Inspiration From Out Of The Blue

 

Don't Quit by John Greenleaf Whittier

When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all up hill, When the funds are low and the debts are high And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is strange with its twists and turns As every one of us sometimes learns And many a failure comes about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don't give up though the pace seems slow— You may succeed with another blow. Success is failure turned inside out— The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, And you never can tell just how close you are, It may be near when it seems so far; So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit— It's when things seem worst that you must not quit. This poem is in the public domain.

A Return To A Youthful Perspective.

 As a young man, I believed strongly that all government was force and fraud for the betterment of the forceful and the fraudulent. Over time I modified my perspective. 9/11 was a turning point. Yes, the FBI might be murderous thugs but we need them to protect us from Al Qaeda. 

I came around to believe that American institutions were worth preserving, the American experiment was a noble undertaking, and that free elections were a safeguard against tyranny. I embraced the premise of winning hearts and minds, ultimately so that the hearts and minds voted in a sane and sensible, and rational manner.

George Bush II was the first president I helped elect. This would be a year before 9/11 so maybe my cynicism was softening anyway. I had this ridiculous idea that Bush, being the first MBA president, would appreciate the merits of fiscal responsibility and he would sing the virtues of a sound currency. Prior to that I usually boycotted elections, believing the two-party system was a sham and that unelected bureaucrats held all the real power anyway. Voting would signify my seal of approval for a bogus system.

In 2020 we witnessed the hijacking of a presidential election to say nothing of down-ballot robbery. It was fraud on a scale and a scope we thought impossible. We would also learn that many of these practices had gone on for years, if not decades. But this time, evil was caught red-handed. 

For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That might be a law of physics but it is not a law of politics. From all indications, law enforcement aided and abetted the criminals and the GOP would reveal that they had more in common with the Dems than with their base. To date, there has been no opposite reaction.

Maybe my youthful cynicism was an accurate perspective after all. It is all force and fraud all the time. The FBI is crooked. DOJ is crooked. Big city law enforcement is crooked. The media are crooked. Big tech is crooked....the list goes on and on.

The one institution that still had integrity was the military. Or so they said. But they are standing down. Every US war in my life has been a philosophical playground. Vietnam may or may not have been a noble cause but was in the US's best interest? The first Gulf  War was well-intentioned and went swimmingly for the Coalition and the Saudis picked up the tab but it wasn't as if the US was directly attacked. The Afghanistan War might have started out as a rational undertaking but twenty years later, why are we there?

The US was attacked by foreign and domestic terrorists in November 2020. This came on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes referred to as the China Virus. If ever there was a need for military action, it would be in 2021. Nothing has happened. Begs the question: why do we fund a military? If they don't defend us now, will they ever defend us? Are the military's loyalties to the American people? Are they as crooked as the FBI?

 If elections are so easily stolen, why bother with politics? Why bother with hearts and minds, rational discourse, reason, and rhetoric?  A red wave in 2022? Sure and the Dems win anyway. A new political party? Sure and the Dems win no matter what. All hail Mark Zuckerberg. 

Maybe I should be glad I started from a position of extreme cynicism. This is familiar territory.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A Few Reasons To Oppose An American Civil War

The first American Civil War was not fought on a terrain that included 58 nuclear power plants, 80.000 dams--including 2,400 that produce electric power-- a network of gas pipelines, as well as oil refineries and chemical plants. People of the day were not dependent on power grids and plumbing and even city people ate local food. The citizenry probably did not use the term "supply chain" in regular conversation.

Rookie terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, killed 168 innocent people in their only bombing effort. It is important to remember that these guys were amateurs. As bad as the destruction was, it could have been a lot worse.

On September 11, 2001, 19 Al Qedah hijackers killed 2.977 people, mostly American citizens. Metal detectors and concrete barriers soon dotted the landscape. Patdowns and backpack bans were the order of the day. Cancel that power plant field trip. 

It might be interesting to explore the not-yet ubiquity of weapons of mass destruction but not at this blog. Some people never think about such things and we should keep it that way. But let us emphasize two points: 

1. We are more technologically vulnerable than we used to be.

2. The capacity for destruction--even for amateurs--is much greater than most people realize.

Now let me hammer home one more point. We are a civil society because we trust in our institutions to be fair and honest, providing equal protection under the law. When a landslide election is stolen--and the presidency (as well as who knows how many down-ballot elections) was stolen--what recourse do the people have? 

Yes, they can contest their cases in court but when the judiciary is so corrupt that it no longer passes the sniff test, what then?

1. People can accept the rule of their overlords. Reluctantly, that is what I will probably do. I am not young or hardy or brave and I have only shot firearms five to ten times in my life. I am a sluggish specimen of a sluggish demographic. Don't look to me for help. I will spend my time alone reflecting on  America when she was great and we were free. I will thank God that I got to live most of my life in that Camelot. I will eat and drink and go to bed early and go through the motions of work. Most days I will be numb.

