“You guys have no idea how painful it is to … be forced to watch it all unravel”
Captured my feelings: “You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel. The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves.” (Peachy Keenan on X)
On June 25, 2024, I wrote about tweets I saw from Gad Saad, “The West has committed the greatest self-immolation in human history”:
“When the leaders hate their civilization more than their enemies do, the civilization is doomed. Never before has history witnessed such a gargantuan self-inflicted death of a civilization that was an existential light in an otherwise world of historical darkness.”
Remember: War is coming to every corner in the West. It might take 5 days, 5 years, or 50 years but it’s coming. The West has committed the greatest self-immolation in human history. Save this post.
I just saw another series of tweets from an account Peachy Keenan along the same lines, but to me more personal:
You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel.
The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves.
Absolutely agonizing experience. Like watching the most beautiful person you know slowly mutilate themselves.
The reason everyone on Earth wants to move here is because if you squint your eyes, this country still basically “looks” the same, is still powerful, etc.
But we are running on the fumes of the past.
Paradise is no longer paradise after the barbarians rape, burn, and pillage everything not nailed down. And I’m talking about the barbarians in DC, not the ones galloping over the border.
I feel that sadness frequently.
To have grown up in the late 60s and 70s in hindsight was the best fortune I ever had. I wrote about it when I attended my high school reunion a few years ago, My ’70s Show Revisited – 40th High School Reunion [warning, image of me in a leisure suit, NSFW]:
No high school experience is perfect, but Roslyn and Roslyn High School in the 1970s were great places to grow up….
The Vietnam war wound down just as I was entering high school, and the draft would be abolished just before I would have to enter. Selective service registration was not yet in place, so we were in that gap.
What I most remember was the freedom of movement. “Be home for dinner” was about all the parental monitoring we had. We hitchhiked, hung out at Jones Beach and the Roslyn Duck Pond, and once we got wheels, pretty much roamed around unencumbered.
We didn’t have personal computers (those were just a few years away) though some of my classmates were early tinkerers who went on to great success in computer science. We also didn’t have cell phones — those were more than a few years away, so we weren’t constantly monitored. Thankfully, we also didn’t have social media. Whatever normal cliquish and catty behavior took place wasn’t amplified as it is now.
That’s not to say we didn’t have the usual growing pains, including in high school. But all in all it was a great time and place.
I wish I had the answer to stop the unraveling.
Some replies to the Peachy Keenan tweet, a lot of them seem to be from Gen X-ers, not late stage Boomers like me:
Agonizing is right. Not going down without a fight.
Fight like hell. 🇺🇸 #JoyfulWarriors
— Tiffany Justice (@4TiffanyJustice) August 15, 2024
Conservatives love what we have. That why we want to conserve it. So we feel pain when we lose it.
Progressives hate what they have. That’s why they want to transform it. So they feel no sense of loss when what they have is destroyed.
— Very Insignificant Person (@VeryInsig) August 15, 2024
GenX too, I agree but we are not doing it to ourselves. This is an orchestrated takedown of America and capitalist countries around the world. The communists made the long March through the institutions here and now they’re destroying the country from within. Everyone must vote
— Mike D🇺🇸🍊 (@raftoregon) August 15, 2024
This 1000x. Grew up in the Reagan 80s Southern California. Limitless possibility and optimism. Night and day.
— Mike Kimelman 🏴☠️⚔️ (@mikekimelman) August 15, 2024
Born in 1962, I can relate to this.
During the 1980s, I was convinced I was living in the greatest nation on Earth, with unlimited potential.
But that was then and this is now.
— Ken Cook (@KenCook_KC) August 15, 2024
During the Obama years, I kept telling people that we were heading toward a re-enactment of the fall of the Roman Republic. I never imagined the possibility that the end of the Republic would come in my lifetime.
— Servant to Poo-bah the Cat (@PoobahTheCat) August 15, 2024
Even explaining to my kids what life used to be like here is a knife in the heart. I’m doing everything I can to make them feel a sense of that.
— Courtney (@crystalandqueue) August 16, 2024
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Comments
I take it as more opportunities for irony, satire and the like. Unfortunately 1/3 of the population has no sense of humor and they vote.
Avoid sarcasm though. The humor form of adolescents. And women (“something is wrong and you have to figure out what it is because I can’t be bothered”).
Need a book like “US Politics and the Rise of Cosmic Irony.”
Read The Wall Speaks by Jerr.
http://TheWallSpeaks.com
@jerr_rrej
·
Jan 12
Here is a list of things that men think are masculine but are feminine:
1. Anger
2. Machismo
3. Lack of sexual restraint
4. “Bravery” in showing emotion
5. Sarcasm
https://x.com/jerr_rrej/status/1745881175443275975
Someone recently went through a life defining moment rose and said:
‘Fight, fight, fight’
Your choice, fight or roll over and die.
I pray 🙏 that we never get that far in the US, (again) but the Founding Fathers believed we might need to. After all, they did what current British Citizens need to do now, rebel against Tyranny using the force of arms.
I’m the same age as you, Bill, and I saw that tweet earlier today and it hit me the same way, too. It was a great time to grow up (except for 1970s fashion).
Our second grandchild was born on Tuesday, and I worry about the world our grandchildren will live in.
Congratulations! You are catching up to me.
I don’t think we’ll ever catch up to you. You had a real baby boom going on in your family!
Maybe conservatives should’ve worked to actually conserve something in the last 30 years.
Conservatives did. The problem was that they were under attack from both the Democrats AND the RINO’s.
Western culture is actually being preserved by East Asians (Korea, Japan, China), if you follow classical music on YouTube. They abandon their traditional music and take up excellence in Western classical music owing to its intellectual content. Here four Koreans, e.g., that came up the other day, set to the cool second movement of Debussy’s quartet in g minor.
https://youtu.be/5VMQuHMq8QQ?t=382
Thanks for the link. There are some dang fine Japanese shred guitarists as well. If you also like Western music in a different direction.
Christian imagery and themes are also quiet prevalent in Anime. Which I suppose could be another example of Western culture being preserved by East Asians.
My child is in the local high school band, showing enough aptitude to advance to first trumpet after a year of playing.
Then we saw some videos of Japanese high school bands. Simply. Amazing.
And why? They practice, they study. The high school “band” members at her high school are simply trying to get out of gym. Honestly, there are about five members that are good, the rest are a joke. They could be good, but have no desire to do so.
For me growing up was 50s and 60s, I launched my first business in 69. I remember a time when gas was 25 cents a gallon, by 72 I was making and wasting $50 K a year, and lost all of it by 73. Yet I was able to bounce back in a few years.
Those opportunities do not exist today. It is far more difficult to rise above wage slavery.
I am thinking about Soro’s MO, and that he and others are profiting from undermining economies.
50’s and 60’s for me also. Even though times turned tough in the mid=60’s for my Dad and me…. still great times to be alive. There was purpose to and for living. Simpson-Masoli was a major hit. Congress promised only one time… right.
Yes, it’s unraveling. Our government and societal relationships look like a mash up of late Imperial Rome and a middle school student council. I am a bit older than most of the commenters here. Born in 51 in Ohio, when Detroit was the richest city in the country, and the Great Lakes region was not yet the Rust Belt. Draft lottery #31 in ’69 upon HS graduation, so I was going regardless. Was fortunate enough to get into the Military Academy and spent until 2000 in the Army, probably at the pinnacle of American economic and military and societal power, despite our internal problems. Watched and participated as the Army rebuilt itself after VN — found mission, people, equipment, doctrine, training necessary to establish the best Army in the world. Other services rebuilt and looked ahead as well. Military and other institutions could get things done. Despite the rot beginning in education, US education was the envy of the world and provided innovation, perspective, and the ability to set priorities and also say, “no.” Periodic outbursts across society were largely contained and addressed — sometimes not in the most effective or efficient way. Much less vitriol and parties weren’t completely captured by their respective radical fringes. We had the luxury of being the world’s super/hyper power, but we took it for granted and figured that there was nothing constant that we could not change. Big mistake in perspective on the world. Now and in the future we are going to pay for it. We better learn to recite “Ozymandias.”
