Before getting into glowering threats to our future, let me offer you something that could lift your spirits... a tribute to my friend Frederick Turner, who was among the finest epic poets since Byron, and possibly Homer. And almost always with bold science or future-aimed or even science-fictional themes. I'll miss him, a lot.
Last month - before we were all yanked away by insipidly stupid war - a few in the press had finally started asking about the "Eyes Wide Shut" (EWS) orgies that Madison Cawthorn and two other GOP congressmen publicly - years ago(!) - called 'routine' in the GOP establishment. Of course, this has led to the vast blackmail ring that keeps RP pols & pundits in line, as the most-disciplined political force in US history.
And yes, this is related to the Epstein Files, which showed conclusively that Moscow's lipstick-relabeled KGB was long involved with Jeffrey Epstein, supplying both cash and pretty young Russian gals to help serve as kompromat bait. But, according to Cawthorn and others, Epstein's Island was not the only locale, nor were he and Robert Maxwell's daughter the only pimps.
NOW a new twist, prompting further hope that the dike may soon break. When (finally!) a reporter grilled Nancy Mace about the reported orgies, she writhed and evaded the question by mewling "I don't get invited to parties. I have no friends. I live all alone with my dog."
Say…what!? And what does that have to do with the question? Note that she did not deny it’s going on!
Alas, it may be an isolated case, with this reporter quickly told to veer back to “Quiet piggie” outrage. Have any of you seen reporters or dem-pols following up about this? Which could prove Epstein a mild offshoot eddy in something vastly deep and wide and murkier. A giga scandal, waiting to smash the GOP? One I've only been talking about (in vain) for a decade.
== Keep us focused on contrived horizons ==
They aim to render us dizzy with distractions. And certainly it succeeds. But I'm not just talking about this particular, current war... or Trump's chain of them.
In fact, the left has been ironically complicit in the distraction strategy.
How?
Take the widespread incantation that MAGA is all about racism.
Sure the depredations of ICE garner applause across Redland and horror in the eyes of decent people. But learn to recognize a deliberate distraction. Because anti-immigration stuff has no pertinence to POWER. And power is what the GOP oligarchs seek. Power to terrify and neutralize the laws and inspectors and civil servants who have long thwarted the planned return to feudalism.
While there ARE racists and Nazis and Klanners among the MAGA lumpenprols, try asking the average Fox viewer. They will reject the ‘racist!’ accusation resentfully. “I don’t feel racist.” And they’ll cite many black faces on Fox and all the adverts they now see there featuring inter-racial couples. And Clarence Thomas. And yes, that doesn't make them non-racist by your standards. But it does let them rationalize resentment toward the accusation.
Moreover, again, the oligarch masters couldn’t care less about race. It serves as a useful dog whistle to rile some of their worst confederate troops. But dig it: The powerless are not the ones who oligarchs worry about.
1. You’ve heard me say it before. There is one force in society that stands in the way of resumption of 6000 years of feudal rule by inheritance brats. That force is the fact professions, from science and civil service to the FBI/intel/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror., to teachers and strong journalists. And accountants. Especially the Inspectors and JAGs and auditors who the Trumpists have fired, in droves.
It started with Newt Gingrich demolishing the Congressional Office of Science and Technology Assessment, because the OSTA civil servants dared to tell fanatics “sir, that just isn’t true.” And every successive GOP administration has carried that battle further. Against scientists and others – like neutral and qualified judges - who know stuff and can block the worst depredations of oligarchy.
Again, tune into Fox! They are the ones most hated-on… the fact professions plus the universities that were the pride and joy of the GI Bill generations.
But not all Republican apologists are onboard with all that, and so we get to rationalizations #2 and #3.
2. “I know my party and my movement has gone stark, jabbering insane. But… but… but democrats are worse!
"Yeah, that’s the ticket. I can retain my old loyalties and hold my nose and support these travesties because Fox tells me that ALL Dems are just like the screeching 0.001% sanctimony yowlers of the far, far left!
Of course it’s trivially disproved by comparison of OUTCOMES. Which are almost all diametrically better across the spans of Democratic administrations. From deficits to GDP growth to employment to scientific advances to healthy international alliances to rates of every turpitude – from gambling, domestic violence and addiction to child predation and murder and crappy education… to net parasitism sucking taxes from the rest of the nation…
…ALL of which are more rife on average in red-run states (except Utah) than blue ones. And yes, this is where my proposed tactic of demanding wagers comes in. Because they realize you aren’t just matching assertion vs. assertion (They love that!) But you know you have actual, objective facts on your side.
