Better Explanations?

We might be forgiven for thinking that China does not have our best interests in mind, given their halt of all national movement from Wuhan and encouragement of all international travel from Wuhan in the pandemic’s early months, given the secrecy that surrounds the Wuhan Institute and the belated admission of and tight controls on the WHO inspectors, etc. etc.

The tragedy at our border is huge and this seems almost a small part of it, but some acts seem to parallel China’s: Why are Americans expected to isolate themselves from useful pursuits (such as work and education and church), while Covid-infected illegal immigrants are sent on planes and buses to the interior (not that I’m all that crazy about how their policies are also refreshing the epidemic in Texas).

Stirring division, encouraging wokeness and discouraging economic recovery in Atlanta, ignoring the vulnerability of the border to human trafficking and terrorist entry, encouraging defunding the police and justice systems that show little (in some cases any) respect for property or the victims of violent crime: the quantity of “ironies” might be more easily explained as expected consequences to Biden/Harris policies. And so we might be forgiven for thinking that they, too, do not have our best interests in mind.

With Trump I’d turn to Instapundit and notice every day little and big things that seemed to free us or make the future more attractive, one of the values was that doing and speaking seemed aligned and Orwellian obfuscation was not omnipresent; it is, now, as opposite patterns can be easily discerned. Both seemed to be “busy” presidents – though that this seems to be coming from Biden seems hard to believe, it certainly is coming from “his” White House. And one’s busyness leads to productivity and the other’s to stasis – the position of a sitting duck.

29 thoughts on “Better Explanations?”

  1. “We might be forgiven for thinking that China does not have our best interests in mind, given their halt of all national movement from Wuhan and encouragement of all international travel from Wuhan in the pandemic’s early months, given the secrecy that surrounds the Wuhan Institute and the belated admission of and tight controls on the WHO inspectors, etc. etc.”

    Perhaps the colour revolution you supported in Hong Kong, the constant lies about the Uighurs, and your constant accusations, have upset the Chinese. Who knows.

    As well the Covid virus found in the sewers of Venice in Sept 2019, puts the lie to many theories about its inception.

  2. The abandonment of the media field has been catastrophic, but the real problem is how pitiful the GOPe is. Where is anyone speaking up about, well, anything? Now, the two problems are interrelated, in that in general the MSM won’t give anyone sensible from the GOP side a platform, but I don’t really see anyone trying, mostly of course because the only thing that really motivates any of them is tax cuts for their big donors.

  3. The difference in the effect of the presidential activism is based on the differing goals. The current regime seeks the final, open destruction of the Constitutional order to match the ongoing practical destruction of it. The GOPe is not functionally different from the Democrats, and although they think themselves secure they will share the fate of the Mensheviki whose role they are playing.

    The coming times are going to be difficult for us, internally and externally. In the absence of legitimate electoral processes, TINVOWOOT. Externally, we will be dealing with adversaries from a position of weakness. There is no guarantee of survival in either case. Which incidentally, will please the hell out of PenGun who observes from afar and thinks there will be no spillover from events in the world.

    Be Thou Then Truly Resolved . . .

    Subotai Bahadur

  4. “Which incidentally, will please the hell out of PenGun who observes from afar and thinks there will be no spillover from events in the world.”

    I live barely 100 miles from the US, its hardly afar. There is always spillover, we are in this together, and our government is far too far, up the US posterior to suit me.

    America is in the way. The world is held back from so many things as the US is fighting for supremacy any way it can. It will lose. America broken on the ash heap of history, will be a benefit to our world.

  5. The SDS, Weathermen, etc. and their ilk figured out that they could destroy the system, which was their goal, from the inside, far more effectively than from the outside.

    Conservatives have been far too complacent, and let Them take over every institution in society. At this point the one institution that We have any chance at getting control again is the government, so it’s time to ditch any pretense that the government is for anything but rewarding your friends and crushing your enemies. None of this “government is best which governs least” nonsense. How many “blue” states have implemented boycotts of “red” states, and yet I’m not aware of a single case that goes the other way? There’s been a years-long ongoing coordinated effort by big business to steal an election and rig future elections, and other than a couple of tweets, what is the GOP doing about it, other than worrying that if the Dems raise the corporate tax rate it will be bad for the deficit?