2. People can resist tyranny. If it comes to that, I predict carnage on a scale unimagined. Think of the spectators at the first battle of Bull Run who packed lunches and fled in horror. Think of the Civil War generals and later World War I generals who were shocked and bewildered that they could kill or be killed at such an astonishing rate. The public is never prepared.

Is there a way to avoid a second Civil War? There is. The US military can call foul and say that due to election-rigging involving foreign entities including Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, Iran, China, as well as possible involvement of several other countries who purport to be our allies, the 2020 elections are null and void and the perpetrators will face prosecution.

Are there still patriots at the Pentagon? Like every other federal agency, the Department of Defense employees donate to the Democrat party much more than the GOP. The Pentagon pensioners might be riden with Biden.

Civil strife or patriotic intervention? It will be one or the other.

From The Depths of Despair

I am still shell-shocked from November 3. We witnessed the theft of a landslide presidential election. It is hard to say if the breadth of the fraud was more significant than the depth of the fraud. There were thousands of conspirators and just as many government hacks who are guilty by torpor. 

At least nine separate techniques of vote-rigging have been identified. The details make it damn near impossible to explain the situation to the uninformed. There were five hours of solid testimony in Georgia alone.

The situation has made me physically ill. It has depressed, dispirited and, demoralized. It has also made me feel what one is supposed to feel when one is gaslighted by a media tsunami, as has the unfortunate exposure to my hive-mind zombie workmates. Add to that the loss of my beloved father-in-law (expected but sad nonetheless) and bad weather and it has become a challenge to get out of bed most mornings.

America is a broken refrigerator and we sniff the contents to see what has spoiled. Our Department of Justice is hopelessly deep state. The FBI has no good apples. None. Zero. Zilch. Our judiciary is deep state. The GOP still has a few populists but the ruling class has recaptured her soul. The Democrats are a repackaged version of the Nazis. There are fewer than five honest people in journalism. Maybe, just maybe, the military is salvageable.

Our country was/is under attack. Total war involving infiltration of industry and academia, corruption of public officials, control of the news media, control of social media, control of search engines, control of commerce and the obliteration of dissidents who want to participate in commerce...the abuses go on and on. 

It's not so simple to say that China has declared war on the USA but that is the literal truth. The problem is that China is not our only enemy. Canada, UK, Iran and a few European flags of convenience have played significant roles in stealing our election for the Democrat Cartel. And America has no shortage of domestic enemies as well.

Our last hope is (was?) our military. Supposably, this was the last bastion of integrity but how many officers are just biding their time until their pensions kick in?  Are there more McInerneys than McClellans? (or McMasters? or McChrystals?)  Our nation hangs in the balance, and that is not an exaggeration.

Bob Dylan - It's All over Now, Baby Blue (Audio)

A Disturbing Sign: "Reason" Renews Its Vows With MSM

The following soft censorship rant by Steven Greenhut appeared at Reason, once a bastion of free thought and anti=authotitarianisnm. What is especially insidious about the article is that its implicit sanctioning of mainstream media as arbiters of truth. The author asks the reader to follow the lead of William Buckley, Jr. and dismiss all voices not approved by "The New York Time" (or the Associated Press. Or Google. Or Facebook. Or SPLC. It is one hivemind consensus.)

We have accepted the sellout of institutional libertarianism. That is old news. More disturbingly, this article was highlighted at Doug Powers Blog, an aggregate blog that has been included in our blogroll from early on. Et tu, Dougie?

Greenhut's comments are in regular type. BOSurvivor comments are in Bold type.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the modern conservative movement's greatest leaders, the late William F. Buckley Jr., retold a fascinating story from the run-up to the 1964 presidential election. As he explained in The Wall Street Journal in 2008, Buckley and his allies convinced Barry Goldwater to distance himself from the John Birch Society—a conspiracy-minded group that touted his candidacy.

Buckley noted that the society's president, Robert Welch, had at the time a "near-hypnotic" influence on the Right, despite his "wild" ideas: "(Welch) said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a 'dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,' and that the government of the United States was 'under operational control of the Communist Party.'"

Buckley realized that Welch's fixations did a disservice to the anti-communist cause. So he convinced Goldwater to reject the core fallacy—"the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the communists, therefore the president of the United States and the secretary of state wished China to go to the communists."

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We can all agree that members of The John Birch Society were turning into laughingstocks by the "respectable" news media, but questions persist: Did the Birchers deserve their ridicule and banishment from credible society? Were they accurate about the threats posed by Communism, threats that were downplayed by Buckley and his Ivy League cocktail buddies? Did Buckley pave the way for the rise of the Rockefeller wing and the mercenarical RINO's? 

I say no, yes and yes.

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Goldwater, of course, gained the GOP nomination and lost the general-election vote by 23 percentage points. Thanks to Buckley's efforts, however, the GOP vanquished various fringe groups. The Goldwater candidacy built the foundation for the GOP's future and set the stage for a movement that helped topple the Evil Empire. Sometimes, losing is better than winning.

