The “climate change” Trojan Horse

In this as in everything else, it’s never really about what they tell you it is.

I have thoroughly debunked the idea of man-made climate change in previous articles and I won’t be spending time on that here. Instead, I want to examine the end goal of climate change policies – The ultimate solution, which is NOT to save the planet, but to dominate the populace.

The names used for the climate change “reset” vary, but it is often referred to by globalists and the UN as Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals. These programs wear a facade of environmentalism but they are ALL rooted in economics. That is to say, all climate change efforts exist to destroy industry and trade and establish a government/corporate partnership to dominate production. Climate change is a Trojan Horse to introduce authoritarianism.

I believe one of the most important aspects of Agenda 2030 for globalists is something called the “15 Minute City”; a project which involves hundreds of city mayors from across the US, Europe and Asia working closely with groups like the World Economic Forum. Any mention of this idea in a negative light and the media erupts with anger as well as mockery as if it’s not a real issue worthy of debate.

The establishment paints an interesting picture of 15 Minute Cities – A Utopian future in which everything you need is only a short walk away and private transportation is superfluous (or banned). You might even live in mega-complex, much like a giant mall where you also work. You could spend months within one square mile of space, never having to leave for anything.

It’s no mistake that this idea was pushed hard during the pandemic lockdowns. The public was awash in fear propaganda over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate and that fear made the unthinkable idea of staying at home all the time suddenly thinkable. Media pundits continue to call the connection between covid lockdowns and climate lockdowns a conspiracy theory, but the idea is openly admitted in UN and WEF white papers.

Some people argue that most cities are already “15 Minute Cities” with necessities all within walking distance of their homes. These folks don’t understand what a 15 Minute City really is. As numerous establishment descriptions of the project note, it’s not just about convenience or close access, it’s about changing every aspect of our current philosophy of living. It’s not about gaining amenities, it’s about making an array of sacrifices in order to appease the gods of carbon emissions.

The 15 Minute City is more like a recipe, containing every single ingredient of the climate change and covid lockdown agendas in a single comprehensive Orwellian vision. It includes removing motor vehicles, removing private transportation and roads, smart city and AI monitoring of each person’s electricity usage, monitoring of product consumption and “carbon footprint”, biometric surveillance within a compact and stacked urban landscape, the cashless society concept, equity and inclusion cultism, population control, etc.

It is the culmination, the end game; a massive prison with no bars. A place where you are conditioned to grow accustomed to artificial limitations on privacy, no civil liberties, no private property, and no work options or mobility. You are tied to the land and the land is owned by the state (or corporation). If you want a historic comparison, the closest I can find is the feudal system of Medieval Europe.

It’s important to understand that these compact cities will not be designed for your comfort. They will not be designed so that you can have all the amenities you have today closer to your fingertips while also providing “sustainability.” That’s how the globalists try to sell it, but that’s not what it will be. Rather, these cities will be designed to better CONTROL you, so that you can be forced to make the sacrifices they say are necessary for sustainability to be possible.

They are erroneously billed as “decentralized communities,” but they are the exact opposite – They are utterly centralized, like a hamster cage where you are the pet. The core philosophy behind them is dependency. If you live in a place which is specifically constructed to eliminate your ability to provide for yourself, then you are a slave. Though, to be sure, even slavery can be made to look noble if people are convinced that their chains are necessary for the good of the planet.

Thanks to these bloated, endlessly grabby, monstrously-powerful governments, the world becomes a scarier, more threatening place with every passing day, don’t it? Why, it’s almost as if the Founding Fathers actually knew whereof they spoke when they so vehemently warned future generations against the dangers of permitting their central goobermint to outgrow the box it originally came in or something.

Lisa Liberal splutters hysterically: but…but…but…HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE FORESEEN (fully semi-automatic assault weapon riflepistol guns at every WalMart, available for purchase by any man, woman, or child with no background check, waiting period, permit, or registration required AT ALL, EVER/unlimited-capacity self-reloading magazine clips/Cop Killer bullets/shoulder thingy that goes up/heat-seeking .50 caliber incendiary rounds/GAIA-raping ICE automobiles/rural electrification/deadly gas ranges/insert Leftard bugbear of the month HERE)?!?

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Alarums, tocsins, and (over)due diligence

Welcome to the party, pal.

‘Wake Up, It Is a Time to Be Concerned’: FBI Director Wray Issues Stark Warning at Committee Hearing
In a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray provided some worrying — if not outright alarming — answers to questions from U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) regarding current terrorist threats against the homeland.

“What has now increased is the greater possibility of one of these foreign terrorist organizations directing an attack in the United States,” Wray told senators on the committee. “We haven’t seen evidence that it’s actually happening yet, but what we have seen is — and I listed them off in my opening remarks — one terrorist organization after another calling for attacks,” he explained. “We should wake up, it is a time to be concerned — we are in a dangerous period.”

Gee, whatever gave you your first clue, Sooperdoopergenius?

“I couldn’t say that we’re able to detect all individuals,” Wray replied. “The people that we know about — as Secretary Rumsfeld used to say, ‘the known known’ — we’re quite good at, together with our partners. But it is ‘the unknown unknown’ that I worry about quite a bit,” he revealed.

Since, as Wray said, the FBI is unable to “detect all individuals,” Sen. Scott followed up by asking whether the FBI is aware of any terrorist organizations operating in the United States at present. Again, Wray’s answer was less than reassuring.

“Well, we’re not tracking that,” Wray responded. “But again, I can point back to what it is — the gaps in our intelligence are real and it’s something that we have concerns about.”

Well, as long as you’re keeping close tabs on all those “violent” ÜberUltraMegaMAGA J6 “insurrectionists”—hunting them down; locking them up indefinitely without charges; manufacturing evidence of their spurious “crimes”; directing Praetorian Media coverage of that awful, awful day; protecting Our Sacred Democracy and its Holy DC Citadel; arranging for continuous box-wine deliveries to Granny Botox Pelosi, our Dearest Leader; surveilling and/or conducting kinetic late-night commando ops in full battle-rattle against confirmed non-D卐M☭CRATs; and such-like—I suppose that’s all that really matters.

Don’t know about you all, but I feel a lot better knowing Our FBI© remains on the job and ever-vigilant to keep us safe from those scary Trump-monsters.

