The Stakes : America At The Point of No Return

This link should take you to all my notes and comments on Goodreads. 

The book is unimaginably great, and sadly, probably all but unreachable to most Americans because in this age of distraction, the general population is so convinced that a quick hitter high entertainment value tribal tidbit is all they need to bother with. Something long enough to provide required context, is by design something to avoid. Let the experts deal with it, surely we can trust them! 

It turns out that Michael Anton is the "Decius" that wrote an incendiary column in the fall of 2016 -- commented on by me here.

The point of it all is that we are either "at", or (as I believe) beyond the point of no return for America. That fabled nation that believed in GOD GIVEN rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" ) ... or maybe conferred by "the thing" as the current candidate for president of "The Party"(TP-D) prefer. "God" is a bit uncomfortable if you worship the relativism of "if it feels good, it IS good"! 

 

This book summarizes what I had predicted from my study of 100s of books, articles, etc of 20+ years. Basically: 

• Democracy is either dead or in hospice in the once Constitutional Republic (but no longer) of America. 
  
  
• We are in or headed quickly for "Bluetopia" / "Wokeistan". Essentially current California (or the burning cores of our TP controlled blue cities)  -- a place where only the very elite of the 1% or the bottom "20%" can live "decent" (though very different definitions of "decent") lives.
  
  The top 1-5% look a lot like a little better version of the old "American dream" -- nice homes, great schools, safe communities, bright futures, etc.
  
  The "hollow middle" either increasingly leave, or live like college students in crowded "dorms" (2 bedroom apartments with 5-10 "living" in them) in increasing nasty "ring suburbs" ... even if they make like $200K a year! 
  
  The bottom lifestyles look like a welfare subsidized much better version of Mexico, Guatemala, Somalia, etc -- the shell of what once America is still a significant step up from a lot of the world. The elite Wokerati is planning that as the target lifestyle for the masses.
  
  If TP wins, there will be nowhere to go, so we Deploreables will get what the elite has decided we deserve.
  
  
• The world is being "Davosized" -- the 1% get 99% of the good stuff and the 99% get the shaft. (like 8 guys have more wealth than the bottom half of the world). 
  
  
• Since our elites receive only a very narrow "education" (really rat race indoctrination), "our betters" have a complete lack of "native intelligence / common sense", and have no choice but to parrot whatever the TP "experts" bleat. 
  
  
• We are a nation that is demoralized and "stuck" ... covered well in "Decadent Society"  

I found this quote to be rather chillingly aligned with one of my main observations. Rather like pre-reformation Western civilization, where questioning anything might be seen by the Popeish elite of that day as "burn at the stake, heresy". 

More sinister is the insistence that you deny reality—for example, affirm that a man is really a woman—or profess things you don’t actually believe: say, that the world will end in twelve years “because of climate change.” As with all cases of religious intolerance, outward conformity is an unsatisfactory defense; the inquisitors must be satisfied that, in your heart, you really believe. Hence insufficient fervor for elite California’s latest enthusiasm is taken as sufficient proof of heresy. There is no political or cultural check on any of this. Millions of Californians may disagree on this or that point and even resent being bullied, but there’s no way to know because they never dare say so—not if they want to stay and continue to earn a living.

In order to survive in Wokeistan, you need to increasingly convince the Elite that you BELIEVE what they demand you believe. BLM "mostly peaceful"? Sig Heil!  Showing ID to vote is racist? Ya Vol! Killing the baby after it is born? Yes master! 

Fear is the universal solvent for rationality. 

This is a decent review, where I stole the following conclusion: 

Anton is praiseworthy in that he is at least still seeking peaceful outcomes. For those who would paint his work in a negative light, ask yourself who else is doing the same. Armed violence is in our streets, and cities are burning in the face of those Anton calls the Wokerati. The old solutions no longer work.

Both left and right say that the solution is to vote the other out of power at every level, but neither has the votes. War is the obvious solution, but not a good one. This book wisely tries to imagine a new working way.

