Sarah Hoyt summarizes:
Not just the conviction that “it can’t happen here.” There is also the deep in-built certainty that tomorrow will be more or less like today, and the worst that can happen within relatively safe bounds. Even while everything is shifting against you. From Pompeii to Nazi Germany, from Alexander’s conquests to Communist Russia, the normalcy bias has killed more human beings than any other factor in history.
See also Note 12 here.
One problem in the immediate future is that the Holocaust reference can make current problems seem trivial–“what are you complaining about, no one is killing you, we’re just shutting down your churches, preventing you from getting jobs, etc.”
Thus has it ever been, cf Matthew 24:37-44 & Luke 17:26-30.
Of course, recognition is only half the problem. The other half is what actions to take.
Indeed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEbjInR6irI&ab_channel=FrankZappa-Topic
One thing the European Jews did not have was 300 million guns. Would they have used them ?
Will we see states that become sanctuaries or that defy the federal regime ?
How sincere are the “Woke” CEOs on that conference call?
Some of them were at Augusta National for the call.
“The gathering was an enthusiastic voluntary statement of defiance against threats of reprisals for exercising their patriotic voices,” Sonnenfeld told CBS News. The corporate leaders “recognize that they need to step up to the plate and are not fearful of these reprisals. They’re showing a disdain for these political attacks. Not only are they fortifying each other, but they see that this spreading disease of voter restrictions from Georgia to up to possibly 46 other states is based on a false premise and its’ anti-democratic.”
Nothing like honest elections to stir up the fascists.
So, to get on an airplane, a person needs (a) to be alive, and (b) to have a government-issued photo ID, and (c) to answer some simple questions from a government official, and (d) be frisked down by government employees. And the CEOs of Delta etc are fine with that. Apparently, those requirements do not prevent women, People of Color, and the gender-confused from flying.
But when a government polling station asks for proof of a person being a bona fide citizen registered in that precinct — the CEOs of Delta etc find that unacceptable.
If someone had tried to write that as a satire a couple of decades ago, any publisher would have rejected the story — too ridiculous!
“If someone had tried to write that as a satire a couple of decades ago, any publisher would have rejected the story — too ridiculous!”
If there were any satirists left in contemporary America, there’s a target rich environment of “liberals” with unread copies of 1984 and It Can’t Happen Here on their shelves cheering on a consortium of Fortune 500 CEOs attacking state legislatures for passing laws that are both common and popular, which the FBI keeps people in prison for months for simple trespassing charges, and argues that they should be held there indefinitely because they voice distrust of the government.
This issue have been a topic-de jure on every Russian-American libertarian/Right blog ever since January.
Our collective – and relatively recent – experience, being mostly Jewish and immigrating to US with refugee status from a place under a direct threat to our and our familie’s lives, – sent a collective alert signal, right when the Left started propaganda campaign after their psyop they call the “attack on Capitol”.
The conclusion: this time there is nowhere to run.
yes, some still discussing how to survive on lake water (with filtering camping equipment) and what how can a radio assist if (some say “when”…) public utilities fail and a week after every man will be for himself.At that point I stop participating.
Oh, and by the way, don’t count on Christian groups helping you.
The talks, ranging from three to 18 minutes long, focus on an array of perspectives and opinions that fit the seven channels of culture, including media, government, and the social sector. “No topic is off limits,” the organization’s site declares.
Ngo told Fox News that he wasn’t given further clarification on the reason he was dropped, although he was “looking forward to speaking to the conference about the threat to liberal democracy and free expression from far-left extremists who seek to normalize political violence.”
“I’m not Christian, but I admire Christianity’s theological pillars of grace and forgiveness,” Ngo said to the conservative network. “That is something that is prohibited in Antifa’s worldview. Unfortunately, the organizers ultimately decided that their attendees should not hear my message.”
Antifa is now allied with “Christian groups.”
“this time there is nowhere to run.”
