Tag: decline and fall

Amend or go home

Remember when all the progressives and moderates were saying that a Defense of Marriage Amendment was unnecessary because Congress passed a law?  Yeah, well, they lied:

A divided U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal law that defines
marriage as a heterosexual union, saying it violates the rights of
married gay couples by denying them government benefits.

Between legalizing abortion and the government dismantling of marriage, the USA has now officially entered Sodom and Gomorrah territory.   I wouldn’t put too much confidence in that “God bless America” notion.  The best-case scenario is that He’s not paying attention. Following American politics these days feels like watching Gibbon on fast-forward; an imperial decline and fall measured in years rather than centuries.

I find it remarkable that Republicans still bother passing this sort of law when it has been clear since at least 1973 that the Supreme Court will simply overturn anything that is effectively conservative. Amend or don’t bother.

UPDATE: And they effectively overturned Proposition 8 in California by refusing to hear it.  Taken together, these two “rulings” make it official: American democracy is entirely dead.

The court avoided a ruling on the merits in a second gay-marriage case
involving California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, saying that
both the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court lacked jurisdiction
to hear the case. That means a federal district court’s ruling striking
down Proposition 8 stands, which could clear the way for same-sex
marriage to resume in California.

Notice how the Supreme Court will jump in and wave the Constitution whenever it wants to override something, but turn around and claim it has no jurisdiction whenever it wants to leave a lower court decision intact.  Pass a law, pass a referendum, it doesn’t matter.  The black robes now rule.

B&N totters

It was interesting to notice during the recent SFWA campaign how
completely clueless most of the authors were about the present state of the publishing industry.  They
genuinely believed that the status quo remains viable, which was part of why
Random House was accused of creating Hydra simply because they are obviously wicked and evil.

Nor did they rethink their position when Nightshade Books went under.  As I said at the time, it would probably take the bankruptcy of Barnes & Noble and the concomitant effects on the genre publishers to get them to realize that the traditional publishing game is all but over.  But that could happen sooner than even a skeptic like me had imagined:

Barnes and Noble has not had an easy go of it. The brick-and-mortar stalwart has seen its revenues and profits steeply decline as we’ve entered the age of the e-book. In fact, profits haven’t just shrunk; they’ve disappeared. During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, the company suffered a net loss of $118.6 million, down significantly from the already poor showing it posted in 2012 when it lost $56.9 million in Q4. For the year, that put Barnes and Noble’s losses at $154.8 million — more than double what it lost in 2012.

It’s somewhat of a pity, as some of my favorite memories include spending Friday evenings wandering through the stacks with Spacebunny.  The only book signing I ever did was at Barnes & Noble and I was told it was one of the most successful ones that branch had ever had.  When I first graduated from college, I used to set myself a $50 monthly book budget that I would spend there; I’d usually manage to spend it by the second or third week.

But then, I still recall my last visit there, and walking out without buying anything.  The SF/F section was full of media tie-in novels and fantasy novels with badly Photoshopped covers, the history section had all but disappeared, and most of the remaindered hardcovers were picture books.  So perhaps the structural rot that is now apparent had already set in.

I imagine the executives at Barnes are already trying to figure out what sort of pitches they can make to Amazon and Google.  Anyhow, if you’re an SF/F writer who writes actual SF or epic fantasy, feel free to contact me about publishing through our in-game store.  We’ve already got some excellent original works of fiction, including a few set in Selenoth, but we’re looking for about 20 more.

Snowdon and the secret cyber army

Although, given its functions and capabilities, secret cyber Praetorian Guard would appear to be a more historically relevant description:

With his revelations exposing the extent of potential, and actual, pervasive NSA surveillance over the American population, Edward Snowden has done a great service for the public by finally forcing it to answer the question: is having Big Brother peek at every private communication and electronic information, a fair exchange for the alleged benefit of the state’s security. Alas, without further action form a population that appears largely numb and apathetic to disclosures that until recently would have sparked mass protests and toppled presidents, the best we can hope for within a political regime that has hijacked the democratic process, is some intense introspection as to what the concept of “America” truly means.

However, and more importantly, what Snowden’s revelations have confirmed, is that behind the scenes, America is now actively engaged in a new kind of war: an unprecedented cyber war, where collecting, deciphering, intercepting, and abusing information is the only thing that matters and leads to unprecedented power, and where enemies both foreign and domestic may be targeted without due process based on a lowly analyst’s “whim.”

