Support Your Local Idiots

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So, Halloween is done and we begin the sprint to Christmas.  We’ll try to forget the various horrors that surround us on every side and try to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This week is a nightmare of commitments that end probably a week from today.  That of course cuts into my writing time drastically but what can you do?

All the routine nonsense dominates the news.  The usual psychos are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, escalation in Ukraine and more illegal aliens in Texas.  Joe Biden’s poll numbers keep edging down toward 30% but everyone assures us he’ll be the candidate.  The latest attacks on Trump are to remove him from the ballot.  This is supposedly by Democrats but you know that the Republicans are assisting them in any way they can.  And every media site trumpets the extraordinary popularity and remarkable wisdom of Nikki Haley, the new manlier version of Mitt Romney.  Well, it is the stupid party.  I’m sure there are plenty of useful idiots who will parrot this swill.

As you can see, the news is not worth a post.  I think I’ll talk a little bit about the present state of “leadership.”  Let’s review.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the executive leadership of the United States government.  Antony Blinken is the Secretary of State.  The “Squad” including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are considered important legislative leaders.  Merrick Garland is the Attorney General.  Pete Buttigieg is the Transportation Secretary.  “Rachel” Levine and Sam Brinton were considered qualified to provide responsible government leadership despite being mentally disturbed.  Lloyd Austin is the Secretary of Defense.

None of these people is considered particularly impressive in their field of endeavor.  In some cases, like Joe Biden and Ilhan Omar, an honest mental health professional would probably recommend institutionalization as the safest option for the good of both the patient and society at large.

My point is that we are selecting “leaders” based on grievance group politics.  These people are representing the agenda of the various constituent groups of the Democrat party coalition.  But, otherwise, they are entirely unqualified for their jobs.  In fact, some of them are dangerously unqualified.  For instance, Antony Blinken has one of the most important jobs in the federal government.  He has an enormous amount of influence over the foreign policy of the most powerful military power on the planet.  He could literally trigger a nuclear war by some of his actions.  And yet he’s a blithering idiot and a delusional partisan.

And speaking of blithering idiots, no one can seriously claim that Kamala Harris isn’t a mental and emotional cripple.  Watching her performance in the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ debate would convince any neutral observer that Harris was an emotionally unbalanced simpleton.

And yet all these people are allegedly running the United States federal government.  It seems to me this is proof that the idea that our elected representatives “run” the government is a charade.  The actual operation is handled by bureaucrats and by the government contractors who tell the Congress what bills to pass.

But regardless of how ancillary the office holders in the federal government may be, it still seems clear to me that having morons and the insane as our elected and appointed leaders will pretty quickly lead to chaos.  Already we have reached the point where hyperinflation is threatening.  Pretty soon the national debt will become impossible to service.  At that point very bad things can be expected to happen.  And yet, currently Americans keep voting these people into power.  It’s extremely hard to assume that the average American isn’t also a moron.

I guess I understand why many people have been investing in commodities.  After the crash these materials may be the only way to avoid complete bankruptcy.  But hopefully something will happen to stave off such a catastrophe.  Maybe nuclear Armageddon.

Hey, Here’s A Guy Who Agrees with Me

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A couple of weeks back I said that the simplest way to knock out the Gaza tunnel system would be to pump seawater into it and flood it.  Well, here’s a guy trying to steal my idea!

I’d say great minds think alike but I’m too incensed that he got the idea linked on Real Clear Politics.  Oh well.  We geniuses are never recognized within our own lifetimes.  Well, there’s always my anti-gravity ray.  Maybe that one will take off.

I’ll Wait for the Movie Version

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“Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as they warred against each other, beginning to write as soon as the war was on foot, with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it; conjecturing so much both from this, that they flourished on both sides in all manner of provision, and also because he saw the rest of Greece siding with the one or the other faction, some then presently and some intending so to do. For this was certainly the greatest commotion that ever happened among the Grecians, reaching also to part of the barbarians and, as a man may say, to most nations. For the actions that preceded this and those again that are yet more ancient, though the truth of them through length of time cannot by any means clearly be discovered, yet for any argument that, looking into times far past, I have yet light on to persuade me, I do not think they have been very great, either for matter of war or otherwise.”

In 1629 Thomas Hobbes the philosopher (or we should say the social scientist) translated into English, Thucydides “Peloponnesian War.”  Above is Thucydides’ introduction.  He believed that this was the greatest war that had ever been fought among the Greeks.  And in this belief, he was probably right.  And in a sense every major war that was fought afterward in which European peoples fought amongst themselves became the greatest war.  After the Peloponnesian war, Sparta fought with the other Hellenic city states such as Thebes until they wore each other down.  That allowed the related Macedonian nation to conquer the Greeks and that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire.  And the squabbling of the successor kingdoms of Alexander’s generals was the incubator for the Roman empire.

But when the rotted corpse of the Caesars’ world disintegrated sometime during the 5th century A.D. it formed the fertile soil that nurtured our Western civilization.  And now the United States of America is approaching the point where it will need a new name.  Calling it a democratic republic is sort of a bad joke.  The form of the government is some kind of self-perpetuating bureaucracy.  And its extent is no longer defined by the outline of the fifty states.  Much like Rome it has many vassal states that while technically not American territory nevertheless are almost completely controlled by America.

