…the Schlichter prophecies, I mean, wherein the good Colonel Kurt S. postulated a political/geographic split of the United States along red-blue lines. In his bleak and blackly humorous vision, (carried out over a five-volume series) the middle portion of the States carried on with fidelity to the Constitution, free-range capitalism, and universal military service as an obligation for full citizenship. Meanwhile the east and west coasts as a so-called “People’s Republic” carried on under a selection of increasingly deranged and erratic progressive principles, turning into a dysfunctional combination of Portland’s CHAZ/CHOP, any PC-addled university you could name, Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and Venezuela at this very moment. The series is meant to be grimly entertaining, but I’m beginning to believe that the split has already happened not in the neat geographic manner (with some violent hiccups) outlined but in a slower and murkier manner.
We’re already split between red and blue, progressive and conservative, urban/rural (with suburbs likewise split) between those who got expensive college loans and now can barely pay them back with minimum wage jobs and those who skipped college for a tech/trade school and now have a house, a boat and money in the bank. We’re split between those who can work remotely from home and those who actually have to go someplace and get sweaty and grubby for a paycheck; between those who have built something with their hands, and whose who have built something in their minds. There are also those whose income has been stable this last year even though they didn’t work at all, and those who didn’t work at all and didn’t get paid. Split between big business and small business, between veteran and non-veteran, between those who own guns and have concealed carry licenses, and in decreasing numbers of late, those who wouldn’t touch a gun with a ten-foot pole. Split between those who consume the New York Times and its establishment big media clones, and those who would rather stab ourselves in the eyes with a spork than watch another minute of MSNBCBS etc. There are those who wholly believe that Black Lives Matter, and those who stubbornly insist that all lives matter. And lastly there is the split between those who believe in their hearts that Biden/Harris won the last election fair and square and those who know for certain that it was stolen and our votes for Trump were basically overwritten and discarded. We don’t even see each other, save as caricatures and that may be the most damaging split of all.
We’re already at the split. We read different books, watch different movies and television shows those of us who still watch movies and television follow different celebrities, earn a living in different ways, educate our children differently. We honor different things, different heroes and heroines, have wildly different aspirations and hopes for the future. We are already split. Now we must figure out what our future options are. Discuss as you wish.
Those of us who have been here for years, can you see the things being posted and discussed seriously now being even remotely imaginable a few years ago? This was always a pretty level-headed place. Somehow we’ve gone from America 3.0 to wherever it is we have today. Heck, a few months ago we were talking about civil war breaking out, and I poo-poo’d it, except for a crazy situation where Trump wins on election night and then over time Biden is declared the winner and with Senate control the Dems start ramming through all their wishlist on a country that has no desire for it, and half of whom think the election was stolen. It’s mind-boggling what has happened to the country in the last decade, and anyone who thinks our American Chernenko is going to somehow fix anything at all is delusional.
People do change their positions (or at least *have* changed their positions) on these splits over time, though..several well-known bloggers, such as Bookworm, used to be on the ‘liberal’ side of things and have documented their stories of political change. Now, maybe I’m grasping at straws here; maybe the changing that was able to happen has *already* happened; that those who are still on the Left are those with the most unchangeable opinions. But some of the Walkaway stories, such as the video from ‘Georgia’ that I linked, offer hope that some potential changers may still be out there.
I fear that we are sufficiently fragmented, so irrevocably, that it cannot be resolved by peaceful and Constitutional means. If Biden is installed, then the will never be another real election in the country. And eventually, it will be on.
Subotai Bahadur
“If Biden is installed, then the will never be another real election in the country.”
Nah. The Deep State is real, but it’s a Potemkin village, people by mediocrities like Biden, Kerry, et al. The main advantage We have is that They are stupid and their ideas don’t work. In 2024 they’re going to run some absurdly awful ticket like Harris/Buttigieg. The margin of fraud just got twice as large, but it can be shrunk again, and overcome. When the GOP wins back governorships in WI, MI, PA, they should be able to suppress enough of the most blatant fraud there, and in every state they need to eliminate mail-in voting, to be replaced by limited early voting, and the elimination of voting machines with any internet connectivity.
And the next GOP president won’t be nearly as nice as Trump.
Brian:
1) If they can create any vote count they want, no one will beat them electorally. And one can argue that such is not a real election.
2) I commend to your attention Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich. There will be a different text, but the same methods.
Subotai Bahadur
I suspect we haven’t been having real elections for a long time.
I’ve been seeing endless reports of voting machines changing votes from gop to democrat since at least 2006. I’m pretty sure Detroit didn’t just start stuffing ballot boxes in 2016. Or Philadelphia, for that matter. I’ve read that in 2000 the media called Florida for Gore before the Republican-leaning panhandle even stopped voting, and waited to call Utah for Bush until 2 a.m. The democrats are famous for “discovering” just ballots for them to “win” close races- and that happens over and over again.
It seems to me what’s new this time is that the fraud was so obvious, blatant, and important that they’ve committed an act with immense consequences that will play out in ways yet unsuspected.
But not good.
“I suspect we haven’t been having real elections for a long time.”
