Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 02DEC2023 – Dissident Monarchists

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Hi photog,

I’m a reviled civic nationalist just like you but you shouldn’t put more weight on successful predictions by the dissident right than they deserve. I realized in 2004-2006, when Republicans had the presidency and both houses of congress, that we were in deep do-do. With Republican control nothing changed. Literally, nothing changed. While I like to think I’m smarter than the average bear it doesn’t mean that I have a solution for all that ails the U.S. any more than the dissident right does.

Before I stopped following the Zman (please don’t think I have a grudge against him, I just know him better than most) he was reading a lot about Karl Marx and the early Russian communists. Zman was impressed by their sharp social criticisms; they did an excellent job of diagnosing the problems 19th century Europe was facing. The elephant in the room with the Marxists was their solution to these problems was horrific. Seeing a problem doesn’t mean you can solve it.

I hate to say it but a lot of what is happening in the U.S. right now reminds me of problems I used to associate with South America; a loss of the middle class and large slums. When I was younger I would wonder why the ruling classes in these countries didn’t do more to encourage the development of a middle class. As time passed I realized that the ruling classes in those countries liked things that way, they liked being an aristocracy that lorded it over the peasants. They had a class identity and not a national identity. I think that’s where the U.S. is now but the dissident right solution of moving toward monarchy is not a solution. All it will do is formalize the class distinctions we’re already seeing.

At least that’s how I see it.

 

Comment from TomD

I’m not certain I see that it is the far right moving to a monarchy. It seem that the current trend of the concentration of all power into the executive branch and the underlying administrative state would come closest to a de facto monarchy. And that looks to be a feature of a significant portion of the entire ruling class, regardless of party affiliation.

Please expand on the equation of far right to monarchy.

Reply by Glenn W

Hi Tom,
 
When I wrote the comment about monarchy I had in mind an argument that Zman has made on many occasions where he compares our modern democracy with a monarchy. Zman argues that being in the white hot spotlight of an election discourages any self respecting person from running in the first place. Over time the sane people are boiled off and only the most superficial people would consider running for election to any public office. This how we get congress critters like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes in office. He then compares the democratic clown show to a monarchy where the king has to keep the people happy or risk being toppled from power. That is an over simplification but not by much.
 
To be fair, Zman probably isn’t advocating for monarchy but he does consider it to be superior to any democratic system. What I think he actually advocates, without saying it in the open, is some form of commmunitarianism (for an introduction to what that is please read “The Communitarian Option”).
 
The common thread that runs throughout the dissident right, to use Zman’s term, is its antagonism to individualism. Zman constantly hits on the theme that the voting public is a bunch of morons who cannot be trusted to vote for enlightened self interest. Of course that is the principle that our founding is based on and why he disdains civic nationalists. The details of what exactly the dissident right would like to replace our system with are always vague but it won’t be a system where the hoi polloi are allowed to mess things up.

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.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 01DEC2023 – Biden’s Voters

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Here is the person who will vote for Biden:
This is an old friend. A person who has worked union jobs their entire life.
They asked if I planned to retire anytime soon.
I replied that, had they asked me that in 2019 I would have told them I’d be retired now.
But since the last presidential election, my 401K is in the shitter and everything is a hell of a lot more expensive so retirement is not an option.
(I phrased it this way because I knew they were liberal.)
“Well, the market goes up and the market goes down.” was the reply.
I pointed out that this was the first time the market was down while inflation was skyrocketing.
They gave the standard talking point that inflation was down now.
I explained that the rate of inflation was down, but the prices had not come down and were substantially higher than they were 4 years ago.

They will still pull the lever for straight democrat, even though they live in a crime ridden shithole city that has been run by the democrats for over 50 years.
There are many of them.

 

 

Dah Duh, Dah Dah Dah Daaah, Duh

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2016 was the Star Wars election where a plucky band of rebels blew up the Hillary Death Star and sent Barack Obama careening into oblivion, or was it Jeb Bush?  2020 was the Empire Strikes Back Election.  The rotting corpse of Emperor Bidentine was installed on the throne and the rebels were battered and scattered.  Now here we are for Return of the Trumpi.  To torture this metaphor a little further I’m not sure if Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are annoying enough to be Princess Leia and Yoda.  But at least I’m sure that Chris Christie is Jabba the Hut.

Alright, enough of that.

As a reviled civic nationalist, I have been fighting a rear-guard action against the string of successful predictions of the dissident right for something like twenty years.  They’ve been right about the Bushes and right about the Republicans in general and now we’ll find out if they’re right about the finality of, “We’re not going to vote our way out of this.”  What we have in front of us is the acid test.  Joe Biden has created the perfect storm to force the populace to vote for the Republicans.  If he manages to win the 2024 election then nothing remains to dispute the truth of, “We’re not going to vote our way out of this.”

Granted, I’m already pretty sure it’s true.  But I’ve been tempted back into the game by just how awful a mess Biden has made of the country.  It’s becoming harder and harder to see the America as it was just a few short years ago.  There’s not even the pretense that this isn’t the trajectory they mean to for us to be on.  It’s just homeless encampments, unchecked urban violence and rust belt poverty as far as the eye can see.

It’s hard for me to see how anyone who isn’t either a welfare recipient or a true believer could look at what is happening to America and not say, “enough.”  So that’s why I still have any lingering doubts about the finality of the Left’s victory.  I desperately want to believe that even leftists who strive for all the progressive platitudes but live in the real world wouldn’t be horrified by the collapse of the beautiful world they once lived in and want someone to fix the zombie apocalypse that has unfolded before our eyes.  Even if that someone is Donald Trump, the very devil himself.

So, here we go again.  Another countdown to the “most important election in our lives,” another round of pathetic headlines by the New York Times and the Washington Post assuring us that Joe Biden, notwithstanding the fact that he can’t count past three, is the greatest president since Harriet Tubman and possibly a living saint.  And that his only begotten son Hunter is completely above suspicion and, by the way, possibly a good choice for president in 2028.  Oh, the pain.

Well, the only thing left for me to do is figure out who will be the Ewoks.  Maybe we are.  At this point I feel pathetic enough to fit the part.

Jim Jordan’s Weaponization of the Federal Government Investigation is Truly Depressing

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It’s much, much worse than we’ve heard.  I’ve started it at Shellenberger’s testimony and then it goes on for hours.  Obama set this in motion and the intelligence agencies have jumped on it with relish.  For this alone I’d shut down the FBI and the rest of them.  If Speaker of the House Johnson loves this country he should refuse to allow the Patriot Act to be renewed.  American Stasi.