My recollection is you live in NYC or thereabouts? There’s still plenty of space–to TX, of course, though as enough people have done so it’s changed a ton in recent decades–they need to put in more checks against craziness, to build on the stuff they’ve done like write a ban on income tax into the state constitution. Most clearly red states will do. I’m in NY myself, and, well, am gonna stick here for at least a while longer.
A good read but I would add unlike the Jews philosophy in survival in Europe – that ultimately the oppressor would see their killing something that provides for them – people want to believe that things will be the same tomorrow as yesterday.
I believe that if the Jews had guns there would have been, as today with other groups, a desire to cooperate and disbelieve what was coming. Only when the program was well underway would those left take up their arms.
I beleive the Jews in German had guns, until they didn’t.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1598131621/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_4?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
The conclusion: this time there is nowhere to run.
Years ago I was debating a Black Activist and we got onto the topic of White Flight and I pointed out that White people will vote with their feet, they’ll simply move out of a neighborhood which is degraded by too much diversity. His response to me was that it was his mission to insure that Whites could find no safe havens to escape to.
His mindset was little different from the views ObamaCare proponents expressed to me when I pointed out that there was nothing stopping them from inviting all liberals, all Blacks, all minorities and all illegals together and voluntarily creating a universal health care system for themselves and they they can exclude the opponents of universal health care from that system. They were apoplectic, they wanted to force their vision onto the opponents.
That mindset is little different from was Andrew Neather remarked on regarding Tony Blair’s Labour Party purposely expanding 3rd migration into the UK in order to rub the noses of Conservatives into the destruction of their beloved Britain.
That mindset is little different from how The Joker was characterized in one of Nolan’s Batman movies, “some people just like to watch the world burn.” If they can bring misery into your life, then they experience joy.
I believe that if the Jews had guns there would have been, as today with other groups, a desire to cooperate and disbelieve what was coming. Only when the program was well underway would those left take up their arms.
Owning guns is a red herring. A bike-lock to your opponent’s head does much more damage than a gun never fired in self-defense or in offense.
What matters is the willingness to take violence to your enemies. Antifa and the Left are willing to do such violence. Think about that college professor in SF who prepared to go to the Proud Boys rally. He packed that bike-lock weapon, he had intent to use it to brain damage anyone who was not Antifa, he didn’t chicken out, he used it and hit people in the head and did do bodily damage to his ideological opponents.
All of the Rambo’s on the Right masturbating around their gun collections, talking tough, all share a vision of how they will be Rambo – The Antifa Goons bust into his house and threaten him and his family and so he fires his firearm and kills these intruders. This fantasy is entirely a self-defense scenario where Antifa goons are storming into his castle. In terms of morality, most people have a clear conscience if they use violence, even deadly violence, in self-defense. The problem with this fantasy is that, come the revolution, Antifa is not going to be storming into your home, instead they will bypass you like the US Navy bypassed the Japanese at Rabaul. They’ll simply have you fired from your job, render you unemployable, have their allies in government de-person you, have your house repossessed, etc. Holding onto your beloved firearms and waiting for your enemy to storm your house so that you have moral excuse to shoot them down is a form of Mary Sue fantasy.
To use those firearms requires a mindset of accepting the consequences which follow and because wars on not won by being solely on the defense, this means the situation has to be so damn bad that submitting to your enemy is actually a worse fate than going out and fighting them and risking your life and your family’s and all of your worldly possessions.
In Solzhenitsyn’s essay “Live Not By Lies” he writes about inflicting costs on the communist enforcers when they are sent out to round up people. People will submit to tyranny if they think they can eek out some kind of life under tyranny, and this applies to the Rambo’s of the Right, it doesn’t matter how many guns you own, you have to be willing to use them in OFFENSIVE situations, and thereby you risk everything you are and all that you have.
That bike-lock is deadlier than a firearm which is never fired because the Antifa good is committed to his revolutionary vision and the firearm owner is focused on living a normal life, desiring to be left in peace.
though as enough people have done so it’s changed a ton in recent decades–they need to put in more checks against craziness
You know that scene in Austin Powers were Fred Savage has a huge mole on his face and Austin can’t mention it and so he looks crazy as he tries to avoid the subject?