Al Franken stole a Senate seat. Dino Rossi had the WA governorship stolen. Those are just a couple of the most brazen that come to mind from the blogosphere era. Yes, there absolutely is fraud, and it’s outrageous that the GOP never has lifted a finger to stop it. They just accept that there is a non-trivial margin of fraud that must be overcome. Yet Trump did overcome it in 2016, and he overcame the normal amount this year, just not the inflated amount that they did this time. There has to be a reckoning, and the stuff I pointed to above can relatively easily bring it back down to where it’s always been, and even smaller. IF the GOP can be pressured into it, of course, and not intimidated into backing down as they always have been before.
There has to be a reckoning…
There will be, one way or another. But as Subotai says, if the can create any vote count they want, no one can beat them electorally.
Thinking the gop will do anything except dance on command of the leftist-dominated donor class strikes me as fatuous.
I note the endless non-action about fraud from the party during essentially every interval when they controlled the government, most notably when Trump made an issue about it and the establishment blocked any action.
The gop won’t do anything, and at this point, I can only conclude they’re in on it.
The gop needs to die, and be replaced by something that will actually represent the people who vote for it, because they’ve convinced me they never will, no matter what.
That’s the galling part of it all, gentlemen – that if this election stands as SOP, then what is the point of ever having an election again? The usual career functionaries and so-called activists with friends in high places and the establishment media in their hip pocket will just have the required number of votes ordered up for them. The rest of us might as well not bother. The chosen candidates will pretend to campaign, and the establishment will pretend to consult the voters.
The establishment GOP will let it slide because it means they can still dip their beaks in the trough and retire on a fat pension and a book deal for a volume that no one will ever read, and will eventually be pulped after sitting in a warehouse.
if we’re going down, let’s go down hard. No votes for republicans on the national level at all. Mitch the turtle got my donation this year, and 6 more years for him, if he makes it at his age. If he can pull out the Senate, he sits in the catbird seat. If not, why should the dems let him dip his beak. Seems like there are a lot of likely young democrats that need jobs and funding – why waste any on the impotent Republicans?
I could see Google, corporations, private contractors for government facilities hiring Chinese, cheaper H1B1. Lots. Paid in Yuan. Not military, neck no. “Civilians”. Young,fit. OK, ex Chinese military. 4-500,000.
I drove up into bluest New England recently. I was on an interstate up there, driving 75 in a 70 mph zone (guilty!) when about 30 to 40 sports cars passed me as if I was standing still, weaving in an out of traffic, demonstrating the wisdom of demoralizing and defunding the police. There were no troopers in sight. Funny thing is, when you drove along country roads in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, there were places where people still evidently work for a living, and lots of Trump signs defiantly planted in the ground, weeks after the election. Tell me, if this is a question of geography, what are we to do about these lost children?
}}} Tell me, if this is a question of geography, what are we to do about these lost children?
The lost children are the ones in the city, who voted for the demise of the nation.
I used to think talk of civil war was silly. Now I’m far less sure. It’s getting easier to imagine depoliced cities as becoming a cross between Ulster and Gangs of New York.
I still don’t see anything even like the Spanish Civil War happening. I see states just getting more and more brazen about ignoring and then defying federal authority, people moving from blue to red accordingly, and then who knows what spark might light what conflagration.
Texas is looking better & better – they have my ideals (well, a majority of them have my ideals)
Sgt. Mom: “I’m beginning to believe that the split has already happened”
Well, we have now had at least 2 generations of Leftie politicians and their running dogs trying their best to Divide & Conquer the population. Is it any surprise that the population is now divided?
Let’s not lose sight of the coming main drivers of history — which are the economic factors. The Best & Brightest have gone a long way towards de-industrializing the US — ignoring the obvious fact that production has to precede consumption. They have run up a National Debt which can never be repaid — and it is still growing. They are running an unsustainable Trade Deficit which relies on the continued willingness of the Chinese to accept IOUs which will never be redeemed in exchange for the goods that the US can no longer make for itself, such as medications. They have made commitments which will never be fulfilled — Social Security, Medicare, pensions. Some day, all of that will come home to roost.
Any way one looks at it, there are going to be some very hard times ahead. If we are lucky, we will see the rise of a new Class Consciousness, with a recognition that the internal enemy are the Dividers in our Political Class — politicians, media, academics, bureaucrats, lawyers. Maybe We the People will be successful in uniting to throw off that Political Class; but they will not release their grip on power easily. Remember that when Mao Tse Tung was faced with an analogous problem of an ossifying Communist Political Class which was entrenching itself, he released the horrors of the Red Guard to break their hold. Very hard times followed — but now the bulk of the Chinese people are doing well. There is hope for us!
China is no model for any return to liberty and the sustained economic growth based on innovation. There is a portion of their people who are tied into their chicom mercantilism who have benefited, but the “average” peeps are still in the early iron age or locked up for re-education. The rest of them are checking their social credit scores.
Just as there was no close president for our revolutionary war and foun ding, there will be none for what will shortly happen here again.
A trip wire may well be the second amendment knee-caping they have telegraphed. When you turn tens of millions of solid citizens who happen to own and are proficient with weapons of a certain kind into overnight felons while they still have their weapons, you are asking for trouble you can’t contain. I think they actually believe these folks will just turn them in and then scream at the sky. That’s not what I see happening. They have been trying to boil the frog for years, but foggy has figured this play out.
Death6
Gavin, I agree some sort of collapse is coming but I expect something like Weimar Germany. China was not an industrial state when Mao won his civil war. Germany was and was ruined by the war and the vengeance of the victors, especially France. The result was massive inflation that ruined the middle class. Young people were able to play the game, much as student loan forgiveness will reward the reckless. The savers and conservatives lost everything.
