Tag: decline and fall

They had their chance

Glenn Reynolds explains how David Brooks and company created The Trumpening:

Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish,
thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about
today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution
that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the
Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and
working class.

The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement….
Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared “I’m not a fan of this movement.” After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it
was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their
promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives.

And now they call Trump supporters fascists and Nazis. So, guess what comes next if David Brooks and company are successful in keeping Donald Trump out of power?

Does no one know how to play this game?

Those who organized the mass multiethnic chimp-out in Chicago are celebrating their defeat of the Evil Donald Trump. 

Meanwhile, millions of white Americans, or as they were historically known, Americans, are deciding they had better vote for the only candidate who is going to deal with the invasion of America.

And if you weren’t already convinced that Ted Cruz is not the man for the job, his response to the situation should suffice.

Ted Cruz hit The Donald on such violence, saying his campaign bears some responsibility for encouraging it. “A campaign bears responsibility for creating an environment when the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence,” Cruz declared on Fox News’s The Kelly File Friday night.

I’ve never supported Cruz in any way because he’s a Goldman-Sachs creature, and I don’t regard him as being eligible for the presidency anyhow, the various emanations and penumbras that declare him a “natural born citizen” notwithstanding. But the political tone-deafness that he is showing here is truly astonishing.

Meanwhile, Mike Cernovich brings us news about the Washington Post’s contribution to the media’s desperate anti-Trump campaign:

Jabin Botsford has been ordered by Washington Post reporter Ben Terris to cover up a media hoax, we can now report. (Credit for these shocking revelations goes to this Internet sleuth.)

When Michelle Fields was nudged during a Donald Trump press conference, Ben Terris blamed Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Fields went on the media circuit, accusing Lewandowski of assault. Her accusation was later revealed to be false.

Yet the story goes deeper. The Washington Post is actively covering up the false accusation against Trump’s campaign.

Trump’s decision to cancel the rally is looking more and more like his previous decision to skip the Fox debate; he knows a trap when he sees it and isn’t afraid to take action to evade it.

The message and the harbinger

Trump is merely one harbinger of nationalism rising across the West in response to the traitorous globalist elite:

This side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump tends to be portrayed as something of a unique event. He’s broken every rule, slaughtered every sacred cow, and defied every political prediction: He’s stronger than ever. To explain him, many American commentators, particularly his critics, have suggested that the Republican presidential contender has latched onto some specific quirk in America’s national psyche, or identified an inherent weakness in the U.S. political system or failing on the part of its current political parties….

But from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Donald Trump story looks very different. From the perspective of many anxious op-ed writers in Western Europe, Trump isn’t an anomaly. Instead, he’s part of a dramatic populist surge occurring across Western democracies at the moment, on both the political left and the right.

“From Spain to Sweden to Poland, populist protest parties are spreading,” wrote Josef Joffe last month in the German newspaper Die Zeit. All that differs is the terminology: “In America the ‘mainstream media’ is the enemy. Here it is [called] the ‘Lügenpresse [lying press].’ Here they rage against ‘those at the top,’ there against the ‘elites.’”

“In nearly every European country they are on the move now, the little Trumps,” declared Evelyn Roll in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, warning against the dangers of nationalism.

“We have Marine Le Pen. They have Trump,” agreed Le Monde’s Alain Frachon. Le Pen, who heads France’s Front National, often draws these comparisons, given her similar nationalist and anti-immigration posture. But others point to Viktor Orban in Hungary or the politicians in Germany’s “Alternative for Germany” party, a group opposed to immigration and the European Union that is expected to gain ground in the next election.

Of course, not every European observer is anxious as a result of these developments. My concern is that they are too little, too late, and that the allied elites will be able to use the anti-democratic rules of representative democracy to stifle the nationalist rise.

Because, as I have repeatedly warned, if the nationalists can’t succeed through the rules of representative democracy, the ultranationalists are going to succeed through force. Because open nationalist dictatorships in the interests of the nations will be vastly preferred by the various publics to hidden globalist dictatorship in the interests of the international elite.

And if the nationalists are stopped, that is the choice that will be presented to the nations of the West.

The mask comes off

Revealing the alien philosophy it concealed. It only took a few hours for the Transamerican School of National Identity to declare that disenfranchisement of actual Americans in favor of Ameriboos was desirable.

accordingtohoyt
This is VD’s bullshit. I can see it taking several generations to being fully civilized because part of it is a genetic selection thing, but in THAT case we’re all about somewhere close, myself included. Several generations to be fully American? Oh, take a powder. You need to be an idiot to believe that.

Amanda
I will take Sarah and all those like her who want to come to this country, who do so legally and who take all appropriate steps to become a citizen any day of the week over someone who looks down on them because they were not born here. Right now, Sarah looks much more “American” than you.

thewriterinblack  
“The immigrant becomes a citizen. The immigrant lays claim to now being American. Only by law, Sarah.”