The fringes are agitated enough to save us. The moderates are useless.
Moderates are definitely useless and have ushered in the current insanity.
I get your point, but if the moderates weren’t moderate, they’d land on one side or the other. Then what?
Got me, Fuzzy. If moderates continually vote for communists, then they aren’t really moderate. Harris just proposed price controls and “””moderates””” are still up in the air.
If you consider yourself a “moderate “ in todays world,
Your just ignorant
I was telling my daughter today that it used to be that when you were graduated from high-school you were ready to start the adult part of your life. The choices being find full time work, join the military, or college, get married or a combination of those. Now it appears to me that many younger people are in a state of perpetual adolescence. The current state of the economy only makes it harder to leave that. Ask yourself what happens when there are no more grown ups. Political charlatans like Harris find pickings easy enough while there are still some adults to expose them. In a world of teen angst, petulance, and demand for instant gratification they get to become gods.
And even more sadly, the faculties of the universities are staffed by people that have no or very little practical experience in the real world. They have been, and remain, perpetual adolescents, asking the government (their parents) for handouts so they can continue their “research” and propagandizing the skulls full of mush that come before them in mandatory “core” classes.
I was stunned when I was in the belly of the beast, a local state college. And this was when “political correctness” was the worst problem we had.
On a more happy note, many of the students I engage are most definitely conservatives.
Maybe there is still hope.
🫡
I do. I do exactly.
All fleeing the west coast know exactly what it is like.
Saying goodbye to family and friends who either inwardly or outwardly know say they would like to flee too….
The saddest part is seeing it destroyed by lickspittles who are confused on which bathroom to use. Morons whose weaponized stupidity has emptied the jails and turned vibrant cities into open air drug markets.
In high school- they would bus us to the Seattle Science Center and then Pike Place Market and let us run around unsupervised for 4 hours about twice a year 10th, 11th, 12th grade. I wouldn’t set foot w/in 60 miles of that space now.
“Morons whose weaponized stupidity has emptied the jails”
Those morons are just making space for those of us who will not comply.
Born in ‘58 here and I feel the same way. I weep for my four children, but especially my four grandchildren. Even if by some miracle Trump wins and the deep state does not succeed in assassinating him, it’s just a bump in the road on our path of self destruction. I am looking at my copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on my wall. Every day I see it and marvel at what the signers of that document did. I wonder what I should do to honor their legacy. I just don’t know. That was a unique inflection point in human history. Can it happen again? Can we make it happen again? If so, how?
Get involved. And start creating social groups with the like-minded. And I don’t mean online.
Please remember. Only about 3% of the population participated in the successful fight for our independence.
About 10% of the population fought during the civil war to maintain the republic and free slaves (among other things).
An equally small percentage of Russians participated in their October Revolution.
We have a choice. We can fight to maintain independence, or we can let others fight for our subjugation.
I prefer to fight to maintain what our forefathers bequeathed us.
Who is John Galt?
Good question. Conservative, Inc. would deem John Galt as untoward. We know that much.
The real question is: where?
The spirit of Galt; independence, self reliance and individual responsibility is probably within the many small hobby farms with their own well, stocked ponds, gardens, orchards and so on. Lots of folks trending in this direction all over the place. One thing is for sure, if your neighbors are voting in a monolithic d/prog gov’t every election cycle then you ain’t anywhere near the ‘Gulch’ and should probably begin figuring out an alternative.
I also share your thoughts and emotions about the decline of our country and our culture. I remember and tell my children and grandchildren that my high school economics teacher told us that our generation was lucky to live at the peak of American power and influence as it was inevitable that after our generation the decline would come. He seemed overly pessimistic to the young students seeing the world of the late 60s but if anything, he may not have been pessimistic enough.
He likened it to family businesses where the first generation started and built the business, the second grew it and strengthened it, the third generation consolidated it and the next generations lived off the business and let it collapse and die.
Watching a culture and country that was built by the sweat and at times blood of our ancestors get reduced by the greed for power and wealth of the current ruling class is painful. I will soon be leaving the stage of this drama but I too fear for the future that my children and grandchildren will inherit.
From “the dismal science” to the “pragmatic science.”
I’m not sure if Barbarians have the capacity to be corrupt and collude in such devastatingly treasonous methods.
I think Peachy is discrediting the nobility of Barbarians by comparing them to DC vermin.
GenX growing up under Reagan yeah this does capture what we feel.
Pissing away the greatest country and gift in the world for stupidity.
We best Communism only to be losing to a mutated form of it that the dying Soviet Union infected us with.
It’s going to be a long road back and that’s if we are lucky and work hard.
“Marching Morons” here we come…
I am old as s**t and grew up in the 1950’s. IMO the period after Korea and before the JFK assassination and the Vietnam War was the best.
– No hot wars.
– A public school education in NY City was excellent. Young children walked to and from school by themselves.
– No crime to speak of. No big deal for a kid to walk alone to a neighborhood candy store.
– Most families could afford a home and a mother did not have to work.
– Moral values were strong, families routinely practiced their religion and ate dinner together.
– The TV was an exciting, miraculous invention, in a society not consumed by electronic and social media. People still read books.
– In the winter nothing beat walking to the neighborhood pond with your friends and going iceskating.
– The music of the era was fabulous.
Ah, nostalgia. However, on substance, I think no later period had all of these items. In particular, I think the 3 assassinations in the 1960’s – JFK, RFK, MLK – the Vietnam War and the terrible inflation of the 1970’s changed the country permanently. For example, I purchased my home in 1984, when mortgage rates were 13%. Gone were the days when a home could be bought on one income and most mothers did not have to work.
True.
But even today, young people bemoan the fact that rising prices and inflation place buying a house out of their reach.
Yet, they want to vote for the very people who caused inflation, who forced two income families, and who now want to have price controls.
When homes stopped being the place you raised a family to a short term investment vehicle, things changed.
Professor,
I know we are in seemingly, unprecedented, times but I have great hope and expectation because of the Lord Jesus Christ in my life:
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19, KJV).
It appears as though the next eleven months will have their difficulties, but I expect we and the nations will weather them for the better.
On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand
When darkness veils His lovely face
I’ll rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy day
My anchor holds within the veil
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand
, , ,
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Traditional / Terry Butler
On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand lyrics © Mercy/vineyard Publishing
Some will be in church, praying.
Others will be fighting the battles that need fighting.
We all will make our choices.
Sorry, not a binary choice. I expect many in the battles will be praying as well.
True.
Many because we are in the foxholes right now…
The cause is news as a profit center instead of a loss leader to contribute to the prestige of the network. As a profit center they found their 24/7 audience with Jessica in the Well, namely soap opera women. Instead of reading daily about Liz and Richard in the tabloid, they follow the news.
It’s an entertainment choice, and it’s calling itself news, which makes the audience feel even better.
Women prioritize feelings (hence soap opera’s attraction), and men prioritize structure (avoidance of perverse consequences). The Founding Fathers were structure guys, not feelings guys. The female end of the Supreme Court is feelings. (So guys are better at running big systems and women are better at small systems like neighborhoods and households. Stereotype is the too-strict father.)
