Month: August 2022

A Red-Pilled America

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What happens when everyone knows the country is rigged?  What is lost when half the country thinks they’ve witnessed the end of honest presidential elections?  I have to assume that Joe Biden thinks the answer to those two questions is nothing.  And maybe he’s right.  After all, he’s still president, the FBI has the dissidents from January 6th tucked away in prison and he’s just hired 87,000 new IRS agents to punish that half of the country who don’t like him.  And maybe he’s planning to stage a repeat performance on election day this year.  But if he believes that I think he’s wrong.

I think one of America’s greatest strengths was the belief by a large majority of its citizens that this was an honest place where the rules were followed and the will of the people was abided by.  I think the belief in that provided the leaders with enormous legitimacy which the American people would rally around when an emergency or crisis required them to unify their efforts and make sacrifices.  Probably the greatest example was World War II.  Our fathers selflessly signed up for the war in the millions even before the draft was initiated.  They sacrificed their lives to protect their country in a tremendous show of patriotism.

On a smaller scale a similar wave of patriotic zeal swept over the country after 9/11/2001.  Even pacifists and socialists rallied round the flag and supported the war and the actions that had to be taken to protect the country.  We even sacrificed some of our freedoms by supporting the Patriot Act.  So, belief in the legitimacy of the government and trust in the honesty of our leaders was a big part of why the United States was a tremendous force in the world.  We believed we were the real deal.

So that’s all gone.  Tens of millions of Americans now know that the government is run by dishonest men.  The FBI and the other intelligence agencies might as well be the mafia as far as their brutality and dishonesty is concerned.  We’ve seen judges, federal law enforcement and other deep state actors conspire to spread lies, arrest and jail innocent men and harass and obstruct the orders of our duly elected officials.  And soon over a hundred million Americans and maybe more will be convinced that this country is now corrupt and ruled by an oligarchy that will do and say whatever it takes to hold onto power.

But so what?  What practical effect will this have on America?  Well, I think it’s already having a large effect on this country.  I think the world knows we’re no longer a united country.  I think that’s why Russia, China and a growing number of countries are beginning to break away from the global economic order that we have established.  And that’s part of the reason that our economy is beginning to flounder.  The dollar isn’t as strong as it once was.  And our friends and enemies no longer look at us in the same way.  They know we’re not as strong militarily because no one will rally round the flag any longer.  Who would lay down his life for an illegitimate government that hates him?  No one.

And this is just the beginning.  Biden has plenty more damage he wants to do.  Unchecked illegal immigration and FBI sponsored inner city crime is now a permanent reality.  As the economy deteriorates, confiscatory tax policies will surely follow to keep the government afloat.  So as public support for the government sinks our stature in the world will diminish accordingly.  Even third rate countries like Iran and Venezuela will stop fearing us and begin flouting our orders.

And that will be just a reflection of the way Americans feel about their own government.  Basically, they no longer respect it.  They only fear it.  And as we saw with the Soviet Union, even a government that controls its people through a reign of terror will eventually grind itself down to nothing through loss of legitimacy.

It’s hardly a point of pride that the Democrats will ultimately destroy their own power by debasing the United States but it does provide hope that once they crash the economy even massive voter fraud may be insufficient to keep them in office.  At that point it may be possible to salvage the country.

Room at the Top (1958) _ A Movie Review

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This movie was part of the “Angry Young Men” school of post WWII British film.  It reflected the dissatisfaction with reduced economic opportunities in the British post-war era and the anxiety over the breakdown of traditional societal norms and class structure.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Joe Lampton (played by Laurence Harvey) is a working-class young man who has returned from three years in a German POW camp during the war.  He leaves the poverty of his hometown of West Riding to find opportunities in the more upscale town of Warnley.  He becomes a clerk in the Borough Treasurer’s Office where he meets Charlie Soames who becomes his friend and roommate.  And Charlie quickly learns that Joe plans to use his good looks to marry a rich man’s daughter.

Specifically, he finds that Mr. Brown, the local millionaire, has a daughter Susan who would be perfect for the part.  She’s young, pretty and susceptible to his charms.  Throughout the rest of the movie Joe takes every opportunity to charm Susan.  And he’s successful in fascinating her.  But her parents and her whole social circle reject his advances categorically and stand in the way of Joe ever spending any time with the girl.  They go as far as sending her to France on holiday just to keep them apart.

Meanwhile Joe has himself fallen in love with a married woman.  Alice Aisgill (played by Simone Signoret) is a French woman, older than Joe.  Her upper-class husband George is steadily unfaithful to her with women that he visits supposedly “on business.”  Joe’s working-class sympathies lead him to despise George and he easily falls into an affair with Alice that is conducted simultaneously with his campaign to wed Susan.

