William Lind’s thought-provoking guest post at MVC’s place has a look-see, finds unpleasantness.
In the 1930s, a minor British novelist started writing a new book, which was not a novel. Instead, William Gerhardie proposed a theory of history he called “God’s Fifth Column,” which was also his book’s title. His theory was that, just at the point where everyone who was anyone agreed events would go in a certain direction, they instead headed off on a wild, wholly unpredicted tangent.
Gerhardie was inspired by the events of 1914 and their catastrophic consequences, in which we are still enmeshed. Prior to Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s ill-timed trip to Sarajevo—the head of Serbian military intelligence had multiple assassins positioned there—the elite consensus was that another great European war simply was not possible. All the powers’ economies were too intertwined. International trade was essential. Everyone’s stock market would collapse, banks would fail, there would be riots in the streets. Within Europe, the labor market was international; one German soldier taken early in the war said to his British captors, “I hope this is over soon so I can get back to my job driving a cab in Liverpool.” But war came anyway, though no one wanted it, or, afterward, could explain why it had been fought. And the Christian West died in the mud of Flanders and Galicia.
If we look at our present situation through the lens of Gerhardie’s God’s Fifth Column, what do we see?
After a run-down of some of the uglier things lying in wait for us just around said corner, Lind concludes:
Unlike in 1914, the advent of God’s Fifth Column in our time may not be bad news for conservatives. The “inevitable” future anticipated by the elites is a hellish combination of an absurd ideology, cultural Marxism (currently disguised as “wokeness”) with Brave New World. As Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal,
The struggle to which Americans, of whatever race, should be paying attention is the one that has to do with freedom. It has to do with privacy, mind control, individual liberties—with totalitarian systems of surveillance and manipulation perfecting themselves in an alliance of big tech, big government, global corporations and artificial intelligence. Wokeness…fronts for the real problem of the 21st century: a sinister autocracy just around the corner.
What’s really around the corner is God’s Fifth Column, and it will knock both “wokeness” and Brave New World out of the park.
Let’s hope. After all, something has to. GFC theory looks likely enough to be what does the trick in my opinion, particularly in light of two prospective stumbling-blocks:
- It lines up quite smoothly with my own broken-record insistence that there is absolutely no way of knowing what shape the Coming Unpleasantness™ will take, nor what will result from it
- The Left, in their purblind arrogance, always, always, always leaves the Hand of the Almighty out of their considerations entirely, which has knocked the pins out from under far better and smarter people than they’ll ever be
The only sure thing is that we’ll find out soon enough.
Jesus said we would find obvious before His return, one was deception, and that we would be hated and be persecuted. He questioned whether He would find faith. He also said if you don\t have a sword sell your cloak and buy one.
I like all of us know nothing about what the coming darkness will bring, only an idiot would say this going to be fun.
But what I like most is my Lord said we will face tribulation and persecution, that the gates of hell shall not overcome believers in Him.
Many of us here can posit various possible scenarios and the author brings up other things.
He also notes that what is anticipated widely often ends up not happening as GFC sends us in a different direction.
Let me make a contrarian observation here for discussion.
Are we the people who are the consensus out there? Or are we a minority who see where things are leading and the vast consensus out there is that things will pretty much keep limping along pretty much as they are.
If you’re a Liberal Dem getting your news from CNN and MSNBC and Echo Chambers of Facebook and Twitter you’re believing that Biden is making things better but that the Pandemic is making things harder, but The Dems Will Overcome. Those people are hopelessly unawares of any of the scenarios we feel are coming.
Then there are those on the Right that bought the Scamdemic hook, line and sinker and are STILL not convinced it was all a scam. Oh maybe some of it was, but not ALL of it. There WAS a Pandemic as bad as it was with the Hong Kong Flu of 1968. (It wasn’t). Plus, they’re not really sure there was massive Fraud in the Election. Perhaps Trump won AZ, but that wasn’t enough to effect the outcome. They also watch Fox News and no one is talking about that anymore.
When you add in those “independents” that just glide along blissfully unaware of anything, I think a majority of this Country, The Consensus, have no idea there is a possibility of high inflation or monetary collapse or economic collapse or Balkan Style Civil War 2.0 or Orwellian Deep State Control a la 1984 in our future. I’ll bet if you started talking to many people outside the part of the blogosphere we inhabit about any of these scenarios they’d think you were nuts.
What? You think that the 600k+ Death Count from Covid-19 is wildly inflated by 50-75%? You must be one of those Alex Jones viewers who were behind the Insurrection!!
They might even turn you in to Pelosi’s Goon Squads thinking they’re doing the Patriotic Thing and Saving America.
God’s Fifth Column says that perhaps us Cassandras whom The Consensus says are kooks will turn out to be right.
After all, two of the people who DIDN’T think like the Consensus before WW I, Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt, turned out to be right. Churchill started preparing for War years before it came. Roosevelt came back from an African Safari and while traveling in Europe the Kaiser invited him to see a military exercise. Roosevelt wrote private letters warning that the Kaiser had every intention of starting a War. Roosevelt only saw the Army exercises. I’m not sure if he were aware of the German Naval buildup that Churchill saw.
To sum my contrarian view. What if we are not The Consensus and the Dem Lunatics have convinced people of a different future, not rosy but slogging through tough times?
Then the unseen thing to happen is a disastrous economy and War.
I definitely don’t think we’re the “consensus”. We’re the outliers. Most people pay little to no attention to anything outside their smallish world, until it hits them. They don’t necessarily think we’re nuts, they just don’t know what they do not know and are not going to be bothered to find out, “until it hits them”.
I know far too many people like that.
When does it “hit them” you might ask? When they can’t get food, or the price is outrageous, when they can’t get fuel, or the price is outrageous, when the power is off and they need AC or heat, or the price of electricity is outrageous. When they lose their job and there is none in sight. When there kids go to bed hungry.
You will then find they have the hearts of stone cold killers.
The Housing Bubble was a case in point.
There were people warning about it. We were considered crazy.
We kept being told that never in History had the price of housing fallen in ALL markets at the same time. So diversify geographically and it’s fine.
Or, The internet has made buying real estate a global market and has changed the whole pricing dynamic. That’s why these prices are justified.
Or, everyone is getting rich and can afford bigger and better houses and so demand is rising and price rises make sense.
There were a whole lot of excuses to keep the mortgage bond market flying and the “home equity” ATM machine keep dispensing cash to go on lavish vacations and buy fancy cars. Then there were a whole host of people who were oblivious to it all and didn’t notice until gasoline started hitting $4 a gallon. Even then they couldn’t put two and two together to make 4.
Then they all borrowed lots of money backed by real estate and watched in horror as their equity went negative and they were stuck with 500k in borrowings paying 4-7% a year in interest for a house now valued at 400k. Then they started worrying!!
Btw much of that negative equity has been erased by a New Housing Bubble. Some things never change… Until they can’t go on anymore.