But they can only go so far with the objectively insane "Democrats are even worse!" chant, in the face of stark, raving Trumian insanity. And so... some of them settle upon theories of historical teleology. In other words... this is all destiny at work. These are decadent times! But it will all work out, after lots of pain.
== The rationalizations get ever-more monstrous ==
3. I have elsewhere shredded the core mythology clutched by the ‘intellectual’ wing of today’s gone-mad Right. The mythology that always lures in the conservative wing of social thought. It's called Cyclical History. And its most recent, US-centered cult manifestation is called The Fourth Turning. A capering series of pareidolia incantations, all of whom are trivially disproved, but how can mere factual disproof compete with a lusciously masturbatory sense that all the recent betrayals of civilization by their own cult were fore-ordained anyway. So… let the kids in the next ‘hero generation’ figure it out!
If you know any members of that cult, get them help! You could start with this tragi-comic by Zack Weinersmith’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal series. Or some of the links in the previous paragraph.
Only then there’s an even worse sickness among some elites…
4. Those who are busily building prepper-bunkers fantasizing that, upon surviving a coming, society collapsing “Event,” they’ll emerge after the dust and poisons settle, to be worshipped as demigods by ragged survivors. Only, there's (as always) a flaw in their circle-jerk fantasy story...
...because this aftermath won’t resemble either Mad Max or A Canticle For Liebowitz. Sorry, guys, but the survivors won’t go burning books and lynching nerds. Rather, they will innovate and use science and technology to save however many folks remain. And they'll wait eagerly to greet you, when you emerge, blinking like cicadas, into the sunlight.
Anyway, we nerds have the schematics and locales of every deep or mountaintop ‘prepper’ compound. (Want proof?) And those hidey-holes will not have the desired outcomes. Especially after you do what I’ve heard some of you (like J.D. Vance) openly say… that you expect to deliberately trigger “The Event.”
Think I am exaggerating? Get Douglas Rushkoffs book about this circle-jerk - this mutal stroke-pleasuring of sick twats who chant semi-erotic fantasies to each other: justifications to accelerate a civilizational collapse that never had to happen. And here's a further article about the very real accelarationism cult. Those who want to ‘accelerate the Event’. Murdering you and all of yours, so they can get to be lords of the ashes.
But then… for some, the attraction is being in-the-know! “I’ve done my own research! And me and just a few others know what’s going on, you foooools!
== The ultimate self-stroke ==
5. I have no time here to go into conspiracy fetishism. But there’s hardly a word I’d change from this earlier missive of mine about that all-too human allure and addiction.
Distilled: YES! There ARE conspiracies! But there are ways to evaluate them by plausibility. Like how few or how many skilled people it would take to pull one off, especially years later, when some 80 year old participant gets an attack of conscience… or patriotism… or just the notion to ‘let me go out by spilling-all and causing a ruckus!” (And sure, that applies to JFK and UFOs and all the rest.)
There are many other aspects and ways to evaluate conspiracy theories. And yes, I have one of my own. That today's madness in DC cannot be explained by ideology or mere ‘corruption.’ It can only be coercion of some kind, enforced by a small cabal – likely based in a foreign nation – doing what that nation’s spy services have done for 150 years. Sure, some assassinations and death threats. But a far more efficient form of coercion is Blackmail.
That one satisfies all of the evaluation criteria. And still, I have the sanity to say “My imagination and ego might - maybe - encourage me to believe something that’s not there.” Perhaps because... like Nancy Mace, I never get invited to that sort of parties? Or because all the personality profiles suggest that - like Popeye, "I yam wut I yam, And dat's just a family man."
== Are we done? ==
Getting there, I promise.
Okay, this next one I’ve touted before. At first sight it looks like a cycle of history! But no. It is simply that there have long been two Americas. And the cultural divide is not just regional. It can run through families, like yours. Though regions do influence it. So I am talking about a long, long cultural tussle between citizens who are fascinated by and welcome modernity in all its rapidly changing (if sometimes dangerous or disturbing) forms…
...versus those of our countrymen and countrywomen and others who deeply lament and regret modernity’s disturbances, yearning for a yesterday that never was.
And this manifests in a pattern… not a cycle but a recurring sibling tussle…
6. In every phase of the recurring U.S. Civil (culture) War, going back to 1778, the fiery anti-urban, anti-modernity, anti-equality, 'confederate' faction won initial victories with aggressiveness, always assuming that wimpiness on the part of 'northern epicures' would ensure their victory. And they did win 3 phases - in the 1830s, 1870s and 1920s. Never heard of em? Well, they won those by not pushing too hard.