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1

Where Trans madness ends up

Actually, that’s not quite right either; it isn’t going to end at all, at least not until it’s officially legal for “people” to marry animals.  Yes, that will mean that Christian churches (but not mosques; NEVER mosques) will be forced to perform marriage ceremonies for them, after which all congregants will have to rise to their feet and cheer in jubilation as the happy couple (almost certainly both males, or pseudo-“males” who have had their tits sliced off) lies down on the altar to consummate their holy matrimonial union by enthusiastically butt-fucking each other half to death in front of their appalled, coerced audience.

Think I’m being hyperbolic, do ya? Give it another five to ten years. At MOST.

Hundreds of people who identify as dogs gather in city center: ‘Call animal control’
They’ve got a bone to pick.

A pack of dog-identifying humans has prompted calls for “animal control” after footage of their Berlin meet-up went viral.

An estimated 1,000 people who prefer to be recognized as not humans, but canines, organized a gathering at the Berlin Potsamer Platz railroad station in Germany, communicating only by howling or barking at one another.

Online, critics jeered at the trans-species folk, some offering to put the herd’s “canine instincts” to the test:

“Just abandon them in the Siberian tundra and let them survive with their canine instincts.”

“I don’t see anyone smelling the tail of others.”

“Call animal control and give them their rabies doses.”

“Can you imagine when they all have to defecate?”

“But if they identify as dogs, why do they put on masks?”

“When I wear my costume I feel I’m no longer human,” Ueda, 32, previously told the UK Times. “I’m free of human relationships. All kinds of troubles, related to work and other things — I can forget about them.”

But animal-like behavior has been fetishized as a BDSM kink known as “puppy play,” where participants, usually men, are equipped with muzzles, collars or leashes and behave like a dog.

Some OnlyFans models have become mutts to rake in the big bucks, finding that the canine behavior is especially lucrative.

In 2020, adult content creator Jenna Phillips revealed she raked in $10,000 per month just for acting like a pooch — collar and all.

“It’s insane,” she said at the time. “I never thought my weird dog kink would be looked at by a broad audience, or that so many people would like/care about it. It still blows my mind.”

Emphasis mine, because she’s perfectly correct: insane is EXACTLY what it is. The difference now is that used to be, we locked up the demonstrably insane in lunatic asylums to prevent the harm they might cause to others, themselves, and/or society at large. Today, we’re required to declare “Pride” months for them, attend their parades, allow them to proselytize our children, and not just tolerate them but stand up and applaud them as courageous “heroes.” DM has questions:

Can they be prohibited from restaurants? Will they be required to get rabies vaccines? Will I have to walk them on a leash? Scoop their poop?

A: Yes. Yes, you most certainly will. The last bit, anyway. That, and much, much more—and worse. The other two three, absolutely not. That would be WRONG, see.

Most importantly, if I kill someone and can prove that the person identified as a dog, I can’t be charged with murder, right? At most, animal cruelty…

Of COURSE you can. In fact, as J6 shows, you won’t even have to sardonically suggest it for them to toss you right into the Amerikan Goolag indefinitely.

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1

Lies, damned lies, and government statistics

The Biden Economic MIRACLE!™ continues apace, God help us all.

Warning, this link is to CNN, and it is pure regime-promoting propaganda, discussing how a major downward revision in new job creations is actually good news, because it beat expectations on how badly the Bureau of Labor was going to have to adjust its previously published fabrications. Or something to that effect.

”America Added 306,000 Fewer Jobs Last Year Than We Thought” [CNN Business – 8/23/2023]

Link not transcribed, of course, because fuck CNN, that’s why. Onwards.

Despite the spin, there are a few hard numbers I’d like to extract:

US job growth during much of the past year was weaker than previously projected by a little more than 300,000 jobs, according to new federal data released Wednesday.

As part of the agency’s annual benchmark review of payroll data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down March 2023’s employment gains by 306,000 positions.

This means that 306,000 fewer jobs were created over the 12 months ending March 2023. How significantly was the data overstated?

When spread through the prior year, that amounts to about 25,000 fewer net jobs added per month, meaning that the average monthly job gain for the 12 months ended in March 2023 was nearly 312,000 versus 337,000, BLS data shows.

Let me do the math. The BLS overstated new job creation by 8.0%. That is not a rounding error or a minor miss, it’s a significant and deliberate government lie. And of course, since it is policy at BLS to publish false, inflated figures to help Democrat administrations, it is safe to assume that the revisions are also false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is simply trying to adjust their falsified data reports enough so that they can somehow, sort of reconcile to surveys of actual employment. They have to do this to set the benchmark before the next round of completely bogus jobs reports is released.

How persistent is the jobs report fraud? Take a look at this graph from Zero Hedge, which shows that every month so far in 2023 the BLS publishes an overstated jobs report, which the regime media dutifully touts as a sign of great economic progress under President Biden, and then that same monthly report is later adjusted downward without media fanfare.

The July report was the first one this year to report under 200,000 new jobs, which means that the actual number is going to be even lower than the already disappointing 187,000 jobs reported.

Damned seditious violent treasonous MAGAT bastige, spreading all those damnable lies about our fine government and media establishments. Where’s our fine, upstanding FBI and their paramilitary SWAT teams when you need ‘em for another of their patented late-night, home invasion-style raids, anyway?

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1

Ready for Round Two?

Hate to say I told ya so, but…I told ya so.

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Preparing to Bring Back FULL Covid Restrictions, Rollout to Begin Mid-September
Whistleblowers from the TSA and Border Patrol have raised the alarm to Infowars that the Biden administration is setting the stage for full Covid lockdowns that will begin with incremental restrictions like masking TSA employees in mid-September.

The first source, a high-level TSA official confirmed and known to Infowars, reached out to Infowars and cited a Tuesday meeting in which TSA managers were told new memorandums & policies were being completed that would reimplement masking, starting with TSA & airport employees as early as mid-September.

The TSA official also said next week they will receive new guidelines on how the policy will escalate: by mid-October, mask-wearing will be required by pilots, flight staff, passengers, and airport patrons.

After hearing from the TSA manager, Infowars reached out to our trusted Border Patrol source who is also a manager. This source confirmed the same directives were being given to Border Patrol.