I like this review as well if you don't think you can handle the book. If that is the case, I HIGHLY recommend finding a way to read chapter 7. 

By far the most striking interlude in the book comes in Chapter Seven. Anton describes his ruling class oligarchy in detail — the tech monopolists, the woke universities, the leftist foot-soldiers, the neoliberal economists, the sock-puppet Democratic leaders, the administrative state — and then games out what might happen if their project hits the wall. Contemplations range from the mild (continued geographical sorting along political lines), to the less mild (secession), to the apocalyptic (civil war). These are, to put it lightly, troubling scenarios. In recent days Anton has warned of another: that the Democrats might be plotting a coup in November.

The fact that the RINO ruling class wanna be Republicans hate Trump is one more impetus for me to like him (not love, LIKE!). "There is very little wrong with Trump that more Trump won't fix". 

If TP triumphs, we will get to experience the interior of a totalitarian hell updated from the Gestapo, and KGB versions. With modern surveillance technology, will there really be any difference between inside and outside the reeducation camps? Will your mind even realize it has been captured? 

 

RIP, Animal, Past Lives

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/joseph-laurinaitis-wrestlings-animal-of-the-road-warriors-dies-at-60/2020/09/24/2dd5c35a-fdef-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html

Strange event to bring some of my past life to the surface of my now brain surgery / seizure damaged brain. Early in my IBM career, around the time of my marriage, my "team" (X.25 if I recall correctly) went to see the Road Warriors in Rochester, where oddly we ran into a very straight-laced corporatist 2nd line manager who had taken his early or slightly pre-teen daughter that loved the Road Warriors to the same show.  

I had more than a passing interest in lifting heavy things in those days -- 325 on the bench, 240 military. I had a lot of respect for professional wrestling -- "ballet for those over 250 lbs" as I saw it. 

I was also going through a good deal of "religious angst". Raised and Baptised a "Born again Baptist". Severely doubting the truth of God as I ardently pursued Computer Science and the almighty dollar, I was beginning my quest for "wisdom" -- theological, philosophical, technical, cultural,  and "whatever".  Complicated by falling in love with an even more conservatively raised woman. 

So how did we culturally decide that the "last night" of single life for a man ought to be a night of debauchery? 

Not that I really trust Time magazine, but their take is: 

The bachelor party, however, goes back much further than you'd expect. It's rooted in ancient history — as early as the 5th century B.C. It is believed that the ancient Spartans were the first to make a celebration out of the groom's last night as a single man. Spartan soldiers held a dinner in their friend's honor and made toasts on his behalf — with, one assumes, a Spartan sense of decorum. Since then, the events have generally grown more raucous. In 1896, a stag party thrown by Herbert Barnum Seeley — a grandson of P.T. Barnum — for his brother was raided by police after rumors circulated that a famous belly dancer would be performing nude. Before his wedding to Gloria Hatrick, Jimmy Stewart's infamous bash at the Beverly Hills hangout Chasen's included midgets popping out of a serving dish.

Having been raised in pietous past, my curiosity leads me to Luther's opinion on Mardi Gras. The internet is always helpful (if not always correct, let alone righteous!): 

https://michigandistrict.org/healthy-workers/the-theology-of-pancakes/

This is a temptation for any of us: focus too much on how much you’re not sinning, and the thought starts to creep into your mind that perhaps your own right living is the basis of your acceptance before God. And yet, this misses the essence of faith: not sin-avoidance, but Christ-reliance.

And so Martin writes Philip with words that are as compelling as they are controversial:

“If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but trust in Christ more boldly still, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.”

Luther isn’t recommending that Philip rob a bank or insult his mother. His point is that we should always take Christ and his mercy much more seriously than we take ourselves and our sanctity. “[Christ] became for us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor 1.30–31).

I'm not claiming to understand the Truth that we are BOTH "Saints and Sinners". I just understand that it IS truth!  