Fascism was attractive to two groups, both similar to our situation now. The rich, like Thyssen and Krupp, backed Hitler assuming they could control him. The Socialist roots of Fascism appealed to those who had lost everything. The Nazi part was added from the traditional German mysticism. The war on the Jews came from the left and envy. Jews who vote Democrat are making the same mistake German Jews made as they drifted away from the religion and became secular.
I think there will be a few years in which this could be modified but it would take someone like Trump and we have seen how likely that is.
Gavin,
I don’t believe that you and I have a substantial disagreement on the points you raised, however, there are other points implicit in them that need to be explored.
Your first, that we continue to pay China (and others) in what amounts to script is beyond question. Yet they continue to accept it and in China’s case, manipulate their own currency to make the transaction even more attractive to us. They are perfectly entitled, and would be seemingly prudent, to require payment in gold, platinum or Yuan. They don’t, because if they did, all the ships would simply turn around or never leave port at all, all the factories would close, all the workers would be jobless. All the materials and food that they require for a first world diet, if not to prevent actual famine, and whatever industry remains would also stop moving. A less politically conscious person would be tempted to use the term “Mexican standoff”.
Viewed in this light, Trump’s policy of gradual disentanglement is actually in their best interest. It offers a chance that the rate of change would be slow enough for them to make adjustments that wouldn’t make the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution a fond memory.
Your second point: “but now the bulk of the Chinese people are doing well”, is in the process of change and not in a way that any of us would desire. I am not in communication with people in China so have to use the resources and information I judge to be plausible.
This is from someone that is in constant contact with many people in China and that I find persuasive:
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/11/u-s-china-policy-under-biden-new-ground-or-back-to-the-past.html
There are currents below the surface in China that everyone should fear and that no one person understands let alone has the ability to control. Xi and the CCP are in the position of someone that has grasped a tiger by the tail, their being eaten isn’t the worst that can happen.
I’d like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and hope you all end the day with as many fingers and eyes as you started with. Those knives are sharp.
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all — especially to those in the Land of the Free who have been ordered by their Governors to “shelter in place” under penalty of law. Let’s keep that in mind when we compare how the Chinese and US Political Classes treat their populations.
MCS — we are probably in agreement on most substantive issues. To address what life is like for our equivalents in China: we all see only a small fraction of the world through our own keyholes. What I have seen with my own eyes is well-dressed healthy Han Chinese living in decent apartments, enjoying strolling in safe clean streets & parks, shopping in Gucci & Walmart, girl-watching while sipping coffee outside Starbucks in modern pedestrian precincts, sending their kids to state & private schools, driving their personal cars on excellent toll roads, having fun in all kinds of modern tourist attractions, singing in karaoke bars, … You get the picture. What I have not seen in my very limited exposure to China is a heavy police presence or indications of people feeling oppressed by their government — sadly, I have seen that in the US.
I am not suggesting that China should be our model. All I am trying to report is that Western democracies have developed a Political Class which has some parallels to the Chinese Communist Party. The big difference is that the CCP today is competent and is delivering improving standards of living to the bulk of its people; no-one could make that claim for our Western Political Classes.
On the puzzle of China accepting depreciating dollars for real goods which the US can no longer manufacture for itself — my guess is that we are stuck in a mode where we think of war as being fought with bombs & bullets, whereas the CCP has realized that wars can be fought more efficiently (albeit more slowly) with factories and economics. China’s mercantilist trade policies (plus buying US politicians) has had the same kind of impact on the US industrial base as Allied bombing had on Germany’s industrial capacity in WWII. A hollowed-out US economy which is dependent on China for manufactured goods will present no threat to China and will provide food & raw materials to China — rather similar to what the French tried to impose on defeated Germany after WWI.
When the big financial crunch hits, we have lawyers and pieces of paper — China has factories which can make everything from steel to cell phones. Who is going to be in a better position to survive?
“When the big financial crunch hits, we have lawyers and pieces of paper ”” China has factories which can make everything from steel to cell phones. Who is going to be in a better position to survive?”
It will be…interesting…for anyone making steel in the US if there should be a Biden administration and it gets to implement the Prog agenda.
Blast furnaces? They use coal. Shut ’em down.
Direct-reduction furnaces? Natural gas…almost as bad. An evil fossil fuel.
Electric arc furnaces, virtuously recycling scrap? Well, they can survive, but they’re going to have to pay a lot for that electricity. Just shut ’em down and ship the scrap somewhere else and get the steel back.
Just shut ’em down and ship the scrap somewhere else and get the steel back.
Which is exactly what the imbeciles ruling the United States think they should do.
These people have been throwing away, with both hands, what made the country wealthy and powerful- i.e., the factories and the people who worked in them- and worse, they’ve convinced some large fraction of the American public that these sort of jobs are beneath them. I almost said, “American workforce,” but I don’t think that’s particularly accurate anymore.
Yet more worse, they still think the US can tell the rest of the world what to do, and they eagerly embrace foreign intervention. If your country is the only one can build B-29 bombers and nukes, you can get away with that. If your country imports the guts of its weaponry- the electronics- from its most likely enemy, I suggest you can’t- and you shouldn’t try.
