Category: Current Events

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 06DEC2023 – Human Rights

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Hi Arthur,

I agree that these ideas of rights are ours in the West, really the Anglo-Saxon West. They are the product of a particular time and place and most of us in the West no longer understand them much less the invaders. I also agree that there is such a thing as reality and it is important to discuss what that reality is. Our worldviews aren’t really that far apart.

Zman is big on western tradition which is great but he certainly values some tradition above other tradition (I know that’s not a surprise). Zman’s post disturbed me enough that I bookmarked it (see Survival of Rights). I think this quote lays it out well:

The thing they will not find among the decaying buildings, rusting vehicles and collapsed bridges will be piles of human rights. They will not open a door of some oddly preserved building and find a bunch of skeletons who had found shelter along with their sacred human rights. In fact, they will probably find no trace of human rights or any discussion of the concept. Given that most of our knowledge is now digital, these sorts of things will be impossible to detect.

 

 

 

 

 

The main reason for this is human rights do not exist. They are a thing that humans invented late in the history of mankind. People say that human rights are real and point to various authorities to support the claim, but rights are not real things. They exist only as a figment of our imagination, like the concept of lust. No other species has this concept so it is possible the aliens will not understand it either. It will be as alien to them as our entirely made up concept of human rights.

Without individual rights liberty does not exist. Personal liberty is my tradition and I will do everything in my power to keep it.

What’s My Identity?

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People in the dissident right are fond of quoting Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew as saying, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”  Now I understand the rationale when it comes to a place like Singapore.  The cultural and social views of the Chinese, Malay and Indian populations are strikingly different and in a zero-sum game where losing means living in a society that would be highly antagonistic to your way of life, I could see how voting your “race” would be critical.

But how would that relate to the United States?  It seems to me that the popular culture is currently so strange to me that it couldn’t get any stranger if this became a Latino or Chinese majority society.  But in fact, what I notice is that younger, assimilated Latino and Asian Americans mimic the same weird standard culture that their white American friends use.  All of them use a sort of hip-hop patois that seems to have been formulated on TikTok or some product manufacturer like Nike.  Well, I can’t imagine anything more alienating than that.  So, I’m not sure what I should expect from the majority minority (or is it minority majority) future we’re waiting on.  In fact, because the worst proponents of anti-white bigotry all seem to be really pasty white, I can’t make up my mind how I want to fit into this scary future.

My experience has been that most of the problems with minorities in the parts of American life that I have had experience with occurred because the government (or schools or corporations) run by white people decided that affirmative action was a good idea.  Even in the terrible situation we find ourselves in today with the urban black underclass committing unsustainable levels of property and violent crime we could still improve our situation immeasurably if we just put an end to all forms of affirmative action and reestablished equal treatment under the law for everyone by getting rid of all the protected classes we’ve invented.

But what about the idea that I am better off sticking with my own kind?  The truth is my own kind doesn’t exist.  I’m a mutt.  Both my parents’ ancestors came from Southern Italian stock.  There is absolutely nothing standard about that population.  Just within my siblings I have a mixture of blue, hazel and dark brown eyes.  Hair (where it still exists and isn’t gray) is either dirty blond or close to black.  Skin color varies from very light to olive.  There are tall and short people and a whole slew of intellectual and personality traits exhibited.  I grew up in an Italian ghetto of Brooklyn.  But my neighbors included Irish, Jewish, Polish and Russian people and to be honest it wasn’t like the Italians were some quantum leap closer to me personally than the other types.  In fact, in grade school, my two closest friends were a German kid with ash blond hair and a kid whose parents were Irish and Italian.  A lot of the Italian kids I knew in the neighborhood (not all of them of course) wanted to be mafiosi.  Later on, they found out the hard way that they weren’t.  But they wanted to be and this made them extremely unpleasant neighbors.

Now growing up in Brooklyn in that time I was well aware that there were black and Latino neighborhoods where I shouldn’t go.  These were dangerous because the inhabitants were welfare recipients that existed in a lawless environment.  But as I grew up, I went to school with and worked with black and Latino New Yorkers that were just regular people doing their jobs.  Some of them I got along with and some I didn’t.  A lot like the various varieties of “white” people I lived among.