So my oh so helpful team in that distant past decided that I needed a Bachelor Party, and given that they knew of my pietous past, religious searching,  and impending marriage, they thought a stripping "nun" would be somehow appropriate (we were young). Apparently, as the "act" proceeded, cheers for "Road Warriors" rose to a crescendo, and I executed the "Road Warrior press" ( grasping under the arms, military pressing her to full height over my head) on said "nun". ( I'm not likely to get on the SCOTUS) 

I'm told that the event was marred by my quickly going to arms raised in triumph as her apogee was reached, oblivious to the fact that gravity would  return the spike heeled lass expeditiously to earth. Thankfully, she was young, agile, and resilient, so no injury ensued. 

My heart was gladdened to see in the article that: 

Both Mr. Laurinaitis and Hegstrand became born-again Christians, something which helped Hegstrand conquer his addictions. Nevertheless, he died from a heart attack in 2003 at age 46.

How long we hang on in this veil of tears is of very little significance. I'd like to imagine that we could have some great heavenly tag team matches. Perhaps they will be known as "The Legion of Grace"? 

We Live In Teddy Kennedy's America

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/reflections-on-the-devolution-2.php

The linked makes the case that the "Borking of America" on July 1 1987 was a critical point in the devolution of America into a broken leftist "Wokeistan". I agree it was a key point, however I maintain that Chappaquiddick,  was the extreme turning point -- metaphysically linked with the Moon Landing. 

God is not subtle -- hubris and the fall are eternally linked, and to any with even the most minimal of faith, the truth remains obvious. 

As Bronner suggested, Senator Kennedy’s unconstrained opposition to Bork’s appointment has indeed had profound effects in the practice of “judicial politics.” As Steve put it in The Age of Reagan, “the subsequent public campaign of the activist Left was stunning in its breadth, depth, and dishonesty.” We saw it recur preeminently in the confirmation proceedings following the nomination of Justice Thomas, but not just there. It has become something of a template for liberal attacks on mainstream conservatives beyond the realm of judicial politics.

The tone set by Kennedy in connection with the Bork nomination lives on among Senate Democrats. We live in Edward Kennedy’s America not only in the consequential legislation that he sponsored and saw through the Senate, but also in the afterlife of the vulgar political sham on which Senator Kennedy relied to spark the defeat of Judge Bork’s confirmation.

"Ted Kennedy" is a great answer to "how was America destroyed". 

Roe v Wade (January 22, 1973) cemented the fact that whatever the nation was, it was no longer a "Constitutional Republic" under which Roe would have required the recall of any supporting judge, since it was in no way Constitutional. The idea of "rights" found found nowhere in the Constitution, but only in a  paranormal "penumbra", having more basis in witchcraft than law. Finding a "right" for women to vote, rather than going to all the trouble of the 19th Amendment was the Constitutional way to CREATE a new right -- which everyone understood in 1920. Voting is never really a matter of life and death -- abortion is. 

Teddy was the warlock that reified the witchcraft of conjuring "rights" out of the spirit world with no consideration of such mundane things as Constitutional Amendments. 

In Teddy Kennedy's "america", babies die by the tens of millions, "protected classes" riot and burn cities, "schools" indoctrinate children on hatred of parents, God, tradition, and patriotism, and even the basic truths of man and womanhood are denied. 

To a significant degree, America died with Mary Jo Kopechne on July 29, 1969.

Is It OK For Liberals To Make Public Death Threats?

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/are-liberals-responsible-for-the-consequences-of-their-death-threats.php

This is of special interest to me because I have heard Nils Gilman on Steven Haywards podcast (as he mentions in his post). 

Nils has 14K twitter followers, and is a lefty in good standing -- employed by an institute with a $500 million endowment. The fact that Steve H reaches out to converse with him is one of the reasons I follow Power Line and especially Steve Hayward -- he has civil discussions with guys like Nils!

I'm quite saddened by this event. I'm 2/3 through "The Stakes", Anton's an excellent chronicle of the decline of Conservative / Constitutional / small R republican America. 

This development gives much more creedence to Anton's point that the left is already resorting to violence -- the only real question is if the "silent majority" is going to finally stand up, or just die quietly.

