Been waiting with bated breath for the second installment of Claire Wolf’s characteristically brilliant magnum opus to drop, and finally it has.
Who’s in denial about our current cultural and political state of collapse?
Most everybody. Millions of ordinary people who think bad times are always temporary are in denial. Oligarchs and plutocrats who believe we ordinary people are eternally tractable and malleable are in denial. Intellectuals who believe increasing quantities of fashionable nonsense are in denial. Politicians and their handlers who believe they can rule by fiat without consequences are in denial. Fools who imagine “the science” is a religion and that dissent from any statement by a
high priestgovernment-approved scientist is heresy are in denial.I’ve been in denial about the true depth of our circumstances and about how truly evil (and insane) our new totalitarians are. I venture to say every one of us is in denial about something pertinent to freedom’s future. Even the best of us have blind spots, no matter how much we pride ourselves on having clear heads and open eyes.
Anyone who doesn’t see that we’re in deep, deep trouble must be very carefully NOT looking. Yet even the most clear-headed can’t see the future.
And by “future” I don’t mean a year or 10 years or a century from now (though that, too). I mean what might happen tomorrow. Or what’s happening today that we just haven’t found out about yet.
But who can blame those who yawn and go on with life? Yesterday no doubt brought some equally shocking, horrifying, or scandalous news. Tomorrow will bring more word of the ridiculous, the invasive, the totalitarian, the impossible. Some days we might get hit with two or three or four such outrages. Which one do you adopt as your cause when by tomorrow morning five more equally outrage-worthy acts will have fallen to your attention?
This is not apathy. This is not even the famous “outrage fatigue.” This is a sign of fatal decline. People know either that they can’t do a damn thing against the onrushing absurdities and evils or that they’ll try to accomplish something and be trapped forever in a game of Whack-A-Mole.
It’s chilling, as well, when you remember Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
I’ll update Voltaire for our times: “Those who believe absurdities and force silence upon doubters, ensure atrocities.”Good people are famously slow to perceive real evil. Famously slow to react radically (in the original meaning of striking at the root of a problem) once they realize conventional solutions no longer avail them. Once pushed to the wall good people can be famously more dangerous than their would-be masters acknowledge. Still, we’re slow — often tragically slow. We act only after the thing we love is already lost or crumbling.
That’s particularly true when we understand that virtually everything we read or hear is a lie, a distortion, a manipulation, or a sheer display of moonbattery. We realize we’ve been disenfranchised. Self-appointed (or dubiously elected) political and cultural leaders can get away with any damn thing they please. And they’re all rushing to do their dirty deeds as fast as they can, before we can catch on to what they’re doing, let alone react. So far, this tactic seems to be working in their favor.
But then, sometimes rapid shifts toward evil or insanity work to the advantage of We the Deplorables, as well.
Okay, enough with the excerptin’. As with Part the First, Claire takes a deep dive into American history to help shape her argument, but this time out she throws some of the less-well-known and seldom-discussed aspects of that era into the mix. It’s all solid stuff, a genuine, all-caps MUST READ. Hie thee thither.
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