Eventually Susan finds a way to escape her parents’ protection and she and Joe wind up in bed together.  But Joe finds Susan’s company much less stimulating than Alice’s.  Susan’s prattle seems sophomoric and dull compared to his conversations with Alice.  Joe discovers that Alice is the woman he wants.  He plans to marry her as soon as she can get a divorce from George.  But George confronts him and tells him that he’ll never agree to divorce Alice and if she tries to leave him, he’ll blacken their names so badly in the courts that they’ll become pariahs.

And just after this meeting he is summoned by Mr. Brown to a fancy conservative club where he learns that Susan is going to have a child by him.  And Mr. Brown has decided to accept him as a son-in-law and bring him into the family business.  But the condition is that he must break off his scandalous relationship with Alice.

Joe goes to Alice and tells her of Susan’s pregnancy and the impossibility of Alice and him ever having a life together.  And he tells her that he plans to marry Susan and that Alice would never see him again.  Alice is devastated.  She goes out drinking and we learn afterward that she crashes her car and dies in the wreck.  Next morning as news of the impending nuptials between Joe and Susan circulate through the Treasurer’s office and Charlie and his other friends are congratulating him Joe hears of Alice’s horrible death and he goes into shock.

In the next scene Joe has gone on a bender in some dive bar.  He has taken up with a woman who’s also quite drunk and when her boyfriend shows up Joe threatens him and scares him off.  But later on, this man and his friends find Joe and pummel him into unconsciousness and leave him bleeding in the street.  Eventually the next morning Charlie finds Joe and takes him home.

The last scene is Joe and Susan’s wedding ceremony with the priest reciting the vows and Joe, after a perceptible pause, answering, “I will.”  As they drive off in the wedding limousine Susan talks about the meaning she found in the ceremony.  But she notices that Joe has tears in his eyes so she says, “You really are sentimental, after all.”  But he just smiles brokenly as the movie ends.

I always find English movies of this time period a little depressing.  And this film is certainly no exception but for all that I thought it had its merits.  Despite his mercenary attitude toward Susan, Joe’s working-class sensibilities and the snobbish cruelty of his upper-class persecutors quickly win over the sympathies of the audience.  His guilt and contrition over abandoning Alice and her subsequent death are meant to convince us that he has grown and might become a better man.  I can’t unreservedly recommend this movie for everyone.  But if based on my description it sounds interesting give it a try.

Spin the Wheel and Take Your Chance

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Yesterday I allowed myself to bask in the warmth of what a complete conservative victory in America would be like.  And honestly, it must have been something I wanted to indulge in at that moment.  Just thinking of the world restored to normalcy was intoxicating.  But indulging in a narcotic that strong is dangerous.  Fentanyl is for thoracic surgery not as an apéritif.  So please excuse my recent indulgence and let’s talk about something a little less fantastical.

For the last couple of weeks, the daily polls of Creepy Joe’s approval ratings have been steadily rising.  And the pages of Politico and the Atlantic have been full of stories about how the mid-terms are starting to look like a Democrat come back story, full of redemption, angry women and Trump hatred.  And so, the usual spineless Republicans are wringing their hands and running in circles.  So familiar.

Well, I guess this isn’t my first rodeo clown circus.  I love how the mantra of these weak-kneed types is, “Renounce Trump!”  They must feel if we disown the devil, the angel of death won’t enter our house and we’ll survive the curse.  Fascinating.

But I feel quite the opposite.  Just bring it on.  Let them do their worst.  Raid Mar-a-Lago, cancel college debt, declare marshal law, auto-tune Joe Biden and put him on TikTok, whatever they want.  Now is the time for us to find out if there’s any hope of the American people waking up or not.  Runaway inflation, recession, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, Afghanistan, COVID tyranny and COVID incompetence.  You name it.  No one has seen an administration as incompetent and just plain weird in the entire history of the United States.  If we can’t win in this environment then we never will.

So, no whining, no bland middle of the road waffling.  We need to fly our colors and let the chips land as they may.  If we’re able to take back the Senate then we must stiff Biden’s appointments and investigate everything that went on over the last two years.  An impeachment over the laptop evidence is a no brainer.  And the details of this trial will be must see tv.  Hunter’s former business partner has already stated on the record that Joe Biden was “the big guy” who was skimming ten percent of the revenues.  That alone should be enough to convince most of the American people that they have a crook in the White House and not a very smart crook at that.

