Category: Current Events

The Shape of Things to Come – 2023 Edition

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I was reading an article about shoplifting and the author said something like, the way things are going having food on open display in a grocery store may soon be too expensive to allow because of shoplifting.  And that struck me.  Imagine if you couldn’t walk down the aisles of a supermarket and pick out your fruit and meat or even a can of beans or a box of spaghetti.  Imagine if you couldn’t go to a big box store and get some nails or screws or a saw because the store couldn’t afford to leave these things on shelves.

So that’s what they mean about a society going from high trust to low trust.  The stores can’t trust the public not to steal everything in sight.  That got me thinking, where else has trust disappeared.?

Well, off the top of my head, you can’t trust that your public school isn’t trying to groom your kids for homosexuality or even stranger things like trans -gender dysphoria.  And you certainly can’t trust the Republicans to be conservative.  You can’t trust anything about the government.  You can’t trust scientists to tell the truth about the climate or the drug companies with your health.  You can’t trust the tech companies with your information and you absolutely can’t believe a word that the news organizations say.  And we used to depend on the police and the courts to keep us safe from criminals but that’s gone too.

If you think about it, the world we knew was based on a bunch of relationships of trust that no longer exist.

Based on this, I think it would make sense to try to imagine what the world will be like in a few years when all of these changes have reworked our relationships with each other and the larger institutions around us.  The first thing that came to me was that where you lived would become increasingly important to determine how you would live.  Currently the larger cities run by Democrats with large poor minority populations are becoming more and more like third world locales with businesses moving out and increasing rates of violence.  It would make sense that around these disaster areas will develop concentric rings of suburban areas where the levels of crime and other dysfunction will gradually decrease as you move outward in much the same way as a topographic map records rings of decreasing elevation in circles around mountain peaks.

Proximity to these danger zones will also determine things like the existence of stores selling luxury merchandise and levels of safety precautions like bars on windows and security systems in homes.  Of course, the definition of “luxury” will be completely relative to the wealth of the area.  In some places toothpaste may be a luxury item.

Security problems like these may explain the real basis for the “fifteen-minute city.”  What these enclaves are really designed for is excluding strangers from the area.  The kind of surveillance that will be possible in the future will make the non-local with no business in an area stand out like a sore thumb.  After all, if you have nothing to hide why worry if the government knows everything about you?  So, only people that the government thinks should be somewhere will be able to get there.  No freedom, no crime.  Pretty slick.

But out among the peasants, not so slick.  It appears that there is an intentional destruction of the old world going on.  People living together in free association, voluntarily following sensible rules and laws, will be overwhelmed by the encouragement of criminal behavior in dysfunctional communities that won’t be constrained by police forces and the old legal system.  The new world of the elites will be separated and insulated from these areas by diminishing transportation options, advanced electronic surveillance systems and a social credit system that will control what you can do and how you will live.

This seems to be the direction things are going.  Whether this plan will be successful in all or some places and how long it will take to implement is yet to be seen.  But that is what seems to be happening.  Otherwise, how do you explain what’s going on in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Philadelphia?  These cities are being made unlivable by the people in charge and so far, nothing has been done to stop the change.

I hope it is within reason that some areas of the country will successfully prevent this program of sabotage from succeeding.  If they can restore law and order to their jurisdictions, I think the existence of these oases of normalcy will eventually destabilize the new system.  Maybe colonies from the normal areas will eventually establish themselves in the depopulated wastelands and eventually return them to civilization.  But maybe I’m being overly optimistic.

Okay H.G, Wells, how’s that for some extrapolation into the future?  In your face Herbert.

Dianne Feinstein Blazes the Trail For Joe Biden

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Ninety year old Dianne Feinstein has shown the way for Biden, Pelosi and McConnell by croaking in office.  No cause of death was announced but informed sources were speculating that the natural half-life of the protons in her body had been exceeded and she just evaporated.

On being informed of Feinstein’s passing Joe Biden was heard to say, “She was hot, she will be missed.  No joke.”  When her colleague in the Senate Mitch McConnell heard the sad news he was so affected that he stood for twenty minutes staring into space while soundlessly opening and closing his jaws.  Nancy Pelosi mounted the Speaker’s rostrum and spoke in impassioned gibberish for half an hour until Kevin McCarthy turned off her microphone and called security.

Well, Feinstein is a lot like our society.  It’s decrepit and demented but there doesn’t seem to be a way to change it yet.  Hopefully when the collapse occurs something better will take over, something better than Adam Schiff.