Hence the collapse of everything through feminization. Amy Wax has a milder diagnosis – the rules of the nursery and kindergarten brought to the academy – but it goes deeper. Feelings attracts eyeballs of women and you can sell those eyeballs to advertisers. Democrats just supply soap opera in return for votes, in a sort of business arrangement with the media.
Interesting perspective. I fault the MSM far more directly and have considered them the primary danger for years. By aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and its values, they have abandoned what I regard as a major value of journalism and the media, to bring accountability to Society. IMO if the light of day had been shined on Biden and Harris, Biden’s incipient dementia in 2020 would have kept him from running and Harris’ obvious incompetence would have disqualified her. What this Society lacks is accountability, from the shoplifter in CA, to the Trans in women’s locker rooms and sports, to the politicians at the top. What is not “right”, really isn’t right. Period. No excuses.
Conservative = independence; leftiam = dependence.
Leftism.
How did America get here?
The other evening, a friend told me that he realized that nothing works in America these days. He is right.
This same guy has a severe medical issue but not an emergency. His specialist can’t see him until December.
When you call to get a prescription refilled, you have to listen to a message offering you the opportunity to go online or speak Spanish, then another telling you to call 911 if it is an emergency.
Our president is nowhere to be found, and the vice president is too dumb to sit for even a softball interview.
The FBI can only solve crimes committed by conservatives. The Secret Service is incompetent.
It recently took the post office two weeks to mail a card to a nephew who lives 4 hours away.
My bank did away with its drive-thru, and inside, there is one teller and long lines.
Doctors’ receptionists are often surly and unhelpful.
Every business has a phone tree, and if you finally reach someone, you can’t understand their heavily accented English.
And on and on and on.
^^^^ I came here to say exactly this. I’ve taken to saying whenever I have the misfortune of conversing with a “Liberal” that “nothing is built, nothing is back, nothing is better.”
Everywhere we turn in society and business there is incompetence, and when the government is involved it is often malicious incompetence. Rule of law has been dumped in favor of rule by men (remember, we fought a revolution for rule of law). If you are a conservative, you are deplatformed, demonetized, depersoned, and eventually defenestrated.
And sadly this is all being done from within.
I’m waiting for that John Conner figure that will rise up and lead us in the fight against the DemocratLefty machine. I hope it’s soon, I don’t have a lot of time to wait.
“I’m waiting for that John Conner figure that will rise up and lead us in the fight against the DemocratLefty machine.”
He’s here, but most don’t recognize him. The left just tried to assassinate him.
I’d like to think you’re right, but unlike Conner, Trump still thinks he can defeat the Left from within the system. I no longer think that’s possible.
Nothing brings out my longing for a rotary phone like hearing the words “Please listen carefully as our menu options may have changed.”
And… I know of ONE instance where the menu options DID change. My primary care doctor office.
We have something that is called a modern high efficiency washing machine that seems to not be able to get all of the load wet, let alone actually wash things clean with
Confidence. Someone in a office removed from the process thinks they know better than those who have been doing it for decades, whatever the “it” is.
The irony, thinking they were wise they became fools.
Just wait ’til they bring that washing machine to prices of the items you buy.
The AI in the new machines will tell you the clothes aren’t dirty enough, and to wear them again.
I have a 30 year old washing machine, a basic Kenmore (remember them?). When my new LG had an electrical issue, I just swapped it in and it worked perfectly. Maybe I should sell the LG….
At least your nephew got the card. A customer at one of my jobs lost her son in 2022. He lived out of state. His ashes were being shipped to her and the post office lost them. Legally, they are the only people allowed to ship cremated remains.
I opted to pick up our cat’s remains at the vet hospital. If the USPS can lose a person, I don’t trust them with my pet either.
“When you call to get a prescription refilled, you have to listen to a message offering you the opportunity to go online or speak Spanish, then another telling you to call 911 if it is an emergency.”
When you go to the pharmacy to buy an “over the counter” decongestant you have to show a government ID and sign the mommy-may-I book before you can get the medicine. Even though the m3th cooks have gone on to other ingredients Uncle still thinks ephedrine ingredients need record keeping.
The same ID nobody can seem to scrounge up when it is time to vote?
There are directions online somewhere for the chemical procedure to turn meth back into Sudafed.
I used to buy 1000 phenylpropanolamine pills for $10.00 on a veterinary prescription (the drug store just handed over the whole unopened bottle). Used in treating urinary incontinence in female dogs along with DES. Both pills now banned apparently. I think the former went into Sudafed as an ingredient. Not only cold sufferers suffering.
Amen. I find one area where government actually does something right (amazing, right?). When I need a script refilled from the VA I can go to the on-line My Health Vet website, select refill prescriptions, click on the med(s) box(es) and click “submit”. No phone tree, no speaking with a surly receptionist, just quick and easy refills mailed out.
Now compare this with paying your Medicare premium.
Reading the comments I have to remind myself that the Fall happened in Paradise not outside of it.
No generation is spared the consequence of living in a fallen world. I doubt there has been a single time when some group of believers did not take the news of the day as proof the Apocalypse was at hand.
Are current events and societal changes accelerating the loss of paradise? Yep. Can it be slowed down? In patches, maybe. Overall, not a chance. Too many people yearn for that bone strewn path to Utopia. I know many will disagree but I believe we have left the battlefield and are now under siege. That means creating smaller worlds for yourself and your loved ones. It involves taking on a fortress mentality. While trying not to abandon charity, hope, and faith. That’s tricky.
I too grew up with more freedom. Some good, some bad. But at least I had the chance to learn the difference.
I find it interesting that Daniel is told that at the time of the end there will be vast amounts of information and that people will travel all over with abandon… those things are true of our time as never before.
If we seek to save our lives we will lose them, if we lose our lives for His sake we will find them. The original Israel was told to be careful when they grew rich not to forget the Lord their God… the culture largely has jettisoned Him wholesale and thinking we were wise we became fools.
I saw an ad today about how Harris has a history of being a tough prosecutor and will take on the border and the fentanyl problem….as if she hasn’t been part of the enabling of the same crisis, and they expect enough people will be so stupid as to believe it.
Our colleges have been funded for decades by the same people who funded October7th.
Wish I remember where I saw this first and continue to thinking describes our situation the easiest way.
We are ithe looting the Empire stage
It ain’t over until WE say it’s over!
Found this in my mailbox this morning: https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/when-the-saxons-begin-to-fight?publication_id=30495&post_id=147720773&isFreemail=true&r=1tuj8g&triedRedirect=true
A little long but so inspiring.
Thanks. I enjoyed seeing the Brits getting to the end of patience, though some of it was pretty dated with a reference to Tony Blair, who left 10 Downing in 2007. And it might well be a case of too little too late, as it will also be here if we don’t take back control of the political system. I can’t say I’m very optimistic of that happening any time soon.
I was born in 1949. It has taken the last awful decade of American politics to make me realize what a unique period of time post WWII was. Shared military service overseas united US males into a band of brothers that survived throughout civilian life. It took the misadventures in Vietnam to shake the inherent respect given military veterans. The underlying truth then was that American parents were not eager to have their sons die overseas. And so cracks appeared in the trust of government institutions. Today, after the disgrace of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the clear politicization of the DOJ, and the bald faced lies told the American people by their own government, there is little broad respect left for American institutions. That shining city on the hill has slid off its foundations..
Never heard of Peachy Keenan. Sometimes I’m lucky that way. For chick reading I stick with Ann Barnhardt, especially on Sundays.
She’s bright. She’s thoughtful. She writes well. She seems to be mid-40s. I have no financial or personal connection to her. Check out her substack. Doesn’t cost you nothin, may slow the onset of what we all inevitably face: age-related crotchetiness.