Pretending that the threat to Texas is coming from wokesters is kind of the same dynamic. What’s the mole analog in this situation? Racial Demographic Change. Texas is creeping towards flipping to the Democrats because of the declining White population of Texas. Wokesters moving to Texas is a rounding error on this issue.
This mindset of thinking that changing a few laws, changing the state constitution, is going to safeguard Texan society is a common failing of Republicans who can’t seem to comprehend what their eyes are showing them – liberals don’t follow their rules.
That bike-lock is deadlier than a firearm which is never fired because the Antifa good is committed to his revolutionary vision and the firearm owner is focused on living a normal life, desiring to be left in peace.
Excellent points. We are the law abiding and that might be a disadvantage in the crisis. My parents’ home was in a near idyllic section of Chicago called South Shore.
It is a hell hole now and you can guess the reason. My father finally sold our house (I was in California) after being assaulted on the front porch. He managed to get the front door open and the dog drove the “youths” off.
I have no interest in offensive action as I am too old but I will defend my home. The leftists being placed in law enforcement, like the LA DA, will punish any attempt at self defense, like the Kyle Rittenhouse kid in Wisconsin. I will accept that if it comes to that.
There is also the deep in-built certainty that tomorrow will be more or less like today, and the worst that can happen within relatively safe bounds.
This is why Reactionaries are the folks with the clearest vision, their eyes opened widest. They see the danger the moment it arrives while everyone else is blind to the danger and accommodates the change. Where Reactionaries need to improve is on the timescale argument – doom will not arrive immediately after they sense the danger, and when they warn of doom and doom does not arrive immediately, they are discredited. Doom will arrive, but it takes time for that cancer to do its damage.
Random but not countering and not cheerful responses:
Booking a flight to where? Consider the wokeness of corporate America, of sports – partially now considering themselves in imaginary terms of global citizens of global economies.
Bellingham: “Never underestimate the desire of some to make others dependent upon them” which goes back to the desire for power in David’s post. And what better way to make them dependent than to burn their houses, their businesses, their churches.
The Pipes interview I keep throwing in: 3 steps: 1) One national party; 2) Making everything political in terms of that party; 3) Concentration/re-education/Gulags.
Since this morning, straightening unread journals, 2 gloomy articles skimmed:
National Review‘s essays on the Jacobin’s (though the comments seem to make more sense than the articles. Aside: the right has been forced into thinking in political terms, they don’t naturally or comfortably go there – but when sports and humor and churches, sex and family structure and raising children become political, considering politics is self-preservation.
The apparently free Epoch that arrived yesterday, with Roger Kimball’s “A Near Call: Whether the Left Will Implode or Triumph.”
The political became intertwined with sex, gender, and the family as well as religion. Free sex – meaningless sex – was characteristic of our era – that diminishes love, loyalty – above all it diminishes a place of privacy, an oasis. Then homosexuality: what began as a sensible and moral tolerance became a political statement. Now, the stance of the transgender, problematic at best in terms of the good of those undergoing it, as become a political position. And so, slowly (or rapidly in terms of human society) have the nearest, closest, most intense of our institutions, including the family, been invaded and subverted. Religion, the oldest and at once the most intimate of our institutions has become politicized in ways that subvert its core. (The great beliefs about the equality of souls in societies that encourage decisions about life and death be taken from the soul, from the family and defined by bureaucracy seems a great example. The “woke” sense that conscience is trumped by government.)