But our so-called elite shows absolutely no comprehension of this. I remember I used to read plenty of people who believed we were pulling a great trick on China to get them to take fancy pieces of paper for real goods- but they’d literally never seen the word “merchantilism.”
Thus, I’d suggest yet another way for the long looming crisis to begin- these morons stumble into a war with China. I note that China now has the largest navy in the world, while the USN is incapable of preventing its ships from colliding with better-run civilian container ships.
I still remember from Hillary Clinton’s time a secretary of state that she intended to homeport one, lone, small US navy ship in Singapore to “deter” China- and now I’ve seen stories that she might become Biden’s handlers choice for secretary of defense.
Yikes.
“China has factories which can make everything from steel to cell phones.”
How long will any of those factories make payroll with no orders? What they’ll have is empty factories, with creditors and unpaid employees picking over the bones and looking for the “owners” that have emptied the bank account one last time and are on their way somewhere else.
They ASSEMBLE cell phones. All the really important parts are made elsewhere. When we banned Huawei from access to tools and equipment, the Chinese electronics industry came to their rescue. The catch was they would have to build their hardware with technology that was about 20 years behind state of the art. About half the worlds semiconductor capacity is based in Taiwan, they are not about to allow any process smaller than hundreds of nm into a mainland fab. They know just how long it would be before it was stolen.
Ironically, the Chinese consumer market is dependent on the export market to keep domestic prices low. Costs would increase dramatically if they were based on Chinese demand only, not to mention that, employment would fall off a cliff.
The sort of change to Chinese dominance that you foresee would have to happen literally over night to prevent huge dislocations in their population. The jobs in their factories don’t look that great unless your alternative is a pig farm miles from the nearest paved road with a dozen others trying to survive on an acre or two.
re China and the **assembling** of cell phones…
Back when mechanical watches were the thing, quite a lot of them were made in relatively high-wage countries, including Japan and Switzerland. I did a little research on this, and, in the case of mass-market products, a lot of automation was applied. (I may do a post of this one of these days)
Is it any more difficult to automate the assembly of an iPhone than of a mechanical watch, which all the little gears and spring? Seems questionable.
I suspect that a considerable part of Apple’s reason for doing so much manufacturing in China lies in keeping the regime happen enough to facilitate the sale of its products into the Chinese market. (Market access has certainly been a factor in some of Boeing’s sometimes-weird offshoring decisions for airframe components)
MCS: “What they’ll have is empty factories, with creditors and unpaid employees picking over the bones and looking for the “owners” that have emptied the bank account one last time and are on their way somewhere else.”
So, you have been to Detroit?
“Ironically, the Chinese consumer market is dependent on the export market to keep domestic prices low.”
Last time I looked at trade figures, there was something interesting — China’s international trade with the Rest of the World is more or less in balance. China imports food & raw materials from Australia, Middle East, South America, etc and pays for it by exporting manufactured goods, from plastic geegaws to high-tech. The exception is China’s trade with the US, where China runs a massive surplus, exporting all kinds of manufactured goods in exchange for dubious IOUs. Since China is not earning any real value from its exports to the US, how could it hurt China’s economy if they decided simply to dump the iPhones in the ocean instead of sending them to California?
None of us can predict the future, but Anonymous at 3:36 pm has it right — when a country is the technological leader (Rome BC, UK after the Industrial Revolution, US after WWII), it can rule the roost. When a country has a Cargo Cult Economy, dependent on imports it cannot afford, that country needs to do some deep soul-searching.
Notice that we are discussing real existential issues here — none of which figured in any way in the recent election. We need to wake up!
“none of which figured in any way in the recent election.”
Putting aside the farce of an election, Trump ran a terrible campaign–nothing about China/trade issues, about avoiding new wars and winding down existing ones, about peace in the Middle East, etc.
Putting aside the farce of an election, Trump ran a terrible campaign–nothing about China/trade issues, about avoiding new wars and winding down existing ones, about peace in the Middle East, etc.
I must disagree.
Trump won, absent astonishing amounts of vote fraud. He would have done even better, if he had anything resembling an honest media reporting on his accomplishments, or a Republican party that was interested in anything more than stabbing him in the back.
I think he did fabulously well- and I bet the people who voted for him knew full well his positions on trade and war, despite the best efforts of left.
And I was the anonymous at 3:36 pm, sorry.
Xennady: Yea, I believe he won too. But he didn’t run on any of his impressive accomplishments, which I think was a big mistake.
I also disagree. First, his rallies were entertainment as much as a campaign event. His press conferences were confrontations where no useful information was provided by asking questions about policy. The newspaper coverage was dishonest and never mentioned an accomplishment. The attendance at the rallies was evidence that the accomplishments to the attendees were well understood.
The fact that fraud was necessary to defeat him is also evidence that the message was getting out.
The rallies were for one audience.
Go look at the debate transcripts–where did he talk about his many positive accomplishments? Total missed opportunity.
Yes, there was massive fraud. 100%. But he could have increased his votes by stressing all that he’s done.
If Trump had reiterated his accomplishments during the rallies, they would have become tedious beyond endurance. None of it was in question with that audience, they knew who they were going to vote for and it wasn’t Biden.
What crippled him was the total lack of issue reporting in the media that could have reached the undecided. You can’t make a point on anything that matters in 30 seconds. This was so transparently deliberate on the part of the media as a cover for the complete lack of substance on the Democrat side, it reduced informed observers to impotent rage.
