroy the working- and middle-class – who have the ungrateful habit of independency and a disinclination to do as their so-called betters order them – and replace them with grateful serfs who will obediently do as they are told. How better to dissolve the people and replace them another?
There was a protest scheduled last Friday and Saturday – at the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio. It was a rather small one, when I passed by on Friday afternoon, and if the protest continued as scheduled on Saturday, I can find no evidence for it – but then, seeing how frequently the establishment media organs function as the public affairs office (Media Division) of the Obama administration, I wouldn’t have been surprised to know that the protest was continued, and with more protesters – just that the local news coverage was of the “close your eyes, cover them with your hands and hope it will all go away” variety. One thing I did notice on Friday was that the protestors were raising the issue of Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who inadvertently crossed over into Mexico at a particularly confusing San Diego freeway interchange earlier this summer. He had his personal weapons in the trunk of his car – and has been in a Mexican jail ever since, accused of smuggling guns into Mexico. I imagine that the Mexican authorities are feeling the schadenfreude, on account of Fast and Furious, but I haven’t seen much enthusiasm on the part of our State Department on getting him out of durance vile, Mexican-style … so every little bit of street theater may help.
Discuss.
“some kind of dirty nuke on a major (or even a relatively minor) American city”
I think this is coming and sooner than we dream. Madeline Albright was asked about their concerns with terrorism in Billy’s administration. She said, “Of course we were concerned. We had meetings almost every week.”
The Obama people are not having meetings except on the golf course. I hope I’m far enough from LA harbor. New York is closer.
Sgt. Mom,
I have rehearsed your list of likely catastrophes, with a few additions myself. We are at the point where there is literally nothing that we can do about it. I am reminded of the sarcastic saying in the old Royal Navy during sailing ship days as they were going into battle; knowing that they were about to receive broadsides through their wooden hulls at “half pistol shot” [100 yards] or less.
Lord, for that which we are about to receive, make us truly grateful.
I can only take issue with one point. These are government sponsored [including the United States Government, which is not to say an “American” government] intruders. The phrase “illegal invaders” is far more accurate. Sovereignty is in large part dependent on what the response to invasion is.
Subotai Bahadur
I don’t think we can know, or even guess with any sense of it being “educated”, what’s going to happen next.
My prediction is that it will be a complete surprise, as nearly every significant event for as long as I can remember has been.
We are flying blind, for all the hoopla about our intelligence services, and our media, formal and informal, is filled with triviality and sensationalist bs.
Of course, after something happens, all the bright people will come forward to declare that they knew it was going to happen all along, and someone will find the applicably obscure prediction from Nostradamus or some Bible code, or whatever.
But, no matter what, the worst leadership elite in human history will be caught flat-footed and clueless.
THAT prediction I feel completely safe in making.
The Ottoman Empire survived thirteen dud sultans in a row.
“the worst leadership elite in human history “: oh come now – you must be overlooking the W and Clinton administrations. Not to mention Kaiser Bill’s. Or see above.
Poor leaders. Why quibble about words. If your captain runs the ship aground it doesn’t matter if he is the worst ship captain in history or is merely dangerously inept.
Obama makes Clinton look good, and makes W look like Lincoln, by comparison.
“Obama makes Clinton look good, and makes W look like Lincoln, by comparison.” I agree with this. Right now, it is a total clown show in DC. We are basically on our own. When the excrement hits the rotating vanes, the cops will arm up and take care of themselves and we will have to make work what we can. I just hope that the next black swan doesn’t happen in winter.
I suppose, Dearie, that we can endure the ministrations of incompetent elites, as did the Ottoman Empire with thirteen dud sultans in a row. But what we may not be able to endure for long is the administration by an incompetent political elite who give every evidence of hating the working and middle-class, the small business owners, the military and most of the residents of flyover country. Those sultans of whom you speak may have been duds, but it doesn’t seem they were working at destroying the Ottoman Empire … well, not deliberately, anyway. We really can’t be certain about our own sultan.