Infowars’ analysis is clear: this new rollout’s timing is perfect for the embattled Biden administration to put the country back in a state of civil emergency and even martial law to further divide and confuse the public and move forward with the greatest election meddling in history.

After the dismal success of Test Run For Tyranny v1.0™ in 2020-2022, an encore was never a matter of if but of when. So will “Americans” lay docilely down en masse again and take their buggering like good little sheep as they so disgracefully did last time around? Or can we expect more resistance of these blatantly contra-Constitutional edicts than we too-recently witnessed?

Compliance, or defiance? That, folks, is the crucial question. Our liberty, our fortunes, our sacred honor, our very future (if any) all hang in the balance, awaiting our answer. Our posterity likewise hangs by the same slender, frayed thread…waiting.

Fingers crossed and all that, but honestly, I can’t say I’m expecting very much. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan’s prophetic words of warning from his 1967 Inaugural Address ring out more clearly and somberly than they ever have before.

Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.

In 2023, after everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve endured, can any sane, sensible person seriously contend that Reagan was mistaken? About so much as a single syllable of it?

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Power failure

Coming all too soon to an aging, overburdened, decrepit electric grid near you.

A Silent Threat to the Energy Transition: America’s Broken Infrastructure Policy
So much of the conversation focuses on the tired and misleading narrative about Oil & Gas villains vs. Renewable heroes. The true enemy of our sustainable energy future is the nation’s broken infrastructure policy. We could greenlight every renewable project in development today and innovate every piece of technology needed to meet our climate goals, and it wouldn’t matter because we lack the ability to utilize and store the energy we create.

Infrastructure isn’t top of mind for most people, but it has gotten more attention in recent years, particularly after Congress passed the massive $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021. The legislation included funding for everything from airport repairs to clean drinking water. It also contained the largest investment in clean energy transmission and the electric grid in U.S. history – $65 billion – to be used for new transmission lines for renewable energy, advanced transmission and distribution technologies, and research hubs for next-generation technologies, including carbon capture and clean hydrogen.

But what good are new transmission lines and next-gen technologies if they never make it past the black hole of red tape, interminable delays, supply-chain problems, and exploding costs that derail so many energy projects?

Much of the U.S. grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, and over 70% of it is currently more than a quarter-century old. But age isn’t the grid’s only problem. The U.S. power infrastructure was built to bring energy from where fossil fuels are burned to where the energy will be used. The nation’s electricity industry, meanwhile, grew via a patchwork of local utility companies whose targets were to meet local demand and maintain grid reliability.

Emissions-free energy sources like sun and wind are, by nature, intermittent. They’re abundant only in places where the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and therefore need to be stored and transmitted to other locations where there is demand for power. 

Along with the need for new ways to transmit and store sustainable energy, the existing grid will need a major upgrade as demand for electricity rises to meet the needs of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other replacements for conventional energy sources. A modernized and expanded grid “will be the backbone of the energy transition – and a requirement of any realistic decarbonization pathway,” according to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Company.

There is no silver bullet to fix this complex set of issues. But it’s clear we need a strategic approach to infrastructure investment, and fast. Part of that investment needs to come from Washington in the form of comprehensive policy and regulatory reform, which is the single biggest blocker to private investment and healthy competition in the energy sector. 

Simply put, building energy projects is complicated. Who pays for what is even more complicated, as processes, permitting, payment, and incentivization are all misaligned. Current policy doesn’t support the buildout we need; in fact, it slows it down and exacerbates the problem. Without policy and regulatory reform, we’ll continue to pay more and more to maintain our quality of life. Even worse, we’ll never reach the finish line in the race to a sustainable energy future.

I’ll say it yet again: funny, innit, how almost all of our contemporary woes have their origins in the same place: a greedy, grasping, over-powerful central goobermint?

(Via Bayou Peter)

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Dissing the franchise

In his latest Substack post Glenn suggests something I’ve been in favor of myself for years now.

Vivek Ramaswamy Channels Robert Heinlein, and Me
Raising the voting age, and demanding a commitment

So Vivek Ramaswamy is channeling a weird mix of me and Robert Heinlein with his new voting age proposal. (Hey, he could do worse).

The proposal is that the voting age should be raised to 25 by constitutional amendment (necessary to overcome the 26th Amendment, passed in 1971, which set the voting age at 18). Younger people could vote, but only if they had served in the military or as first responders, or if they could pass the same test given to foreigners applying for U.S. citizenship.

The first part of the proposal echoes a column I wrote some years ago about raising the voting age. After some unfortunate events at Yale and the University of Missouri, I wrote:

To be a voter, one must be able to participate in adult political discussions. It’s necessary to be able to listen to opposing arguments and even — as I’m doing right here in this column — to change your mind in response to new evidence.

This evidence suggests that, whatever one might say about the 18-year-olds of 1971, the 18-year-olds of today aren’t up to that task. And even the 21-year-olds aren’t looking so good.

We tend to treat voting as an act of self-expression, but it is also, in a sense, an act of violence. It is both a sort of proxy for violence, measuring the size of the forces on either side of an issue, and it leads, eventually, to real violence, since voting establishes the mechanism for passing and instituting laws that will eventually be enforced with violence. (As my old law professor Stephen Carter says, when you want a law passed, you say that you’d be willing to kill the people who don’t obey your wishes. That it’s at second hand, through the institution of government, doesn’t make it less violent, just less obvious.)

So we want voters to be reasonably informed, and capable of mature judgment. (At present it looks as if a college education may often actually make them less capable of mature judgment).

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers, envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.

That seems to be at the core of Ramaswamy’s proposal for letting people with military or first responder service vote sooner. Military service is a sort of “expensive signaling” of one’s willingness to serve the nation even at high personal cost. Such people are, on average, likely to be more public spirited.

The part of Ramaswamy’s proposal that I’m least enthusiastic about is the citizenship test. America had those sorts of tests before, and in the abstract they sound fine, even laudable. But historically they were applied/graded very unfairly, so as to disadvantage marginalized groups (chiefly, but by no means exclusively, blacks) and keep them from voting. I have no faith in the institutions that would apply and grade such tests today.