I was born in 1949. From my viewpoint, my country died November 22, 1963. Kennedy was, in fact, a so-so president but the man shown by the press was athletic, had this wonderful family, sailed, biked, and did all sorts of family type things. I sincerely believed then, and still believe now, that he gave this nation the attitude that there was not as single solitary thing we could not accomplish when we out our minds to it. That was already proven during Ike’s time (the transistor, polio vaccine, and more).
That all died with him/. In place of this dynamic man we got Lyndon Johnson, just another cynical crook soaking the American people for every penny he could for the benefit of himself and his gang.
I have other opinions about our downfall that I would share with you all, but won’t. First of all, it won’t change anything. Second, I will likely offend every single one of you with my views.
I have no real solutions. I just know that – as a (lapsed) Jew – when the trucks arrive I plan on taking out as many police as I can before I am gunned down or thrown in one of those trucks. And yes, it will be the police doing this, not the military. Just like last time.
With Kennedy, at least we have “Camelot.”
With Harris, we’ll have “Cumalot.”
Proof of the decline and the debauchery from the Democrat party.
Relax, Grizz.
Adolph allowed for honorary aryans, so your religious negligence and conservative views should easily earn you this exemption.
As a fellow 1949er, I can remind you that we were in the 8th grade when Kennedy died. It certainly did not occur to me that America had died with JFK in Dallas. For one thing, my Dad was still there, as fiercely Republican as ever, as determined as ever to safeguard the Republic. I knew it was a significant event, even as the news spread at school, but I certainly did not yet understand the horror of a political assassination. I have been a true believer for most of my life, as I suspect many MAGA supporters were. That we, the true believers, have lost faith in our government, signifies a real disaster for the United States. The most reliable underpinings of our society are disintegrating before our eyes,
I was a young adult when Kennedy was killed. No one forgets where they were when they heard. Riding the NY City subway that evening was like being at a funeral. My wife, who is younger, could not understand why her parents were crying. It changed everything and the political hack, LBJ, and the Vietnam War made things worse. Men who fought in WW II were losing their sons in a war that had no justification.
The military rationale for American involvement , as I understand it, was:
(1) The threat of communism was real.
(2) JFK had basically allowed Cuba to stay communist, 90 miles from the US. A complete abrogation of 140 years of the Monroe doctrine .
(3) The defense establishment had grown up since WWII with the one basic tenet that communism cannot be permitted to spread.
(4) The defense establishment knew that JFK was a slacker, and a not-serious person. Who probably come to power via voter fraud primarily in Chicago and South Texas.
And so — while the military might well have been willing to walk away from South Vietnam — maybe — once Cuba was permitted to stay USSR-aligned, the feeling was Well , we gotta draw the line SOMEwhere. Also, at the time, it was unimaginable that we could lose militarily in Vietnam.
JFK was viewed as a really young, really kinda incompetent inexperienced rich fratboy— and imho he was killed , from the pov of those who killed him, for the good of the country, and for the good of the world.
That was the logic.
That was the justification.
I was brought up in a staunchly Democrat home, but outgrew all that crap because of Vietnam, and other things that brought about an awakening that went all the way through my 20s. It took a while, but, here I am.
Kennedy was a horrible man. He was a adulterous druggie and incompetent leader who almost caused WWIII. What we lost was that superficial and very fake veneer of the type that is still being pushed by the Hollywood Left.
I will never understand how people from back then could still have such rose-tinted memories of a fictionalized past and childhood dreams.
LBJ wasn’t some just 180°, but the acceleration of what was already happening.
I’ve been thinking and saying this for a while. For me, I’m closer to the end than to the beginning, on the back 9. But for someone who is 35-40 and lived through America at it’s best but still has a way to go, they must be pissed and/or depressed.
There’s only one way out of this.
In my first post above, I ignored the thrust of Prof. Jacobson’s article – the pain of seeing the America we loved destroyed. Yes, it is almost unbearably painful. Certainly, it was excruciating when the realization first hit. It’s gotten better, I suppose. Perhaps I’ve grown used to it. Acceptance of the unacceptable. Where do we go from here? I wish I could see a clear path forward. I fear for DJT, whether he will survive to win the election, and, if he does, whether any one man can save the Republic in four years. The rot is pretty deep. There don’t seem to be any patriots left in DC.
It is not up to one man to save the republic. But, having DJT in place will provide the catalyst many will need to get the snowball rolling on taking things back.
It can start with telling a cop no, you can’t see my ID for the “crime” of eating my lunch at a picnic table in a public park.
It can be the people who are already fighting their school districts over library books and “gender affirming”.
It can be people pressuring the colleges to get rid of their DIE departments. Same with employers.
It can be many things, but, if people expect one man to do it all, then all is lost.
Correct. Each of has to be willing to our share. Those of us in the more sane States with sensible policies at local, County and State level have been doing so for a while now, which is why those Cray Cray policies have been held at bay. Those in other places have a higher hill yet to climb. What ain’t gonna work is waiting on someone else to save you. Expecting the voters in Red States to rescue folks from the State and local policies of the blue State politicians they keep electing is not gonna be fruitful. No one with any sense in a sane State wants to hand Congress the power to override existing State/local authority for fear the next time those blue State/blue enclave voters get a Congressional majority of their own.
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother
It is murder
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul
Leonard Cohen, The Future
I looked up Mr. Cohen’s work. It’s a song and I looked up the lyrics (reading lyrics is easier and more accurate for my artillery ears). I find a good word for the work is “Dystopian”. I didn’t seek lyrics on the rest of his work in that album.
Born in ‘57
All societies are entropic.
All societies, eventually, tend toward disorder. Some, quicker than others.
The one, defining principle, that keeps a society cohesive, is a single dominant culture. Without that, we are doomed.
We have been moving away from that concept, for a long time. So long as we are on this path, our better days will be behind us….
Much of that started with “Press 1 for English”.
I grew in the ’40s and ’50s. Carried a weapon of war in a war (really, not Bravo Sierra) mid ’60s. I have been instructing the grand and great-grandchildren, to a greater or lesser degree depending on age, about what life was like in the US in the golden era post war to the riots of the late ’60s-70s. Have been doing the same with a 50 year old neighbor at the lake. Different world today, more’s the pity.
many children are ungrateful
so they take the riches of the parents/grandparents
and go through it like they were “owed” it and it will never run out
there are sooooo many laws in place
that it will take “lawbreakers” of a certain character to say
we are not hiring dei we re not pro affirm action
we judge people on their merits
the road to communism is now smooth
the road back to freedom is bumpy ..to say the least
I want to personaly thank Prof. Jacobson for posting this piece. IMO it is an important issue to think about, talk about and act upon, to the extent able. Having lived a long life, I shared my thoughts about what I thought was the best period, post Korea to the killing of JFK, which most here have not experienced; and the biggest danger I see, the MSM. It is hard to have any optimism over the obvious trend, so perhaps I should be grateful for not having many years left, albeit sad for my grandchildren.
The fall to this point would all have been prevented If the Supreme Court had ever started enforcing the Article 4 section 4 guarantee of a Republican form of government.
It is not necessarily too late even now, but this sword Excalibur, the most powerfully written provision in the entire constitution, the only guarantee in the entire constitution, must immediately be pulled from the stone and used to save us.
It was justice Brennan who sank the sword into the stone. Considering the possibility of a guarantee clause argument in Baker v. Carr (1962), Brennan wrote for the majority that he did not know what Republicanism is, and doubted that anyone would ever be able to figure it out: that they would be able to locate “discoverable and manageable standards” for adjudicating it.
But there already was such a standard. That was Alexander Hamilton’s definition of republicanism, which he articulated during in the constitutional debates in New York: “that the people shall choose who shall govern them.”