This statement demonstrates that Sarah is more American than you are. Because she believes in what makes America, America. And you don’t.


Stephen W. Houghton
My paternal ancestors have been here since before the war of independence. I say Americans are those who take the oath and stand with us. Traitors, those what ever their blood who do not…. Go and lick your Donald’s hand, may your chains lay lightly upon you, and may our posterity forget that you were our countryman.

Randy Wilde
Meh. She’s more American than many people born in the U.S. She actually believes in the ideals on which the country was founded.

Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard
Nope and by my standards, you’re not a Real American and Sarah is.

Nicki  
You’re a fucking moron, and you don’t DESERVE the citizenship of this great nation.

jccarlton
Here’s the thing, Vox, YOU don’t get a say in who’s an American, not anymore. You’ve given that up for a villa in Italy. I imagine that you enjoy it, that means that you no longer have to deal with America’s problems. All your problem are the problems of Europe and you are welcome to them. As for REAL Americans, I would rather have some of the people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing over the years than somebody who is as childish and cowardly as you, Vox. You ran from America’s problems and then had the unmitigated GALL to say that Sarah isn’t good enough to be an American.

My, these transamericans are certainly entitled, aren’t they? Not only can they tell Americans what Real Americans are and are not, but they are going to kick out everyone who doesn’t think like they do, no matter whose posterity they happen might be! Nations aren’t genetically-related peoples, after all, but mere collections of similarly-minded groupthinkers.

Notice that I never said anything about Sarah being good enough to be an American. I never said anything about being American being something good, or even desirable. What I stated is a simple fact, one no more controversial than Sarah being female. She is Portuguese. She is not American. Becoming a U.S. citizen is paperwork; the mere fact that one has to become a U.S. citizen is sufficient to indicate that one is not an American. As it happens, I even know a few Americans who are not U.S. citizens.

Amongst all the emoting, hissy-fitting, posturing, and outrage, only one commenter, Ironbear, was sufficiently perspicacious to note how “the proposition nation” is not only ahistorical fiction, but in practice, must be intrinsically opposed to the genuine Rights of Englishmen on which the original Anglo-American nation was founded.

Is there a way to maintain and defend a nation of ideas without disenfranchising those who demonstrably don’t share those ideas, even though they be born here?

Saying that “We were able to sustain a nation of ideas as long as America remained a melting pot,” is true, but not useful in that context. The America that was is dead dead, and toxic ideas introduced, propagated, and made colour of law and custom by our supposed fellows murdered it – using the power of the vote, among other weapons.

I find Mrs. Hoyt’s concept of a prospective nation formed of ideas, ideals, and based upon shared experiences and principles to be aesthetically pleasing. I also see it as being extremely vulnerable, and demonstrably difficult to defend – unless one is willing to go all the way to the walls in eradicating ideas that are toxic to it, which our relatively recent ancestors didn’t. (I strongly suspect that they didn’t truly see the danger and the toxicity of Marxism until it was too late, or even really recognize what was killing us even then.)

The extremes required to protect those ideas from those who would destroy them with toxic ones are unpalatable as well, and not the least bit aesthetically or otherwise pleasing to me. I find that to be depressing, and without hope of a resolution that is not borne of fire and blood.

He is correct to be dubious. Their “proposition nation” is not even theoretically possible without the sort of thought police that their self-definitive ideals must reject. Defining a nation as a proposition is as intrinsically absurd and self-negating as feminism or communism or open-borders libertarianism. These transamerican idealists consider themselves to be intelligent and well-educated, and yet they have observably failed to even begin to think through the necessary consequences of the very values they erroneously claim makes one American.

And that, my dear Sarah, is one thing that you really should learn from me: ruthlessly thinking through the logical consequences of your foundational assumptions. As it stands, her core position is fundamentally illogical. On the other hand, at least she does seem to have changed her mind about my finally understanding Europe.

He’s become European through and through. He doesn’t wish the US well (doesn’t take much reading to see him gloating at potential destruction of the US. And all I have to do to attract his attention and unhinge him is say the US will survive, even though I don’t direct it at him.)

Under those circumstances for any American to follow his lead on things like presidential nominations is insane.

I don’t wish VD any harm — in fact, he’s pretty much irrelevant to me, in any way our paths intersect — and his ideas might yet win out in Europe. For America they’re a poison pill and as bad as Obama’s.

(Spreads hands and smiles.) Unhinged? Quite the contrary. Sarah and her commenters have beautifully demonstrated exactly what I intended from the start. Their naive USian ideals are fundamentally and functionally antithetical to the historical American ideals they ape so clumsily.