And therefore the government has all power: it invades our daily lives, our faith, our family; when we are told we are guilty of unconscious racism (proof the tendencies evolution has honed for thousands of years to pronounce infants racist and reject any use of our natural instincts to save us), they claim rights over our minds and consciences. If that ambitious project is undertaken and the independence of those minds and consciences begin (as our nation wisely noted is our nature) to assert themselves, there is nothing left but concentration/re-education/gulags. Or, I guess, death.
the importance of recognizing when the rules of the game have fundamentally changed
“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
Almost everything that is presently transpiring is playing out how I thought it would when I came to adopt my views 20 years ago as a university student. What I got wrong was the amount of White self-hatred and so the active support for movements like BLM and Antifa. My excuse, I was young, I still clung to the paradigm of rational actors. What I’ve learned over the past 20 years is the devastating power of propaganda. My most recent insight on propaganda disabused me of my belief that the leadership class is Straussian, the deploy propaganda to achieve a desired end but are immune to the propaganda, well clearly that is not true, leaders come under the influence of propaganda just as much is the proles, and so the journey through the looking glass becomes ever more bizarre.
I saw how the rules had changed, the change not occurring 20 years ago, the change having occurred long before I became an adult. The fallacy of that essay is the presumption that we’re NOW in a period where the rules are being CHANGED. No, we’re now in a period where the consequences of rules changed in the past are starting to bite us, but the bites are not distributed normally through the population, some folks (like me) understood long ago, others are understanding what is at stake today, and others are still blind to what is happening while others will remain blind even as the bites kill them.
October 1, 1992 – Eugene McCarthy’s book “A Colony of the World” is published. We all know who McCarthy was, right? He was no reactionary. He saw that the rules had changed.
We CHOOSE not to use our powers. What influences choice? Thoughts, values, beliefs, principles, self-interest. The Patriots who went to Charlottesville are portrayed as scum, Antifa is portrayed as peaceful and fighting the good fight to make America better. This inversion of reality is all due to propaganda.
Ginny: “… there is nothing left but concentration/re-education/gulags.”
Look on the bright side. The English instituted concentration camps in South Africa; Germany perfected them in WWII; USSR ran gulags on a massive scale. And, you know what? In every case, those societies failed!
Oh, the instigators were successful in creating lots of human misery at the time. But where are they now? British Empire? Nazi Germany? USSR? The instigators succeeded in creating industrial-scale human misery, but ultimately they failed and were swept into the dustbin of history.
So shall it be with the Far Left Democrats and their foolish plans. They are indeed succeeding in making life worse for most of us — and it is going to get a lot worse too. But ultimately they will fail, and be swept away — perhaps with extreme prejudice.
This may not seem like much to be happy about today, but at least we know from history that the Big Intrusive Government types are doomed always to fail in the end.
Look on the bright side. The English instituted concentration camps in South Africa; Germany perfected them in WWII; USSR ran gulags on a massive scale. And, you know what? In every case, those societies failed!
What’s different, perhaps, in our case is that we may see Americans wanting to go to those Gulags. Whites are a toxic presence to the lives of minorities, so with Whites rounded up and sent to live in isolation from glorious diversity, America will supposedly be improved. Poor White people having to live in Gulag states with only White people as their neighbors, co-workers, fellow students, poisoning each other’s minds and souls with their toxic Whiteness. For a lot of Americans, that actually sounds like a good deal.
Texas is creeping towards flipping to the Democrats because of the declining White population of Texas.
No, it’s creeping towards the demonrats because of the numb inability or craven unwillingness of the geee ohh peeee to make a political case against the left and represent the people who vote for the party. That is, assuming your assertion is correct. I note Trump won a heavily Hispanic border county and vastly improved his vote total over 2016 others. He did that because he offered an alternative to the left that the witless GOP refuses to do.
They’ll simply have you fired from your job, render you unemployable, have their allies in government de-person you, have your house repossessed, etc.
Obviously, we should just all commit suicide right now, because we lost already. Nothing can be done, nothing at all.
That bike-lock is deadlier than a firearm which is never fired because the Antifa good is committed to his revolutionary vision and the firearm owner is focused on living a normal life, desiring to be left in peace.
Mmm-hmmm.
They use bike-locks- and skateboards and frozen eggs and the like- because if they use obvious weapons their political cover would be blown, and the demonrats would have some explaining to do. It wouldn’t go well for them, because most people aren’t interested in violent revolution.