And in the engineering field over the last thirty some-odd years I have worked with lots of Indian and Chinese people.  Like their white counterparts some were good people and some were real jerks.  But once again, all the trouble I’ve seen surrounding them has had to do with attempts to satisfy affirmative action.  In fact, the most egregious cases seemed to be attempts to have women, mostly white women (and strangely mostly blonde white women) promoted above their levels of competence.  So once again this reinforces my thoughts about affirmative action.

So, to drive this home, who are my people?  Are they random white people that include most of the woke young people?  Are they Americans of Southern Italian ancestry?  To be honest, I think my people are people who identify with the culture that was forged in mid-twentieth century America.  They grew up believing that they could raise their families in an America that was based on working for a living and obeying the rules.  It was a simple place where regardless of race or ethnicity they respected the Founding Fathers for setting up the Constitution that guaranteed us freedoms and allowed us to live together without chaotic violence or poverty.

Of course, opening up the borders to millions of poor immigrants that won’t be assimilated into the American culture is an obvious disaster that must be stopped.  But the problems have been purposefully exacerbated by the Democrats and their shock troops like Antifa and BLM.  Now that the Supreme Court has begun reversing some of the affirmative action judicial decisions maybe things can get straightened out.  And after the borders are closed and the illegals sent home things can get back to normal.  Or maybe they won’t.

 

But honestly, I still feel that anyone can be on my team if he just tries to follow the rules and doesn’t tell me I’m the cause for all his problems because my skin is a light shade.  Anyone who can’t accommodate those two things isn’t on my side.  So, I hate to say it but my identity is American.  I hope that doesn’t sound too lame.

The World of Ideas

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I was glad to get some interesting comments from both the civic nationalist and dissident right perspectives during the last few days.  And I’m especially glad that the writers were level headed and thoughtful individuals.  I visit various sites with all kinds of commentors who don’t always react to each other with, let us say, tolerant open mindedness.  And I understand that verbal combat may be more of a feature than a bug at some of these sites but truthfully, I seldom learn anything useful from the sort of mental arm wrestling that goes on during these exchanges.  So, kudos to all involved.  We’ve raised the level of internet discussion by several orders of magnitude.  Bravo.

I’m especially glad about this situation because I’m personally located somewhere on the border between the civic nationalist and dissident right factions.  While I consider myself a civ-nat I recognize that for whatever reason my political cohort has been guilty of incredible gullibility for decades and I’m tired of being part of a conspiracy of the ignorant.  So, I’ve been listening in on what goes on at the cool kids’ table and learning their lingo.  And I’m not afraid to admit that they’ve got a lot of things figured out.  But I also know that I’ll never be cool enough to sit at their table.  I just believe too deeply in the decency of most people when they’re all treated fairly.  I feel that if we run the game fairly, we can get people, all kinds of people, from the dumbest to the smartest and from the meanest to the most naïve to at least act decent.

But that’s why I’d like to have the discussion with people whose hearts are in the right place.  If you ever see the comments section of a Fox News article it’s remarkable.  There are some thoughtful comments.  But they’re drowned out by a flood of rage-aholics.  You could say that any site that has the traffic that a large outlet like Fox gets is bound to attract a goodly number of deranged individuals but from my point of view it renders the comments almost useless as a venue for the exchange of ideas.  So that is why I’ve been trying to find people who straddle that same line on the political spectrum and set up a dialog.  Because that political border is where I think the reality of our future lies.

We need to toughen up the civic nationalists to where they won’t let themselves be rolled by the progressives, while at the same time lure the dissidents back from the fringe where things get pretty dark.  My dream would be to have a space where a guy as tough minded as the ZMan would be willing to have a good faith conversation with civ-nats like Michael Anton or Chris Rufo.

Now this might be terribly mistaken.  As I’ve said many times, people must be allowed to select their own enemies and it’s ridiculously presumptuous of me to think I can judge whose interests are served by discussion and with whom.  These are all grownups and they get to decide which playground to play in.