Are there enough "Americans" to stand up and demand that we return to being a great Constitutional Republic, or are we "Wokeistan"? 

Hunter Biden vs Donald Trump Jr

 https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-report-details-hunter-bidens-extensive-foreign-business-dealings-and-obama-officials-efforts-to-distance-themselves-from-it/

We know that Hunter Biden had a host of corrupt influence peddling activities, and we know that since he is a D, the MSM doesn't care. He is on "the right (left) side of history". 

The Biden's aren't the only corrupt family in left wing American politics ... the Kerry's play for pay as well, and daddy is happy to lie about it. 

The day after Hunter joined the Burisma board in May 2014, Kerry’s stepson Christopher Heinz, who was a business partner of Hunter’s, emailed his father to inform him of Hunter’s appointment to the board and to distance himself from the decision. Kerry’s staff followed up with a briefing on the press inquiries prompted by Hunter’s board seat, according to their testimony before the committees.

Neither Kerry nor anyone else in the administration appears to have intervened to put a stop to the younger Biden’s influence peddling.

When asked by a reporter in 2019 whether he had any knowledge of Hunter’s work for Burisma, Kerry responded “I had no knowledge about any of that. None. No."

 Mitt Romney likes to criticize Trump -- most likely because he has a son Matt, a principle in Solamere Capital, which Mitt is involved in as well. 

In March 2013, Mitt Romney became chair of Solamere’s executive committee and a member of its investment committee, and Solamere’s bare website currently lists him as the executive partner group chairman. The site only describes the company as “a collection of families and influential business leaders leveraging their broad networks and industry expertise to invest strategic capital.”

Isn't it nice to have "broad networks". Mitt needs to keep pretty close to THE party line -- you know, THE Party (D) rather than his supposed party --R! 

Just imagine for a minute if it was Donald Trump Jr who we were talking about rather than Hunter! Any chance MSM interest would be a bit higher????  

Censorship Google Style, Lysenkoism

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/20/google_pushes_conservative_news_sites_far_down_search_lists_144246.html

News to nobody -- social media, the big info companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) subtly and not so subtly censor views that do not comply with the current "Deep State, Global Davos Elite, Mass Media, etc" approved thought. 

As "Scientific" American -- an endorser of "200 million Americans will die before I finish this speech" Biden would say, "You MUST follow the "science" "! 

Both Breitbart and the Daily Caller have confirmed that their Google traffic fell dramatically as their search rankings fell.

Internal Google files have hinted at such action. In 2018, the Daily Caller reported on a leaked exchange the day after President Trump's 2016 election win. In it, employees debated whether Breitbart and the Daily Caller should be buried.

“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote, according to the documents obtained by the Daily Caller.

Those who believe that truth is something that is best decided by the mass population (the "Proletariat") vs "The Party", the media, the elite, etc, need to review Lysenkoism. 

The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menard

 https://newcriterion.com/issues/2001/10/ideas-as-anecdotes

A clear case where reading the linked review is much more enlightening than reading the book. As a "group biography"of the initiators of Pragmatism,  the book is "decent" with insights into the life experiences, addictions, loves, families, etc of the subjects, but in knowledge "cash value", it has a very low signal to noise.

It is basically a "Supermarket Tabloid" for Pragmatism. 

... Peirce endowed ideas with the power to convert doubt into belief, annoyance into comfort, while James remarked that wrong ideas can kill us, right ones can save us. Menand recognizes that power—and tames it. He returns all questions to the realm of circumstance, where complexities may be narrated as personal conflicts. The result is an entertaining but superficial exercise in intellectual history, one in which ideas are wheeled on not because of their substance or truth value but because of their anecdotal force.

I'm all for simplification, however it seems likely that converting "War And Peace" to a Meme will leave out a bit! 

... For most people, truth and justice are lofty things best pursued disinterestedly. But for Menand, “making those kinds of decisions—about what is right or what is truthful—is like deciding what to order in a restaurant.” To distinguish between judging what is right and selecting an entrée, apparently, would be to venture outside the world of real human action.