That’s actually an important fact, btw.
This is why Reactionaries are the folks with the clearest vision, their eyes opened widest.
I love this. I can just see the Che posters on your wall, along with an assortment of Castro mementos from your time protesting against the US boycott of Cuba.
I have a different take. I think it’s a good thing that normal people aren’t picking up guns to kill our present enemies, because it means normal people aren’t murderous scum like anitifa or the burn-loot-murder crowd.
When the time comes for that to change, it will. Until then, I’m not going to kill anyone.
Ginny…a big part of the problem, I think, is people looking to the formal, public sphere for things previously handled by the private, family, and neighborhood spheres, while simultaneously looking to regulate all personal & family behavior by the kind of rule-driven constraints and demands previously associated with the political sphere.
The terms ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’ almost fit, but not quite.
I have a different take. I think it’s a good thing that normal people aren’t picking up guns to kill our present enemies, because it means normal people aren’t murderous scum like anitifa or the burn-loot-murder crowd.
You must really hate Thomas Paine and the tree of liberty. Even worse were the murderous scum of American Revolutionaries.
You seem very confused about things, especially about Cuba and Che.
Neo Neocon posted a few days ago, with a repeat of an old post on what she calls a hierarchy of evil and resistance:
Here they are, in order from most evil to most dedicated to fighting evil:
“–Some people will conceptualize, plan, and implement it as leaders.
–Some people will actively cooperate with vigor.
–Some people will support it but not actively participate.
–Some people will be indifferent (or even unaware) unless it directly reaches them or their family.
–Some people will be somewhat disturbed by it, but manage to put it out of their minds most of the time and go on with their lives.
–Some people will be disturbed by it and contemplate various forms of resistance, but will be too frightened to act.
–Some people will be disturbed by it and will decide to act in small ways to resist it, ways they consider lower risk.
–Some people will be disturbed by it and will decide to take great risks in order to resist it, but could be stopped by threats (not necessarily threats to themselves, but threats to friends and family).
–Some people will risk all to actively resist it in every way they can.
… When we talk about the prevalence of evil in humanity, and whether people are “good at heart,” this is what I think we’re actually discussing. What percentage of the population belongs to each group? I don’t know, but if I had to guess at the shape of a graph, it probably would be a normal distribution—that is, the biggest bump would be in the middle groups, with much smaller numbers for the beginning and ending rungs of the ladder of evil.”
The whole thing and the discussion there is here – https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/04/10/the-ladder-of-evil-3/
David, I think you are on to something, if I understand you – there’s the private and the public, one requires one kind of guides and the other, another one. Applying one to the other doesn’t work well (pretending that the government is just like the family means a hopelessly confused democracy where children have no security or a helplessly anarchic one when the government is run by individual passions and whims soon degenerating into a mob driven by passions and not thought.)
One of the things that has always puzzled me about the “progressives” is how static they are (of course they are always projecting, so that makes sense). They want “science” to explain things while it is the “scientific method” that is always moving and expanding and questioning that really explains. They think there was a utopia – before man, when things seemed static and perfect. The free markets – of ideas, of science, of commerce, of even choices of who we marry and where we live – are always in a flux, trying to move toward something better or at least better for each of us separately. That freaks out control freaks and if anyone seems a control freak it is your average progressive. I tend to read that as a noxious lust for power – which I still suspect is a major part of it – but some of it just may be fear of letting go because their eye of letting go is the mob, for some strange reason. When you lose sight of human nature and natural law as eternals (which I think I mostly do – I can see how the age has affected me but not always a way out) then you’ve lost your bearings.
she calls a hierarchy of evil and resistance
What constitutes evil though? Let me get even more specific, is evil judged by ultimate outcome, proximate outcome, by actions in support of outcome? If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, are the good deeds evil if they ultimately lead us to a collective hell?