Well, now half of us know without question that we are being lied to unceasingly on every topic by the “media”. What are we going to do about it? The problem will be the other side that has come to depend on this to advance their corrupt agenda. They won’t give up without a fight, either figurative or literal, time will tell.
Trump has an intuitive, pattern-recognizing, and creative sort of mind, quite different from the deductive and conventional minds of most politicians, media, and academics. This allows him to identify opportunities and threats that others don’t see, or at least that they don’t see yet. He also has a highly-conversational and informal communications style.
Unfortunately, though, Trump hasn’t been good at *translating* his thoughts and accomplishments into a highly-structured 1-2-3 format, which many people really need to hear else they will perceive chaos.
For example, when Covid-19 came up during the debate, he talked about his decision to shut down China travel, and really didn’t go much beyond that subject. What he could and should have done is a crisp summary:
1–shut down China travel
2–use Defense Procurement Act to acquire masks, ventilators, etc
3–initiate multiple parallel lines of vaccine development and deployment
etc
Was this election a result of a failure to communicate on Trump’s part? I seriously doubt it.
If we take the reported votes as a given, 14 Million more people voted for Senile Biden in 2020 than for Crooked Hillary in 2016, about a 25% increase. Where did those additional voters come from? What motivated them to vote this time for the unhealthy Old White Guy when they did not bother to vote for the unhealthy Old White Woman the last time?
We know that those 14 Million additional votes did not come from disenchanted Republicans who were unaware of Trump’s accomplishments, since President Trump himself gained almost 11 Million more votes than in 2016, a 17% increase. And it is a reasonable assumption that Trump’s increased votes were real.
One hypothesis is that a lot of Biden’s 14 Million increased votes are fraudulent. But if so, that fraud would have to be nation-wide in scale, since Biden got more additional votes than Trump in 38 States. Another hypothesis is that propaganda works, and 4 years of Political Class lies and negative coverage scared many previous non-voters into stepping forward to vote against Trump, not for Beijing Biden. Of course, those hypotheses are not mutually exclusive.
I have the suspicion that everyone commenting about the Trump campaign is correct, in the same sense that the parable about the blind men and the elephant is correct. That is, everyone understands a piece of the whole and is perhaps missing the rest, myself included.
Brian, when you say Trump ran a terrible campaign I have to wonder if you’re saying that because of ads. I still recall that I saw exactly one ad from the Romney campaign, and it was idiotic. I don’t have cable nor do I watch broadcast TV so I saw no ads from the Trump campaign at all. Perhaps that explains our differing perspective.
That said, I agree with David foster that there are things Trump could have done better. My personal example is the reaction from the 1619 shinola from the left, which eventually inspired Trump to ban the whole race-baiting enterprise from the federal government. If you’ve never heard of the 1619 project et al, you have no idea why Trump would have any comment about it at all, let alone why he would ban it.
A functioning opposition party would be right there explain why. Instead, we have the Gee Ohh Peeee, which is never to be seen when politics is on the docket.
Trump is just one man, and his supporters are exactly the sort of people the American political establishment seeks to erase.
It remains to be seen how successful that establishment will be in that endeavor, but I will offer my opinion that the recent fraud is essentially a stab wound to that establishment, which will eventually cause it to bleed out and die.
Time will tell.
it’s much like the tory party in the uk, that sought to eliminate or coopt the brexit faction, boris johnson has proved to be not of the same mettle as his idol churchill, more like ted heath or stanley baldwin,
Put aside the odd fact that Biden is transitioning the same way he campaigned, i.e. a couple hours a week, watching the establishment and media right now brings to mind the old saying about the Bourbons learning nothing and forgetting nothing.
Are they seriously going to say we need to mend fences with China so we can fight climate change together? Because if that’s their plan (of course just a cover for more brazen corruption, but let’s put that aside for now), then the guillotines are going to be out soon, and all the election fraud in the world won’t save them from what’s coming.
Miguel Cervantes Says:
November 27th, 2020 at 7:08 pm
it’s much like the tory party in the uk, that sought to eliminate or coopt the brexit faction, boris johnson has proved to be not of the same mettle as his idol churchill, more like ted heath or stanley baldwin,
Yup. Boris has been a disappointment. At least Ted Heath was a good sailor. I did wonder a bit about where he got the money for all those custom yachts.
Stanley Baldwin gave us WWII. He was known as “Dear Vicar.” Chamberlain got all the blame but it was Baldwin who did most of the damage. Of course, without Clemenceau and David Lloyd George, we might not have been blessed with WWII. Wilson got snookered by the two old connivers.
yes baldwin took over after the hung parliament (that was satirized in that python sketch) churchill was perhaps the only good one in the lot, he had the wrong view on india, so the leadership preferred baldwin and later chamberlain,
speaking of snakes,
https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/is-bob-woodward-an-evil-sorcerer-or-a-poisonous-snake/#comments
“…if we’re going down, let’s go down hard.”
The Ghost of George S. Patton advises, “No poor dumb bastard ever won a war by ‘going down hard.’ He won it by making the other poor down bastard ‘go down hard’.
Ruminate and reflect on these words.
“We’re already at the split. …s, educate our children differently. We honor different things, different heroes and heroines, have wildly different aspirations and hopes for the future. We are already split.”