    Walking away and hoping to be left alone is not an option, it’s far too late for that. Vote, if no other reason than to force Them to rig elections as brazenly as possible.

    “It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” GKC

  6. Now, the two problems are interrelated, in that in general the MSM won’t give anyone sensible from the GOP side a platform, but I don’t really see anyone trying, mostly of course because the only thing that really motivates any of them is tax cuts for their big donors.

    Trump had two natural allies, meaning their thinking was aligned with Trumpism even before Trump articulated his vision – Kris Koback and former Rep. Steven King. Any man who can articulate the following fundamental truth ““You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else’s babies. You’ve got to keep your birth rate up, and that you need to teach your children your values” is a man who can clearly DIAGNOSE the core problem facing American society. We all saw how the GOP stood behind a brave truth-teller.

    Kobach should have been VP instead of Pence, Trump was arranging to nominate him to head DHS but McCain went on the warpath and blocked him. Then Trump put Kobach in charge of his voter integrity task force, but abandoned him when GOP moderates refused to cooperate and vowed that there was no problem with voter fraud in America. Then Kobach was torpedoed by Kansas GOP moderates and lost his race for Governor, proving that it’s NOT ONLY the GOP politicians who are a problem, many GOP voters agree with the diversity loving GOP business class.

    Two men with the right vision but who can’t get elected. They can’t get elected because their vision is in opposition to the propaganda-created zeitgeist. Propaganda works and it works well, that propaganda sets the permissible Overton Window and the public stays within that Overton Window. Trump was unique in that he had enough star-power that he could get media to transmit his message direct to voters and he also wrestled media to the ground when they tried to spin his message. Trump actually had pretty good message discipline, he didn’t roll over and submit to media spin.

  7. America broken on the ash heap of history, will be a benefit to our world.

    Yet Canada was shitting bricks when Trump tore up NAFTA. The way to your better world is to take the first step to that better world where America no longer exists, stop trading with America. Cut those apron strings.

  8. Ginny: “We might be forgiven for thinking that China does not have our best interests in mind …”

    OK, the statement is ironic. Of course the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have their own best interests in mind, not anyone else’s. And that is the way it should be. If the US Political Class were as competent as the CCP, we would have nothing serious to worry about.

    The frightening thought is that many of the Political Class and their chorus among the Karens may well think that everyone else should be ignoring their own interests and putting the Woker-Than-Thou first.

    Reality will win in the end. It always does. The sad part is that society has to hit rock bottom before the healing can begin.

  9. Reality will win in the end. It always does. The sad part is that society has to hit rock bottom before the healing can begin.

    The even sadder reality is that sometimes there is no road back. Buggy whip manufacturers go bankrupt, all involved vow to become more efficient and management and labor will work as partners to restore the industry to where it once was, meanwhile the public no longer wants to buy any buggy whips.

    The structural problems we’re creating in society will lead to disaster but if we heal and leave the structural problems in place, our healing will be very short lived because those structural problems will cause the same downfall again.

    Imagine drinking a cup of vegetable oil every day and not exercising. Now you have clogged arteries and your heart attack finally get you to begin exercising, and you even take your bottle of vegetable oil to chug on as you go out for your evening walk. Lack of exercise was not the primary cause of your heart attack.

  10. Kobach should have been VP instead of Pence,<

    Pence is a squish but might have been all that was available and willing to take the job. He faded quickly on the RFRA when Indiana Governor. Worse than Kristi Noem. The real tragedy was when Reagan got talked into taking Bush as VP instead of Jack Kemp. Reagan was seen as a wild man by the GOPe. Dole delayed the tax cut until 1982 and lost the Senate.

  11. TangoMan: “The even sadder reality is that sometimes there is no road back.”

    Off the top of my head, I cannot think of ANY historical case where there was a road back. The British Empire is as dead as the Mongol Empire and the Roman Empire. The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on; etc.