There are a lot of people who think that they are doing good by standing against the Proud Boys and the Patriots of Charlottesville and accepting Antifa and BLM as forces fighting for justice. If the forces these good people support are allowed to progress, the outcomes for these good people will be horrendous, but in the moment their egos are rewarded for their beliefs and actions. These people could never be convinced that they are doing evil, they believe that they have good intentions and believe that those good intentions will never lead them, and society, to hell.
“These people could never be convinced that they are doing evil, they believe that they have good intentions and believe that those good intentions will never lead them, and society, to hell.”
The way to Hell is paved with good intentions…
TangoMan:
Indeed. The Left won’t make you stand your ground. It will reprogram your kids and squeeze you into swearing loyalty oaths so that you can keep your corporate job that you need so that you can afford your leveraged lifestyle that you need to get your kids into desirable schools and to keep your middle/upper-middle-class womenfolk’s status-hunger satisfied. For most of us it will be (and is) extremely difficult to resist the leftist program, now apparently accelerating due to – election fraud? networked communication and AI? complacency by the Right? all of the above? The revolution itself will be a mere mopping up after a long process of left-wing power accretion. The squeezing by increments will continue and at no point will it make sense for the squeezed to resist forcefully, because why risk it all. Most people will get rid of their gun collections and keep their mouths shut, if doing so means keeping their prospects for a normal life.
None of this is foreordained and only time will tell if the Left prevails. Guns probably won’t save the country in any case: that’s too obvious, too hindsight-looking, too risky for the other side. Better for them to continue exploiting mass-complacency. What might save the country is some combination of 1) overreaching by the Left and 2) a widespread realization by normal people that the Left really is out to fundamentally transform the USA and must be stopped. Everything else is details.
You must really hate Thomas Paine and the tree of liberty. Even worse were the murderous scum of American Revolutionaries.
I’m just not hankering for genocide, unlike you. You should know that the American Revolution wasn’t individuals casually murdering people they didn’t like, it was something more serious.
You seem very confused about things, especially about Cuba and Che.
Yep, keep patting yourself on the back, imagining how awesome you are. You got it, nothing can be done, we’re doomed by the rising brown tide just like Ruy Teixeira said long ago. I expect if you’d been writing this in the 1910s you’d be telling us all how we’re doomed by the swarms of Italian savages invading the land.
You. Know. It. All. Tremble in fear of the bikelocks!!!!!
Well, no. Once again I have to saddle up my hobby horse to lament the sheer sniveling worthlessness of the gop. A functioning opposition would never have allowed the left to get so far out into crazyland, but because of the numb incompetence of the gop- led by people like you– we have a violent terrorist group rampaging through American cities without any sort of fear of the law or sane restraint.
The left has been taught that it need not fear any political response from the putative opposition because the gop agrees with you. Guns are useless, nothing can be done, the rising brown tide is going to swamp us all so we best try to get the best deal we can right now.
The party of why nothing can be done, as Mark Steyn described the Geee Ohhh Peeeeee, endorsed by you.
The squeezing by increments will continue and at no point will it make sense for the squeezed to resist forcefully, because why risk it all.
Nonlinear responses never happen, right?
No one of the non-left will decide they’re just getting boiled in a pot like that poor proverbial frog- and figuratively jump out. No one will decide the putative non-left party is useless- and look elsewhere. No one will vote for an orange-haired reality TV-star- oops. No opposition party that effectively represents non-leftists will ever emerge, because… reasons.
I recall something from one of Studs Terkel’s book, about a “premature anti-fascist.” That is, some people were castigated by the government because they were hostile to Nazi Germany before the government became anti-fascist too.
But the government was taught to be anti-fascist by the German declaration of war, if nothing else, and events followed from that.
The American public needs to be taught to be anti-leftist- and the GOP should be doing that. I don’t think they are.
Hence, events will teach the public to be anti-leftist.
My guess is that this will be much bloodier than if the gop had been willing or capable of doing its job.
Most people will get rid of their gun collections and keep their mouths shut, if doing so means keeping their prospects for a normal life.