We now witness and interpret the same thing or event totally differently.
If we see black, they see white… if we see a riot, they see a justified protest… if we see a phoney buffoon politician as a leader, they see a charismatic visionary.
Regrettably I think the divide between us has passed the point of no return. Maybe it’s me but I see this happening with my friends and relatives. You can’t rationally discuss or argue anymore over the simplest of issues.
I sometimes wonder whether we have evolved into different species.
Without respect for life and individual liberty …
… to the degree that they are prioritized over anything else that the culture deems to be a “common good” …
… there can be no unity.
Only dominance, and submission.
And our comfortably-numb culture prioritizes almost everything, over that respect … the respect that is behind the very reason we have governments: “to secure these rights”.
There is much talk about enemies here … the media lying to us, the politicians killing off our manufacturing and China exploiting that to strengthen their authoritarian regime, as they steal elections.
But it’s always about someone else … not OUR willingness to hang on every pontification or expression of doom of an “expert” or “leader” se see in the media that happens to match our own biases … not OUR expectation that we have a right to work the same job the same way in the same place for a lifetime, simply punching in, doing just what we’re told and expecting our union and/or our government will compel our employers to pay us what we (think we) deserve … not OUR willingness to go along when “leaders” compromise processes on a whim for “good reason”, such as changes in our election laws (supposedly) driven by Winnie the Flu … not our willingness to consider structural changes to the way we’ve Always Done It, because that might threaten our pet tax deduction, or government grant, or “guaranteed” student loan.
The greatest threat to our future, IMHO, is already in place: our society has adopted a set of assumptions that replace respect for and reliance upon individual insight, diligence, compassion, and initiative – in my view the secret sauce of all human advancement, short of Divine intervention – in favor of outsourcing the exercise of those attributes to an elite few whose credentials, positions, popularity, and/or presentation skills give them the appearance of being smarter and wiser than the rest of us.
Under these assumptions, ordinary people are expected to simply live out our lives, going to school or work day after day, expecting that elite to solve our problems – at all levels, ranging from the national right down to the individual – FOR us.
Meet the other enemy … he is US. Our Ruling Class is a reflection of us, empowered by our submission as though our common sense and proximate insight count for nothing.
Ironically, the tighter one holds the above view and its derivative conventional wisdom, the more vulnerable they are to the shocks when reality intrudes (think back to 2008). On the other hand, those that do not totally buy into this paradigm – such as the skilled tradesmen mentioned above, and others who have built prosperity and security for themselves without bowing to the robed mandarins of Woke U., have been better able to absorb those shocks … they retain a valuable ability – the ability to work AROUND the errors and mendacity of others, particularly our “leaders” – through the responsible exercise of their personal initiative.
That ability, in part, is what makes many of them “deplorable”, because they attained it by not submitting to the elites who earlier bowed to the robed mandarins and have made their status their focus, who exercise their initiative to impose their views as The One and Only True Way All Good People Think with a fundamentalist zeal that makes snake handlers look like skeptics.
Is our divison, all that surprising?
@ Subatoi Bahadur,
It is worth remembering that Richard Nixon had an election stolen from him in 1960. He held a justifiable grudge over that and when he ran again in 1968 he had a few effective countermeasures that forced the Democrats into losing a clean election. The 12 year old me that read the story of how he did it didn’t realize that the 60 year old me would be desperately interested in details concerning what it is that Mr. Nixon did so I remember nothing beyond what I have told you but all the same I think we might do worse then to research what he did and implement them again. 🙂
Allow me to stipulate that we presently languish after the point of emotional divide. But before we undertake any analysis and prognostication of the future, let’s review the past.
In America’s own history — as that of other nations that have suffered such a split — the active participants in this dichotomy represent less than half of the population. Perhaps less than 25 percent of the population stands proudly socialist (even if they have no real understanding of what that means). Perhaps another faction, also less than 25 percent of the population stands proudly Constitutional and conservative (although they may have little concept of what they’d conserve, given the tools).
And the rest watch YooToob, listen to music set to the emotional maturity and hormonal flood of a 13-year-old girl, dream of yachts obtained by becoming an “influencer,” and have no good answer to “wanna get high and bouncy-bouncy?”
In my unflattering description of our current cultural and social backdrop, I’m not sure there’s much I want to save. But I’ll continue on my mental experiment and presume that the small percentage of people — classically liberal, Constitutionally-founded, passionate defenders of capitalism, personal liberty from tyrants (big and small), and the rights enumerated and unmentioned in the Bill of Rights — have the will and the way to persevere. What path lays ahead for them?
And what path lays ahead for those who neither hold their views or directly oppose them?
To be succinct, let’s call the constitutionalist The Red States. And let’s call the socialists The Blue States.
History graphically demonstrates that those in The Red States can survive, even if many of them perish fighting The Blue States. Similarly, The Blue States only survive so long as they may plunder The Red States, steal from vilified groups within themselves while eradicating those groups so there will be no witnesses, and overrun or overtake neighboring groups (geographical and philosophical) who still have some or enough of what they need.
The future, then, forebodes bitter conflict between the haves (constitutionalists and capitalists) and the have-nots (socialists/marxists and tyrants).