Four other - bigger - phases - were total victories for the Union and modernity, for reasons that Sam Houston expressed perfectly in 1861, in urging fellow Texans not to secede:
“Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche...”
Oh, it's not purely North vs South, this time, though look at a map… and ponder those ‘turpitudes’ I spoke of.* Anyway, the deepest cultural divide is the same, going back to 1778. And today's 'red' anti-modernity passions are fully 1860s in vehemence - only this time with more foreign backers than even Jeff Davis could wish for.
Alas, there is no Sam Houston chiding for satiability. No recognition that machismo stands little chance, if it wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
I mean, seriously? How do you expect it to go when an ’avalanche’ of nerdy fact folks get really mad? The folks who know cyber, bio, nano, nuclear and all the rest?
The list of rationalizations for betraying the Enlightenment Experiment – especially the 80 year Rooseveltean era of the Greatest Generation, that truly Made America Great – go on and on. Just as the Olde South concocted one justification after another (states rights, a ‘lost cause’, etc.) to evade the pure fact that their treason was absolutely about slavery. And slavish devotion to the plantation lords.
Likewise this time it all still boils down to slavish devotion to those aiming to restore feudalism.
That is, unless you aim to skip that darkness and jump to the second phase described by Karl Marx, which is…
7. Monarchy or neo-monarchism. In many ways the most noxious of them all. Because the neo-monarchy guys want to keep modernity! Since many of them are tech bros. They just want to get rid of da few teensy aspects of modernity: emocracy, regulations, neutral courts and flat-fair markets, now that they are on top. Keep the nerds and boffins busy inventing toys and ways to make the lords immortal. And the best way to do that is to create a king-like ‘top CEO.
Forgive a little pedantry as I show you how far back these guys go, in justifying resistance to ‘government by consent of the governed. You might look up a fellow by name of Edmund Burke, who initially supported the American revolution but turned hard right when he saw what I freely avow was a typical mad excess of the left… the Terror taking place across the Channel. In Paris, 1789.
In Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in November 1790, he wrote:
“We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty.”
Of course, such jabber often devolves down to flattering-the-boss. Burke did very well when King George and the regent read his unsupported eloquence.
But we did one better. in Common Sense, where Thomas Paine wrote dismissively about the murky origins of monarchy:
“… could we take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace them to their first rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of pre-eminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions.”
But at least the monarchy touted by Burke had some institutional limits, unlike the versions proposed by favorites of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. While the latter is pushing hard a New Russian Ideology that combines Soviet imperialism (complete with red banners and a volcanically toxic KGB) with every resurrection of Czarist romanticism…
...Donald Trump is appointing frothing microcephalics to every position in the US government. Like the notoriously worst Roman emperor, Caligula, who appointed as the new Consul… his horse.
Which takes us to the latest version of monarchism that has none of Burke’s eloquence or IQ. Incel neo-monarchist dopes like Mencius Moldbug… or Curtis Yarvin… who would quash flat-fair-creative competition forever, just like every insipidly stoopid king or lord of the last 6000 years. (Shall we tally the exceptions and wager over howfew kings were measurably wise? Were there even ten, across 60 centuries?)
Yammering - despite the last 80 years of spectacular success under the Rooseveltean Pax - that we need a king (or benevolently-dictatorial "CEO") to finally crush all hope of the flat-fair-creative-even-joyful competition that gave us so much and was the brainchild of the Father of Liberalism, Adam Smith.
Even worse than their ingrate hatred of all the Enlightenment miracles that gave them everything in their spoiled lives, these jerks would end all competitive accountability forever and ever. And, of course, they would likely end all of our lives.
==The Confederate Threat ==
Sure, but you all draw the wrong lessons from this. For a century, all these dark red zones suffered a recurring trauma. And here comes my personal, crackpot theory for why Red/Gray Americans so hate their urban, university-graduate neighbors.
Dig it: in rural or semi-rural America, the local High School is the center of all life, with the bight young heroes everyone adores, from classroom to prom to singers in Oklahoma!, to the football field. Only what happens in June? Every summer, the best and brightest kids kick off the local dust and hurry toward bright city/university lights, leaving behind... a kind of desolation of abandonment, as depicted in the film: The Last Picture Show.
And when they return (if at all) they come back changed! Transformed into snooty know-it-alls. Can you pause and recognize the Changeling Theme from almost all ancient mythologies? Faerie/e/f beings steal your children and replace them with cuckoo demons.
Is it any wonder they hate us, despite absolutely depending on our skills and inventions and services and vast productivity and taxes, every hour of every day? And despite it being their own children who are making a choice?