Trudeau and Zelensky give Standing Ovation to Waffen SS Veteran

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You just can’t make this stuff up.  In case anyone wasn’t aware of the Ukrainian fighters during the Second World War who sided with the Nazis, the Canadians managed to find one living in Canada, ninety eight year old Yaroslav Hunka.  And just to be sure his bona fides couldn’t be doubted Hunka was a member of the Waffen SS, the worst of the worst of the Nazi war machine.

So they give him a standing ovation and Zelensky and Trudeau cheer.  Hunka killed lots of Russians!  Yay!  Well, among others.  Now Poland is trying to extradite the nonagenarian for war crimes and the Canadian Speaker of the House of Commons has resigned.  Of course Trudeau claims himself blameless.  I guess utter stupidity is a defense in Canada. And no one would accuse Trudeau of intelligence.  Trudeau was the guy who called the truck drivers that didn’t want the COVID vaccines “fascists.”  Brilliant.

So for the last year or so there’s been all kinds of information about Ukrainian troops in the Azov Assault Brigade who were associated with antisemitism and used Nazi iconography in their uniforms and tattoos.  The American press has shouted down any attempt to highlight this link to fascistic sympathies in Ukraine.  Well, Canada has rendered the point moot.  They managed to dig up the last living Ukrainian Nazi just in time to tar Zelensky and Trudeau together.  While they were at it why didn’t they goose step in a line and give him the Nazi salute too?

Well done Canada, well done.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28SEP2023 – Quick Ukraine War Update

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Been rather busy. Have had to catch a military cargo hop to Joe’s town  twice this month.  The assassination of the Wagnerian boss is causing more trouble in the evil empire than you would think. Him and his deputy were the most capable commanders the Emperor had.  On the wider front, the Ukes aren’t doing quite as well as they claim, but the Empire is faring far worse than they claim as well. Big reorganization going on. The Emperor doesn’t want to believe how much corruption has had and is still having on his forces. They are desperate for oriental technology but as others are finding out, the Oriental’s weapons are mostly paper dragons. The Hermit has offered supplies for long boomers but they want just not cash but concessions. They are taking a chance that the Emperor will not be replaced by some internal Sith lord.

 

More as I get a chance.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Part 1

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I figure I’ll see if this can have future installments.  After all Philly seems to be on a roll.  Imagine being a cop in that place.

The Real Reset

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The Global American Empire (or whatever you prefer to call it) seems to be unravelling.  In a recent Wall Street Journal article, “The Rules-Based International Order Is Quietly Disintegrating” it was noted that Western institutions like the United Nations, the G-20, the World Court, the IMF and the World Trade Organization have fallen into disrepute and are routinely ignored or disparaged.

Evidence can be seen in the recent annual opening of the UN General Assembly in which Joe Biden was the only leader of the five permanent members of the Security Council to show up at all.  Now it’s obvious why Russia’s and even China’s leader isn’t travelling to New York City.  Even ignoring the threat of attack by homeless zombies and gang bangers America’s largest city is no longer neutral territory in this new cold war.

It’s not so much that the West has become suddenly weaker.  That has been a slow, steady process.  What has accelerated is the sense that the American Empire is no longer an honest broker between the various nations and power blocks.  Recent behavior has demonstrated that the West has become capricious and underhanded in its dealings with other nations both large and small.  Its actions in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have been heavy-handed, arrogant and clumsy.  In fact, the Africans have recently stated that whereas the Chinese provide assistance on projects, the West provides lectures on LGBTQ awareness.  And that synchs up with the recent spate of coups in West Africa and the calls for the French and the Americans to remove their troops from the region.

The larger question is where does this trend lead?  Much of America’s power is based on its reputation for stability and competency both economically and politically.  None of those things seem true lately.  The COVID lockdowns and the political theater that characterizes the Biden administration and its military actions in Afghanistan and Ukraine all reinforce the impression of a country racked with muddled thinking and dangerous instability.  Because of this the actions of the Western nations no longer seem to have the clout they formerly possessed.

The prime example is the Ukraine debacle.  The West has been using economic sanctions against Russia and military assistance to Ukraine to punish Vladimir Putin for resisting the West’s plan to weaponize Ukraine and bring a hostile military power to the very border of Russia.

Against expectations, the sanctions have failed to crash the Russian economy and instead have badly damaged the economies of several European states including Germany which received a large part of its energy supply as Russian gas until the United States sabotaged the underwater pipeline that supplied the gas.

And the war itself is not going as expected with Ukraine fighting valiantly but finding its manpower exhausted and facing economic and societal ruin through the disruptions it’s suffering through.