So, let’s not use those names.  Let’s just use regular folks who inhabit the internet and try to see if the information flow serves any purpose.  I’ve heard lots of interesting perspectives.  And all of the talk has been quite cordial, which makes my life easier.  So, keep up the good work.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 05DEC2023 – DR to CN Reply

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I took Zman’s assertion that natural or individual rights do not exist as the affirmation that these concepts originate in Western Civilization, and are not universal. Throughout my military career traveling the globe, this resonated with me as our ideas are just that – ours. One would receive blank stares from Indonesian bush folks if you began to try and explain these. This is why the dilution of Western countries by mass immigration (invasion, really) puts these abstract conceptions of natural and individual rights at risk under our supposed Democracy. For example, look to the polls of Muslims in the US and UK who overwhelmingly agree with the notion of living under Sharia law if they could. Or how varied the customs, cultures and traditions are in the Middle East compared to the West.

My biggest appeal to the DR side is seeing the world as it is and not how people ‘wish’ it were. This means that differences should be acknowledged and a sane and serious approach to societal ills should be employed in the areas of crime, immigration, and the well-being of the citizens in our nation.

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 05DEC2023 – CN to DR Discussion

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The dissident right (DR) certainly has an appeal to anyone who has watched the disintegration of American society and culture over the last sixty years (I am currently 62 years old). I found the DR critique of many of the United States current problems to be very insightful. In the end though, I think the proposed DR solutions to our problems will cause more problems than they solve.

I agree that Heritage Americans have been reviled and treated with a hatred that has surprised me. The question is: is that hatred solely an ethnic hatred? I would say that it isn’t. “White people” are strongly associated with being Christian. I don’t think that’s particularly true anymore but that is the stereotype and lefties love them some stereotypes. The BLM website at onetime listed both stable marriage between a man and a woman and deferred gratification as being examples of white privilege. No, those are examples of Christian morality. Of course ethnic differences are used as a wedge to fracture our society and it has been wildly effective.

Can different ethnicities live side by side peaceably? I don’t see why not in theory but in practice it may no longer be possible. The well has been poisoned and there may be no way back to what we were, the old culture looks to be gone. What is the DR solution then? After giving it a lot of thought I think the DR has settled on some type of ethnic caste system. One set of laws for thee and one for me. Anyone who believes in objective standards of right and wrong (that apply to all people) will find that to be a real problem. I know I do.

I would also like to ask: how should ethnicity be defined? Even in the founding of the United States the English weren’t as homogeneous as we’d like to imagine (see Albion’s Seed). Add in all the immigration that has already happened and can’t be reversed, it’s a hopeless mess. Lines will have to be drawn in the new system but no one will say how this will happen.

The thing that finally tore it for me is when Zman declared that there is no such thing as “rights.” Declaring rights to be an abstract concept that don’t actually exist, he dismissed them out of hand. If there is no such thing as individual rights then there is no such thing as personal liberty. Everyone nowadays seems to want to put a leash on me. Zman’s statement reminded me of a quote by communitarian Alasdair MacIntyre:

“From this it does not of course follow that there are no natural or human rights; it only follows that no one could have known that there were. And this at least raises certain questions. But we do not need to be distracted into answering them, for the truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.”

― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

I am not familiar with the work of Professor Özkırımlı but the title of his book seems to indicate that his is a “critical theory.” This country is dying from too much Hegelian theory, do we really need more?

Late Night photog – 2

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photog – Welcome back.  While you were watching that fascinating laxative/ADHD commercial my guests were comparing notes on libel cases they had going on.  President Trump was discussing the slander that has been making the rounds on the cable channels and other cesspools of the mainstream media.  Mr. President, are the accusations and fantasies about you setting up a fascist dictatorship in your next term something you’d be likely to pursue through a lawsuit.

Donald Trump – Negative, photog.  All of that chatter is protected by the first amendment.  I’m a public figure.  They’re allowed to say almost anything.  I’m reduced to just waiting until I’m in office and then we’ll see what’s what.

Cthulhu – I disagree Donald.  You’re really limiting your options.