This is a quote from Menard that appears in the review: 

The lesson that Holmes learned from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. The key to Holmes’s civil liberties opinions is the key to all his jurisprudence: it is that he thought only in terms of aggregate social forces; he had no concern for the individual. This [the idea of community] was the conviction at the bottom of all Peirce’s thought. Everything James and Dewey wrote as pragmatists boils down to a single claim: people are the agents of their own destinies.

One might also observe current rioting and conclude that loss if fixed belief and chaotic thinking also leads to violence. Perhaps regression to an unredeemed human state leads to violence? 

I ran into this work because it was mentioned in a NR column. My view would be that mention was "grasping at straws". Yes, Pragmatism was an attempted response to the "failure" of the Civil War. How could BOTH sides be supposedly Christian, Civikized, etc and still have a war that killed over 600K? 

The thinking of that article, and many today is "how can this be happening"? 

To Christians and Constitutional Republic supporters, the answer is painfully obvious. When God and Law are abandoned, POWER is "god", and the establishment of who is most powerful requires violence in many forms.

Clearly, Pragmatism did not prevent war -- see WWI and WWII! 

Next to Hell, war is a walk in the park. As long as human pride is widely substituted for the fear of God, we can be certain that war will be with us! 

James Burnham and the Struggle For the World

 https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=66

The linked review is quite long and I believe accurate ... Burnham was a fearless, generally non-ideological intellectual genius. His life and thought presents a window into the largely leftist intellectual elite conflict of "control vs chaos" -- veers from being a Trotskyist, to a CIA employee, to a McCarthy sympathiser, to a prophet of "The Managerial Revolution", to an editor of the National Review with close ties to William F. Buckley. 

While he seemed to value not "settling" on any specific world view MUCH more than I, I do much respect his willingness to attempt to always have an open mind. In some cases, it seemed that his mind may have been so open that the brains fell out, his intelligence made his "above the fray of ideology / religion to be believable.  My perspective is that since his fear of being pinned down to a specific worldview became a fetish that was in fact much aligned with a worldview -- that the world is inevitably headed toward a specific ideology that is bureaucratic, "managed", and is quite close to Fascism. (Fascism is NOT "Nazism" -- it is bureaucratically managed collaboration between massive government and increasingly large corporations, with the "common man" increasingly disposed of (physically or metaphysically).   

I think he is essentially correct at a high level, though wrong on the specifics -- he thinks that Capitalism will be replaced by this "Managerial State". I believe what we see is that Capitalism remains as the "engine" that produces the wealth that supports the increasingly centralised worldwide bureaucratic state (Davos World). Trump and Brexit are either the last gasps of actual competition and freedom, or harbingers indicating that Capitalism and the Proletariat are much more elemental to humanity than Marx or Burnham believed. I pray for the latter. 

From the linked review on the Burnham path from Trotsky to "management". I am reminded of one of the things that tech people used to say about the last and supposedly greatest management "Flavor of the Day" idea to "improve"  -- "Management for management's sake". Hey, they needed to feel that they were doing SOMETHING! 

Kelly writes, “It is tempting to write off Burnham’s Trotskyist phase as wasted time, a six-year detour into the sterile world of left-wing sects. But this judgment would be wrong” because “the involvement prepared him for what would be his real career” (pp. 87–88). In 1940, Burnham’s first major work appeared and sold well. Called The Managerial Revolution, it showed the influence of Machajski, Rizzi, Berle, Means, Veblen, Thurman Arnold, and Lawrence Dennis, as well as of Trotskyism (pp. 95–96). Burnham argued that bureaucratic management was the wave of the future, even if it took such forms as fascism, communism, and the New Deal, depending on circumstances. Only a cold, empirical, social-scientific approach could tell us where we were headed.

This quote from the linked is a valid summary of the book -- though, as always, the map (summary) is NEVER the territory! 