In the days following our Founding the franchise was limited to landowners, based on the idea that, pace Heinlein, they’d earned the right to vote via having what one might call skin in the game. After reading Starship Troopers about, oh, a dozen times, the relentless drumbeat advocating endless expansion of the franchise started to clang quite discordantly in my ear. The problem we have, it seemed to me, isn’t that not enough Americans vote, but that way too many of them do.

And most of them do so ignorantly, almost blindly, without even the most cursory of nods towards researching the candidates, the relevant issues, and the positions on said issues espoused by a given candidate. They pull the lever for the name that’s most familiar to them—or the incumbent, depending on the particular voter’s level of awareness—and go home congratulating themselves on having done their civic duty so nobly, so selflessly. Then, they forget the whole ordeal until another four years have flown by.

Well, bollocks to all that rot. With millions upon millions of complete stupes voting not their convictions or the issues they care most about, but based entirely on who they’ve seen on TeeWee the most during the month or so they’ve actually been paying any attention to politics whatsoever, is it any wonder the Republic is in the dire shape it now is?

Bottom line: Limbaugh used to rail about “Low Information Voters,” but it’s my carefully-considered opinion that no healthy polity ought to allow those Low-Infornation types to vote in the first place. If it does, it won’t BE healthy for very long. Most of these LIVs couldn’t tell you who James Madison or John Jay was, much less what the guy running for their State House or Senate thinks about anything.

But hey, he’s the one with the nice hair and smile, right?

WelpLostMyJob

Pshaw. I know, I know, just another of the myriad things that ain’t ever gonna happen, not a snowball’s chance of it. But still—I’m right just the same, and you damned well know I am too.

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You say you want a revolution?

Like it or not, you damned sure got yourself one.

My contention is and has been that the communists have been following the CIA Insurgency Manual, which I have been pointing out now for three years. The historians of the future will argue on when the exact date was, but I believe that the communist revolution began more than a decade ago. Antifa has a heavily supported and organized command structure. They have organized it under the US military’s model.

Communist overthrows happen in phases. I did a three part series on that back in 2020. Phase I (pre-hostility or incipient phase) corresponds to infrastructure development plus initial recruiting, organizing, training, and equipping of combat elements. I believe that phase began during the Obama administration. By the time Trump was inaugurated, we saw the beginnings of phase 2.

Agreed. I repeatedly argued back then that Bathhouse Barry’s insistence on militarizing the police—equipping even small-town PD’s with tanks, APCs, and such (if I remember correctly, even tiny little Lowell, NC got one)—was part and parcel of that effort.

Phase II (guerrilla warfare phase) is the first level of armed violence. Irregular forces engage in sabotage, interdiction of communication and logistics links, assassination, and selective attacks against government forces. Insurgents expand their secure base areas and, where possible, link them to form strategic enclaves of political autonomy. The Antifa (they weren’t known by that name yet) riots at the 2017 Trump inauguration, and the gunning down of Republican congress members, I believe marked the beginning of Phase 2.

Phase III is the “crisis” phase. The crisis state distinguishes resistance movements from social movements. Scholars have identified signals of this crisis state to include a decisive loss of legitimacy by the government, financial collapse, breakdown in authority, strong symbolic actions, and perception of dual sovereignty or provisional authority, among others. It begins modestly- assassinations, disappearances, unexplained deaths that aren’t fully investigated, and seemingly random attacks.

I believe that we entered phase 3 with the beginning of the Pandemic lockdowns. It was these lockdowns that enabled the leftists to take hold of our voting mechanisms and overthrow the republic. What we have now is no longer the government that we had. Make no mistake, the 2020 election was the coup. Our President was overthrown.

Once the last phase begins, totalitarian elites let loose their inclination to brutally eliminate their perceived enemies. Once this phase begins, things happen very quickly. The new government is a fragile one, and is prone to counter revolutionaries who would take power for themselves. They have to be eliminated.

Violence is considered a means to achieving the goal of centralized power. There is not even a pretense of due process or respect for free speech. Yes, there are pretexts given for eliminating perceived enemies, excuses that have the perpetrators projecting their own intentions upon their victims, but the accusations are merely for show. I believe that is where we are now. That is why Trump and his team have to go. They will be disgraced and imprisoned. To kill them outright would create a martyr and a rallying cry. To toss him in prison, where he can either rot or be Epsteined will not be as dangerous for them.

As I said in the comments and have been screaming myself blue in the face about for a good while now, revolution is indeed a process, not an event. I only wish I could find a way to argue with any of the above, but alas, I cannot. Put the way Divemedic does here, and being up on current events and a lifelong student of history as I am, how the hell could I?

Another thought: the above-excerpted post dovetails way too nicely with the one about the Ukrainian dot-mil tranny, don’tchathink? In a most ugly way, yeah, but still.

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No reason it can’t be both

And every reason to think that it not only can, but IS.

Recently, in a conversation between friends, the hypothesis was floated: what if all the burning farms, derailed trains, crop failures, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad scary nauseam aren’t really enemy action, but more a competency crisis.

As in these things happen not because big-bad is plotting against us, but because no one knows how to do the things they purportedly do anymore.

Embrace the healing power of “and,” Sarah.

To give an example: Suppose you were hired to haul buckets from a well. But when you actually get the job, you find out, no. Because of inherited systems, and what your superiors expect, you’re supposed to climb down the wall, hand over hand, and bring up water by the cupfull. And there are regulations in the works to make that by the spoonfull. However, you’ll be fully held to account if you can’t provide the amount of water the company is contracted for. You. Personally.

So, you do what you can. You fudge the books. On paper, you’re getting all this water up. Where the water goes no one knows, every one down stream (pardon the pun) from you does the same.

If this sounds like the soviet system? It is. It’s just that the directives don’t come directly and traceably from the government. (Though under the infestation of Bidentia they increasingly do.) Instead, they come from “experts” “scientists” “Studies” “marketing gurus.” And sometimes they are curtailed or made worse by agencies and regulations.

Yes, the managerial or worse “expert” class is the same that furnishes government. These are not your friends, are not meant to be your friends, and are convinced they know much more than you do.

What they know in fact is “how to manage.” But it’s not how to manage anything. They know theory of management (or whatever) derived from no reality (mostly from the writings of Marx, if you dig a little) and pushed ALL THE WAY DOWN.