It has also put spotlight on the man, who until recently deep in the shadows, has been responsible for building America’s secret, absolutely massive cyber army, and which according to a just released Wired profile is “capable of launching devastating cyberattacks. Now it’s ready to unleash hell.”

Meet General Keith Alexander, “a man few even in Washington would likely recognize”, which is troubling because Alexander is now quite possibly the most powerful person in the world, that nobody talks about. 

I have little doubt that General Alexander is, within the constraints imposed upon him by the nature of his job and career path, a decent man who operates within the limits that have been set for him by his superiors, though obviously not the legal ones imposed by the U.S. Constitution.  However, it doesn’t take a superintelligence or a Roman historian to figure out where this arrangement is likely to end up as soon as a sufficiently ambitious or ideologically driven individual manages to take control of the cyberwar apparatus.

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden has safely landed in Moscow and a ship bound for Syria, rumored to be carrying American weapons for the Syrian rebels, has mysteriously cracked in two on the high seas and has been abandoned.

Curiouser and curiouser….

UPDATE: It appears Mr. Snowden is heading for Ecuador:

“The government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J.
Snowden,” Patino said. WikiLeaks said in a statement that Mr Snowden is “bound for the Republic
of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being
escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.”

Prelude

Even the historically illiterate, stunted intellectuals of Red America are beginning to observe the signs of the eventual breakup.

Along with — and because of — dramatic social and demographic changes,
America is quickly dividing itself into two separate nations, regional
enclaves of rigid politics, as the idea of common national priorities
fades further into a distant past….  And the country’s seismic demographic and cultural shifts threaten to make our tribalism permanent.

There has been the rapid rise of minority populations and stagnation in the growth of the non-Hispanic white population in this country. Now, Hispanics represent a majority of all births in America, and last week The New York Times reported on census data that revealed that “deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century.”

In fact, according to an Associated Press report last week, which cited government reports: “For the first time, America’s racial and ethnic minorities now make up about half of the under-5 age group.”

But there were also some worrisome statistics in the report that could help to signal those children’s views on policy…. And, we are becoming less blindly religious and more blindly militaristic. (The former is a good thing; the latter, not so much.)

Blow is wrong about one thing: there is no “nation divided against itself”, because as I’ve previously noted, there are not merely two separate nations, there are four.  There are the Reds of progressive, secular America, there are the Whites
of traditional religious America, there are the Browns of third world
America, and there are the Blacks of feral America. They may broadly follow the racial demographics, but the lines are not hard; for example, Charles Blow is a black man who is clearly Red, rather than Black, just as David Brooks is Red, not White.

Given how people have expressed considerable doubt concerning my  negative outlook on the continued union of these four Americas, it should be interesting to see how they respond to a black, left-wing New York Times columnist who has, despite our very different perspectives, reached similar conclusions. Note, in particular, that damning admission: “because of dramatic… demographic changes”.

The fruits of diversity are bloodshed and war.  They always have been.  Populations of sufficiently differing time preferences simply cannot live together for long. And the only successful way to keep those fruits from ripening has is a powerful militaristic state willing and able to commit atrocities in order to keep the otherwise warring parties in line.  Consider, for example, the difference between segregation as it was practiced in the pre-1960s USA and the way it was practiced in the USSR and China.  Or the way it is presently practiced in Africa with the various tribes vying for power in the national government.

It won’t surprise me if those who oppose deportations now and are horrified by the WWII Japanese internment live long enought to one day find themselves supporting a Red American government that is engaged in internal deportations of Hispanics to its Aztlan Autonomous Oblast.

A befuddling mystery of decline

Zerohedge republishes Michael Snyder’s recounting of the way in which the city of Detroit has changed in only 53 years:


1 – Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
2 – Over the past 60 years, the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
3 – At this point, approximately 40 percent of all the streetlights in the city don’t work.
4 – Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them.
5 – 210 of the 317 public parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down.
6 – According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
7 – Approximately one-third of Detroit’s 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
8 – Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
9 – If you can believe it, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
10 – According to one very shocking report, 47 percent of the residents of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
11 – Today, police solve less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.
12 – Ten years ago, there were approximately 5,000 police officers in the city of Detroit.  Today, there are only about 2,500 and another 100 are scheduled to be eliminated from the force soon.
13 – Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day.
14 – The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City.
15 – Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to “enter Detroit at your own risk“.
16 – Right now, the city of Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities.  That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.