He even included a manageable standard of adjudication: that “representation is imperfect to the extent that the current of popular favor is checked.”
Thus any law, or any government procedure or action, that either intentionally or unnecessarily checks the current popular favor should be ruled unconstitutional.
There are two most obvious ways that the current popular favor can be checked. First, elections can be stolen by vote fraud or some other kind of election fraud.
One obvious example is the Democrats’ use in 2020 of 2000 mules to stuff ballot drop boxes in five key counties with far more than enough illegal votes to flip five key swing states to Biden.
Another is Arizona in 2022, disabling most of its election day voting machines, when Democrat election officials knew that conservatives mostly vote on election day while Democrats mostly vote early my mail.
The second obvious way to check the current of popular favor is to weaponize the powers of government to suppress political opposition, for instance by using unequal application of the laws to attack and disable leading political opponents, as with the Democrats’ numerous lawfare attacks on President Trump.
The sword has actually already been pulled from the stone, our lawyers just haven’t realized it. Hamilton’s definition of Republicanism was embraced (found to be “discoverable”) by the Supreme Court 11 years later in the 1973 case Powell v. McCormack.
Powell was a ballot access case that did not invoke any Republican guarantee clause arguments, and somehow the link to the guarantee clause was never made. The same thing happened in 1995 where the Supreme Court embraced Hamilton’s definition of Republicanism in US Term Limits versus Thornton, another ballot access case.
As already noted, the manageable standard of adjudication is stated right in Hamilton’s definition. A system of government is unrepublican to the extent that it’s laws and procedures block the current popular favor. No system can be perfectly republican, but the obvious standard of adjudication would be that shortfalls in the attainment of Republican government cannot be either intentional or unnecessary.
Of course it is also illegal under the First Amendment to steal elections (as that undermines rates of association for purposes of effective political participation) but this concern is given very low priority. Just look at how the disabling of the majority of election day voting machines in Maricopa County allowed to stand.
All indications are that it was intentional, but even if it wasn’t, only counting the votes of one political side is grossly incompatible with the Article IV section 4 guarantee that elections systems will do their best to accurately assess the current of popular favor.
If the republican guarantee was being enforce by the Supreme Court, it would have to be given higher priority than every other provision in the constitution. If it ever gives way to any other constitutional provision, the guarantee fails to be a guarantee.
By the meaning of words, it is the Constitution’s sword Excalibur that no other constitutional provision can stand against.
This seird Excalibur is already free. It has already been discovered by the court, and the manageable standards for using it are obvious to anyone who looks at it. It should be invoked in every suit from here on out against the Democrats’ attacks on our electoral system.
Every Democrat attempt to enable vote fraud, from mass mail-in voting the ongoing voter-registration of tens of millions of illegal aliens, it’s all blatantly unconstitutional under the republican guarantee, and everyone needs to start using it.
Another way to check the current popular favor is by the censorship regimes that Democrats have been trying to implement. Gateway Pundit’s suit against systematic government-orchestrated censorship was recently declined by the Supreme Court for lack of standing, of all things, just as the Texas suit against the use of unconstitutional voting systems by Pennsylvania and other states during the 2020 election was rejected for lack of standing.
“Are we not part of the United States,” cried Texas Attorney General Paxton. Yes you are, but for that to matter you would have had to sue under the one provision of the constitution that empowers all parts of “the United States” to act against unrepublican government actions.
The republican guarantee names the “United States” as its guarantor. Of course that means first of all, all three branches of the federal government, but it must also include every state, and even every citizen. We are all part of “The United States,” and therefore all have standing to sue on behalf of The United States.
Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We the People can never be excluded from it, as our now fully communist Democratic Party is currently trying finalize.
They succeeded in stealing one election from us, thanks to our Supreme Court’s long abominable lack of due diligence in upholding the Republican guarantee. They must not be allowed to steal another, or the loss of our republican form of government will almost certainly be total.
The founders gave us a sword Excalibur to defend our republican system of government. We must use it.
OMG, where to start?
First of all, no, it was not justice Brennan who “sank the sword into the stone”. That happened in 1849, in Luther v Borden. The Supreme Court ruled that the Republican Guarantee clause is not justiciable. It’s up to the president and Congress to enforce it and the courts can’t interfere.
Each house of Congress can enforce it by not seating members it believes not to have been properly elected, and if a house makes such a decision no court can order it to seat that member. (However if the house accepts that a member was properly elected and is qualified, but doesn’t want to seat him anyway, then the courts can and will order it to seat him. Powell v McCormick.)
The president can enforce it by sending troops into a state to overthrow a government he deems not republican. E.g. a stolen state election, or election rules he considers unfair. The only check on him is impeachment.
By the way, the Republican Guarantee clause only applies to the states, not to the United States. It would obviously be silly to charge the United States with guaranteeing that its own government would have a republican form. The constitution itself is that guarantee, and no better is possible.
Also, whatever else stolen elections may violate, they do not violate the first amendment.
Gotta go now. More later, probably.
Milhouse is wrong as always. Brennan got a lot right in Baker v. Carr. In particular, he wrote a very clear explication of why Luther v. Borden and other earlier cases were wrong.
That is, he pulled the sword from the stone. But then he sank it straight back in.
He explained how guarantee clause cases do not automatically raise the kind of “political question” conflicts with the other branches of government that had vitiated earlier cases. In particular, Baker v. Carr itself did not raise any such conflicts.
Earlier attempts to apply guarantee clause arguments to election law had all sought to overturn the results of a particular election on that basis, after the will of the people had already been polled and the results certified by the other co-equal branches of government.
That is where the “political question” conflicts were coming from in election law cases. But Baker was not trying to overturn any election result. It was an apportionment case where the plaintiff did not want voters in the adjacent congressional district (with a much smaller number of voters in it than his) to continue to have their votes count for much more than his did. He wanted his vote to receive equal weight in the NEXT election.
Brennan actually did a great job laying out that, if discoverable and manageable standards for adjudicating the republican guarantee could be found, then it could possibly be used to decide Baker’s case.
But equal apportionment was ruled out as a republican requirement, given that it is violated by the U.S. Senate.
At that, Brennan surmised that it was very unlikely that any discoverable and manageable standard of adjudication would ever be found, and the majority signed on to this.
It was absurd. There was no attempt at any kind of historical survey of the meaning of republicanism. No, “hey, does anybody know what the definition of republicanism is?” So they missed Hamilton’s definition. If they had seen it they would have realized immediately that it has broad application, requiring at the very least honest elections and no weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents.
Instead, since Brennan himself didn’t know what republicanism was, he just surmised that no one did and that no one ever would. Crazy.
Luther v. Borden was crazy too. As I said, a long history of Supreme Court failure to conduct basic due diligence regarding the most powerfully written provision in the entire Constitution.
As for the republican guarantee applying “only” to the states. Note that the Constitution gives it to the states to conduct all elections, federal and state. Thus any unrepublican election process, like mass mail-in voting, designed in a way that leaves wide open opportunity for mass vote fraud and election fraud, clearly undermines and hence violates the guarantee of honest elections (one of the requirements of republicanism).
Ditto for any weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents that occurs at the state level, as seen with the trumped-up prosecutions of Trump in NY and Georgia.
Finally, it is obvious that in order to fulfill the guarantee to the states that they shall not be subject to unrepublican government, the federal government can also not be allowed to engage in unrepublican actions.
Every state has the federal government over it. Thus if the federal government adopts an unrepublican form, such as by weaponizing the powers of the federal government against political opponents (as Biden-Harris are doing), then every state is subject to that unrepublican government, violating the guarantee.