It’s like — exactly like — being run by “experts” who memorized the Little Red Book. It might please those in power, but it has nothing to do with accomplishing the actual job in front of you.

No coincidence, that. The mistake Sarah makes here is one all too many of us still do: assuming that “their job” is still what the traditional American understanding of that was. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the present-day Amerika v2.0/Soviet-style system, these people are NOT “public servants.” They do NOT “work for us,” are not in any way, shape, or form answerable to We The People; they are accountable only to their OWN masters in goobermint, whose goals are not ours.

Once you’ve accepted that home truth, it all starts to make a sad, sick sort of sense—another of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen, shall we say. Bukowski recognized all those years ago what the underlying problem is.

Apologies for y’all being forced to click over to YewToob to learn the answer, but hey, whatchagonna do. New category for this sort of thing, which I fear is gonna be populated all too quickly: Culture Of Incompetence.

Update! Well, whaddya know, after getting the dreaded “Video unavailable” nag-window in the MarsEdit post preview, the vid appears on the actual CF page, at least for me. YMMV, of course and as usual.

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Straight dope on…ummm, dope

Why are certain pharmaceuticals becoming rare as hen’s teeth in the FUSA? Bill lays it all out over at the DP mothership, then hits on a related topic in his latest for Substack: Blogs – What Are They Good For? Both posts are of the impossible-to-excerpt variety, so just click on over and read ’em all.

No fate

But what we make. So far, we seem to be making a piss-poor job of it.

Recently, I was asked to make the “pessimistic case for the future.” I present instead more of a “pessimistic take on the present.” The future, while imminent, is obscure. The present, by contrast, is knowable. This is also not so much a “case” replete with exhaustive evidence—there isn’t space for that, nor is there a need—as a quick tour through our present hell. No one who thinks “everything is fine” will be persuaded otherwise. Those who see the seriousness of our problems hardly need proof. Nor have I made any attempt to be evenhanded, much less philosophically detached. My account is perforce one-sided. I hope it is wrong.

Alas, all evidence to date indicates that it isn’t. In fact, seeing as how this is Michael Anton we’re talking about here, one might reasonably assume that it’s all dead accurate; with him, that’s practically always the case. In this essay, Anton breaks his arguments down into sub-categories, which for purposes of this excerpt I’ll present as is, formatting intact (ie, italics). No better place to begin than the beginning, right?

The Constitution Is All but Dead

We Americans are supposed to govern ourselves via a constitution that rests on a specific understanding of natural right (right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse exist by nature) and natural rights (government’s job is to secure people’s God-given rights to life, liberty, property, etc.). The Constitution specifically declares and delimits the purposes of government and its powers, and it specifies how we the people choose the officers of the state, who are supposed to exercise those powers.

We still choose, sort of, but that hardly matters, because the people we nominally elect do not hold real power. And when they do, they often use it for unconstitutional ends. America’s real rulers are not the constitutional officers we nominally elect, and certainly not the American people, whom our understanding of political legitimacy asserts to be sovereign. They are, rather, a network of unelected bureaucrats, revolving-door Cabinet and subcabinet officials, corporate-tech-finance senior management, “experts” who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and media figures who police them.

Add to this the routine, repeated violations of our explicitly guaranteed rights—Big Tech censoring free speech, big cities denying the right of self-defense, the government itself violating the right to be secure in one’s person, home, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures—and it becomes more than a stretch to describe the United States as any longer a “constitutional republic.”

We Have Two-Track “Justice”

How the same offense is treated by our “justice” system depends on who’s committed it and, often, for what purpose. At the upper strata, compare the treatment of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe with that of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Carter Page, and Michael Flynn. Clinton illegally hid, and then deleted, her proprietary—and classified—communications from government records. Comey and McCabe orchestrated the Russia Hoax and lied about it. None of these three was even charged.

The latter five have all been hounded by the state—some convicted and imprisoned, all at least bankrupted and defamed. Their crimes, to the extent that any were even committed, were all much less serious than those of the regime darlings.

Compare the treatment of the Jan. 6 protesters with the total impunity granted to the summer 2020 rioters. One example: Two lawyers, literally caught throwing Molotov cocktails, were given slaps on the wrist. Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree murder (one of six charges) for shooting two deranged thugs who were in the process of trying to kill him. All over the country, and especially in blue-ruled precincts, acts of self-defense will get you arrested, jailed, and possibly imprisoned. Meanwhile, in the Black Lives Matter era, so long as the perp is the correct race or acting in a sanctified cause, violence and arson are excused.

Skipping a couple categories down, we come to what I consider to be the most condemnatory, troubling, and just downright infuriating of the entire lot.

We’re So Blinkered by Ideology that We Can’t—or Won’t—Apply Obvious Solutions to Simple Problems

The same way we don’t lock up criminals because “racism,” there is almost no end to the sensible things we refuse to do, and the stupid things we eagerly do, because of ideology.

The United States is presently in the midst of our worst energy crunch since the 1970s. Instead of expanding supply, we are constricting it. Why? “Climate change.” But nuclear would generate energy without carbon emissions. The same people who say no drilling also say no nuclear. Why? Supposedly, because the plants themselves and the waste they generate are “unsafe,” though nuclear power has a near-perfect record in this and nearly all countries. (The real reason is to force everyone to don the hairshirt.)

Our drug problem is fueled by Mexican cartels that cross our border with impunity. But we don’t secure the border because “no human is illegal.” Monkeypox is transmitted at homosexual orgies. We won’t close bath houses because “love is love.” But we will close churches, gyms, and restaurants over Covid. That’s an emergency!

“WE’RE so blinkered”? As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, whatchoo mean WE, white man? The shitlibs own that one lock, stock, and barrel. Which of course Anton knows, as the above-cited examples demonstrate without explicitly spelling out.

By the end, each of Anton’s sub-cats tie in together to present a scarifying portrait of where we now are, with seriously ominous indications of where we might be heading. Essentially, he uses interlocking bricks to construct an unassailable wall of logic and observation as deftly as a Master Brickmason. For instance, the connection betwixt “We Prioritize “Diversity” Over Mission and Performance” and “Our Military Doesn’t Win” is readily apparent, with the first being a primary reason for the second. It’s a blunt-force yet subtle strategy of argumentation that even TeeWee lawyer Perry Mason could only shake his head in awe and admiration at, being fond of the same sort of thing himself.