Depending upon how one reckons it, we stand on the verge of the fourth America. I count them as follows:

America 1.0: Constitutional America 1789-1865
America 2.0: American Empire 1865-1913
America 3.0: Republican US 1913-1941
America 3.1: Early Imperial US 1941-1965
America 3:2: Latter Imperial US 1965~2033 (est)
America 4.0: Post-US~2033

Sarah and her defenders are confusing America 2.0 for America 1.0, and are completely unaware that they living in an America 3.2 that is rapidly laying the groundwork for the Post-US. And while I still value the ideals of America 1.0, with a very few exceptions they simply don’t exist in the USA anymore. As for what Sarah calls my “ideas”, they will win out in both the USA and in Europe for the simple reason that they are not my ideas, they are simply my observations of what is already happening.

It is easy to know that I am much more likely to be correct than they are. Lacking imagination – ironic given how many SF writers are there – they assume the future will be the status quo extended into the future. And it will not be. Whatever it will be, it will most certainly not be that, not after the largest invasion in human history.

The preference cascade

Glenn Reynolds makes a connection between the Trumpening and #Brexit:

In America, Donald Trump — who many of the experts thought had no chance — is dominating the polls. In Britain, meanwhile, much of the public seems to be mobilizing in favor of exiting the troubled European Union — a British Exit, or Brexit.

Writing in The Spectator, Brendan O’Neill puts this down to a class revolt on both sides of the Atlantic. And he’s right as far as he goes, but I think there’s more than just a class revolt. I think there’s also a developing preference cascade. O’Neill writes: “In both Middle America and Middle England, among both rednecks and chavs, voters who have had more than they can stomach of being patronised, nudged, nagged and basically treated as diseased bodies to be corrected rather than lively minds to be engaged are now putting their hope into a different kind of politics. And the entitled Third Way brigade, schooled to rule, believing themselves possessed of a technocratic expertise that trumps the little people’s vulgar political convictions, are not happy. Not one bit.”

Well, that’s certainly true. Both America and Britain have developed a ruling class that is increasingly insular and removed from — and contemptuous of — the people it deigns to rule. The ruled are now returning the contempt.

Robert Prechter predicted this more than a decade ago. It’s also happening in other European countries. This is what happens when the social mood changes. The blithe, mindless optimism that permits the populace to be used and abused by the financial elite is gone. People are seeing more clearly now, and they are beginning to recognize what was done to them, and by whom.

There will be a reckoning. There will be many reckonings. And unfortunately, not all of them will be pretty, or even civilized.

When the tide goes out, it’s easy to see who was naked all along.

The obnoxious and obtuse left

The leftist technocrats of San Francisco don’t seem to grasp that when the revolution comes, they’re going to be among the first strung up. And in light of their entitled attitudes, deservedly so.

I am writing today, to voice my concern and outrage over the increasing homeless and drug problem that the city is faced with. I’ve been living in SF for over three years, and without a doubt it is the worst it has ever been. Every day, on my way to, and from work, I see people sprawled across the sidewalk, tent cities, human feces, and the faces of addiction. The city is becoming a shanty town… Worst of all, it is unsafe.

This holiday weekend, I had my parents in town from Santa Barbara and relatives from Denver and Rochester New York. Unfortunately, there was three separate incidents and countless times that we were approached for money and harassed.

The first incident involved a homeless drunken man in the morning coming up to their car and leaning up against it. Another bystander got frustrated with the drunken man, and they got into a heated pushing and shoving altercation.

The second incident occurred as we were leaving Tadich Grill in the financial district. A distraught, and high person was right in front of the restaurant, yelling, screaming, yelling about cocaine, and even, attempted to pull his pants down and show his genitals.

Finally, last night Valentines, I was at Kabuki Theater inside watching a movie. About two hours into the film, a man stumbled in the front door. He proceeded to walk into the theater, down the aisle to the front, wobbled toward the emergency door, opened it, and then took his shirt off and laid down. He then came back into the theater shielding his eyes from the running projector. My girlfriend was terrified and myself and many people ran out of the theater.

What are you going to do to address this problem? The residents of this amazing city no longer feel safe. I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society. The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day. I want my parents when they come visit to have a great experience, and enjoy this special place.

I am telling you, there is going to be a revolution. People on both sides are frustrated, and you can sense the anger. The city needs to tackle this problem head on, it can no longer ignore it and let people do whatever they want in the city. I don’t have a magic solution… It is a very difficult and complex situation, but somehow during Super Bowl, almost all of the homeless and riff raff seem to up and vanish. I’m willing to bet that was not a coincidence. Money and political pressure can make change. So it is time to start making progress, or we as citizens will make a change in leadership and elect new officials who can.

 “I shouldn’t have to see the pain.” Yes, that sums it all up right there. God forbid that he actually attempt to do anything about it himself. No wonder the white SJWs are starting to get scared. They’re starting to realize that their mercenary army of immigrants and impoverished hates them as much as it hates the white traditionalists they were imported to destroy.