Donald Trump – What do you mean CMan?  How can I get around the prerogatives of the press?

Cthulhu – Well, for instance if someone blasphemed against my eldritch self, I’d start by forcing nightmares of cosmic horror to haunt his every sleeping and waking moment.  In these nightmares he would experience the sensation of his flesh being slowly eaten away by a corrosive bath of slime that started at his feet and worked its way up to his head.  Then when he hadn’t had a moment of peace for two weeks, I’d send a parasite to crawl into his ear one night and begin slowly to gnaw away at his brain.  Eventually only his skull would be left.  It’s a fan favorite I highly recommend.

Donald Trump – Well, that was my plan B.  But this is network tv and I don’t like to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.  But tell me CMan, doesn’t the FBI come looking for you when you say these kinds of things in public like this?

Cthulhu – They used to Donald back in the good old days.  And it was very exciting because with all the diversity and inclusion that the FBI has been practicing the variety has been amazing.  They’ve even added capon to the menu.

photog – Capon?

Cthulhu – I think they call them post-op trans-women agents.  But potato/puhtata.  They’re wonderful with a tobacco sauce marinade.  I like them cold with beer so I pop them in the fridge for a day or so.  I just wait for them to stop screeching and I know they’re ready.  And then I put them in a bowl and watch some old favorites on TCM.  I’m a sucker for those old screwball comedies.  Or a good old adventure story like Gunga Din or Kim.  But they must be running out of capon, uh agents.  None have shown up for months.

Donald Trump – CMan, not being a Great Old One I don’t have the leeway you do with respect to the criminal justice system.  I’ve got to admit it sounds kind of exciting.  Well, not the cannibal stuff, but the brain eating bug thing.  That probably solves a lot of problems.  There are at least a half dozen or so prosecutors and judges that would really benefit from having about half their brains eaten away.

Cthulhu – I tell you what.  I’ll FedEx my copy of the Necronomicon with a post-it on the page with the spell for the brain bug and you see what you think.  No pressure.  I’ve got a website that’ll only charge you by the amount of brain that gets eaten.  You can stop whenever you want and you won’t even get a lot of spam bugging you for more business.

Donald Trump – That would be great CMan.  I doubt that any of them has more than a few ounces of brains anyway so I’m sure I’ll be able to swing the payments.  Although I will say, things have been kind of tight lately.  I had to sell off the gold toilet and downgrade to silver.

Cthulhu – Damn shame.  Sorry to hear it.  Well don’t worry.  I read the other day that you’ll be instituting a fascist dictatorship once you’re reelected.  I’m sure you’ll recoup your losses afterwards.

Donald Trump – Well, I hope so, but these things are tricky.  For every Franco there are probably ten Pol Pots so you never know.

photog – I’m sorry to break up this discussion but we’ve got to go to commercial.  Take it away, Study-Lax.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 04DEC2023 – Civic Nationalist to Dissident

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I used to believe in civic nationalism and the idea of the global populace buying a ticket to the (American) story and ideals. Funnily enough, around the time I held these beliefs was 30+ years ago in an America that had a firmly entrenched demographic majority of Heritage Americans. (Roughly 80% IIRC)

See, that’s kinda of the paradox of the idea of a successful nation operating under civic nationalism in that you still need a majority ethnic population who puts their full faith in the mythos of said nation’s founding, institutions, and ideals. Once it hits a certain fracturing of population and becomes majority-minority, with no one group asserting dominance – this gives rise to overt tribal tendencies. Diversity is not a strength. If it were, nations like Japan and China would be importing as many diverse groups as possible to get an edge on the global economic competition.

Still, if we lived in a reality based sane and serious nation that spoke the truth on differences a la Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, it could have worked. This would require media, academia and gov’t to cease the relentless attack on the historical figures actions and events that led to the creation of the USA. No, not celebrate outright the dark corners of a nation’s history (that all nations have, Western and non-Western), but understand that each apology, every condescending remark merely removes another brick of the foundation of American mythos and her founding.