D—What makes you think I was only referring to political leaders? The disreputable mob which comprises the current regime is a symptom of the deeper corruption that pervades this country and the west in general.
Just as it is impossible to predict the course and play of a chess game beyond the first opening moves, so too with our politics.
“The Time of Troubles” predicted by science fiction writers is upon us. Our hegemony is being deliberately weakened from within, with eager and ambitious rivals waiting to strike. Our greatest strengths, American openness and good-heartedness, are being turned into weak points.
Until recently, Obama has had the initiative with constitutionalists and conservatives trying, but failing, to play catchup as Obama escalates the tyrannical practices.
One ray of hope in my opinion is Gov. Perry’s calling out the Texas National Guard to help protect the Texas/Mexico border. This is symbolic in terms of law enforcement but it seizes the initiative from Obama, making Obama play Perry’s game.
What is Obama to do? Will he try to nationalize the Texas National Guard? What if Perry and the troopers refuse to take orders from Washington? Would Obama send regular Army troops to control the TNG? Would the regular Army troops obey? Suddenly, the doubt and uncertainty is in Obama’s head, not in the minds of Boehner and McConnell. Rather than making us accept illegal executive actions for fear of escalation, now it’s Obama’s turn to risk an escalation he may well lose.
An interesting point, I think the USCIS-INS and the Border Patrol are used to pushing around, ignoring, or ordering about individual citizens. They’re going to be in uncharted territory when armed troops show up who don’t answer to them in any way. Great move by Perry.
How does O do on the acid test: is he as bad as Carter? As LBJ? As JFK? As FDR?
Woodrow Wilson
You have to go back to James Tyler, Zachary Taylor, or even James Buchanan (OK, maybe he’s not that bad).
In them we had presidents who either openly or privately supported the archaic and oppressive institution of slavery and worked to preserve the system until it eventually lead to crisis and catastrophe. Now we have a president who openly and privately works to support a modern system of oppression – the welfare state and the police state. The only question is will it be too late to prevent a crisis before he leaves office.
“the administration by an incompetent political elite who give every evidence of hating the working and middle-class, the small business owners, the military and most of the residents of flyover country”: we had years of the Blair govt which had the same views. The consequence of their antics that will presumably prove irreversible is to do with mass, unselective immigration.
We don’t know how bad he is, as we haven’t hit bottom yet.
This is the guy that said the country could sustain another 9/11, correct? I can’t imagine any responsible leader saying such a thing, even if they thought such a thing. But, when I think of those people that said we “had it coming”, those that danced in the streets in Brooklyn that morning, and those who are connected to them, I would be very surprised if something did not happen in the next two years.
“I can’t imagine any responsible leader saying such a thing”: Churchill surely said that sort of thing? Would you rather Obama said that another 9/11 would promote such hysteria that the USA would dissolve? Wouldn’t that encourage her enemies?
The chap may be a chump, but I don’t see the point of criticising him when he’s right.
““the worst leadership elite in human history “: oh come now – you must be overlooking the W and Clinton administrations. Not to mention Kaiser Bill’s. Or see above.”
Clinton was deficient in recognized the growing terrorism and Islamist threat. He was a pretty good politician who turned on a dime when the voters rejected his agenda in 1994. Until impeachment forced him back to the left for support, he did a fairly good job in spite of himself but that is part of leadership.
W Bush was not my favorite but he had good people in his administration, especially Cheney and Rumsfeld. The financial crisis was created by the left in Congress, especially after 2006 when Congress lurched left and ignored all the warning signs. Bush’s SEC was incompetent but a president is often a prisoner of his appointees.
Kaiser Bill was so erratic that his ministers often did not tell him things. He, in my opinion, did more to bring on WWI than anyone else, even the Austrians. He threatened Britain with his high seas navy or they might have stood aside as they did in 1870. Much of his motives were simple pique at his English cousins.