Tag: Allegory of the Sinking Ship

What Do the Deplorables Want?  How About, What Do I Want?

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So, this is a loaded question.  There isn’t a monolithic consciousness that pervades all of the Right and aligns everyone’s opinions.  I have friends who really only care about the Supreme Court and are praying for a Roberts-proof lock on the voting.  Then I know guys who more than anything else in the world want to see Comey and all his superiors all the way up to Barry O get frog-marched into prison for their treasonous crimes over the last several years.  And I know plenty of people who believe as an article of faith that unless the illegal immigrants are ejected by the tens of millions in the next couple of years that America will be finished.

Look at this list and the other priorities you know about; First Amendment violations, Second Amendment outrages, social media discrimination, job offshoring, etc.  These priorities are all over the place.  What pattern or organizing principle can clarify how all of these goals are related?

A couple of years ago I wrote a post in which I compared the present illegal immigration situation to a sinking ship.  The steps I outlined to solve the problem were:

  • Step One – Plug the hole.
  • Step Two – Pump out the water.
  • Step Three – Repair the damage.
  • Step Four – Review cause of crash and take measures to prevent recurrence.

I laid out what each of these steps translated into with respect to the immigrant problem but it’s easy enough to guess what they were.

Thinking back to that analogy and looking at all the other problems listed above I have to modify the model.  It’s not as if we struck a reef and a hole has to be repaired.  It’s like a group of maniacal saboteurs armed with explosives has systematically blasted a dozen separate holes in the hull and is in fact still setting up additional charges.  In a situation like that plugging holes is not the first order of business.  The first job is to liquidate the saboteurs.

For that reason, I agree with the folks who want to prosecute the Coup and throw the book at them.  These people are an existential threat to us and as long as they are still in place, we will never make any progress on wresting control of our lives back into our own hands.  Comey, Brennan, Clapper and the rest of the conspirators have attempted to overthrow the lawfully elected President of the United States and although they failed, they are still walking the streets unpunished and waiting to get back to work as soon as they have another chance.  These people are a de facto oligarchy that decide what is allowed to occur in the federal government and even who is allowed to run it.

Since J. Edgar Hoover started blackmailing Jack Kennedy back in the 1960s the security apparatus has been dictating policy from behind the scenes and controlling many of the elected officials that we thought were the decision makers.  Does it go above these coup leaders?  Maybe we’ll find out.  If the lower level guys squeal on the mid-level rats I would imagine that anything is possible.  But this will require that William Barr is both genuinely patriotic and absolutely fearless.  It’s hard to believe that we could be that lucky.  Once again, we’re about to find out.  It’s way past the time for Barr to start getting results from Durham’s investigations.  After the acquittal some people have stated that the first indictments are about to be handed down in the next few weeks.  Well, I’ve heard that many times before.  But I’m interested in seeing what is the result.  As stated above I thing that prosecuting these people is the only way to head off further damage to our country.  Otherwise we’re just chasing yesterday’s disaster and never catching up.

The Allegory of the Sinking Ship

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I had a good friend who died a few years ago.  He was about ten years older than I was and had served in the Green Berets during Vietnam, was a chemist, became an engineer as a second career, raised a family, was a musician and late in life took up sailing.  He was also universally acclaimed an honest, hard-working, friendly and just Christian man.  He kept me around, I think, as a mascot and probably, by comparison, as a cautionary tale for the young.  One day after he retired he called me up and asked me if I wanting to go sailing with him on Narragansett Bay.  He was in remission from cancer and I hadn’t seen him in a while so I said sure.  After all I was in relatively good health and younger than him so I figured I’d go along and enjoy a peaceful and restful morning sail.  Well, by the time we came back I was sun-burned, wind-burned, and aching in bones and muscles I had never known I had.  Suffice it to say my knowledge of boats can be written in billboard sized letters on the narrower face of a grain of rice.  I did learn that starboard probably means right.  So, there’s that.

Now this is what we call foundation material for a call back later.  So, hold on to the nautical theme.

There exists a range of opinions of how things will unfold in the future.  The Alt-Right has claimed that the hypocrisy about race that prevails today precludes the possibility of honest relations in a multicultural society.  But they go well beyond that idea.  Their claim is that different ethnic and racial groups cannot coexist in harmony.  They contend that the open immigration of the last fifty years has drowned out the former nation that existed in America before and that the new population shall produce a third world society closer to Brazil or South Africa than to the former United States with respect to culture, stability, prosperity and quality of life.  Their draconian solution is partition of the country.  The Establishment Republicans on the other hand, contend that all that’s needed to restore America is a good illegal alien amnesty bill and some inspired After School Specials.