Of those who are opposed to the Left, who has the most to lose, the CEO, the doctor/dentist, or the pizza delivery guy or the garbageman? Clearly those in the upper class have the most to lose, this also means that they have the most to lose when it comes to taking a stand in opposition to the Left. And that’s why we find the patriots who went to Charlottesville to protect American history were the pizza delivery guys, guys with little to lose and so they weren’t hamstrung when it came to fight to save the nation. We’ve long known that wealth is corrupting, people will sell their souls to get wealthy, and then once wealthy, they’ll sell their souls to keep their wealth, and by wealth we can include things like (I want my children to be educated and I want to launch them into life so that they have a good life and good career.) It’s much easier to stand for your principles when taking the stand doesn’t come at great sacrifice. This also applies to Antifa, dudes living in their parents’ basements and smoking dope all day don’t really have much to lose.
Now, I can understand why the frontlines are manned as they are, but I can’t wrap my head around how people are cheering for the wrong side at a time when cheering is not yet an act which will bring reprisal down on you.
The squeezing by increments will continue and at no point will it make sense for the squeezed to resist forcefully
The decision-point regarding forceful resistance is characterized, as you observe, my past incremental movements. It’s a dynamic dance, the squeeze just a little bit harder, you adjust to the new reality and turn your focus to what you’re allowed to have, so having done this dance a number of times already, having sold your soul in small increments, why would the next iteration of the squeeze be the one which breaks the camel’s back? So long as you are allowed to keep something which brings enjoyment into your life, you will probably adjust once again to the new reality. This process is why I don’t subscribe to the model used in the OP, that there is a point where we recognize that the rules have changed. It’s never that stark nor that universal. The funny aspect to this is it’s quite likely that the writer of that viewpoint had, some time in the past, condemned someone for thinking that civilization was unraveling, when all that person actually did was arrive at the conclusion a few years before the writer of the OP came to the identical conclusion. This, of course, also means that there will be those who will look at the writer and think they’ve lost their marbles and that all is still fine and that the rules have not changed.
The revolution itself will be a mere mopping up after a long process of left-wing power accretion.
Completely agree. There used to be a lot of hand-wringing about “the Left’s March Through The Institutions” but not much was done about it and now even the complaints have dried up, the Right has accepted this as a fait accompli.
What might save the country is some combination of . . .
I hope it’s that easy. I suspect that a reversal will only come from an existential crisis which puts people into a severe fight for scarce resources. Right now no one gives a damn about deficit financing, multi-trillion dollar spending programs because no one has skin in the game. Let’s see how middle-upper class White supporters of the Left feel about the Left’s policy prescriptions when the capital markets won’t finance any American-issue debt and that the only way to pay for everything is through increased taxes, wealth confiscation, rationing on house size, etc. A zero-sum game which affects all families. As Milton Friedman noted, it’s easy being generous when you’re spending other people’s money.
but because of the numb incompetence of the gop- led by people like you
People like me? Buddy, do you have the wrong number. University indoctrination centers would be defunded, I’d be building affordable housing and shipping “diversity” into rich White neighborhoods where support for Democrats is highest, I’d be shipping all refugees out to Sanctuary Cities, I’d be overturning the Voting Rights Act, overturning anti-discrimination laws, overturning all quota mandates, shutting down all immigration, allowing local gov’ts to determine their own welfare policies in order to prevent Somali migration to Maine in order to benefit from generous welfare, I’d be finding ways to charge Lutheran Refugee Services, and similar organizations, with Crimes Against Humanity, and, well, I could write all day about how I’d play hardball if I was in charge.
If people like me ran the GOP your complaints about me and the GOP would be of a completely different nature.
TM: “I suspect that a reversal will only come from an existential crisis which puts people into a severe fight for scarce resources.”
The odds are you are right, TM. The trigger for change will come from outside the US. If memory serves, it was former UK Prime Minister Harold McMillan who once said “Events, dear boy. Events!”.
My bet today is the trigger will be when China stops accepting freshly-printed US Dollars in exchange for the real goods that are no longer made in the US. But I may change my mind. :)
“Who has the most to lose”
In our country, that isn’t just the upper classes. We’re rich. An awful lot of us have a lot to lose. True, most of us are getting poorer, but there’s still a long way to fall.