Most condemnatory, depressing line of all has to be the one which caps off the mercifully-concise “Nothing Works Anymore” sub-cat: “The whole country is becoming the DMV.” To which the response can only be: ouch. Also: YIKES!

Much, much more yet to this typically top-notch article, of which you should definitely read the all. Adapted from Anton’s contribution to Encounter Books’s Up from Conservatism compilation, it’s as comprehensive, unflinching, and clear-eyed an examination of the roots of our woes as can be imagined. From the EB website’s book-blurb:

The Conservative Establishment’s consensus of the past two generations has almost totally broken down. Conservatism was unable to stop or even slow the Left’s rolling revolutions in nearly every sector of American society—from classrooms to boardrooms, from the military to the culture at large. The Left has successfully transformed the nation over the past few generations, racking up victory after victory, with no clear end in sight. This is not sustainable for the country or the constituency represented by the Republican Party. For the Right to have a serious future, it needs to rethink its positions and think more deeply about the essential policy questions which will define the future of the country: race, men and women, sexuality, religion, the economy, foreign policy, and other major issues. This collection of essays, written by some of the Right’s most interesting thinkers and practitioners, seeks to reframe the ideological and policy direction of the American Right.

Can’t find a whole lot to argue with there, other than to say I’m extremely doubtful that “think(ing) more deeply about…policy questions” will ever avail us much. When you get right down to the nut-cutting, it amounts to putting the policy cart before the ideological horse.

The conflict presently before us doesn’t primarily revolve around “policy,” but fundamental beliefs. Unfortunately, we find ourselves smack in the middle of a struggle involving ideologies which are entirely incompatible, one insistent on totalitarianism and absolute, unchallenged State power over the individual, the other on ordered liberty and the right to be left alone to live as one chooses, within certain constraints to which both parties are in agreement.

There can be no reconciliation of the two, no satisfactory compromise, no middle ground. As pretty much all of 20th-century history more than adequately demonstrates, whenever and wherever the Leftist glioblastoma is permitted to metastasize and flourish within a liberty-oriented body politic this conflict is made inevitable. One side must win, the other must lose. Once the victor has been determined, “policy” will necessarily flow from there.

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The problem with cities

Is that eventually, one way or another, their problems become our problems.

Imploding Cities Will Drag All of Us Down — Even if You Don’t Live Anywhere Near One
There is so much wrong with America’s cities, it’s hard to see why any contributing member of society would live and/or work in one of them. Some of the issues arise from far-Left local governance while others are generated by more widespread Leftist policy. These are coupled with an organic workforce evolution, as the United States transitions from an industry-based to an information-based economy. The result is urban areas caught in a downward spiral — and, as with any sinking vessel, threatening to suck everyone nearby down with them.

First, a quick refresher on the compounding problems of urban areas. Chief among them is that big cities are dark blue, and thus they’ve become crucibles of Left-wing policy failure. Uncontrolled crime, roving drug and mental-illness zombies, and swarms of sanctuary-recipient asylum scammers are crowding out reasonable people and businesses. The normals who remain to take advantage of access to cultural events (such as they are) and restaurant variety are also subject to totalitarian social controls and two-tiered justice systems that punish them when they fight back against criminals. But no matter how desperate the situation becomes, city councils can be counted on to double down on woke policies, then double down again.

Businesses are fleeing. In the ones that remain, shopping for basic goods has become a frustrating exercise in waiting for an associate to unlock the case so you can grab a razor and some toothpaste. Add in today’s high interest rates, which make owning and running a business prohibitively expensive, and the writing is on the wall. PJ Media colleague Rick Moran reported last month that large San Francisco commercial businesses, like hotels and malls, are simply walking away from their obligations, handing the keys to the banks with which their real estate is financed. Concurrently, major retailers are declining to renew leases and are simply closing their doors, unable to break even in an atmosphere where retail theft is encouraged. This process is occurring to some degree in major cities across the country.

While we conservatives point and laugh at the plight of woke cities from the comfort and safety of our suburban and rural homes, we may want to take a moment to consider a sobering issue. The effects of the imminent collapse of the commercial urban real estate market will ripple out across the financial sector and affect just about everyone in one way or another.

Remember the mortgage-backed securities crisis in 2008? And how, even if you didn’t default on your mortgage or didn’t even own a house, the entire economy tipped into what the hyperbolic media tagged “The Great Recession” and we all suffered? So, this would be kind of like that, except the problem will start with a commercial real estate collapse.

Which collapse is happening even as we speak (so to, umm, speak). Real Americans who aren’t shitty-city dwellers have no place they can reasonably expect to find succor, either:

Don’t start daydreaming that we’ll have a Republican president by then who will refuse to bail out imploding cities, either. When you realize that everyone’s pensions are involved, you understand that not bailing out these banks and cities was never going to be an option. They have us over a barrel. So we can expect a cool trillion or two to flow from Big G’s coffers. This, while we are still reeling from the inflation and high interest rates from the last crisis, the Great COVID Overreaction Rescue Plan.

There is much to recommend city life: museums, entertainment, fine dining, varied shopping and cultural experiences, travel hubs, and excellent medical care are all steps away. A large segment of the population prefers such a stimulating and convenient lifestyle, and they would happily live in cities regardless of whether they worked at home. Enterprising landlords could convert less-used office space to living space and continue to run a profitable business. But so long as Soros DAs, activists, and city councilors keep making urban life unlivable, America’s cities will continue to circle the drain. And we’re all going to get sucked down with them.

Too bad, that, and no, it ain’t really fair. It’d be all too easy to assume that, what with the industry and manufacturing that for many years was centered in our large cities now gone the way of the dodo, the cities’ influence over and ability to affect the outlying areas might have diminished a great deal, but it just isn’t the case. As ever-larger numbers of those in a position to do so flee the urban shithole-zones, the rest of us Flyover-Country types will almost certainly be feeling the pain too—and the lamentable tendency of those big-city refugees to vote for the exact same things that ruined their own befouled nests* is only the beginning of it.

* Which tendency may or may not be apocryphal, interestingly enough, according to what you’re reading and who wrote it

Is it tyranny yet?