Over the course of the last few years I have concluded that the Establishment Republicans are worse than useless.  They have ignored or abetted in the steadily increasing damage done to the native population by off-shoring of whole industries along with wholesale destruction of jobs through competition from illegal aliens.  In addition, they ignore the ceaseless and ever worsening assaults on the foundational institutions of a healthy society by the Leftists.  In fact, they continuously adopt the latest assault as if it were a cornerstone of traditional society.  You only have to watch the NeverTrumpers embrace gay marriage or transgender identity rights to see how far they’ve travelled down the road to nihilism.

At the same time, although I readily concede that the Alt-Right was correct about many critical issues,  I don’t concede that it is impossible for significantly different groups of people to coexist in a society that follows the founding precepts of the United States of America.  While I grant that it will differ from the nation existing at the Founding and even the country that existed fifty years ago I have not surrendered all hope that it could maintain the traditions and institutions that have existed here.  And as a practical matter I even think I can outline a program that will answer the most pressing issues afflicting the American people while allowing a fair test as to whether something short of apartheid will preserve the character of the country as it was two generation ago.  This is my olive branch, such as it is, to the Alt-Right.  Having been right about so many things that everyone else got wrong, I feel they deserve it.  Here is my modest proposal.

And so, I unveil the Allegory of the Sinking Ship.  Plato eat your heart out.  See how I came back to the sailing theme?

Let’s compare our present situation to an ocean-going ship striking a reef.  What are the steps needed to save the ship?  Let’s enumerate them.

Step One – Plug the hole.

Step Two – Pump out the water.

Step Three – Repair the damage.

Step Four – Review cause of crash and take measures to prevent recurrence.

Now let’s identify the analogous steps to save our “Ship of State.”

  • Plug the Hole. – In our case that would be shutting down replacement immigration. And that means reducing legal immigration to just about zero.
  • Pump Out the Water. – That equates to deporting the illegal immigrants that are here or that continue to “leak through.” This also includes legal immigrants and naturalized Americans who break immigration law or otherwise show themselves to be criminals.
  • Repair the Damage. – In our situation this means restoring the life of the country to what it was like fifty years ago.
  • Prevent Recurrence. – In our case that means figuring out how we got into this mess and changing the Constitution to prevent a repeat of this existential threat.

The first two steps are self-explanatory and for the most part only require normal executive and legislative actions to proceed.  President Trump has taken the first baby steps toward these actions.  Much more is needed but part of that process is his moving of the Overton Window on what can and what needs to be done on illegal immigration.  Hopefully some gains in the midterms and possible improvement of the conservative leaning of the Supreme Court will accelerate the actions being taken by the President and Congress.

The third step is an enormous task.  So much needs to be repaired that it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t be easier to start from scratch.  But I’ll throw some things out here for consideration.  One of the requirements is the re-establishment of the freedom of association.  Basically, the government has to get out of the business of telling people who they associate with.  And that means eliminating affirmative action and all of the protected groups that have been created.  This is an enormous change.  And basically, it will decriminalize being a straight white man.  It is the cornerstone of getting back to a functional America.  Another requirement is reducing the overreach of the federal government and stifle its impulse to redistribute wealth.  And finally, we must restore Constitutional authority.  This means the Supreme Court is going to have to strike down all the unconstitutional over-reach that has occurred in the last fifty years (and in some cases more).  This overlaps the first requirement because a number of the anti-free association rules were court mandated.  But there are many more that impinge on the rights of the various states to follow the will of the people in their states.

The fourth step is completely unknown territory.  How do you protect the United States from nihilists?  Perhaps a number of Constitutional Amendments can be put in place to protect us from the Marxist ploys we’ve run up against but it seems that you can’t legislate common sense.  This step will require a lot of thought.

So that’s the outline.  And throwing in one last analogy to the sinking ship is my point about it being a way to test the possibility of restoring the country.  If at any point along these steps the ship starts to sink you can always resort to life boats and escape.  In our situation that equates to the situation where we fail to stop illegal immigration and the Democrats achieve a permanent majority and immediately institute the full Marxist program including functional elimination of the First and Second Amendments.  At that point it will be obvious that I was wrong and the Alt-Right civil war can commence.  See, no fuss no muss.  My plan is just an interim step if you’re convinced of Armageddon.

The way I see it, following a plan like mine is no worse than waiting for the apocalypse and depending on outcome could be a whole lot better.  Now as I alluded to earlier, my maritime knowledge is less than comprehensive but anyone who has dealt with a busted pipe knows that the first order of business is shutting off the supply.  After that comes the cleanup.  But we need to start at the beginning.

 

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