Alex, that is a load of nonsense. The Rhode Island case wasn’t just trying to overturn an election. The rebels claimed (with justification) that RI did not have a republican form of government, so they held their own election and went to court demanding that their elected governor and legislature be recognized, as well as the congressmen they elected, and the senators their legislature elected. And the Supreme Court said that’s not justiciable. It’s up to Congress whether to recognize your congressmen and the president whether to install your governor in power. The judiciary has no role to play.
Also, the term “the United States” means the federal government. Nothing more and nothing less. It does not mean the individual states; only the entity that consists of their union. And it’s that entity that is to guarantee that the states have republican forms of government. It is not to guarantee that it itself has one, nor is it for them to guarantee that. The constitution itself is the only guarantor of that. The form of government that the USA has is the one the constitution mandates, and it makes no difference whether you call that “republican” or some other word. The constitution itself does not use that word for the government it establishes.
Brennan addressed all that in Baker v. Carr. That kind of “political question problem” — where the matter is one that is properly left for the political branches to decide — is not always present in a potential guarantee clause case. For instance, it did not arise in Baker v. Carr.
Neither did a second kind of political question problem arise in Baker: the one I describe above, where other actions by the co-equal branches of government are at stake, like the certification of an election result.
Then Brennan identified a third kind of obstacle to the justiciability of a guarantee clause pleading: the difficulty of locating “judicially discoverable and manageable standards of adjudication” (i.e. a workable definition of republicanism, or a workable requirement of republican government, integral to the concept of republicanism as the framers meant it).
Brennan described this as a third kind of “political question problem,” probably just to make for an easy grouping with the other two types of political question problems.
In Baker, this third type of obstacle was the only one that arose. Brennan was explicit that if a discoverable and manageable standard that applied to Baker could be found, then the case could turn out to be justiciable on that grounds, and similarly for other cases.
In short, he dispensed with any older assumptions of blanket non-justiciability.
Then he blew it with his unwarranted assumption that judicially discoverable and manageable standards of adjudication would most likely not emerge. At the same time he also, in offhand fashion, made another unwarranted assumption: that if the manageable standards hurdle could be overcome, then one of the other political problems would probably jump up, further tending to dismiss the possibility of a viable guarantee clause case.
Turns out he was very wrong about that. Hamilton’s definition of republicanism applies most directly to election systems (that they can’t be designed to enable election fraud), and as long as election lawsuits are directed at future elections, not past ones, none of Brennan’s political question problems arise.
Ditto with suits claiming unrepublican weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents. The goal of suit would be to stop this weaponization from tainting an election, rather than trying to undo an election after the fact, and in that case political question problems do not arise.
Of course there can still be cases where the Luther v. Borden type of political question problem will arise, but there is a large and crucial sphere where they do not.
This has not been fleshed out by the courts for the simple reason that they have never looked at Hamilton’s definition of republicanism as a source for manageable standards for adjudicating guarantee clause claims, but they SHOULD be looking at it, since it has already been found to be discoverable (having been discovered in other areas of constitutional law), and since Hamilton’s definition immediately gives rise to an easily manageable standard of adjudication.
Brennan’s precedent in Baker v. Carr asserts that this is all that is needed to make the republican guarantee justiciable.
That actually means that it HAS to be done, according to Chief Justice Marshall’s great principle of Constitutional interpretation, asserted in Marbury v. Madison:
“It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible unless the words require it.”
If there is a way to interpret the republican guarantee as justiciable, then it must be so interpreted. The current state of constitutional desuetude is not constitutionally viable, given the presence not just of a possible alternative, but of an obviously correct one.
All they have to do is be aware of Hamilton’s definition, instead of muddling around in ignorance of what republicanism might require.
Lots of different election systems could fit with republicanism. Just not ones that are designed to enable phony elections that usurp the will of the people, like we have now.
You are an odd cat Milhouse, to somehow be determined not to see that.
Then we move to your assertion that “Thus any law, or any government procedure or action, that either intentionally or unnecessarily checks the current popular favor should be ruled unconstitutional.”
The whole point of the constitution’s design is to check the current popular favor. That’s why we have senators with long terms, a president who’s not responsible to Congress, and an independent judiciary with lifetime tenure. It’s why we have a bill of rights, listing things the public may not do no matter how much it currently wants to.
“The whole point of the constitution’s design ..”
Yep – Else they would have just gone with simple Democracy. They wanted a check on the passions of the mob as well as protection for the same mob from the unchecked passions of the Government.
Milhouse: “The whole point of the constitution’s design is to check the current popular favor.”
When Hamilton refers to “the current of popular favor,” he is not referring to whatever the majority may favor on any issue, he is directly referring to the current of popular favor as to who shall fill the government offices created by the new Constitution.
In this context, the current of popular favor being seriously checked means there is some kind of stolen or fraudulent election, so that the will of the majority is not being represented in the election result.
Milhouse may be for checking the will of the majority at many points, as am I, and as was Hamilton (who had just helped author the Constitution that imposed a host of limits and checks and balances on the majority), but surely Milhouse is not for stolen elections.
The ideal check on the current of popular favor to have in the choosing of who shall govern us is ZERO.
Seriously, it’s very important not to let the need to check the will of the majority in some areas create any doubt that, in places where the will of the majority properly holds sway, that will of the majority needs to be honestly and accurately rendered. The current of popular favor in those areas needs to be as unchecked as possible.
Good to clear that up. Milhouse’s devil’s advocacy can be useful in that way.
In this vein, suppose someone were to interpret Hamilton’s assertion that a form of government is unrepublican to the extent that the current of popular favor is checked as applying, not just to the process by which government officers are chosen, but to all matters, so that if majority rule is checked anywhere, in anything the majority might want to do, the resulting government is to that extent unrepublican.
What would the Court say if a plaintiff offered this unlimited majority rule as a necessary requirement of republicanism, using Hamilton’s remarks at the constitutional debates as an authority?
The Court would hold this interpretation of Hamilton’s definition of republicanism to be “undiscoverable” as a possible necessary feature of republicanism because it is violated by many provisions of the Constitution as it was passed. The entire structure of limited enumerated powers, for instance, serves as a check on what laws the majority in Congress can pass.
That proves (or “discovers”) that a general empowerment of majority rule CANNOT be a necessary requirement of republicanism. The government that is created by the Constitution serves as the one undoubted example we have of what the authors of the Constitution considered to be republican, so anything that is inconsistent with it cannot be a necessary requirement of republicanism.
We know that this is what the Court would say because this is exactly how the Court ruled in Baker v. Carr. The possible requirement of republican government that was put forward by the plaintiff was that congressional districts must be roughly equal in size, so that some people’s votes are not given a lot more weight than others.
The Court opined that equal voting power cannot be a requirement of republicanism because it is violated by the U.S. Senate, and the Senate must be considered compatible with republicanism. Equal voting power was discovered in this way NOT to be a requirement of republicanism.
This procedure for finding proposed requirements of republicanism to be not-discoverable is already established as Supreme Court precedent, so it is secure that this is what should and would happen in the future. It is not speculative.
Ditto for any suggestion that, if the checking of the current of popular favor is viewed as unrepublican, that would require the franchise to be broad. The franchise created by the Constitution as originally ratified was not broad, and the Constitution must be considered to be an example, if not the exemplar, of a republican form of government.
Thus a broad franchise is discovered NOT to be a necessary requirement of republicanism. If the republic wants to broaden its franchise, it must do so by constitutional amendment.
This exercise shows that Brennan’s criteria for assessing proposed republican requirements, that they be “discoverable” and “manageable,” work pretty well. Brennan got a lot right.