    Personal view — this is the hard part for many of us. We remember a different better world — a world that existed within our lifetimes. It is very tough to accept that the world we remember has gone for ever, and can never come back.

    The best we can hope for now is a future rebirth after a devastating crash. Germany & Japan were reborn after WWII (albeit with very generous help from the US) — but they were also very different places afterwards than they had been in the 1930s.

  12. America is in the way. The world is held back from so many things as the US is fighting for supremacy any way it can. It will lose. America broken on the ash heap of history, will be a benefit to our world.

    What an asinine and pig-ignorant statement.

    The entire post-WWII international order has been built by the willingness of the rulers of the United States to sacrifice the welfare of the country to do nice things for foreigners.

    Pay any price, bear any burden- remember that? During the Cold War it made a certain amount of sense, no longer.

    For Canada, this goes back at least as far when Pierre Trudeau- stepdad of Castro’s son Justin- decided Canada need not maintain any sort of real military because the US wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Canada. The rest of NATO has operated with the exact same philosophy.

    The upside of any American collapse is that it will at least force the swarm of parasites feeding off the country to finally detach and make do with out American support.

    That includes Canada, PenGun. Yep, cut those apron strings. I’m sure the CCP will treat you better than the US, right?

  13. The British Empire is as dead as the Mongol Empire and the Roman Empire. The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on; etc.

    Am empire, a superpower, always achieves its status due to some competitive advantage, some core strength. America achieved its power by supplanting the UK as a manufacturing and financial machine. Entire supply chains were built in America in service of numerous industrial sectors. This is now China’s core strength, manufacturers see the appeal of setting up shop close to their suppliers.

    Now we still control the world’s financial system (SWIFT) buy we’re rapidly hollowing out and we’re unserious, all of this diversity-mania coming at the expense of economic and productive efficiency.

    Look at the Border Crisis taking place right now. A serious country would understand that taking in unaccompanied minors is a drain on national wealth and those kids are not our problem and we’d send them back. This is Tragedy of the Commons playing out – our people no longer see government money as THEIR money, it’s someone else’s money, so spend that money on feeding, housing and educating these children. There was one serious politician in Congress, he remarked “You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else’s babies” but we was unanimously censured by the entire Congress.

    Once our debt becomes unmanageable, our influence in the financial system will evaporate, coupled with a culture riven by racial and ideological conflict, coupled with a hollowed out industrial sector, coupled with a steadily declining national IQ, we’re rapidly running short of world-class competitive advantage. The UK survives to this day, but the days of Empire are long gone. The decline and fall of America is going to leave a very bitter aftertaste for many older people because it was self-inflicted and could have been avoided.

  14. We still have massive advantages over China, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The trendlines are grim, but to be honest I can easily imagine a resurgent Right taking power, mostly because the left has no economic ideas that actually work, and their cultural ideas are extremely unpopular, and they may push people too far too fast. Remember many people compared Trump to the Gracchi. We may not be late Imperial Rome, we may be late Roman Republic. Not saying that’s the way to bet, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. One thing we do know, unfortunately, is the America we all knew before about 1990 is long gone, never to return.

  15. but to be honest I can easily imagine a resurgent Right taking power,

    Let’s define our terms. Contextual analysis suggests that “The Right” is simply those folks who are in opposition to “The Left’s” current idiocy. Looking at “The Right” today and comparing to “The Right” which existed in the 1930s, it’s hard to find the ideological connective tissue. The Right stands in favor of anti-discrimination laws, the Voting Rights Act, diversity and multiculturalism, in favor of homosexual marriage, in favor of foreign interventionism, in favor big government (so long as spending is focused on the military), in favor of massive deficits, etc. Most of these positions were “radical Leftist” position back in the 1930s. “The Right” is simply “The Left of 20 years ago and the Radical Left of 50 years ago.”

    The Alt-Right of today holds pretty much identical views to those held by the GIs who went to Europe to fight the Nazis.

    mostly because the left has no economic ideas that actually work, and their cultural ideas are extremely unpopular, and they may push people too far too fast.