And the investigation into the origins and the mishandling of the COVID fiasco should put an end to many political careers.  There currently seems to be ample proof that the vaccines weren’t safe or effective and yet politicians and medical bureaucrats pushed them on people as if they were.  These actions demonstrate a level of dishonesty and recklessness that should shock the citizens of this country when they’re revealed.

And there are a hundred other things going on that should be investigated.  Afghanistan is a national disgrace.  Their energy policy is disastrously stupid.  The transgender policy on minors is horrific.  And on and on and on.

And what if we lose?  If we don’t take the House then there is no hope.  Even if we take the House but don’t recapture the Senate, I will consider that the Dissident Right is correct and we can’t vote our way out of this hole we’re in.  That will be a bleak outcome.

But knowing the truth no matter how depressing is preferable to basing your life on a delusion.  At least the truth allows you to stop wasting time and resources on pipe dreams and instead try to sidestep some of the damage coming your way.  And it allows you to look for Plan B whatever you decide that may be.  So we’re less than seventy days to the election.  Bring it.

Word is Chuck Todd is Being Bounced from Meet the Press

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Now this is a nice little present.  Up-Chuck Todd, as a friend of mine calls him, has a voice and face that practically shout “smarmy weasel” to anyone watching him.  Now, I know they’ll just replace him with another weasel but seeing this lying sack of crap crash and burn is extremely gratifying.  Maybe having no viewers is finally causing them some pain.

Well, every little bit helps.  But between Jeffrey Toobin, Brian Stelter and Chucky boy I guess that could be considered a hat trick.  Not bad for a Tuesday.

31AUG2022 – Quote of the Day

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Men show at least as much zeal in mischief as in well doing, in folly as in wisdom. The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

Aldous Huxley

What Will the Other Side Look Like?

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America is reaching a fork in the road.  Two mutually exclusive visions of the future are jockeying for control of the United States.  If the Left wins it will be a ghastly spectacle.  Basically, the whole country will become California.  Nothing honest or normal will be allowed anywhere.  Gavin Newsome will be declared president for life and that fat bald guy in the admiral skirt will win the Miss America contest every year.  The rest of the details will be too gruesome to want to predict and chances are I’ll have to emigrate to Hungary.

But what if we win?  Now that would be fun to speculate about.  So, I think I will indulge in a daydream of what could be the future if we don’t lose again.

I guess we’ll have to start by deciding how we would “win.”  Let’s suppose that we retake the House and Senate in November and by 2024 things are so bad that we not only take back the presidency but we end up with a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.  Then with the assistance from the Supreme Court we use several decisions to strip away all the unconstitutional regulations that have hamstrung American freedoms in the last fifty years.

Think about it.  If the affirmative action, gay marriage and gay rights decisions are overturned then more than half the country will be free to live normal lives again.  The government will no longer have the power to tell you who to hire, who to rent your apartment to or who you have to bake a wedding cake for.  Not only that, but the government will have lost the basis under which they currently judge all our decisions.  In fact, I think it might make sense for the government to get out of the business of even collecting racial data on its people all together.  After all, the government is supposed to be color blind.  Well then, let it be entirely so.  As for what else would change I think about thirty states would end gay marriage.  A few others might allow it but disallow adoption of children by homosexuals.  And some states would re-criminalize homosexuality.

But after what has gone on over the last ten or so years, I like to think that the biggest change would be the revocation of the Patriot Act and the yanking of the FBI’s teeth.  The weaponization of the intelligence agencies against the American people has been a horror show that has no equal in our history.  Seeing the things that have been done by the last few Attorneys General and their henchmen has been gut wrenching.  And even that isn’t enough.  I think most of the federal judges appointed by Obama and Biden must be reviewed and the ones who were willing conspirators with the FBI must be impeached, convicted and removed by the Congress.  And the unholy alliance between the Tech companies and the Surveillance state must be busted up.

Also, the federal bureaucracy must be brought back under the control of the executive branch of the government.  In other words, the President must have discretion to remove any employee that obstructs the Administration’s lawful management of the executive branch.

The government must return to producing an annual budget for the federal government.  All these stop gap funding measures and endless multi-trillion-dollar deficits must stop.  We’re rapidly reaching the point where our currency will lose its stability and lose its value.

And finally, if America first leadership reasserts itself, we can hope to see the return of manufacturing to our shores.  And with it would come massive employment opportunities and more importantly hope and optimism.  So, there’s the dream.  If we win all these things become possible.

Sure, it’s a pipe dream.  I figure there’s a one in a hundred chance of all that happening.  The likelier outcome is the current stalemate going on for years to come.  But every once in a while, it feels good to indulge in a bout of unbridled enthusiasm.  So please forgive this outburst and I return you to the miasma of hopelessness already in progress.