Our coming fight is not a civil war. We do not wish to remain connected. Or at least, The Red States have no wish to support The Blue States; and The Blue States have no wish to tolerate The Red States. The Blue States — the socialists etc. — recognize that their own survival depends on enslaving the producers and bleeding their wealth and production for as long as possible.
This will become a revolution, but of a different sort. A civil war seeks total dominance, and The Blue States may initially desire that. The Red States, even now, do not. A revolution it is, then.
In the past, revolutions sought escape from a tyrannical place or government. The English Colonies sought independence from the crown. And they won it against all odds.
This revolution may seek to expel those allies of The Blue States from amongst the Red States; and vice-versa. At the same time, a constant, defensive effort will seek to stop The Blue States at the border and within The Red State interior from pillaging and robbing, from slashing and burning, and from murdering for spite.
As their own plight exacerbates in hunger, cold, and many forms of want and need, the fighting will become terrible and those Red States bordering the Blue States will suffer the brunt of the border conflict. Those interior will suffer a different kind of asymmetrical war: clandestine, hostile, internal sabotage; meant for no more than a mean punch against a mythical Winston-Smithian enemy of The Blue States.
The Red States will truly have their Oceania. And Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania.
While the first months or years of this revolution may certainly see overt, military-like violence, neither side will show willingness to prolong it and both sides will, in their way, silence the instigators and promoters of such violence. (Hint for those playing at home: it won’t go well for those who overtly promote violence; covert violence may well find a different kind of acceptance.)
The foundation and philosophy of The Red States has proven endurance. That of The Blue States has centuries of proven failure. The Red States will endure as long as it takes against The Blue States. We must ask, though, how long The Blue States can stand?
Years, certainly. Decades, possibly. The Soviet Union persisted for seven decades, but they had the gullibility of the west, their expansion and collectivization (theft) of goods and property), and a military might The Blue States will not enjoy. The Blue States will enjoy socialist and marxist global allies, but history shows that the larger consumes the smaller and The Blue States will become dinner and a snack for nations such as China or even the nations of the former Soviet Union who still dream of resurrection.
(This is the wild-card in the mix: what effect will China and the allies of tyranny have on The Blue States?)
Throughout, The Red States will prosper (but not as much had the nation remained undivided).
The Blue State’s last hurrah may come like death to the aged: quiet and without fanfare. But don’t count on it.
Starving and abused peoples rarely act sanguinely and we should expect the end of The Blue States to follow the catastrophic end the west expected of the Soviet Union: a last, desperate, militaristic, destructive eruption of hate and desperation with the familiar motto: “I would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
And then the rebuilding can start.
I won’t be around for that. I don’t expect to live that long.
I agree with those commenters who say it has already started. We are well into the realms of “Irish Democracy.” If this election fraud stands, the transition will happen faster.
I know many people now who have little but contempt for Federal government, and only slightly less for state government. I am not sure I know anyone who actually thinks government is competent or honest, and I work in what would almost certainly be considered the most law-abiding segment of the American population. Historically, that high level of contempt and disdain leads to a lot of things the various governments see as bad, but in this country they have overlooked the most critical. Our entire system is financially supported by a tax structure that depends on voluntary compliance. When people hate and despise their government, and the levels of that hatred and contempt will increase exponentially after this election, they cheat it at every opportunity. Say goodbye to voluntary compliance–people who see their government as not only illegitimate, but a direct enemy, are not going to comply any further than they can be compelled to by force. Those in government who would use force to ensure tax compliance have to get around the 2nd Amendment, and any government that would try to confiscate firearms from the civilian population guarantees by that action the start of real and immediate civil war against them.
Consequently, I do not see violent civil war coming first in this country. I see financial collapse, caused by ruinous inflation due to the Federal government funding its actions via the printing press and forfeiting the dollar’s uniquely privileged position as the world’s reserve currency. THEN we’ll get the civil war. It will make Spain 1936-1939 look like a picnic.
@Mac
Denying a government — who denies all other reality — of a certain cash influx won’t have a tiltle’s worth of difference.
Profligate spending and fiscal corruption bankrupted our nation decades ago. But we stand, unaware and unconcerned — like Wile E. Coyote after he stops twenty feet out from the edge of the canyon wall. Bereft of all tragedy since Wile E. and us have both been in this position before and because we’ve always survived the impending fall; we enjoy the comic humor between the observer’s notice and Wile E’s shock. He always gives us time to read his hastily-contrived sign expressing his dismay.
But in Washington E. Coyote’s episode, the elite will stand, walk around, and enjoy bottomless cocktail parties and soirees without the merest chance that gravity (or natural or financial realities) will take hold.
So long as they keep printing money, keep telling their creditors that the new money is as good as the old, and that the money tree still comes a cropper, nothing will threaten the Federal Depository.
RIDDLE: How are #LazyTrumpists and Bill “Never Trump” Kristol alike?
Answer: None of them ever asked a neighbor to vote for Trump.
P.S. Before November 3rd I wasn’t shy about pointing out that all of you #LazyTrumpists wanted to lose. Now you’ve got your wish.
Brian Says:
November 24th, 2020 at 3:16 pm
The main advantage We have is that They are stupid and their ideas don’t work.
Sorry, but no. The followers might be stupid. The leaders know exactly what they’re doing, and their ideas DO work, for their definition of success (achieving and maintaining their positions, power, and perks). (Admittedly, a few of the priesthood are stupid, as well. But mostly they believe and are committed to getting their priesthood into absolute power, in order to achieve their utopia.) The “don’t work” part? That only applies to our freedom and our happiness.