And we’re sure as hell not going to defend him.

Bailouts are for the banks

Not for the little people:

Believe it or not, the US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people for not paying their outstanding federal student loans.

Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987. He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.

Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans.

I suspect Donald Trump is the only reason the USA is not entering a revolutionary environment. But even with Trump, one more round of bank bailouts should do it.

The end of the EU

The abomination appears to be in its death throes.

A new German plan to impose “haircuts” on holders of eurozone sovereign debt risks igniting an unstoppable European bond crisis and could force Italy and Spain to restore their own currencies, a top adviser to the German government has warned.

“It is the fastest way to break up the eurozone,” said Professor Peter Bofinger, one of the five “Wise Men” on the German Council of Economic Advisers.

“A speculative attack could come very fast. If I were a politician in Italy and I was confronted by this sort of insolvency risk I would want to go back to my own currency as fast as possible, because that is the only way to avoid going bankrupt,” he told The Telegraph.

The German Council has called for a “sovereign insolvency mechanism” even though this overturns the financial principles of the post-war order in Europe, deeming such a move necessary to restore the credibility of the “no-bailout” clause in the Maastricht Treaty. Prof Bofinger issued a vehement dissent.

The plan has the backing of the Bundesbank and most recently the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, who usually succeeds in imposing his will in the eurozone. Sensitive talks are under way in key European capitals, causing shudders in Rome, Madrid and Lisbon.

Deflation is killing the bond markets; governments require an ever-growing inflation in order to pay off their debts in cheaper money. That’s why interest rates have been driven negative, but it’s a fool’s game because the problem continues to expand the longer the day of reckoning is delayed.

Although complete collapse is unlikely, between the migrant crisis, the debt crisis, and Brexit, it’s possible that 2016 will see the first European nations break free of the Fourth Reich.

The decline of the West

I’ve read part of Spengler’s magnum opus, and to be honest, despite being a Hesse fan, I have a very hard time with all the German mystical babble. But in light of recent events, I feel as if I should probably return to it soon.

Political Epochs in Autumn and Winter

    1. Domination of Money (“Democracy”). Economic powers permeating the political forms and authorities. 1800-2000 AD.

    2. Victory of force-politics over money. Increasing primitiveness of political forms. Inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually-increasing crudity of despotism. 2000-2200 AD.

    3. Private and family policies of individual leaders. The world as spoil. Egypticism, Mandarinism, Byzantinism. Historyless stiffening and enfeeblement even of the imperial machinery, against young peoples eager for spoil, or alien conquerors. Primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living. After 2200 AD.

The Future, Echoing Roman Civilization

In the Winter of Roman politics there was a shift from the Roman Republic to Caesarism, or government led by a charismatic strongman. Eventually, the idea of representation broke down and there was a shift to bloody “force politics.”

Of course, our current government is modeled on the Roman system. There are even similarities between the two dominant parties. In Rome, the two dominant parties were the Optimates and Populares, the Republicans and Democrats of their day. This form of representative government eventually stops working because the system of checks and balances interfere with each other, causing gridlock. Force politics (killing people) eventually comes along to break the gridlock. (As an aside, some historians say it’s possible we entered this era in 1963 with the assassination of JFK by the military-industrial complex.) Arguably, this predictive model is spot-on with the current situation in the Western world. So, if Spengler’s model is correct, we are awaiting the rise of a dictator to come along and smash the rotten edifice of democracy sometime this century.

Regardless, I very much doubt that Oswald Spengler could possibly have imagined the descendants of his co-nationals being anywhere nearly as stupid as they have been under the suicidal leadership of Angela Merkel.

Bring the 3rd World, become the 3rd World

Western civilization is contracting before our eyes in France:

From the air it appears as an urban sprawl, fanning in all directions, gobbling up every available scrap of land.

With its schools, theatre, nightclub, shops and restaurants, the migrants’ camp known as the Jungle has now become a thriving Calais suburb, albeit a ramshackle one.

As our aerial pictures show, the camp on the edge of the French port has expanded beyond recognition in six months.

Last summer it was home to about 3,000 people awaiting their chance of a new life across the Channel in the UK. Now its population, made up of 22 nationalities, edges towards 7,000. But while there are some vestiges of basic infrastructure, conditions in the camp remain dangerous and unsanitary.

Civilization is not land or buildings. It is not technology or infrastructure. It is people. The Greeks understood this. The Romans understood this. Import enough uncivilized people, allow enough barbarians entry, and your society will become uncivilized.

This doesn’t mean civilization is dying, as some would have it. Such barbarization is not merely reversible, it is easily reversed. It merely requires changing the authorities that presently rule the West, which will happen. The only question is when.

And before any Americans complacently predict the end of France, I suggest having a look at what southern and central California look like now, or reading Victor Davis Hanson’s mournful dirges for the land of his youth.