Yes, it most certainly is. The Advanced stage of it, actually; we blew right by the “Intermediate” and “Beginner” levels and left them spinning Wile E Coyote-like in our dust long, long ago.

By operations underway I mean things like mRNA vaccines stealthily deleting kin, friends, and public figures from the scene…decriminalizing crime…undermining the oil industry by a thousand cuts…liquidating small business…making little children insane over sex…flooding the land with illegal immigrants…devaluing the currency…queering elections — all of these things done on purpose, by the way. And if you complain about any of it, here comes the FBI or the IRS knocking on your door.

So, to make sure that a collapse of the USA comes on-schedule, there is the useful fracas created by our government geniuses over in Ukraine that creeps day-by-day toward a quick American assisted suicide. Just to remind you, here’s how that started: In 2014, the US fomented a coup against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In short order, the Russian language was banned (despite the fact that Most Ukrainians speak Russian). A piqued Russia re-po’d the Crimean Peninsula. When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (the Donbas provinces) tried to go their own way, Ukraine shelled and rocketed them for eight years. That was the setup.

All of the above was absolutely unnecessary, you understand. Ukraine had been going about its business the best it could since 1991 as a shlub nation with an aged-out Soviet infrastructure, some US-sponsored bioweapons labs, and no energy resources. It had been collecting royalties for allowing Russia to run oil pipelines across its fruited plain — of which, a lot of gas was siphoned off in transit by bandits. Ukraine attempted to compensate for its disadvantages by being an international money laundromat, though that only benefited its oligarch class (and the extended “Joe Biden” family).

After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin. NATO was dragooned into the quarrel as backup against its better judgment. If the objective was to weaken Russia, as stated by one of our strategic geniuses, SecDef Loyd Austin, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help — including the major countries in NATO.

Another good outing from Kunstler which, alas, falls apart in the closing ‘graph.

Anyway, “Joe Biden’s” entire act is unspooling. He is a prank that the Democratic Party played on the American people. Sometime before Halloween he will have to exit the scene in disgrace, gruesome as the prospect might seem, with Kamala Harris anxiously draining vodka bottles as she awaits history’s call at the old Naval Observatory. That will be a fun day in the USA, all righty.

Sorry Jim, ain’t gonna happen; barring Too Old Jaux succumbing to age and general decrepitude, he ain’t going anywhere, and will assuredly be running for re-“election” next year should he live long enough to. The Repugnicants aren’t going to be impeaching his corrupt ass, in spite of an over-abundance of grounds for doing so—and, having grubbed so very desperately for several decades to worm his way into the White House, the notion that he would ever step down of his own volition is self-evidently absurd.

Trump as Horatius

Now here’s a YUUUGELY flattering comparison I’ll bet you never thought of before.

Donald Trump – Our Horatius at the Bridge?
After reading the account of Horatius again, I wonder if some of the electorate view Donald Trump as our Horatius. Bear with me; I’ll explain all that.

Horatius’ fame resulted from his action described in Macaulay’s poem and by Plutarch; he planted himself at a bridge and, with only two comrades, faced down an invading army until the bridge could be removed and the gate closed. He did so without question, an act of courage, patriotism, and duty so profound that it has survived through the ages.

Even so, a lot of people jumped on board the Trump train right at the outset, and lots of those folks are still riding that train today. Is it because they see Donald Trump as the latter-day Horatius?

It may very well be. There are several parallels.

Horatius took a stand, with only two faithful followers, against an invading army. Donald Trump’s campaign now portrays him as the only man who could take on the army of the Deep State, and that he is taking a stand to do so.

Horatius was unafraid, taking his stand out of a sense of duty to Rome. Trump’s message was that the Deep State scares him not a whit, that he is losing wealth by running for President, but that he does it out of a sense of duty to America.

Horatius took his stand with two others, also loyal soldiers of Rome, who shared his commitment. Trump sells himself similarly, that he is a “team builder” who would put together a crew to put our national affairs in order.

There are, of course, some key differences.

Naturally there would be, not all of which redound to Trump’s discredit. In the final analysis, we’re left with this.

There are probably a lot more holes in the comparison than I’m mentioning here. An actual scholar of ancient Rome would probably pick the idea apart. But I do think that this is a big part of Trump’s appeal. It’s a potent symbol: The strong, stoic man, standing at the head of a small band of heroes, with weapons drawn, saying, “No more. It ends now. This far and no farther. Now we will drive you back.”

Mind you, I’m not saying Donald Trump is that man. He may prove to be, but it remains to be seen. But I think, consciously or unconsciously, that this is the image he is trying to portray, and it may well work for him if he can resolve some of his other issues. And it may be a cautionary note that Horatius’ brave stand being what it was, Rome still fell to the Etruscans.

Here’s another important cautionary note. About five hundred years after Horatius, another Roman leader emerged, and this one saw the end of the Republic. That’s a parallel that voters should be watchful for. Caesar was a populist, legally elected Dictator first for ten years, then for life, largely on a slate of jobs and benefits for the common people of Rome. But in the end, his actions led to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the totalitarian Empire.

It’s tempting to say it can’t happen here. But a lot of Romans about 49 BC probably thought the same.

It may be tempting to say that, but that’s probably due more to its being comforting than it is to any factual accuracy. Because, as history has demonstrated for us over and over again, it can happen anywhere—and it WILL.

Know thine enemy

First, know that an enemy is exactly what he is, then recognize that he will first, last, always, and forever act in strict acordance with his deepest, most fundamental nature.

A ittle phrase I wrote some years back about the Left, in the guise of my character, “David Kahane,” has managed to hang on across the time and space of the internet and has now become common wisdom on the Right: They never stop, they never sleep, they never quit. Which is to say, in their relentless quest to destabilize every society with which they come into contact, “progressives” move seamlessly from one provocation to the next, camels sticking their noses under every tent, mindless of the human and institutional debris they leave behind and eager to get on with attacking the next potential pile of rubble.

Think of them as Klingons, perhaps, who can never forget who and what they really are way down inside.

Progessivists as Klingons: betcha never saw THAT one coming, even from me. Anyhoo, Walsh contends that there really is a central, organizing theory providing a sort of template from which the shitlibs are working.

This animating principle, by the way, is what is known as Critical Theory.