P.S. Before November 3rd I wasn’t shy about pointing out that all of you #LazyTrumpists wanted to lose. Now you’ve got your wish.
I guess that must be why he only got 74 million votes.
“I suspect we haven’t been having real elections for a long time.”
There’s the rub. There is tremendous pressure against the most basic and reasonable measures to detect and prevent fraud. I think a lot of fraud happens, largely in places that it doesn’t really matter, because it has to happen or else it will be obvious that it was happening in the past.
“I suspect we haven’t been having real elections for a long time.”
There’s the rub. There is tremendous pressure against the most basic and reasonable measures to detect and prevent fraud. I think a lot of fraud happens, largely in places that it doesn’t really matter, because it has to happen or else it will be obvious that it was happening in the past.
It would possibly also give insights into some of the shenanigans that we may play in other governments’ elections.
Phat Shants: “(This is the wild-card in the mix: what effect will China and the allies of tyranny have on The Blue States?)”
Regrettably, that is not a wild card at all.
Step back and look at the situation in the US — where something like 80,000 factories have been offshored mainly to China in the last quarter century; something like 5,000,000 direct jobs lost, and a whole lot more indirect jobs through the negative multiplier effect.
Recall that in WWII it took years of massive bombing campaigns and invasions by both the Red Army (real Red, Communist) and the Western allies to inflict a similar level of destruction on Germany’s ability to wage war.
Look at US universities today and realize that most of the graduate students pursuing MS & PhD in hard technical topics are foreign students, with the largest group from China — those are the people who will go home and take global technical leadership.
And think about the US academics & politicians who are knowingly or foolishly in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party — such as Clinton’s deal allowing Loral to sell China missile guidance technology.
Recognize that US warplanes are dependent on Chinese (or Taiwanese, soon to be same thing) computer chips.
Bottom line — the Chinese Communist Party has been waging economic war on the US for at least a quarter of a century. Successfully! And all we hear from bought-off US politicians & academics is “Free Trade”!
The CCP’s aim is fairly clear — they want the US out of their way, and they have already largely achieved that goal. They seek a de-industrialized North America which will supply food & raw materials to Greater China. The people of the US don’t matter to the CCP — the difference between (false) Red and (false) Blue means as little to them as the difference between Sunni & Shia means to most of us. The CCP will be quite happy to let America burn — the true Red socialists as well as the true Blue loyal Americans, and they are probably not above pouring some gasoline on the flames if need be.
Also, don’t forget that the 2016 recounts had to be stopped because they were uncovering fraud on behalf of Clinton.
Answer: None of them ever asked a neighbor to vote for Trump.
You really think we didn’t spread the word? We can do that without joining you in rolling that boulder, just like Sisyphus, up the hill of the Establishment system … which is what you persistently ask us to do.
I don’t agree that it’s a red state vs blue state thing. Dig this map of deep blue Oregon I posted on my blog:
https://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2020/11/an-oregon-secession-map.html
Instead of a state-to-state war, it’s more of a county-to-county war and the Reds own almost all of the counties. It won’t be a war so much as a self-inflicted scorched-earth campaign. For example, if Red truckers go on strike for even two weeks, the cities will be in dire straits. If Red guerillas knock out a few power lines in February, dittos. Take a look at the numbers involved in the Eastern Front, 1941-1945, and then take a look at US Army infantry divisions. There’s nothing like what you’d need to control territory and restore trucking / power.
Then you have the problem in the Blue cities that they don’t and can’t control their populace. The looting that devastated their cities over the summer wasn’t political. If it had been, their strong anti-police moves would have stopped it. Instead, they ended up with more looting and fewer cops. It was the worst of all situations for them. Knock out the power or shut down trucked supplies and the looting will get going for real. The looters won’t rally around a Biden flag because they aren’t political.
Ritchie the Riveter:
Agreed. We did it in our own way. In real life, I write a weekly column for a county newspaper. Our circulation is about 20,000 subscribers. It is a conservative paper, and you can bet whatever body part you care to risk that my 2000 words a week for years has been pro-Trump, pro-Conservative, and anti-Leftist. I have been given to understand by management that people scream bloody murder when I take time off, and that my column is one of the most popular things in the paper. By the way, for all these years I have done this pro bono. Yet I get dinged and insulted for not fighting to preserve our country. As do we all.
K T Cat:
That is most likely how it will be. Absent highways, railway, pipes, and powerlines the Leftist urban areas are deathtraps. Rule of Threes: You can live for 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.
Your median urban area has a 3 day supply of food in stores and warehouses without replenishment. Which mean half have less.
Subotai Bahadur
Phat,
The rest of the world generally has to make the books come a lot closer to actually balancing than we do since we are now the issuer of the world’s reserve currency. When the rest of the world decides that the dollar is nothing more than a piece of nearly worthless paper and refuses to accept it in exchange for goods, that’s when the U.S. financial collapse comes. The rest of the world is not stupid, and the only reason the dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency is because it is the least ugly girl at the ugly girl ball. Our current policies ensure we are going to get uglier by the day. If we don’t take some serious budget-balancing measures that would, at present, be politically impossible, our currency’s years as the world’s reserve currency are numbered in single digits.