Burnham’s books do have interesting and important insights—especially The Managerial Revolution, Congress and the American Tradition, and Suicide of the West—but the Cold Warrior Burnham constantly undermined the conservative Burnham (if conservative is the right word). He embraced empire, constant frontier wars, managerialist determinism, and the warfare state, while complaining occasionally about Caesarism, the decline of Congress and other intermediate institutions, the growth of federal bureaucracy, and the loss of traditional liberties. This circle could not be squared. Burnham seldom considered that anything other than big impersonal historical forces might be causing the things he bewailed, that actual human agents might be driving some of the seeming inexorabilities. As a result, his rather willful disregard of economic theory and his battles against “doctrinaires” such as Frank Meyer look like symptoms of a larger failure of vision.

Consilience Revisited

https://quillette.com/2020/09/09/at-the-intersection-of-art-and-science-revisiting-eo-wilsons-consilience/

I reviewed Consilience here -- naturally, you would be well served to go view that review! ;-) 

I enjoyed the linked as well. The basic thesis of Wilson is that randomness randomly happened in a universe in which humans randomly evolved to somehow acquire a innate "environmental imperative". 

For Wilson, evolution is "god", so naturally, since any "god" will have infinite powers, "anything is possible" ... and believable, to believers -- even "scientists". 

Postmodernism’s popularity, he argues, may be explained by the possibility that its “love of chaos” is part of a universal human nature. He sees postmodernism as possessing “a surge of ‘revolutionary spirit’ generated by the real—not deconstructed—fact that large segments of the population… have been neglected for centuries and are only now beginning to find full expression within mainstream culture.” But instead of it having “exploded human nature into little pieces…” he sees its rise as an opportunity to “set the stage for a fuller explanation of the universal traits that unite humanity.” In the sciences, he sees consilience as a necessity in order to gain full insight into human behavior: “Works of art that prove enduring are intensely humanistic. Born in the imagination of individuals, they nevertheless touch upon what was universally endowed by human evolution.” For the scientist, the desire to know the real world, to answer the “how” and “what,” is paramount, while for the artist, it is a desire to take that real world and expose it to imagination, intuition, and experience.

I firmly believe that "love of chaos" is part of Satan's nature, and one can detect the Satanic by “a surge of ‘revolutionary spirit’". 

Old Adam is indeed by nature sinful and rebellious -- and since we are created in the "image of God" our nature includes a desire to seek the order of God. Wilson seems to have a clue, however Satan is helping him mistake disorder for created order. 

How Many "Americas" Are There? And What is "Normal"?

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/coronavirus-pandemic-americans-divided-assessing-risk/#slide-1

Many of us realized a good while ago that we were not in "America" anymore -- you know, the one that built the Bomb, won WWII, landed on the Moon, created the PC and the Internet -- THAT America. 

"The Decadent Society" is one good book that covers our degree of lostness ... there are others linked there. 

I'd argue that we have been divided from the beginning, as everyone and every human institution is -- between "Control and Chaos" ... we "boiled over" in the Civil War, to some degree in the 1960's, and it looks like we are at it again. 

I think the linked is a worthy read if only as a root for some books that appear to be good .., I have "The Metaphysical Club" on order. 

The other big division is between being a practicing Christian and not being so. Everyone has a "god", and for a much larger percentage of the population today, the "god" they believe they have is government -- sadly, they are wrong in that assumption. The Bible makes it clear, you either serve God or Satan, when you cease to regularly participate in the Divine Service with the Body and Blood, Satan, like the dog waiting for table scraps, is there to take your reins.  

Government is a particularly nasty false god, since it has the power of the sword and the purse. Our Constitution split government into three branches with the hope that "faction" -- jealousy of power, would limit the dangerous "Leviathan"  and keep government as the servant of the people, who were in turn servants of God. It was a wonderful architecture -- but it required a religious people in order to continue to operate.  

So we are sadly divided with no shared foundational belief as to what this territory of N America formerly the "United States", holds as "truth" -- clearly in this failed state, there is no such thing for a majority approaching "self evident" truth. We are supposed to be "woke" to the tragedy of "Critical Theory".

Well, at least it isn't critical "fact" ;-(.