Legal Insurrection 13th Anniversary — “Gradually and Then Suddenly”
What better wake up call do you need than the fact that you have to worry about your kindergartener being ideologically manipulated at school by teachers and administrators?
Legal Insurrection website is 13 years old today. The Legal Insurrection Foundation is not quite 3 years old. My first post was on October 12, 2008, Obama is “Door No. 2″. Each year I write an anniversary post, you can read them to see the ebb and flow of opitimism and pessimism.
This year the theme is collapse. Of the structures that hold our country together.
There are many variations on the theme that collapse happens gradually, then suddenly.
For the first decade of Legal Insurrection, we documented and did our best to oppose the “gradually” phase of societal collapse, what in 2017 on our 9th anniversary I described as the continuing loss of institutions:
Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.
I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter. The education system, from public grade school through public and private higher ed, is gone. The frontal assault on free speech on campuses is the result. If you think this is just a Humanities and Social Sciences problem, stay tuned. In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.
There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable. I feel it in the air, even at Cornell which is far from the worst….
Even language as a means of communication is corrupted, with terminology manipulated and coerced to achieve political ends. It started on campuses, and it’s moved into the AP stylebook and the mainstream.
The press could stand as a bulwark against this slide, but it too is corrupted.
We are in the suddenly phase now.
All the “progressive” pieces were in place but needed a spark to burn down the house. That spark was the death of George Floyd in late May 2020.
What followed was state-sanctioned lawlessness, rioting, and looting; a vicious cultural purge from academia to corporations to the military to historical monuments; gaslighting and burying of news by a corrupt and dishonest mainstream corporate media and Big Tech; and the solidification of our post-truth world where we are required to state things we know to be untrue or with which we disagree in order to avoid social ostracization, where feelings matter more that facts, and where telling facts some people don’t like can get you fired, denounced, and boycotted.
We don’t have mean tweets anymore, instead we have a sociopathic federal government that wants to watch over almost every financial transaction we make and labels as domestic terrorists parents who raise objections to their kids being force-fed ideological poison at school. All the while destroying our borders, our energy independence, and the credibility of our military.
You cannot depend on the government of your personal safety, certainly not in large cities. When seconds count, the police are 1619 minutes away.
We’re in the collapse phase. You can feel it. There are no credible national institutions left. The medical field, the sciences, public health experts, on down the line are being gutted and losing legitimacy. The military is run at the top by woke clowns.
Higher Ed is gone, K-12 is the last cultural battlefield. That’s why the teachers unions, the education bureaucracy, and leftist billionaire funders are fighting so hard and so dirty. What better wake up call do you need than the fact that you have to worry about your kindergartener being ideologically manipulated at school by teachers and administrators?
Collapse is not irreversible, but it’s happening in real time. You can feel it.
The backlash is building. You can feel that too. It’s not a natural state of affairs for people to want to live under such tyranny. It can’t continue at this rapid pace. Something has to give.
But the backlash to the backlash will be to criminalize dissent and to intensify the cultural purge. We already see that the power of the state and corporations will be brought to bear.
As for me, I’m still Prepping for the Worst:
So all in all, I no longer view “preppers” as crazy. Maybe they were right, just early. Better early than late.
I don’t plan to be late.
I’m not going off the grid, but a back up plan is not a bad idea. Why do you think so many people are buying acreage in flyover country?
I have so little faith in the people running this country at various levels that stocking up on long shelf-life food and other prepper-lite protections seems to me, for the first time in my adult life, to be one of the least crazy ideas.
Are you cheered up yet?
Since this is our anniversary, I probably should mention that we have a website and a Foundation, and we’re increasingly focused on being a support system for the purged, the almost-purged, and the soon to be purged. We can’t depend on institutions, so we need to depend on each other.
We do what we can with what we have, day in and day out. Sometimes with recognition, sometimes without. And on a ridiculously small budget.
The pressure is real. We face throttling on social media and search engines, and there’s also some deplatforming crap we’re facing behind the scenes, which will be revealed in due course.
Anyway, I thought I’d share this video of my speech to the Norfolk County (MA) Republican Committee on October 7, 2021. I talked about a lot of the things we’ve been doing, and the state of the nation.
(Full video with Q&A here)
Sorry if I rained on your parade. I probably should not write these anniversary posts after a day of traveling while sitting in a hotel room after midnight somewhere not far from some city in Michigan, getting ready for an appearance. I’m back to doing in-person appearances, next stop San Diego in early December. We’ll try to organize a reader get-together, details tba.