In my 2015 literary hand grenade, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, I explained the true meaning of neo-Marxist doctrine:

Critical Theory, which essentially holds that there is no received tenet of civilization that should not either be questioned (the slogan “question authority” originated with the Frankfurt School) or attacked. Our cultural totems, shibboleths, and taboos are declared either completely arbitrary or the result of a long-ago “conspiracy,” steadfastly maintained down through the ages—as degenerate modern feminism blames male “privilege” and other forms of imaginary oppression. If the feminists have an argument, it is with God, not men; but since few of them believe in God, it is upon men that they turn their harpy ire. In its purest form, which is to say its most malevolent form, Critical Theory is the very essence of satanism: rebellion for the sake of rebellion against an established order that has obtained for eons, and with no greater promise for the future than destruction.

In other words, this is war, but on the basis of all current evidence, only one side is waging it in earnest, and with “pride.” If there’s one thing history tells us, it’s that all things must pass. Times change, cities fall, empires crumble. As Shelley famously wrote: “Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Who defends us now? In Joe Biden’s America — really, Barack Hussein Obama II’s America, since it is Hussein’s caravan of camels that is now afflicting us — masked thugs wander freely around our streets, roaming bands of disaffected, white, ideological soy-boy thugs who act as the enforcers of cultural Marxist orthodoxy. Gyrating “queers” (their word, now rehabilitated by the house organ of Gay America, the New York Times) march half-naked through New York, shouting that they’re coming for your children.

But the walls have fallen, the dams have burst, and there is no end in sight. In accordance with the late Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics, we are now ruled by a cabal of our enemies. As they were in National Socialist Germany, the universities have become hotbeds of intolerant socialist orthodoxy. Thought-crime laws are being bruited world wide; the concept of “protected classes” makes a mockery of equality before the law. George Floyd, a obese, violent drug addict who died in police custody after the commission of a crime, has become a secular saint, the apotheosis of “blackness” to a generation that has no memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., much less the Harlem Renaissance. Whole cities have been sacrificed on his altar.

Hunter Biden, the louche crackhead sex-pest issue of the President’s loins, skates on serious income-tax and firearm charges even as he and the demented paterfamilias of this crime family are being publicly accused, in Congress, of being the principals of (a) multi-million-dollar international bribery racket, thanks to Joe’s employment of the FBI as his personal police force and his corruption of the Justice Department. Merrick Garland, who ideally would be cast as Beria in a road-show production of Stalin’s Henchmen of 1953 is the attorney general of the United States, perhaps soon to be facing impeachment. As the late Bob Dole wondered during his quixotic campaign against Bill Clinton in 1996: “Where’s the outrage?”

Long gone, along with Americans’ former personal independence and self-reliance. It’s still hard to believe that the country of Paul Revere and John Dillinger went so sheepishly into the fascist pens of the Covid Hoax lockdowns, surrendering their First Amendment freedoms without a fight while the useless judicial branch under the effete John Roberts sat by and didn’t even squeak. The Roberts Court — thanks, George W. Bush! — appears to believe it sits on Mars, far away from the hugger-mugger mess of representative democracy, with no patriotic duty to use at least its moral authority on the issues of the day before they wend their way through the crapulous intestines of the “justice system.”

But the Covid hoax, which stripped bare the pretentious fools in the American and international health establishments and inured Americans to the sight of masked faces in public places, thus normalizing Antifa, was just the warmup. Like the lady in the old sex joke, Americans have shown who they are and now we’re just haggling about the price. Because you just know what’s coming next…

Sadly enough, we do indeed.

Coming soon: Climate lockdowns?
The past two years have been a checklist for the worst impulses of government and public sentiment. COVID allowed for supposedly temporary measures to morph into two years of “emergency” restrictions. But what if COVID was only the opening act, and another proclaimed crisis is the main event? Implementing significant but partial restrictions, one by one, in the name of the common good can allow for encompassing government control that results in relatively little backlash. Fear over climate change could lead to long-term soft lockdowns, given the precedent of immense growth of government power and significant support for sweeping state actions.

This isn’t a right-wing fever dream. Calls for harsh government measures in the name of saving the environment are already in the parlance of influential organizations and figures. In November 2020, the Red Cross proclaimed that climate change is a bigger threat than COVID and should be confronted with “the same urgency.” Bill Gates recently demanded dramatic measures to prevent climate change, claiming it will be worse than the pandemic. Despite millions of people having died from COVID, former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney last year predicted that climate deaths will dwarf those of the pandemic. Lockdowns, which significantly reduced carbon emissions during 2020, could be the solution. After all, the EU’s climate service gloated, the first COVID lockdown may have saved 800 lives.

While deaths from natural disasters have fallen by two-thirds over the past five decades, mostly thanks to technological innovations, elites insist that climate change is the “biggest threat modern humans have ever faced.” Climate lockdowns and other restrictions will be framed as saving the people of the United States, and the world, from themselves. What goal could be more noble?

And if there’s anything we can all agree on about them, it’s how thoroughly they enjoy patting themselves on the back in self-congratulatory awe at how wonderfully, selflessly noble they all are. Bottom line?

The pandemic proved to be the precedent of 21st century governance. The initial lockdowns were a desperate attempt to understand more about the virus and shut it down. In hindsight, the overreaction will simply provide a backdrop for the next major government overreach. If COVID could kill millions, imagine the powers the government will assume against a threat that could kill billions.

Political leaders have learned that fear prompts the public to accept dramatic curtailing of freedoms for vague promises of safety — they must realize the incredible power at their fingertips. COVID gave the government mouse a cookie, and power-hungry officials and bureaucrats can utilize the precedents of the past two years to institute a much longer, much more comprehensive lockdown.

That’s the long and the short of it, yeah. As I’ve said so many times, the FauxVid hoax was just the trial run; soon enough, the final test of whatever mettle Real Americans still have left is coming. Let’s hope we don’t flunk that one as completely as we did the first round.

Update! The Shelley lines quoted by Walsh above are, as most CF Lifers will probably know (literary mavens that I know most of y’all to be), from his brilliant Ozymandius.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Not quite as good as the greatest pome yet written, but a damned respectable effort nonetheless, so I though it worth mentioning.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

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"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

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