And the war has fostered a much closer relationship between Russia and China.  China sees what has happened to Russia with Ukraine and they recognize a similar situation for themselves with respect to America’s attitude about Taiwan.  And this strategic partnership between China and Russia is strengthened by their economic and monetary relationship in the BRICS economic grouping which in addition to those two countries, includes India, Brazil and South Africa and soon will expand to include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

So, all in all, “the West” is facing serious challenges to its economic and military supremacy for the first time since the end of the Cold War.  And without a doubt the trouble is almost completely self-inflicted.

The article finishes with this summary of the latest woes:

“States are imploding and the rule of law is disappearing across large parts of the world. In Latin America, narco-trafficking crime organizations have infiltrated or supplanted weak states. Something similar is happening in the Sahel, with jihadist groups and bandits openly defying the authority of shambolic governments. Russia, China and Iran are happily fishing in these troubled waters, with few signs of effective Western responses to a growing security threat. The ignominious collapse of French power across Africa has been more dramatic, but the palsied incompetence of American responses to the erosion of civil order among our own neighbors is at least equally disgraceful, and equally grave.”

Up until a few years ago I would have viewed this upending of the supremacy of the Western world order with horror.  Now I think it may be for the best and may clear the way for America to return to its correct mission, serving the needs and goals of the people who live here and let the world muddle through on its own.

Out With the Old, In with the New

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I look at the headlines today and see:

  • “Link” “ABC News/WashPost: Trump 52, Biden 42”
  • “Link” “Biden Poll Freakout”
  • “Link” “Democrats Fear Party Leaders Are Too Bullish About Biden’s 2024 Odds: ‘They’re Playing Russian Roulette’”
  • “Link” “FBI agent says prosecutors thwarted Hunter Biden charges, corroborating IRS whistleblowers”
  • “Link” “‘Missing witness’ in Biden corruption probe offers dirt on Hunter FBI ‘mole’ who tipped him off”

Huh?  What the heck is going on here?

Bidenomics is leading us into the strongest economy in human history.  Open borders and equity-driven justice has made our cities the envy of the world (or, at least, of Brazil and Venezuela).  And our compassion for gender non-conforming toddlers is taking the breath away of progressives in Sweden and Britain who used to take the lead in this kind of thing (until some late breaking data caught their attention).

All these bed-wetters in the Democrat party panicking when everything is going great?

Alright, maybe it really is time to pull the plug on Dementia Joe before the primaries get going.

I’m fascinated by trying to guess how they’ll do it.  Do they leave a horse’s head in the West Wing or would that be too subtle?  Does Merrick Garland show up in the Oval Office with a folder that has pictures of Hunter handing Joe a bulging trash bag with a huge dollar sign stenciled on it?

Would they do something drastic?  I mean it’s not like these guys have any qualms about breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.  But I’m just afraid that we’ll never really know how the play went down.  I think they owe it to history (and comedy) to provide a YouTube video showing the whole thing.

Personally, I think the perfect way would be to set up a presidential address to the nation for Joe and then just have the teleprompter read that Joe is retiring after the end of his term.  By the time he figures out what it means he’ll have already announced the end of his presidency.

Now who do they replace him with in the election?  Everyone says Gavin Newsome, Gavin Newsome!  Well, I guess, but maybe there are better choices.  I think Mayor Pete is the obvious go to.

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/buttigieg-breastfeed.jpg

His qualifications are obvious.  Everything about him screams “commander in chief.”  And he is the face of a new generation, a generation much less worried about annoying details like laws of nature, facts and success.  With Pete we’ll get Joe Biden’s insouciance but without the wrinkles and with significantly fewer falls on the tarmac and the podium.

But if Pete is too young and inexperienced then go with a proven winner.

https://img.particlenews.com/img/id/4TkZex_0fQugn1100?type=thumbnail_1600x1200

Admiral Rachel Levine is the whole package (well in some senses).  Her free-wheeling, sashay through the world of gender affirmation has taken the country by storm.  Throw in the uniform and it’s pretty hard to deny that America is crying out for this new kind of leadership.  Can you imagine not voting for her in the general election?  I dare you!

But if I’ve still left you unconvinced then let’s circle back to the obvious choice

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/__TaKyfFeeM

Instead of letting Biden wait out his first term just have him shipped off to the funny farm now and presto, change-o Kamala Harris is the incumbent.  From there the campaign will be one long slog through the cities and suburbs of America with Kamala professing her love for school busses, post-it notes and kinetic desk toys like the drinking bird and fidget spinners.  It’s been claimed that the average IQ of Americans has decreased about ten points per decade.  It’s quite possible that Kamala is now “the one.”  She may be the perfect fit for the new America.  And who are we to stand in the way of progress (or regress).