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Johnson was unbeatable in 1964. To blame Goldwater's loss at the feet of the JBS is silly. Sillier too, is crediting Buckley--or even Goldwater--with the liquidation of the USSR.

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In recent years, conspiracy-mongers and kooks have gained a similar foothold in the GOP. It's a huge problem on the Left, but as a non-leftist that's not my battle. My goal is to support a functioning right-of-center movement that has the credibility to thwart the utopian dreams of the progressive movement. At this time, the Right needs more self-analysis and less whataboutism.

The explanations are complex and subject to debate, but it's impossible to ignore that a portion of the Right has descended, quite frankly, into madness. I partly blame a president who has advocated "birtherism" and given a pass to supporters of QAnon, who embrace some inchoate theory involving Satan, politicians, and pedophiles.

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At this point, we dispense with niceties and call StevenGreenhut a malicious liar. 

Trump did not advocate "birtherism". The Birther story is intriguing and well worth telling, but only if one includes the details. This blog has covered the Birther story in its many nuances including the allies of Barry Soetoro rewriting the saga in such a way that the pampered one is victimized by a vast racist conspiracy. The fact of the matter is, Barack Obama is the father of Birtherism.

"Supporters of QAnon" What does that mean? QAnon does not accept donations and is by any measure, self-supporting. The wild theories that follow QAnon are due largely to the law of averages. QAnon had millions, if not tens of millions of readers from all over the world. A diversity of opinion will follow. Some of the opinions might be disagreeable to Greenhut and the respectable members of the respectable news media. Readers of Q posts do not promote a consensus viewpoint, unlike our respectable Tass Media.

By the way, the exposure of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, et al, seems to have some credence, despite the respectable members of the respectable media's reluctance to cover the subject. 

Trump will soon exit the White House unless he chains himself to his desk. But the conservative movement will need to chart a path forward—and decide whether it is primarily about airing a list of Festivus-like grievances, or whether it is tethered to important and mostly good ideas centered on promoting markets and limited government. So far, the prognosis isn't good.

My view is that if Trump had actually won the election, he would have been able to prove systemic voter fraud in one of the 58 lawsuits that his supporters have lost. I believe in the rule of law, and the legal system has rendered its verdict. It's crazy to go deeper into this rabbit hole, yet the conservative movement has yet to find bottom.

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I do not know of a single person who looked at the evidence--really looked at the evidence with an objective eye--who has said that there was not massive electoral/voter fraud that significantly benefitted Joe Biden. 

If there was nothing to hide, why would Twitter, Facebook and Youtube silence anyone who tries to present evidence of a stolen election? Why would Google searches for "Election fraud" yield radically different results than searches using Qwant or Duckduckgo?

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Nothing has been as loopy as the Jericho March, where religious supporters of the president gathered in Washington, D.C., last week to hold a prayer rally to protest the election results. Prominent conservative activists spoke, along with Alex Jones, the radio broadcaster who, among other things, once claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were a hoax. Buckley must have turned over in his grave.

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Despite his silliness, Alex Jones probably has a higher accuracy rate than "The Washington Post." Do you remember Jones promoting a knowingly false "Russian Robots Hacked 2016 election?" I don't either.

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As penance, Christian writer Rod Dreher watched the entire march—named after the biblical story of how the Israelites marched around Jericho blowing shofars until the city's walls collapsed. (Unless the media hid it, I'm pretty sure the Capitol is still standing.) As Dreher noted, speakers insisted that the election was stolen—as "an article of faith…If you doubt, you are a traitor, a coward, in league with the Devil. I'm not exaggerating at all."

Such, er, uncritical thinking is no longer confined to the outer reaches but has entered the conservative mainstream. "I am willing to die for this fight," a "Stop the Steal" activist tweeted. Nonsense flows freely on social media, but the Arizona Republican Party actually retweeted it with the words: "He is. Are you?" (Uh, no, but thanks for asking.)

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Unfortunately, information does not flow freely on social media. Big tech is way ahead of Greenhut in silencing unsanctioned viewpoints.

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A Virginia state senator posted that "President Trump should declare martial law as recommended by General Flynn." Former Gen. Michael Flynn, who spoke at the Jericho fiasco, retweeted a post from a group calling for Trump to "temporarily suspend the Constitution" and call for a revote. Conservatives say that ideas have consequences, yet only a few have spoken out against those who peddle flagrantly authoritarian ideas.

The Cato Institute's David Boaz last year wrote about the "no enemies on the Left" approach that liberals had long taken, as they refused to drive out socialists and communists. Pointing to Buckley's legacy, Boaz called for modern conservatives to eschew a similar "no enemies on the Right" stance and stay far from "fever swamps."

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There are no enemies on the Left because the Left is Borg. If a Right Wing exists--and I for one says that it does not--it is not a hive. The Left is opposed by a coalition, not a countercult.

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That's good advice. Conservatives might not agree on policies in a post-Trump world, but they should agree that some Buckley-style limits are critical for the movement's future.

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Buckley-style limits? No thank you. I for one believe in free thought and the free exchange of ideas. Reason sold out.

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