“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.” – Winston Churchill
I was reminded this week also of the limerick about the lady smiling as she rides the tiger – and how they return from the ride with the tiger smiling and the lady inside. I wonder this week if certain politicians (American and European mostly) and a good many of our own very dear national media figures are riding the tigers with a desperate smile plastered on their faces. They’ve had a good time and have scored richly remunerative leadership positions, or climbed to the top of the national media heap in advocating for various progressive causes, or in defending such causes through various media organs.
They’ve been riding those metaphorical tigers for decades; championing everything from enabling the mass importation of illegal immigrants and spurious refugees country-shopping for the most generous set of benefits, gay porn for kindergarteners, skimping on fire prevention and brush clearance in the name of the ecology (looking at you, Governor ‘Brylcreem’ Newsom), enabling and indulging the deranged and drug-abusing homeless, knee-capping the domestic industrial base and reliable energy-producing technologies, enthusiastically denigrating the white ethnic working class (and majority) citizens to favor the exotic ‘other’ in every possible way, leading many observers to suspect that our leadership wishes to dissolve the people, and replace them with a much more biddable and subservient population. Oh, and don’t forget how our educational overlords have reduced the value of a college education into something with the approximate value of a used bus ticket, and graduated high schoolers who can barely read a third-grade textbook.
The big names in our national media rode the tiger by insisting for years that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, an incorruptible and stone-patriot American, against everything that the rest of us could see with our own eyes. For which we were told that our lying eyes were deceiving us, right up until a few weeks ago, when those big national names began sobbing about how it wasn’t their fault! They were all deliberately fooled by certain of the Biden administration top staffers. So – this belated cri de Coeur establishes the national media as either partisan hacks or too dumb and incurious to even call themselves reporters of news at anything more elevated than a high school newspaper. If this is the national media’s tiger dismount, it’s way too late to redeem the lost credibility.
As for progressive politicians, academicians and bureaucrats generally, the policies on which they have built decades-worth of careers are turning out to be wildly unpopular, especially among citizens who feel themselves to have been grossly harmed by them, and voted last November to favor our own interests and concerns. Trump and other MAGA-sympathetic office-holders have the whip-hand in the US, at least for now – and not wasting any time in holding back with the whip. Now comes the time when the ride is getting … uncomfortable for those on the tiger. Ask not for whom the mob bays – it bays for thee. And when and if they decided to dismount, the smile will be on the face of the tiger.
Every nation or people has some sort of social contract. Basically, though nations/peoples can differ widely and actively oppose each other, within each separate contract there are functionally rules for how things are done. The viability of the social contract depends in large part on having the majority of the nation or people accepting and following those rules, and the legitimacy of the social contract is highly dependent on the mass of the people believing that those in power share with them the respect for those basic beliefs.
When those in power, and the mass of people, do not in fact share those beliefs; the nation, people, and social contract will break apart.
Looking around our own country, and further at Western Civilization as a whole, legitimacy is getting thin.
Subotai Bahadur
When there are clearly two different standards, SB – one for the anointed, who have privilege by virtue of color, position, income and connections to the ‘correct thought’, and one for the ordinary folk – that thins the social contract to near invisibility.
For myself, I would like to see any of the Antifa-Trantifa-BLM-anti-Ice rioters of this year treated exactly as the J-6 accused were. Every single jot and tittle, exactly how they were hunted, detained, and treated, before and after trial.
@Sgt Mom; your soft heart does you credit, madam.
Me, I’d string ’em up.
The purpose of democracy is to channel the will of the people to productive ends
When totalitarians thwart the peaceful means, they are reminded there are four boxes for feedback.
And because Education fails: Soap, Ballot, Jury, and Cartridge.
Ukraine “sneaks” agents into Russia, stations them close to important military bases, then has them launch drones and other short range weapons, with virtual no advance warning, destroying significant parts of Russia’s defense capabilities.
Israel “sneaks” agents into Iran, stations them close to important military bases, then has them launch drones and other short range weapons, with virtual no advance warning, destroying significant parts of Iran’s defense capabilities.
The USA allows hundreds of thousand Chinese to live, study, work and buy land (some near important military locations) in their country.
No one gets out of China without CCP approval.
it is the ‘woke’ heresy, I call them zombies, but they are most brainless often rabid, see those two molotov petardees, who were indicted in California,, as opposed to the two attys in Gotham that were, let off with community service,