An awful lot of us have a lot to lose.
I agree, hence my observation about who it was there at Charlottesville defending America, the losers of our society. In a country where the citizens had moral fiber, steel spines and understood that collective action early in conflict will put a stop to the Left, the people protesting against erasure should have been history professors, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, corporate leaders, etc., people who could bring their personal reputation, wealth, stature to the game and make it more difficult for the Left to unperson them.
The Left would have attacked these people because they do have something to lose, but those attacks only work when the employers of these people, the customers of these people, the neighbors of these people, do the Left’s bidding and ostracize them. All it takes to neutralize “cancel culture” is to tell the Left to fuck-off, you stand with the person that they want to unperson.
You think my defending the patriots of Charlottesville is some attempt to win friends and influence people? I’m completely at odds with the zeitgeist on those guys. They went out to defend our history and most faced personal ruin and no one spoke on their behalf. They weren’t, by far, the first to be cancelled, but if people stood with them, then they could have been the last to be cancelled. Bullies stop being bullies when victims stand up to the bully.
Xennady: Nonlinear responses never happen, right?
That’s not what I wrote. Anything can happen.
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TangoMan: Let’s see how middle-upper class White supporters of the Left feel about the Left’s policy prescriptions when the capital markets won’t finance any American-issue debt and that the only way to pay for everything is through increased taxes, wealth confiscation, rationing on house size, etc.
The easier way is to inflate the currency.
Brian: your recollection is right.
“There is still plenty of space” – but is it, really?
Besides, when there is nowhere to run – when one is in the corner – the reaction might not necessarily “flight”.
Tatyana, no doubt we are getting close to the point where there is no more space to safely withdraw, no more “this isn’t the hill to die on”, etc. Very, very close. To the point where we need to (if we haven’t already) be preparing for fighting ourselves, not just expecting our kids to be the ones who have to, after we’re gone.
Just an anecdote that fits: I talked to an old friend–a yellow dog Dem–yesterday and he told me that despite my misgivings about COVID vaccines it was my patriotic duty to get in line.
My reply was that I pay taxes; I did refrain from saluting him.
As to systemic shock, don’t be in such a rush.
(I’ll be 68 next month and still have stuff to do.)
I’ll reiterate my comment about how the South’s winning the slavery argument with the Dred Scott decision culminated in the Civil war.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/dred-scott-case
The Missouri compromise and Kansas-Nebraska Act had rendered slavery obnoxious but tolerable to the majority in the free states by containing to the states where it existed and controlling its spread to new territories. As far as I know, all, or the great majority of free states had laws that forbade slavery within their borders and automatically freed slaves brought into them.
Dred Scot set all of this aside and laid the foundation for invalidating all the laws that had limited slavery to the slave states. This “win” effectively removed many of the people that deplored slavery but tolerated it as long as it was happening “down there” from the side lines and launched them toward becoming abolitionists.
The irony, if that’s the word, is that the abolitionists were no closer in 1861 to being able to amend the Constitution to abolish slavery then they ever had been. Secession is what put them in the driver’s seat and even then took until 1865.
The truth is that the federal government, out side of the military, has precious few resources to force compliance with anything.
twenty assorted nationalists, vs something like 2,000 leftists, they were ahead of the mark of this way of smashing artefacts how long before the us flag was deemed toxic, and within a year after that even lincoln was
buchanan was distracted with the bigger issues, because as a fmr diplomat, he had tried to acquire territories that still had their cohort of slaves, the northern states didn’t want trouble, the midwestern states as the lincoln douglas debates proved we’re really interested in committing either way,
The Confeds were their own worst enemies, and MCS notices a wrinkle that is easy to miss. Another aspect of the reality that is obscured by ‘state’s rights’ framing is that Scott and other such cases were not argued on the basis of ‘states’ anything, but rather the ‘personal’ rights of master over slave.