This is part of how I found myself admitting more and more that I am a part of the Dissident Right. I will vote for Trump-not as a faithful belief that he will be our Red Caesar but more as a wrench into the leviathan machine that hates me and my people.

“Since all nations lay claim to a unique place in history and to certain boundaries, all national identities are exclusionary. In that sense, all nations are ethnic nations […] Brubaker elaborates on this, claiming that there are two different ways of mapping culture onto the ethnic-civic distinction. Ethnic nationalism may be interpreted narrowly, as involving an emphasis on descent. In this case, Brubaker argues, there is very little ethnic nationalism around, since on this view an emphasis on common culture has to be coded as a species of civic nationalism. If, however, ethnic nationalism is interpreted broadly, as ethnocultural, while civic nationalism is interpreted narrowly, as involving a cultural conception of citizenship, the problem is the opposite: ‘civic nationalism gets defined out of existence, and virtually all nationalisms would be coded as ethnic or cultural’. Even the paradigmatic cases of civic nationalism, France and America, would cease to count as civic nationalism, since they have a crucial cultural component.”

— Umut Özkırımlı, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, pp.24-5

Damn You Millan!

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Little Evil Dog (LED) is now about four months old.  And still in the midst of a teething frenzy as her milk teeth are falling out.  Sometimes Camera Girl even bleeds from the bites of this insane little basset hound.  There has been some improvement.  Lately she only draws blood once a week rather than daily.  Everything is relative.

Today I noted that Camera Girl was watching the Dog Whisperer on Nat Geo.  It’s that Mexican guy Cesar Millan who trains dogs.  Of course, there is nothing more absurd than Camera Girl trying to train her dogs.  They completely dominate her and systematically ignore all her commands.  It would be accurate to say that they have trained her.

I tried to imagine her attempting to use Millan’s techniques but I know that she could never assert authority over the dogs.  It just completely clashes with her babying of these canines.  And yet with her children and grandchildren she has always been able to maintain good discipline.  I think it’s the fact that intellectually dogs are like permanent infants.  They never reach a point where they can be responsible for their misdeeds.  Training always has to be a matter of dominance.  And so, she forever treats them like babies.  Even if the animal outweighs her.

And so, the problem of Camera Girl’s bad dogs can never be fully solved.  I have in the past had to force obedience from some of the larger male dogs on my own just for safety’s sake but she will never be their boss.

But as I watched the episode that Camera Girl had on it occurred to me that a wife whisperer would be an interesting show.  If some guy developed a format where he had men come to him with wives who behaved poorly and he came up with a regimen for bringing them back in line.  And of course, it should be a humane program.  No shock collars or whips; nothing like that.  It could all be done using positive reinforcement.  Even a muzzle probably would be unnecessary, although I could see where it would make life better sometimes.

I’d guess it would work with treats and gifts used to encourage good behavior and verbal cues to point out bad behavior.  I started to think how I could work some of these things into my home life.  I could use small rewards like buying her a turtle or a lizard if she behaved herself.  But I realized that my house would probably overrun with pets within a few weeks.  And since there weren’t any other treats, I could provide or withhold, there wasn’t a way forward with my wife whisperer idea.  It was a dead end.

But I did watch how often food was the treat that Millan used to train his dogs.  How he used it to reinforce good behavior or withheld it to show displeasure.  And then some things came together in my mind.  Grocery patterns and other aspects of my life.  And I was aghast.  She has been using Millan’s program on me!  Tonight, we’re having a pork roast.  That only went on the menu after I performed the winter yard close-up yesterday.

To Serve Man, it’s a training book!

The Fisking of Kagan 123

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My favorite author of Trump-happily-ever-after election propaganda is now Robert Kagan of the Washington Post.  You may ask yourself, “Has photog gone mad?  Isn’t Robert Kagan part of the neo-con Kagan family that runs the Biden State Department?”  Why yes, he is.  But he’s just written a column that would bring tears of joy to the eyes of any Trump voter who reads it.  I’ll demonstrate.

“Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day.”

How’s that for a start?

 

“In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.”

Pretty good right?

 

“The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor.”

Nice.