And like Rome the American Empire has an enormous amount of momentum.  Even in the midst of precipitous decline in many aspects of its existence the shear mass of this human organization is staggering to behold.  And because of this scope it will take a long time for the creature to die.  Unfortunately, we will be the witnesses to the early stages of this downfall.  And it is already on display.  Just as the Roman republic died with the destruction of the small Roman farmers so our society will degenerate into a feudal existence with the dominance of the corporate oligarchs over small independent businesses.  And in fact, the last few years has greatly accelerated this process.

And our age’s equivalent to the Roman “bread and circuses” is the vision of welfare and the metaverse where everyone commits slow suicide to make room for the depopulated Gaia model.  It almost makes 5th century Rome sound humanistic.

I was recently skimming through Macchiavelli’s “History of Florence.”  It begins with the Fall of Rome and after the Carolingian period quickly devolves into endless petty wars between a long series of German Holy Roman Emperors named Frederic, French Kings named Louis and Neapolitan Dukes named Rodrigo battling the Popes for control of Tuscany and Lombardy.  And it occurred to me that someday that will be North America.  Idiotic descendants of the Pilgrims will be warring endlessly with some Asiatic warlords and Neo-Aztecs for possession of Lake Winnipesaukee.  And if that’s the case then my ancestors might as well have remained in Southern Italy and at least have had the comfort of snow free March weather.

If I were a Stoic, I’d look at the whole thing as the way of the world and just make the best of it without whining about it.  But my ancestors made a tradition of bitterly complaining about just about everything that was outside of their control and just about everything was outside of their control.  At the same time, it meant trying to make the most of the things we could control; family, food and friends.

But just as Thucydides did with Athens and Tacitus did with Republican Rome, we will get a chance to see up close and personal how a once free people get turned into serfs.  It won’t be pretty but it will be momentous.  I hope the movie version has good CGI effects.

Idle Hands

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The first frost is due Tuesday night.  I’ve heard there could be snow or freezing rain.  That’s Halloween, so everyone is hoping it holds off until the kids are home from their candy raids.  Of course, a dusting of snow would be alright but freezing rain would be awful.  I remember many years ago when my children were still small and I walked them through the sidewalks of the small town common where we lived at the time when a freezing rain began.  Their plastic pumpkin candy containers filled up with rain and ruined their treats.  But worse still they were frozen to the bone by the time we walked home.  Truly a miserable end to an exciting night for the young.

I had the family over today for a kid’s birthday party.  Amazing.  Remarkable how much good will and high spirits can be created with some pasta and meat sauce.  Well, there was ice cream cake too.  I guess that could be an extenuating circumstance.  I also learned that a pool table will turn into a Nok Hockey table if you allow for the inventiveness of small children.  Instead of a pool cue they use billiard balls as paddles to shoot the other balls back and forth at each other.  Of course, it was probably a little dangerous.  Some small hands might have been pinched while they played and more than a few times the balls came flying off the table and bounced and banged their way across the room.  But they had a good time.  Later on, we had a couple of normal games with the older kids and I tried to teach Princess Sack of Potatoes how to use the cue to make a shot but let’s just say that her way of clearing the table seemed to make her happier.  So, all good stuff.

And we found an old book of “Scary Stories” that I had read to my kids all those years ago.  And I heard about how scary my delivery had been.  And some approved of those convincing dramatics and some had been too afraid.  And I remembered the occasion so many years ago and it surprised me that they still remembered the details.  And so, I offered the book to the children’s mothers and told them to use their own judgement as to when the children were old enough for the story of “The Big Toe.”

So, kids are still kids.  Even with all the nonsense that’s been introduced to ruin them.  They still enjoy being scared by a ghost story and misusing their parents’ toys and all the same things that we did.  You can still enjoy being a parent and grandparent and a kid.  It’s just a lot more expensive.  But that’s nothing new.

But something has changed in the last fifty years.  Our government doesn’t want any more kids.  At least not ones whose parents were born here.  Nobody is planning for them to have jobs and lives and eventually kids of their own.  Slowly but surely.  Methodically and cold-bloodedly, they’ve strangled off the world that produced all that living.  All the jobs that were located in factories and plants that produced everything from shoes to phones to washing machines no longer exist.  Or rather they exist in China, Thailand and Malaysia.  Our kids and grandkids are out of luck.  They’re not needed.  They’re not even needed as engineers, architects, managers or accountants.  Even those things have been outsourced.  The message is we’re not needed and we’re not wanted.  There’s no room for us and certainly not for any of our kids.

And yet the American people haven’t said no.  Well, some of them have said no.  But there hasn’t been an upswelling of anger at seeing their country chloroformed.  I find this remarkable.  Are we that blind?  Are we that stupid?  I guess we are.  What seems obvious to me is that unless this changes very soon there won’t be much left.  Just the managerial elite and their servants.  And I’m sure they’ll keep squeezing even that fraction down to a minimum.

So human capital is no longer the thing.  Well, we’ve been told over and over again that “our democracy” is a precious thing.  If the powers that be aren’t careful, they may find out what raw democracy means when it goes looking for the hand that shut off the work that used to keep it busy.  Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.