Tag: decline and fall

From Huxley to Orwell

The world isn’t binary. Sometimes it isn’t an either/or proposition, but rather, a first A, then B situation.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through:

•    Sensual gratification,
•    Cheap mass-produced goods,
•    Boundless credit,
•    Political theater and
•    Amusement.

While we were entertained,

•    The regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled,
•    The laws that once protected us were rewritten and
•    We were impoverished.

Now that:

•    Credit is drying up,
•    Good jobs for the working class are gone forever and
•    Mass-produced goods are unaffordable,

  …. we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.”

We can take some comfort in the knowledge that all of this was foreseen and explained nearly two thousand years ago.  Of course, that doesn’t mean it is going to be a good time for everyone.

Can’t say we weren’t warned

Some find significance in symbols:

Oh, dear. This is probably not the symbolism the White House wanted.

Hours after CIA Director John Brennan took the oath of office—behind closed doors, far away from the press, perhaps befitting his status as America’s top spy—the White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of the ceremony.

“There’s one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

Earnest said Brennan had asked for a document from the National Archives that would demonstrate the U.S. is a nation of laws.

“Director Brennan told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as director of the CIA,” Earnest said.

The Constitution itself went into effect in 1789. But troublemaking blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that what was missing from the Constitution in 1787 is also quite symbolic: The Bill of Rights, which did not officially go into effect until December 1791 after ratification by states. (Caution: Marcy’s post has some strong language.)

That means: No freedom of speech and of the press, no right to bear arms, no Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and no right to a jury trial.

How … symbolic?

It could be.  I find it more intriguing that Obama took both his oaths of office in private ceremonies after the first, public one was fluffed.

Too big to jail

Karl Denninger considers the Attorney General’s recent admission that the big banks are above the law:

The Rule of Law works and guides a just society only because it applies to everyone.  Nobody gets to rape, rob, pillage or murder.  If you do, no matter who you are, you face the same punishment, the same process, the same sentence.

We all know there are disparities in the process and always have been.  But there’s a difference between the foibles of mankind — everyone has their bias, and there is no such thing as a human process that is flawless — and intentional, designed-in or willful refusal to prosecute certain people for acts that land others in prison.

The latter is the defining action of a dictatorship.

A dictatorship can only exist by declaring war upon the people.  When a certain subset of the population is given license to pillage or worse that is the very definition of “diktat” from which the term “dictatorship” comes.

Fast and Furious, incidentally, falls into this category as well.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous state of affairs and must not be permitted to continue.  The government and its actors have lost all moral and ethical appeal to fair play and the rule of law — by exempting certain people they have declared both themselves and those they exempted beyond the protections that exist in a civilized society.

I’ve previously pointed out that there is no longer “law” as such, in the United States any more.  Everything about the “nation”, which is no longer, properly speaking, even a nation anymore, is fraudulent, from its “money” to its system of “justice”.  Even something as simple and basic as openly fighting a “war” is now beyond its bloated, cancerous make-believe structure.

I wouldn’t call the present system a dictatorship myself.  Dictatorships are more open and direct.  It is better described as a simulatorship, which is to say, rule by pretense.  It is remniscent of the latter days of the Soviet empire, when the Russian people pretended to work and the Soviet government pretended to pay them.  In the latter days of the US empire, the federal government pretends its actions are within the limits set by the U.S. Constitution and the American people pretend to believe them.

If a corporate entity is too big to fail or too big to jail, then logic dictates it must be cut down to a size that permits both.  Remember, corporations are not capitalism, they are creations of government and if they can’t reasonably be imprisoned, they can certainly be “executed”.  And if real American people can be “legally” executed at the order of the president, then can there really be any doubt that artificial American people are also liable to termination on command as well?

This section of the American Banker article particularly struck home:

Many are still angry about the 2008 bank bailouts, and they now have an
on-the-record confirmation from Justice’s top official that the
department is treating big banks softly just because they are large.
Compare it to how law enforcement typically treats American citizens
when they break the law — often times by throwing the book at them — and
it’s easy to understand how that anger could grow into more popular
support for a big bank breakup.

For example, my father was imprisoned for 12 years after being accused of evading $1.6 million in taxes, penalties, and imaginary “interest” despite having paid something like $75 million in state and federal taxes over the previous 20 years and forcing the State of Minnesota to admit that its agents knowingly lied when they falsely claimed he was a resident and seized his house for not paying taxes he didn’t owe. Meanwhile, Congressional investigators estimate that the big US banks launder about $250 billion in drug money every year in addition to their $12 billion in estimated annual mortgage fraud.  When caught, they occasionally pay a monetary penalty calculated at a rate which, in my father’s case, would have amounted to about a $20,000 fine.