 

“Biden, as some have pointed out, does not enjoy the usual advantages of incumbency. Trump is effectively also an incumbent, after all. That means Biden is unable to make the usual incumbent’s claim that electing his opponent is a leap into the unknown. …

Trump, meanwhile, enjoys the usual advantage of non-incumbency, namely: the lack of any responsibility. Biden must carry the world’s problems like an albatross around his neck, like any incumbent, but most incumbents can at least claim that their opponent is too inexperienced to be entrusted with these crises. Biden cannot. On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.”

That is true.

 

“Trump also enjoys another advantage. The national mood less than a year before the election is one of bipartisan disgust with the political system in general. Rarely in American history has democracy’s inherent messiness been more striking. In Weimar Germany, Hitler and other agitators benefited from the squabbling of the democratic parties, right and left, the endless fights over the budget, the logjams in the legislature, the fragile and fractious coalitions. German voters increasingly yearned for someone to cut through it all and get something — anything — done. It didn’t matter who was behind the political paralysis, either, whether the intransigence came from the right or the left.”

You went with the Hitler gambit?  I knew you would.

 

“I mention all this only to answer one simple question: Can Trump win the election? The answer, unless something radical and unforeseen happens, is: Of course he can. If that weren’t so, the Democratic Party would not be in a mounting panic about its prospects.”

Finally!

 

“If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.”

Ooh!  Tell me more!

 

…

Note: Long exposition about how Trump will not be constrained by Congress, the Judiciary or even by Heaven itself.  Blah, blah, blah.  Suffice it say Caesar at the Rubicon.

…

 

“Having answered the question of whether Trump can win, we can now turn to the most urgent question: Will his presidency turn into a dictatorship? The odds are, again, pretty good.”

Alright, the good stuff.

 

“It is worth getting inside Trump’s head a bit and imagining his mood following an election victory. He will have spent the previous year, and more, fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad persecutors and helpless to do what he likes to do best: exact revenge. Think of the fury that will have built up inside him, a fury that, from his point of view, he has worked hard to contain. As he once put it, “I think I’ve been toned down, if you want to know the truth. I could really tone it up.” Indeed he could — and will. We caught a glimpse of his deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.”

Ooh.  That’s pretty exciting.  What else you got?

 

“The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care.”

Gosh, it sounds so good.  Can it be true?

 

“Should Trump be successful in launching a campaign of persecution and the opposition prove powerless to stop it, then the nation will have begun an irreversible descent into dictatorship. With each passing day, it will become harder and more dangerous to stop it by any means, legal or illegal. Try to imagine what it will be like running for office on an opposition ticket in such an environment. In theory, the midterm elections in 2026 might hold hope for a Democratic comeback, but won’t Trump use his considerable powers, both legal and illegal, to prevent that? Trump insists and no doubt believes that the current administration corruptly used the justice system to try to prevent his reelection. Will he not consider himself justified in doing the same once he has all the power? He has, of course, already promised to do exactly that: to use the powers of his office to persecute anyone who dares challenge him.”

Yes! Yes!  He must!

 

“This is the trajectory we are on now. Is descent into dictatorship inevitable? No. Nothing in history is inevitable. Unforeseen events change trajectories. Readers of this essay will no doubt list all the ways in which it is arguably too pessimistic and doesn’t take sufficient account of this or that alternative possibility. Maybe, despite everything, Trump won’t win. Maybe the coin flip will come up heads and we’ll all be safe. And maybe even if he does win, he won’t do any of the things he says he’s going to do. You may be comforted by this if you choose.”

No! No! Dictatorship, we must have dictatorship!

 

“Are we going to do anything about it? To shift metaphors, if we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn’t? Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?”

No! No!  We want the Asteroid!

 

“We are closer to that point today than we have ever been, yet we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy. As the man said, we are going out not with a bang but a whimper.”

Yes! Yes! Whimper!