After all, yellow school busses.

We Need a Classier Bunch of Crooks in Washington

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Our regime is pathetic.  And I don’t mean just Menendez.  I don’t consider Obama or the Clintons or even the Bushes as an upgrade.  I mean altogether.  These people are simply parasites that in no way improve the country.  A Pericles or a Julius Caesar aggrandized himself via the power of the state that he ruled.  Even Pericles was accused of stealing some of the funds used to build the Parthenon.  But no one would accuse either of those two men of not acting to improve the strength of their countries.  Each acted in both peace and war to make his nation a stronger and richer place.

It’s inconceivable that anyone could make that claim for George W Bush or Barack Obama.  And as for Joe Biden, when he isn’t molesting women and children, he’s filling his pockets with graft money.  No.  Our ruling class are nothing but vultures picking the bones of the carcass of the United States while they reshape the world into an oligarchic network under the aegis of their control.

So, I guess the question is, can anything be done to recruit a new elite?  It’s not a simple question.  Donald Trump threw his hat in the ring eight years ago and he got bounced out.  The present regime has a pretty tight grip on the reins of power.  And now that they’ve measured the threat from Trump, they’ve pulled out all the stops to neutralize him.

But maybe there will be a second act.

The present regime has done so much damage with the Green Initiative, the COVID debacle and the George Floyd color revolution that things just haven’t returned to anything like a normal state.  The cities are a shambles and the economy is severely impacted by both the high consumer inflation and the deleterious effects of high interest rates for business borrowing.  Many banks find themselves with underwater bond portfolios and uncertainties over bad real estate holdings in the city centers.

With so much going wrong all at the same time it’s possible that even our ultra-corrupt elites might think it was time to put sane people in charge.  Of course, then they’d have to find sane people.  I’m not sure how they’d do that.  And at this point, the Republican voters want Trump to be their tribune.  So, these experts would have to work with and through him.  But this is Trump’s last stand.  Whether he wins or loses he’s done after this campaign.  His vice-presidential pick is a pretty important choice.  He may be choosing the next president after him.

I’m not sure who is the right one.  For lack of another choice, I’d say Ron DeSantis.  In his favor, he and Trump don’t like each other.  I think that’s a good situation for them.  Also, Trump needs a smart decisive guy who can get things done, someone he can delegate jobs to.  I think DeSantis can do that.  I also think he’ll grow in the role and be ready in four years to run on his own.

But whoever Trump picks he shouldn’t select a diversity symbol like Nikki Haley or Tim Scott.  Now, Ramaswamy is interesting but I’ll confess I know nothing about him other than his recent debate rhetoric.  For all I know he’s trojan horse.  But we definitely need someone smart and ruthless.

The problem with all this is the element of control that the administrative state wields against both Congress and the White House.  And the only possible way that this control could be overcome would be if the legislative and executive leadership worked along with the Supreme Court to scale back the power that the bureaucracy has been imbued with.  In fact, it might take more.  It might require military action to wrench control from those men.  And we know that the military isn’t the loyal servant of the people it used to be.

All of this is in the way of musing about things we are already aware of.  What would make a change possible is if some of the elites defect to Trump.  Could that happen.  I think it’s possible.  The destabilization of the country is reaching a level that must be troubling even for the people who live in safe enclaves far from street violence and decay.  When billionaires start fleeing New York and Chicago for Tennessee and Florida that’s a sea change.

And the last problem is what vision would an elite revolution have for our country?  Fixing some of the crazier policies of the Biden administration and cleaning up government doesn’t necessarily herald the beginning of a renaissance for the middle class.  The elites love their cheap labor.  Closing the border may not be one of the things they care about.  This I think of as a real problem.  They may restore law and order in the cities but allow a very loose immigration policy to continue.

So even if Trump wins next year what will come of it?  Only something like an elite defection seems like it would permit the reform that is needed to get us out of the death trap we find ourselves in.

For whatever reason, I currently think it’s possible that such a thing could happen.  Maybe tomorrow I won’t.

23SEP2023 – Generational Differences

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Happy first day of Fall here at the Autumnal Equinox.

So, I looked around at the news to see if anything jumped out at me.  Meh.  Lots of stuff is going on.  The Texas AG sat down with Tucker to talk about the impeachment hit the DOJ put out on him and how it failed.  That was pretty interesting but I wasn’t in the mood for that level of wonkery.