    Capitalism beat Communism. What has “The Right” done with this outcome? They let the Left capture the commanding heights of culture and indoctrinate youth about the glory of communism. Think about how much of a loser a political movement must be to allow their opponents to propagandize for a return to a failed economic system and not be able to muster a convincing argument or political response despite being correct on the issue and having historical events to back them up.

    There was no popular support for multiculturalism, no popular support for Affirmative Action, no popular support for school integration (hence Ike sending armed troops down South to integrate schools and Boston having riots when integration and busing arrived there), there was no popular support for mass migration, no popular support for homosexual marriage, etc. and yet all of these changes have been implemented, the propaganda machinery went into over-drive, and now even “The Right” is in support of these measures. There is not a single Republican pushing to repeal anti-discrimination laws, not one pushing to end diversity in immigration, not one pushing to repeal homosexual marriage, and even on the bedrock abortion issue, they simply making nice cooing sounds to please the social conservatives, but no one is actually banning abortion wholesale.

    Simply put, much like homosexuals hijacked the word “gay” and now no one uses it to refer to a mood of happiness, “The Right” has hijacked the word “Conservative” all the while not giving a damn about conserving anything.

    For a resurgence to take place I would think one needs some unifying ideology or purpose, the “we’re not them” is too weak-tea to get people off their keisters and fighting to restore America.

  16. Brian: “… I can easily imagine a resurgent Right taking power …”

    It would be great if you were correct, but I look at my fellow citizens dutifully wearing masks and can’t see any sign of a resurgent Right.

    Still, let’s follow the thought. Let’s assume that every elected Republicrat is condemned to the 9th Circle of Hell, elections suddenly become honest, and a resurgent TEA Party sweeps the board in all future elections. What do they do?

    From President Trump’s experience, we know the first thing they need to do is to fire massive numbers of senior Federal employees, prosecute lots of them in military courts, immediately close down entire Federal Departments with extreme prejudice.

    Then they would have to reboot the entire educational system. Many teachers fired. Pensions cancelled. Universities closed down and their endowments seized as punishment for past misdeeds. And then the whole educational system would have to be rebuilt from Kindergarten up.

    Social safety nets would have to be ripped apart. No more subsidizing illegitimacy. No more subsidizing drug addiction.

    The vast networks of regulations which have driven businesses overseas would have to be repealed and replaced. Tens of thousands of government regulators thrown onto the streets. Big Law would have to be downsized and restructured — no more ambulance chasers. Maximum pay for any lawyer set at maybe $45/hour.

    Along with this, the resurgent Right would need to send the rest of the world its blessings and pull out of all one-sided treaties and withdraw the US military back to the US homeland. Let the Europeans and the Japanese and everyone else look after themselves.

    And then this resurgent Right could get down to creating the conditions to rebuild the industrial infrastructure — the mines, steel mills, chemical plants, pharmaceutical plants, etc.

    The whole process would probably take 30+ years — hard difficult years during which all Americans would have to sacrifice.

    So let’s just accept the facts: Yesterday is Gone. Collapse is inevitable. If we are lucky, a phoenix will rise from the ashes … eventually.

  17. Gavin: Did you stop after the first two sentences of my post, or did you read the whole thing? It’s not very long.

  18. Brian: “Not saying that’s the way to bet, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

    My assessment is that the resurgent Right IS beyond the realm of possibility. And it seems that you think so too: “… the America we all knew before about 1990 is long gone, never to return.”

    Once we let go of the possibility of a return to the status quo ante, we have to start thinking about what alternatives may be possible. For sure, there are better and worse possibilities ahead of us.