No I am not excusing that ingrate rage. Sure it's hypocrisy for all those counties to shrug off the vast good that was done for them, by their generous neighbors led by FDR to LBJ, shrugging-off every road and clinic and - yes - High School - that transformed hillbilly hellscapes into decent places to live.** Sure, it's fucked and I am explaining, not excusing, the ease by which Kremlin 'ex' commissars combined with Fox shills to rile hatred of nerdy knowledge folks...
...into all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror... shows how dismally suicidal and hypocritical the cult has become. Has always been, in fact.
Still, one step forward will be to at least understand where much of it comes from. And if you come from such a place, maybe you could visit more often? And take into account that pain.
== The Military Role ==
At last, some are paying heed (too late?) to the real issue, which is NOT races/genders/immigrants. They suffer, sure, but the powerless are not the ones that aristocracy must destroy, in order to seize total power.
What they seek is all out destruction of the one clade who can and will block dictatorship, if they survive. “Over the weekend, NBC News revealed that the Trump transition team is reportedly compiling a list to investigate and potentially court-martial senior military officers involved in the Afghanistan withdrawal. This move highlights the regime’s use of intimidation to enforce loyalty, exact retribution, and silence any dissent. The chaotic 2021 withdrawal was undeniably tragic, but the groundwork for it was laid by Trump’s 2020 agreement with the Taliban.” Trump’s Taliban pact led generals in the Afghan Army to abruptly betray their US allies and our departing forces. (Try actually looking into that.)
“To now suggest treason charges against officers who followed orders—despite the flawed execution—distorts justice into a tool of retribution. This is not about accountability. It’s about sending a warning: dissenters and perceived enemies of the regime, even in the military, will be publicly humiliated and potentially ruined. This move also undermines trust in military leadership, a vital institution for any democracy.” --O.Lautman
Want irony? MAGA/Putinists deride folks like paratrooper/special-forces hero Mark Milley as “procurement and NATO-doctrine ladder-climbers.” In fact, ALL US officers must spend some time doing procurement. Meanwhile, right now, over in Ukraine, every US & NATO weapon system and combat doctrine is proving vastly more effective than even optimists had believed. So much for deriding ‘procurement and doctrine ladder-climbers.’
Oh and NATO is now so strong that Putin knows it will smash him even if his White House servant abandons the alliance. Unless... unless a new war can change the picture.
Which Trump has done.***
======
*If we set aside Utah and Illinois as outliers (or even if we don’t) average rates of almost every turpitude are far higher across Red-run states than Blue-led ones: from gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation.
That is a huge, easily-proved fact and it should discredit all ‘conservative’ claims of good governance, especially when you add in the fact that national Republican administrations are always spendthrift wastrels, sending deficits skyrocketing, while Democratic ones are always far more fiscally responsible. Always. And I welcome $$$ wagers on any of that.
Throw in the failure of a single Rightist 'supply side economics’ prediction ever, ever to come true, with the sole outcome of rocketing wealth disparities, along with the deliberate war on science and the planet, and the stench gets overwhelming, even before we go on to all the lies and treason and their war against the US military officer corps and Trump's deliberate disbanding our ant-terrorism agents (*remember that one!*)... plus an ongoing list of other insanities, a mile high.
But the turpitude gap. That is what says it all.
** Infrastructure: Pete Buttigieg warns us in advance to be ready: most of the tens of thousands of essential projects that were started by the Biden administration will not be finished until during or after the coming Trump administration. Lots of people who are opposed those projects will be taking credit for them.
A. Destroy and politicize the Military Officer corps. . Hitler did this in stages:
1) Eliminating his in-party rivals (the Night of Long Knives), Trump has eliminated all in-party dissent.
2) Reichstag Fires and other faked pretexts,
3) Getting German soldiers to swear the Hitler Oath (1934),
4) Ream-out and execute any politically unreliable officers, esp. in 1942 after the German army lost the battle of Moscow.
Afterwards, with few exceptions, Herr Hitler and his military were crushed in battle after battle.
B. Smash the 150 year old Civil Service Act that (along with science and the New Deal) truly Made America Great (direct cause & effect.) Destroy the independence of a professional civil service and fill it with hacks owing allegiance to glorious leader.
Beckwith concludes, alas, with panic: “And this brings me up to the final point: Democracy in the USA is dead, and Trump is busy killing it. Organizing and signing petitions and all that is as effective as using a Kazoo to counter a bayonet in a duel to the death. Wake up . Playtime is over.”
Well, yes. And I have been offering tougher tactics, for years. You might start here: Polemical Judo.
No comments:
Post a Comment