There are all kinds of articles about Menendez but I’ve got a weak stomach so the little bit I’ve done already is about half the fatal dose for that stuff.

But then I was watching a YouTube video by a sf critic called Bookpilled, where he listed what he considered the top science fiction books in his opinion.  The list was fairly interesting:

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

The Stars My Destination / Tiger! Tiger! by Alfred Bester

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

City by Clifford D. Simak

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Blood Music by Greg Bear

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

Blindsight by Peter Watts

So, because the list seemed thoughtful, I went onto one of his other videos.  This one was called Battle of the Hard Sci-Fi Classics [100 Book Challenge #35-40].  In this “challenge” the host read one or more books by the “Big Three.”  The works he read were “Rendezvous with Rama” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke; “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein; “I, Robot” and “The Gods Themselves” by Isaac Asimov.

Well, I’ll say Bookpilled was not particularly impressed by these golden age authors.  Clarke and Asimov were damned with faint praise but his true scorn was reserved for poor old Bob Heinlein.  Scathing would be a mild description of his comments about the Dean of Science Fiction.  Not amused.

And that brings me to the point of this little essay.  The reviewer Bookpilled, is a Millennial.  His sensibilities were formed in a different world from mine.  Now, much of his criticism of Heinlein (and of the other two authors to a lesser degree) center around the merits of the works as literature.  He finds fault with the characterizations of the protagonists, the seeming simplicity of the plot devices and even with the level of foreshadowing of events.

And in a lot of ways, the criticism is justified.  Heinlein’s characters were very often “types.”  The wise older man, the talented but naïve young man, the omni-competent hero, the socially awkward scientist.  And some of his books, especially in the later years were less successful as “works of art.”  But Bookpilled didn’t just give “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” low marks.  He was viscerally outraged by almost everything in the book.  He was especially upset about Heinlein’s handling of sex.  And, granted, sex is one of the truly weakest aspects of Heinlein’s writing, especially (apparently) from the point of view of Millennial readers.  But it’s interesting that his writing is completely unreadable for this apparently enthusiastic science fiction reader.  Why is this?  Frank Herbert is approximately of Heinlein’s generation but Herbert’s Dune is on Bookpilled’s top fifteen list of all time science fiction books.  So, what’s the deal?

I think the generational difference is that when science fiction was a new art form its audience was entirely made up of young men.  And the aspect of the work that earned it praise was almost entirely its capacity to inspire enthusiasm and wonder about the future.  Whether it was interstellar space travel, nuclear power, or alien life forms the loftiness of the prose and the depth of characterization were almost unimportant to the success of the story.  And so, when these older stories are read by 21st century critics they are not amused.  It matters not at all that “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is probably the first story to consider a political revolution between Earth and a space colony.  He’s read a host of books that took this concept and then updated for the present reader.

In these updated versions, the protagonist may be a black trans-lesbian with anti-white-colonial credentials and the computer will be the disembodied mind of Che Guevera or Woody Allen or someone else, depending on whether it’s an earnest political story, a comedy or something I can’t even imagine.  And the “diversity” allows the author to virtue signal to his audience the correctness of his story.  And if he’s a talented writer it allows him to add exotic points to the writing.

And that’s fine.  Every generation has its own art.  I think the important thing for me to note is that there is a place today for art that does not follow the template of the current day.  Bookpilled is a guy that looks like he’s somewhere in his early thirties.  So, his sensibilities are in line with his generation.  Now, I think he’s probably a fair example of his cohort and I’ll even say he’s probably not hostile to the world view of his parents’ generation.  He just sees things from his point of view.  But if he can enjoy Dune, Mote in God’s Eye, The War of the Worlds and even Frankenstein then he is reachable through art that speaks with a very different voice than his here and now literature.

So as an incipient science fiction author I think it behooves me to understand my potential market.  These young people are intelligent (well, at least the ones I want to reach).  Probably good writing, even if it comes from a different world view will interest them if it can provide sympathetic characters and interesting plot.  But if my plot challenges their world view it will need to be persuasive.  I won’t be able to win them over with exposition.  I’ll need to show them what I want them to understand.  That’s the challenge.

Well, why not?  Propaganda for its own sake is pretty awful even if it’s of your particular stripe.  So, Bob Heinlein be warned.  The Millennials have lost their patience and if you’re not careful they’ll take back your grandmaster’s hat and robe.  Get a copy of “Fifty Shades of Gray,” a highlighter and drop all the dears!