It is, of course, a baffling mystery and no one has any idea what could possibly have accounted for the transformation of this once-great American city.  Perhaps one day, a future Gibbon will be able to decipher the great conundrum of Detroit’s decline and fall.  But in the meantime, we can at least take heart in the knowledge that the innocent and suffering denizens who live amidst the wreckage are, thanks to the effects of the housing crash on house prices, now finding it possible to move to suburbs such as Southfield that have thus far escaped the general decay of the city.

Thank St. Diversity that those poor, but totally civilized Detroit residents, who are without question absolutely capable of maintaining a self-sustaining and technologically advanced society as well as every other collection of humans on the planet, have been able to flee that inexplicably cursed geography.  I have no doubts at all that this change of location will also completely alter what can only be described as their coincidental misfortune of the last five decades.

Celebrate Diversity!

A frightening economy

Zerohedge compiles 40 frightening facts about the U.S. economy.  The five worst, in my estimation:

#6 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars.  Today it is over 56 trillion dollars…

#7 According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001.  That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011.

#17 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#22 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

#40 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

A tale of two statements

American Heritage Girls and an Order of the Arrow Chief respond to the recent action by the Boy Scouts of America to relax its membership standards:

“It was with great disappointment that American Heritage Girls, Inc. Board of Trustees received the news of the change to the Boy Scouts of America’s membership standards. It was our sincerest hope the voice of the majority of those associated with the BSA would be heard and that the BSA would continue the amazing 103-year legacy of its founder to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices. Unfortunately, the organization chose to step away from that commitment.
 
As a result of leaving its time-honored traditions, the BSA has left American Heritage Girls with no choice but to dissolve our Memorandum of Mutual Support. We do so with a heavy heart. We have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with BSA through the years. However, the American Heritage Girls Board of Trustees has decided that we cannot in good conscience continue in a formal relationship with the BSA.
 
As an independent, faith-based leadership and character development organization, we want everyone associated with the American Heritage Girls to know that our board members unanimously affirm the AHG Statement of Faith and its Scriptural foundation, and we are committed to continue providing a safe environment for every girl involved.”

The American Heritage Girls have sent a clear message that they will not pretend that the decision of the Boy Scouts of America to remove the requirement to be “morally straight” from its members is not a serious one.  Whereas, on the other hand, this member of The Order of the Arrow, is scurrilously attempting to encourage scouts who took that oath to ignore it.

Dear Arrowmen of Coosa Lodge,

I know many of you are concerned about what has just happened with the change to the Boys Scouts of America’s membership policy. On May 23, 2013, the National Committee held a vote on whether or not homosexual youth scouts would be allowed into the Boy Scout program. Out of the 1,400 delegates over sixty percent voted to approve the new resolution which states,

“Youth membership in the Boy Scouts of America is open to all youth who meet the specific membership requirements to join the Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Varsity Scout, Sea Scout, and Venturing programs. Membership in any program of the Boy Scouts of America requires the youth member to (a) subscribe to and abide by the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, (b) subscribe to and abide by the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle (duty to God), and (c) demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and is consistent at all times with the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law. No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

Although the resolution has passed, it shall not take effect until January 1, 2014. The reason for this is to give us and our leadership time to adjust and prepare for the upcoming change. Many of you have expressed your opinions and thoughts on this matter, and whether this is right or wrong, do not let this affect the true core values on which the upon which Scouting was founded: to get our youth active in the outdoors, to instill proper skills for the future, and to gain the ideals of leadership and service in today’s youth which will help build a better future for our country and world.

The road ahead will be a long and hard one for our organization. Many scouts have already expressed their desire to leave the program, but I would like to issue a challenge to you all in the hopes that the Boy Scouts of America will come out stronger than it ever has before. In the upcoming months, speak to your fellow brothers about how you can help build our organization. Please do not focus on someones sexual orientation, but on what you yourself can do for Scouting. It is up to us as the leaders of tomorrow; to be the best we can for the packs, troops, crews, and other groups within Scouting. Scouts will be looking for someone to show them what to do. Let us lead the way by showing them Scouting is no different than it was before. Our focus is still to build leadership and skills for our youth and to give service to our local troops, councils, and camps and we intend to keep it that way. I am proud to call myself an Eagle Scout and Vigil Honor recipient, and I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to be a part of this great organization.

As a former Star Scout and member of the Order of the Arrow, my response to the Chief of the Coosa Lodge is that his feeble attempt to minimize the significance of the degradation of standards represented by the board’s action is not worthy of an Arrowman or a Scout, and that I am requesting the removal of my name from the Lodge to which I belonged because I no longer wish to be associated with the Boy Scouts of America or the Order of the Arrow.