Now apply the same analysis to Hamilton’s definition of republicanism when it is applied specifically to the people’s choice of who shall govern them (as Hamilton used it). Here the idea that the current of popular favor should be unchecked means that there should be an honest election system, and this is NOT anywhere at odds our Constitution.
Just the opposite. Election integrity is protected under our First Amendment rights to speak, assemble and associate for purposes of effectively advancing a shared political agenda. Stolen elections violate those core political rights so they are illegal.
Similarly for weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents. Similarly for government orchestration of the censoring of political opponents.
Why then is it important to protect these things under the republican guarantee, if they are already protected elsewhere? Because the republican guarantee is the most powerfully written provision in the entire Constitution.
It is the only guarantee, meaning that in any conflict with any or even every other constitutional provision, it must stand and they must fall, or the guarantee fails to be a guarantee.
This extreme priority is fully warranted. If our system of government itself is lost, if we let our republican democracy be usurped, then we have lost the tree of liberty, and every fruit of the tree will be lost with it. Logically, the preservation of the tree must come first. It must take priority over all else, and that is how the clause is written.
It’s just a great shame that Brennan was unaware of Hamilton’s perfect definition of republicanism, which focused on exactly the most important issue, election integrity. If that true republican requirement had been enforced by the Court it would have blocked all the mechanisms of usurpation that the Democrats have been amassing over my entire lifetime.
They have been allowed to become America’s party of election fraud, to the point where they finally did manage to steal the last presidential election, and have since been subverting all powers of government.
Does anyone know who wrote the republican guarantee? I’m guessing it was Hamilton, and that he knew what the danger was.
Hamilton has long been my favorite founder, haha. Not that Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams et al. had any cobwebs on them.
Bill,
You and I and some others on this forum have a more immediate threat – the growth in genocidal Jew-hatred around the world.
This is actually worse than the 1930s – the enemy is more numerous the combined number of Muslims and Leftists are in the billions and now outnumber us everywhere. The USA is no longer safe because Jew-hating Communists control our institutions and the number of Muslims (and let’s be honest, they all want us dead) is growing. Massive third world immigration now means that Jews are vastly outnumbered by Islamonazis in formerly safe nations like Canada, the UK and Australia. Israel is on the verge of being nuked by genocidal Islamonazis. The UN is setting up the legal framework for our extermination.
To be honest, I don’t see how this doesn’t end in a second Holocaust (this time, a worldwide one). Jews anre just too vastly outnumbered. The only justice would be Israel launching her nuclear arsenal and taking the world down with her.
It’s probably the most depressing post anyone has ever written here but I think a lot of the Jews here deep down believe that this fate is possible.
When my SS and IRA and 401k get stolen my return will be four tons of flesh.
Our politicians are far overdue for a reminder of why we have the second amendment.
Earlier warnings came in the 2009 drama “The Divided,” an independent Hollywood drama/thriller, one of the few films ever to characterize honestly the anti-American Left and its naively destructive alliance with radical Islam.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1113785/
The fact is that the economic and cultural freedom experienced in primarily the US and to a lesser degree Europe, Canada, Australia etc. over the past couple hundred years has been a tiny blip in human history.
The default state of humanity is servitude, poverty and enslavement.
By the Grace of God, we happened to have been born into a period unparalleled in human history, and once it collapses, unlikely to ever occur again.
As others have said, I’m sad to see it coming to an end and I sincerely hope my days are over before it all comes crashing down as it inevitably will, but I’m extremely grateful to have been fortunate enough to have been born into the time and place I was.
Also as others have said, it’s coming because we “did it to ourselves”. It’s human nature and has been repeated multiple times throughout history. It happened faster this time than, say, the Ottoman Empire or the Roman Empire, probably because we had the freedom and liberty to make stupid, bad decisions and get ourselves into this situation much faster than usual, but even the founders knew it was inevitable.
“…I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. ”
–Benjamin Franklin
As I’ve been saying for decades: A people always gets the government it deserves.
It was great while it lasted, and I’m glad I got to enjoy it, but everything that has a beginning, also has an end.
Growing up in 1950’s-60’s, I had no idea we were at the zenith of human civilization. Creativity was everywhere. The Beats, progress in science and engineering, walk on the moon, etc. We’ve done nothing since the early ’70’s. Other than the computer, which is emerging as a tool of mass control. What happened to all those ideas about high speed rail? Improved cities?
What I really miss is the optimism of the time. Things would get better. And, if you worked hard, studied hard, and cared, you could be part of that.Things seem so dark now. Which is how my parents described the Soviet Union following a trip there.
I designed the IO Board that went into the World’s First BBS. You ave been given a tool for mass resistance along with mass control. Resist.
Drugs CAN’T cause addiction. Pass. It. On.
https://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2024/04/better-proof-government-is-lying-about.html
The radicals of the late 60’s took over in academia, for one. Regardless of their purported major, their primary goal is the creation of more radicals. To destroy society, not build it. Marxists destroy.
Would that we could force the current Democrat presidential candidate and her supporters to sit and read through these many thoughtful replies to Jacobson’s essay.. Born in 1942, part of the small “Silent Generation”, I am now 82 years old and so thankful that I grew up in a much better time, as others of you have expressed. Perhaps, as some here have commented, the rise and fall of civilizations is the inevitable outcome of human hubris, but we always believed that somehow the USA was different enough, a noble experiment, to defy the course of history. I will be gone from the planet before this all plays out, of course…..although at the rate of change these days, perhaps not.
“You guys have no idea how painful it is to … be forced to watch it all unravel”
I came into the world on the eve of World War Two, and have lived through the best years of this Republic. My POV was that of a broadcast journalist who gradually, and reluctantly, came to understand that We-the-People were committing suicide as a nation. No one needs to name or explain the reasons to members of this site. My remaining time in this place is short, but to the extent that I’m able I shall resist. When I kneel before the almighty Judge and He asks what effort I made to stop the rot and save the best example of self-government ever created, I want to know that I used whatever talents I have from Him to do some service to that cause.
Our best years have yet to come. Trump – if he gets elected and lives long enough – will lead us out of darkness. A darkness caused by the NATURE of human leadership. The leaders HAVE to be narcissists. Normal humans don’t like the continued attention of crowds. What we want is the narcissists who have given up the anger. Trump will educate. You can read more here:
https://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-role-of-ptsd-in-history.html
Child abuse is the cause of many social problems. We don’t give it the attention it deserves. This covers drug addiction:
https://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2024/04/better-proof-government-is-lying-about.html
I adore Trump but he’s not a religious leader. He will only have four years, max. I have my eye on DeSantis after Trump, if we’re lucky … but DeSantis isn’t a relligious leader either. Theocracies don’t do well and I have no interest in establishing one here.
I do believe Trump survied last month due to God’s grace, and I believe that America has a mystical connection to God – how else to explain this country’s extraordinary growth and well being? However big the problems that faced us, we were able to solve them. We were gifted the confidence to face what was in front of us and deal with it successfully. Things were not too easy and things were not too hard. But God expected us to do the work. He just provided the possibility.
We can’t lose sight of the fact that the work to preserve and prosper is our responsibility.
I don’t think we’re seeing suicide or a fall. This is being done intentionally by folks who want power and have been working on the project for well over a century. This nation is being murdered from inside.
There is an answer. The world is being run by narcissists. It has to be. Normal people do not like the continued attention of crowds. Some of them are still angry about what caused their narcissism. Child abuse. Abused child PTSD is a mental illness. The PTSD anger has to be cured before we let them have power. Hitler was an abused Child. Stalin. Marx. too.
Child abuse is how Islam raises its boys. Abused boys – properly directed – are fearless fighters. They are heartless. They can kill. Normally a difficult thing even for soldiers.