Legal Insurrection was started out of frustration. I never thought about the future when I took to Google Blogger, and certainly never thought I’d still be doing it 13 years later. Through Legal Insurrection I’ve made many great friends and met great people. It’s allowed me to stay (relatively) sane.
I extend my thanks to our great editors and authors who feed this website beast every day. And to the Foundation administrators, researchers, staff lawyers, and others who do so much to help us accomplish our mission. And to the readers, commenters (hah), and donors who keep us alive.
And of course, thanks to The Wife of 37 years, who didn’t seem terribly upset that I was leaving town for a bit.
[Featured Image: Mob Throws Statue of Hans Christian Heg, Abolitionist, Into Lake Monona, 2020]
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Comments
Thanks for all you do, Prof. Jacobson
“We can’t depend on institutions, so we need to depend on each other.”
Exactly. Major positive factors that have been emerging lately are patriots who are embedded in all of these corrupt institutions and who are making the tough decision to choose good over evil. We see them pushing back at great risk willing to lose their jobs or just walk away.
At important societal nodes like parents confronting school boards, local law enforcement, fire fighters, pilots, and a growing list of resistance, people are stepping us as brave individuals and organizing around troublesome laws to bring to bear hardships on the Marxists taking over our country. And the winds in their sails are getting stronger as the counter culture finds its voice in rally cries like FJB!
I am greatly encouraged by this. But I am also dismayed by the many of us who simply cannot cut the cord on corrupt politicians who offer no hope and mock us while they effectively fool us again and again. WTF? We can’t be anti-King George III while praising his top generals. Pick a side. We can’t go into next year with mixed emotions and compromised with misplaced loyalties in powerful scoundrels.
The tide has turned and Trump is already on the march. We have a few very good generals (like Gov. DeSantis) lined up with Trump to clear much of the landscape next year. Let’s see how many more join us. We are going to win and those generals give us hope that we can secure our victory for years to come following the 2024 elections.
So let’s not get trapped in the smoke of our own flack. We need to focus on getting job done in 2022. We are a growing tidal wave of resistance about to roll over the landscape and preparing for the decisive victory in 2024. Let’s focus!
“(Paging Lesko Brandon. Lesko Brandon. Pick up on nearest courtesy phone.)”
Sorry, gotta go.
To understand the stages and causes of collapse, I recommend reading (or listening to a podcast of) Peter Turchin.
Powerfully expressed Professor Jacobson. What you describe is very real. This woke revolution parallels the Chinese cultural revolution quite closely, as it purges our history, redefines our language, socially shuns and cancels people who express think any non-woke thought, It hunts peoples’ backgrounds for the slightest offense against woke thought. There is an ever present fear and guarding of thoughts in work places, schools, and nearly everywhere. I highly recommend the book “The Cowshed” — an autobiography of Professor Ji Xianlin’s harrowing ordeal at the hands of his students at Peking University at the during the Cultural Revolution.
The decay in America is deeper than this woke revolution. It’s in the behaviors of people, their intolerances, manners and their ignorance. We are no longer the pioneering nation of yesteryear, with a hopeful population excited about the future. It feel like a rundown nation with poor behaviors that are leading to an explosive structural collapse of the nation. I sought a rural sanctuary from it, six years ago. Every needs a plan B in their pocket, .. just in case.
I see Instapundit has linked to this little essay. While of course Jacobsen is right, that many of our institutions have been taken over, he is wrong in his hand wringing that everything is falling apart and the nation is lost and everyone is against us. This is the Instapundit line – that everyone is corrupt, that the government is trying to kill you, that the government agencies are trying to get you, etc. To my mind, this just helps the Chinese. The Chinese WANT you to believe that America is evil and is working against you on all levels. The Chinese want the right to hate America as much as the left does. And the right is now encouraging a “Hate America” crowd that overstates everything and wants to demoralize things.
Yes, we are in trouble. No doubt about that. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going, they don’t declare that all is lost. The Chinese want you to panic. When you are panicking, you cannot work to correct things. You are too depressed and emotionally overwrought to fix things. The continual pressure of sites like Instapundit that declare that everything is against you basically are trying to suck you dry so you can’t resist.
Don’t just sit in a puddle of tears crying that “Everyone is corrupt”. Figure out WHO is corrupt, exactly what they have done, and get rid of them. Whole government agencies are not corrupt, individuals in those agencies are. Identify them and get rid of them.