 

And there’s a whole lot more of this.  Thousands and thousands of words.  And all of it unintentionally hilarious.  Oh, if only life could imitate this Kagan art.  What a wonderful world it would be.  Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi wearing those old timey striped prison outfits and General Milley in front of firing squad for his treasonous words to the Chinese military.  But alas, the fevered imaginings of Kagan are just that.  There will be no pogroms.  No elected or career government officials will go to the wall.  In fact, we’ll be hard-pressed to get anything done in the unlikely case that Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025.

But I still want to thank Mr. Kagan for this wonderful bit of fantasy.  I needed a good laugh.  Reading his overheated imaginings was a hoot.  Donald Trump as a combination of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and Joseph Stalin was wonderful.  He even managed to get the asteroid from the movie Armageddon into the act.  And poor Bruce Willis can’t help us now.

But all good things must come to an end.  We can’t forget that in the real-world people are still in prison awaiting trial for something that happened three years ago when they trespassed in a government building like every other Lefty has done for decades.  We still have Dementia Joe crushing our lives under a blizzard of stupid directives that make everything from food to rent too expensive to afford.

And we still live in a country where fake news and fake elections mean fake democracy is the reality we live under.  So, all of this sound and fury about a man who basically is just a middle of the road New York Republican who is trying to keep our globalist elite from dispossessing the middle class and replacing them with tens of millions of third world refugees is a little bit ridiculous.  All it shows is that actual democracy cannot be allowed to happen in Barack Obama’s America.

But it’s good to see that Democrats can somehow manage to pretend that somehow, they are the ones being persecuted.  Well done, Bob, you creep.

If Trump Wins in November, Then What?

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Let’s suppose that the economy continues to unravel and the misery index spikes.  Now maybe the masterminds, among the powers that be, decide that letting Trump clean up the mess would actually be smarter than owning it.  So, they unfortify democracy temporarily in Philadelphia and Detroit and, miracle of miracles, Trump wins.

Then what?

Of course, for a few months the dirt people will be dancing in the streets.  The mockery of Biden and all of the Democrats will be unrelenting.  And all kinds of brave talk will be heard about “draining the swamp” and “cleaning out the FBI.”

And then what?

Truth be told, maybe a whole lot of nothing.  Trump has said he intends to fire all of the disloyal FBI and Justice Department officials who wrecked his presidency.  In order to do any of that he will need a filibuster-proof senate majority.  And even then, the lower courts will fight him tooth and nail and we would probably see nefarious action by the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department to attack Trump’s lieutenants and even himself.

And even if he has the Congress to pass these measures, he will be juggling restoring the country to solvency along with this delousing program.  And because fixing the economy is a very difficult job, he has to get all this done in two years.  If he doesn’t, he’ll surely lose the Congress in the mid-terms.  And nothing of note will happen after that.  So, if Trump is elected, he must hit the ground running and do all of his hatchet work right from day one.

As daunting as that sounds it’s also kind of bracing.  To me it sounds like he has no choice but to go to the nuclear option from the git go.  It would be like a right-wing New Deal or Great Society sized effort.  And since this is a one-shot deal, they could do things that haven’t been contemplated in decades.  They could cancel all kinds of defense appropriations for useless weapons systems and literally and not figuratively close down whole agencies.  How many times have we heard about closing down the Education Department or the FBI and absolutely nothing has come of it.  But if the will were there then it could be done for a short window of time.  And for Trump eliminating the FBI and firing most of the Justice Department is almost a case of self-defense.  Because if they’re still in charge when he finishes his term, they will imprison him for the rest of his life and go after everyone in his sphere of friends.

You notice that all of this is built on a pile of ifs.  The biggest one is that the people running the country decide that it’s time for the Republicans to clean up the Democrats’ mess.  And it also assumes a Republican Congress wouldn’t just stab Trump in the back again as soon as he was in the White House.  Based on past performance that is the likeliest case.  But who knows?  Mitch McConnell might drop dead and if the economy continues to go south there might come a point where even the degenerates who inhabit congress might be willing to play ball with Trump just to save their own hides from the mob.  After all, we’re getting closer and closer to French Revolution territory every single day that Joe Biden drives this country off a cliff.  If the timing is just right, we might see something real happen in November.

Or maybe we’ll see nothing at all.