The seeds of destruction have already been successfully sown by the homosexual activists.  Both the Boy Scouts and the Order will be rapidly following the way of the Girl Scouts, whose membership fell by 250,000, (about one-tenth), between 2003 and 2008.  The BSA membership is already only half of what it was in 1972; the mass withdrawal of scouts, troops, and councils should see it fall by another half in much less time.

Tolerance is not a virtue.  It is, as I have written in the past, “the sin of Jeroboam“.  One would think that seeing one organization after another, one institution after another, decline rapidly after lowering its standards in the name of modernizing them would give the various leaderships pause, (for evil’s activists are never successful without the useful fools convinced by their false promises and tortuous arguments). And yet, as the BSA action shows, the same short-sighted attempt to appease the internal destroyers is repeated again and again and again.

So let the Boy Scouts dwindle.  They have made their bed, let them lie in it. Let their decline into irrelevance be a lesson to you.  Vigilance and internal discipline is necessary for every organization that wishes to preserve itself against the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Relaxing your standards and abandoning your traditions is always the first step along the easy way that leads to destruction.

And the Boy Scouts fall

Another bastion of traditional morality falls to PC pressure:

After lengthy and wrenching debate, local leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have voted to open their ranks to openly gay boys for the first time, but heated reactions from the left and right made clear that the BSA’s controversies are far from over.

The Scouts’ longstanding ban on gay adults remains in force, and many liberal Scout leaders – as well as gay-rights groups – plan to continue pressing for an end to that exclusion even though the BSA’s top officials aren’t ready for that step.

Meanwhile, many conservatives within the Scouts are distraught at the outcome of the vote and some are threatening to defect. A meeting is planned for next month to discuss formation of a new organization for boys.

The formation of new organizations to replace the old, corrupted ones is the only practical response that is likely to succeed. It’s a little remarkable that anyone still takes “thus far, but no farther” seriously as a strategy; once the hard line is crossed, the subsequent lines in the sand tend to fall rapidly in comparison.

“The result was
welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by
gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls
for ending the ban on gay adults. “I’m so
proud of how far we’ve come, but until there’s a place for everyone in
Scouting, my work will continue,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as
a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a
national protest movement.”

If you or your sons are currently involved in the Boy Scouts, I recommend immediately resigning the organization.  It is already mortally wounded and its demise is now only a matter of time.  It is much better to put your time and energy into the traditional alternative that will be born from the ashes of what was once a great organization.

Leftists always seek to invade and subvert all non-leftist institutions.  Once the will to keep them out is lost, the eventual subversion of the institution is assured.  The only way to prevent this is for organizations to be set up with charters containing strict limits on the permissible range of changes that may be proposed in the future; anyone who proposes a change outside that range should be immediately dismissed from the organization.

Forget the audits

The AP reporters should be more worried about being targeted by the Obama administration’s drone operators:

“The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence,” said Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International.

It’s a very bad combination, when you’ve got a lawless administration that is willing to sic the IRS and the FBI on the media as well as its political opponents, and is simultaneously claiming a right to assassinate American citizens at will without so much as an arrest, let alone a trial.

US military unilaterally overturns Posse Comitatus.

“In essence, this policy change seeks to supersede Posse Comitatus,
the 1878 law which forbids the military from being involved in domestic
law enforcement “except in cases and under circumstances expressly
authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” Under the Insurrection Act of 1807,
the President may deploy armed forces domestically under extreme
circumstances but Congress has to review the action every 14 days.


Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973,
the President cannot commit troops to an armed conflict for a period
longer than 60 days without an authorization from Congress of the use of
military force or a declaration of war.


Under no circumstances in current US law is it legal for
the military to deploy itself domestically without authorization from
either the President, Congress or both.”
 It looks as if the U.S. military are actively expecting some sort of trouble in which authorization for the military’s use by the command-in-chief isn’t possible.  I wonder why they are anticipating that?  Especially when the organization most capable of arranging a situation where that authorization isn’t possible is the U.S. military.
The Ciceronian historical cycle anticipates the development of an aristocracy at this point.  It’s interesting to consider from what that aristocracy might develop, as the areas of corporate and military power appear to be the two aspects of society that are increasingly immune to government regulation.  If the Ciceronian model is still relevant, the aristocracy would likely develop out of that corporate-military intersection.