The first part of solving any problem is defining the problem correctly. If you overstate the problem, or get hysterical, or imagine boogie men where their are none, you cannot fix the problem. You go off in all directions. So – CAREFULLY define everything you want fixed, and then refuse to panic. Instead get to work.
This is a very fine idea that you recommend, but the last election proved one important fact to the majority of American voters: the ballot box is no longer sacrosanct in this country. How do you propose “get(ting) rid of them”?
In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.
It’s been here for a few years already. The publications for the American Society for Civil Engineers are loaded with social justice topics, and articles bearing scientific skepticism of global warming are banished in favor of blind reliance on the IPCC’s exaggerated computer projections of the ‘future’ – and a bit of greed for all the greenie construction projects for rent-seeking engineers.
Worse, the State of Washington now has a jolly new Department of Equity, greasing the skids to force racial percentages onto the rosters of licensed engineers and land surveyors. Passing rigorous exams is soooo yesterday…
Note that was a quote from four years ago.
Good point, about how SJW have been corrupting STEM, for some time. In the 1980s, the Federal government contracts began to require positive steps on their contractors, to achieve equal opportunities. But, those steps soon began to require diversity targets. In earlier contracts, the Federal government rightly demanded drug and alcohol-free environments, not just on the company’s contract, but throughout the contracting companies. It required they hunt down employees violating them. That gave these SJWs a big opening. They began to expand their diversity requirements the same way, by requiring the companies be proactive in enforcing diversity. If they looked at real-life experience with diversity, it isn’t all rainbows and eternal bliss. Rather, contrary to what you read in the main-stream media, diversity causes employee churn. In companies like Google and Amazon, that are hog-wild on SJW and diversity, the average employee lasts only about 1.2 years.
we have a sociopathic federal government
No, we do not. We have a sociopathic national government. We haven’t had a truly federal gov’t since at least Nixon. (Arguably, not since Lincoln.)
Keep fighting the good fight, Prof.
I congratulate and thank Professor Jacobson and his team for having created what is truly a fount of indispensable and inimitable commentary on current socioeconomic, legal and foreign policy events. Along with PowerLineBlog, the American Spectator, American Thinker and FrontPageMag, Legal Insurrection is a must-read for contemporary conservatives who are resisting the Dhimmi-crats’ obnoxious, vindictive and brazen totalitarianism.
Been reading this blog daily pretty much from beginning but a fairly new commenter.
It’s nice to know we are not alone.
I found this site before that Kenyan was elected. I don’t know how I found it, unless Breitbart or Drudge or somebody like that linked to it.
Appreciate all the good reporting, Professor, including the fact that at times you have news up before other sites do. Sites with full time employees!
Food & all other Materiel shortages, power included, will appear in the aftermath of C-19’s disruptions of the world economy – that’s a real reason to do some stockpiling wherever you live but for now without panicking. The new Woke, etc regime will make all that worse & it’ll be a combination of basic incompetence, 3rd-world type corruption & racial hatred that hard-wires hardship into Western life – just in the daily round of basic physical survival.. Then, there’s Global Warming..
I’d never read that first post before. You had a lot of great insights about Obama, and all of them panned out.
About the only whiff was referring to McCain as Door Number 1, when (as it turns out) he would actually have been Bush Number Three.
Given that choice, I think it’s best that Obama won. People like the Bushes and McCains understand how to boil frogs. Democrats always rush.
Ironic, as I checked my Twitter feed this morning, I saw Armin Shimerman saying he founded Trek Against Trump and was putting out propaganda for McAuliffe. For an artist , he’s not as insightful. Liberals go for the creative class quickly. Then again, they have put cheerfully put their head on the chopping block.
Keep up the good fight professor.
For a Jewish artist, he’s double-plus un-insightful.
Unfortunately, Professor Jacobson’s comments are 100% on the mark. There is an alternative for parents of school aged children-if you have traditional moral and patriotic American values, you must rescue your children from the Marxist reeducation camps that are called public schools. Look seriously at religiously based schools and homeschooling as an option, The hearts, minds and souls of your children and your role as parents are at risk if you allow the public schools to brainwash your children with Marxist propaganda
Obama, who was the first President elected who was not proud of being an American, and who I did not vote for in either 2008 or 2012, was the architect and implementer of the woke assault on American institutions, alliances, mores and values.
Obama whenever his policies were thwarted always resorted to the race card and was noticeably hostile to Israel and appeased Islamic terror abroad and within the US