And: ==> Hitler was an abused child. Marx was an abused child. Stalin was an abused child. Putin is an abused child. The displaced rage from their abuse dissolved their morals. The anger and the accompanying narcissism are the disease. Abused children are angry, Permanently. They have no human empathy. They crave power and control.
https://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-role-of-ptsd-in-history.html
Hitler Youth is what’s going on. The Muslim Brotherhood allied with Hitler for their usual reasons (policy agreements). Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is sad to watch it all unravel. To have all that you and your fathers and forefathers built be degraded defiled and destroyed
It is even worse to be responsible for that destruction.
Because we don’t fight to keep it.
The left fights for their revolution. They take to the streets. They riot, burn maim and kill.
We type. Just like this. Heated rhetoric on a screen. Useless.
We’ve got families, kids to take care of. There’s a job a mortgage a something that makes the risk too great.
Worse, we’ve got legions of our people bleating that violence doesn’t solve anything.
Really?
Was slavery ended with a strongly worded editorial?
Did Hitler surrender because someone made a really good point in a speech?
Did the USSR disintegrate because a television program pointed out that what the communists were doing wasn’t nice?
The left sure seems to think violence can solve things. And their puppet in in the White House because of that.
This saying keeps popping up–
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”
I don’t think the people who post it understand exactly where they stand in that phrase.
To go with it, they also say that all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing– but I disagree. Good men don’t do ‘nothing’. WEAK men do nothing.
The left is fighting, actually fighting for their revolution, and because they are unmet on the field THEY ARE WINNING.
If we fight, we will win.
Yes, they will demonize us for doing it. Yes they will make us look bad and try to destroy us for fighting back, for picking up our swords and showing them what’s what –but they’re going to do that whether we fight or not.
We have reached the point where we have the choice, we can die on our knees, or we can fight, and we may die, but our cause will win, and our posterity will be restored.
As a great man said,
Fight, FIGHT, FIGHT!!
No, the Left did not take over because they overtly “Fight, FIGHT, FIGHT!!” They did it through the slow march of institutions and slowly tweaked things sub rosa. They did not directly attack the consequences of those fundamental, but left the façade while they were changing those fundamentals from what supported that sense of “normalcy” people had into new fundamentals which were conducive towards something else. It isn’t until society has already been hollowed out that they knock down the façade and let a new normal that better fits in with their clandestinely build fundamentals.
What they’ve done with same sex marriage is an example of this, where people who don’t want gay/lesbian couples to be able to marry are seen as the weirdos who aren’t normal. And those fundamentals that they destroyed can not be rebuilt by “intelligent designers”. since they grew organically over centuries if not millennia.
Protect, defend, and slowly rebuild what pillars of society remain of those fundamentals. Focusing on the superficial isn’t “fighting”, it’s helplessly flailing about.
The Vietnam War wasn’t ‘winding down’: you Yanks were preparing to betray allies you had been grateful to have for Ten Years. Great training for ditching the Afghans similarly – & without any need compared to ‘Nam. You’re getting ever better at betrayal, indeed now you’re doing it to yourselves.
All multi-ethnic/racial empires that are held together by force break apart.
The decline of western civilization is directly tied to the decline in the belief of the Judeo-Christian God, a trend which was famously identified by Nietzsche in the late 1800s, with his declaration that “God is dead, and we killed him”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn highlighted the problem again in his 1983 “Men have forgotten God” speech. As we move away from the God of the Bible we are returning to the old pagan practices of child sacrifice at the altar of transgenderism and abortion, and worshiping the weather, and explicitly rejecting the sovereignty of the individual in favor of collective rights and collective guilt.
Blessed is the nation whose GOD is the Lord. – Psalm 33:12
US and developed nations, formerly congruent with Judeo-Christian ethics and values, have now instituted laws that enable their citizens to break all of GOD’s Commandments and some that would force them to do so – abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, LBGT issues and more. There is greatly diminished value for human life, no reverent fear of GOD, evidence and truth are ignored and lies and deception are promoted for the sake of ideology, people are silenced and persecuted for dissenting opinions and beliefs and for telling the truth about gender and health issues.
Democrat party nominee, Kamala Harris has openly threatened farmers (!) and threatened to seize patents. She and her fellow communist totalitarians want to control agriculture and businesses, natural resources, information and media, speech and thought – everything. Of course, they will allow boutique farms to raise choice meats, vegetables and fruit for themselves, but the general population will be left to either starve or eat bugs and acorns. That’s the way it always is with communists. The people eat beans and cabbage, if they can find it, while the elites dine on steak and caviar. All the previous tyrants have brought on famines with their disastrous policies, causing millions to starve.
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1825330630277931214
All the descent into evil by our leaders and people, makes our nationss vulnerable and targets of GOD’s wrath and judgment, vulnerable to attacks by our enemies, and to failure of business endeavors, failure of our land and crops and more.
We are in Leviticus 26 territory.
Leviticus 26:14-26
14 “But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments,
15 if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,
16 then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
17 I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.
18 And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins,
19 and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.
20 And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
21 “Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins.
22 And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted.
23 “And if by this discipline you are not turned to me but walk contrary to me,
24 then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins.
25 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And if you gather within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26 When I break your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.
May the Lord have mercy and help us to repent and return to Him and re-align with His Word, Law, Commandments – as in Nehemiah chapters 8 and 9.
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A lot of “old man yells at cloud” energy combined with some rose tinted glasses here. Plenty of things were just as bad if not worse. The only difference is that society’s ablative armor has worn thin enough for normal people who are old enough to notice how much things have changed.
The Left has been at this for a century or so. The Frankfurt School laid much of the groundwork back in the 1930’s which itself built upon “intellectuals” from as far back as the late 19th century.
Leftist though has been in the drivers seat since then. They have claimed the fundamentals and slowly changed the foundation without disrupting the façade. Now, though, that façade no longer has the foundation it once had. Sadly, some feel that that façade is the foundation and are willing to burn it all down on the assumption that their beliefs will automatically be the ones to rise from the ashes.
Things have been bad and in ways worse in the past. Back in the ’70s soft-core kiddy porn was legal (and hard-core legal in Europe) with celebrities openly keeping underage sex slaves. Homosexuality was legalized. Drugs were even more abundant an openly popular. Abortion was supported by Protestant churches and almost everyone else. Elsewhere, the welfare state ran rampant. Tax rates were >70%. People still accepted “experts” would meritocratically run things. Lawyers everywhere knew that the 2nd Amendment didn’t apply to individuals and gun control was the conservative position with Chief Justice Burger being picked because he was thought of as conservative.
Heck, even that was better than the early Cold War in the late ’40s and early ’50s. People expected armies, including the U.S. to be under the control and direction of the U.N. Self-selected leaders and intellectuals were expected to efficiently run society for people.
Heck, even back in the 1930s people expect the future to be like the H.G.Wells movie “The Shape Of Things To Come”.
But none of that interfered with people’s superficial sense of normalcy, and people look back with rose tinted glasses.
It was the conservative intellectual movement that first offered a countervailing argument that they fought to just make discussable. They have slowed down this tsunami and even pushed back successfully. The stunning reversal of gun rights in the past half-century is testament to that. As is skepticism of intellectual experts and European-style welfare state that was developing.
But what we are seeing now, particularly amongst the “fighting” crowd, is a reaction to the superficial loss of normalcy, and not the underlying foundational swap. Rage all you want, but without the lowly fight for the fundamentals out of the limelight, any superficial victory is, well, superficial (at best).
We can fight for those core fundamentals so that whatever may come in the future is good, or we can fight for the superficial and try to hold onto that sense of “normalcy” by jumping around in a desultory manner trying to fight disparate myriad threats made perpetually manifest.