  19. “we have to start thinking about what alternatives may be possible.”
    I don’t think the possibility is zero that the Democrats are going to badly overreach, with their policies designed by and for extremely liberal online white women. Imagine in a few years a situation where we have a ruined economy and the Dems start pushing for things like removing tax exemptions for churches in order to raise more money, which would of course only be ever used against evangelical churches and Catholic dioceses whose bishops don’t know their place, never ever against black churches. I can easily see their activist base pushing hard for that, and then I can certainly imagine an Article V convention being called that radically shakes things up. I can also pretty easily see a nullification crisis where DC orders TX to shut down the fracking industry, and the response is to refuse and evict all EPA personnel from the state, and some states try to boycott TX and most do not. I can also pretty easily see the Dems packing the Supreme Court and a majority of states openly declaring that the Court is therefore invalid, and their decisions hold zero weight. I can imagine quite a lot of things. “Oh well, President Harris and Vice President Cortes says my pastor is mean therefore my church is shut down, and the natural gas for my furnace has been shut off to save the planet, and I can’t afford a new car and used gas jobs are banned, but that’s ok, I’ll just have to make do” isn’t the only possible future…

  20. “The entire post-WWII international order has been built by the willingness of the rulers of the United States to sacrifice the welfare of the country to do nice things for foreigners.”

    LOL. America has done its level best to feather its own nest at the expense of the entire world. As it was the only country undamaged by WW2 and came out of it wealthier than when it went into it, it leveraged that great good fortune to shape the world to its advantage. That has gone on ever since and is the main cause of so many of the problems the world faces today.

  21. “We still have massive advantages over China, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

    The economy of China has been, and will very probably continue to, double about every 8 years. ;)

  22. I can also pretty easily see a nullification crisis where DC orders TX to shut down the fracking industry, and the response is to refuse and evict all EPA personnel from the state, and some states try to boycott TX and most do not.

    I can see this coming and soon.

    PenGun is beneath ridicule.

  23. The brainrot is irreversible, had we an imperial sensibility we could have crushed the soviets with weapons at hand but we were too compromised by 20 years of soviet infiltration

  24. The economy of China has been, and will very probably continue to, double about every 8 years. ;)

    China is a bubble. The CCP has been trying to let the air out of the bubble to avoid a pop. They are trying Yuan diplomacy by getting developing countries trapped in their own debt bubble. Soon those countries can ignore those debts as China falls apart. Coof, coof was an act of desperation.

  25. Brian: “I can imagine quite a lot of things.”

    I can imagine quite a lot of things too — many of them similar to the kinds of scenarios you imagine. The lesson of history is that the Big Wheel Keeps On Turning. Every victory contains the seeds of its future defeat — which is why we are not all now living in the Greater Mongol Empire. The situation today is that the Lefties have won, and now we all (including the Lefties) get to live with the consequences — which include the collapse of their Leftie world.

    Some time ago, Brian, you mentioned the book “World Turned Upside Down”, about Mao’s Chinese Cultural Revolution. I got a copy & read it. Some version of that kind of chaos, cannibalism, and near civil war is probably what lies in our near future. But short-term pessimist, long-term optimist. Compare the MagLev China of today with the China of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It may take a few generations, but things will eventually get better (unless one happens to be a Uighur).

    Maybe we should be thinking about the medieval Irish monastery as a model. We can’t stop the chaos that the Political Class is foolishly bringing down upon themselves and the rest of us — but maybe we can keep the flame alive during the darkness, to help future generations choose a better course.

  26. Maybe we should be thinking about the medieval Irish monastery as a model.

    Well, Tucson AZ is a long way from an Irish monastery but it is also 400 miles from California and the craziness now expanding faster than the CCP economy. Arizona has suffered from CA immigration, especially those who bring their social pathology with them, but it is more dispersed and less dense than LA or SFO.

    The exodus from blue cities and states will accelerate. I would not be surprised to see civil disobedience on the part of some states. The left has given us the pattern with the “Sanctuary Cities.” Will it end in violence ? I don’t know. Some Obama generals might find themselves without troops one day.

  27. Mike K: “Will it end in violence ? I don’t know. Some Obama generals might find themselves without troops one day.”

    Someone once noted that the military has to fracture before there can be any real revolution or civil war. Think of Cossacks refusing to ride down protestors in the Czar’s Russia, or Iranian soldiers shooting their officers and joining the protestors in the Shah’s Iran.

    Yes, the path that the Lefties have chosen will lead to violence. But residents of Chicago’s South Side might not notice the difference.

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