So, I can understand why many Americans support a big bank breakup and seeing corporate criminals treated with the same severity as actual human beings.  But it’s not going to happen, because the entire financial system is already on the verge of collapse and all of the insiders know it.  That is why the banks will continue doing whatever they want and the regulators and politicians will continue to look the other way, until the moment when a critical node fails and the entire system breaks down in a manner that can’t be blamed on anyone in particular.

Rushmore isn’t enough

Al Sharpton on the pressing debate of the day:

Last month, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton conducted a spirited debate about whether Obama belongs on Mount Rushmore or instead deserves a separate monument to his greatness (just weeks before replacing frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur as MSNBC host, Sharpton publicly vowed never to criticize Barack Obama under any circumstances: a vow he has faithfully maintained). Earlier that day on the same network, a solemn discussion was held, in response to complaints from MSNBC viewers, about whether it is permissible to ever allow Barack Obama’s name to pass through one’s lips without prefacing it with an honorific such as “President” or “the Honorable” or perhaps “His Excellency” (that really did happen).

I would absolutely love to see Obama added to Mount Rushmore.  The ears alone would be hysterical.  Given that the great destroyer of American liberty is already up there, it seems only fitting that the penultimate consequence of his actions should be memorialized in stone there as well.

However,  I don’t think Mount Rushmore is sufficient memorial for Barack Soetoro-Soebarkah-Obama.  I think he merits a “Chairman Mao” style statue of the sort that the Chinese carved for Martin Luther King.  The bigger, the better.  I want future generations to be able to see precisely how far the nation descended before its final collapse.  Ideally, it would be atop a square platform decorated by a carved frieze featuring 1) the Folsom Street Fair, 2) a squad of female Marines going into action, 3) an image of 9/11, and 4) Mexicans crossing the border.

Another feminist myth exploded

The notion that equal access to higher education was going to cause a flowering of female intellectual achievement was always false, because it observably didn’t happen the first time around.

Although the fact is not widely known, the ratio of male-to-female
undergraduates in the United States was about at parity from 1900 to
1930. Male enrollments began to increase relative to female enrollments
in the 1930s and later as GIs returned from World War II. A highpoint of
gender imbalance in college attendance was reached in 1947 when
undergraduate men outnumbered women 2.3 to 1. But starting then and
continuing until the present in an almost unbroken trend, female college
enrollments have increased relative to male enrollments. 

In other words, elite women were attending university in equal numbers to elite men, but more middle-class and working-class men going to college threw the balance out of whack.  Middle-class women followed suit, and the consequent collapse in national demographics caused the replacement of 60 million aborted natives with 60 million alien immigrants.

Brilliant.  Just brilliant.  Short of poisoning the water supply or dropping a large quantity of nuclear weapons on the major cities, it would be hard to concoct a more efficient means of crippling a nation.

The end of due process

It is clear that due process no longer applies in the United States, at least not under emergency circumstances such as “war” and “the police are really, really scared of the bad, bad mans”:

It’s official: The drone war has come home to America. Wanted fugitive
Christopher Dorner, the homicidal former cop currently at war with the
LAPD, has become the first known human target for airborne drones on
U.S. soil. Their use was confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol
spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed the government’s fear that Dorner
will make a dash for the Mexican border. The fugitive has already killed
three people, according to police, and has a $1 million bounty on his
head. 

That certainly didn’t take long.  It wasn’t all that long ago that I was warning this was bound to happen sooner or later and the self-appointed defenders of the State were dismissing the notion as the usual declinist alarmism.  But this news should certainly harden the opposition to gun control; no one with even one-tenth of a brain is going to be willing to be disarmed by a government that is not only claiming a right of assassination without due process, but is actively making use of drones to hunt, and presumably kill, Americans in the United States.

On the plus side, it looks as if we’re getting a real-time lesson in how effective the fully mobilized and equipped police are when waging war against the people.  We will have to hope that the drone operators have trigger fingers that are less twitchy than the LAPD officers; otherwise we should not be surprised if LL Cool J and half of USC’s defensive line are killed by Hellfire missiles before the end of the week.

Uneasy lies the head

The President appears to be afraid of his Praetorian Parade Guard:

 Take a close look at the M-14 rifles the Marines where carrying at
Obama’s second inauguration. The bolts have been removed from the rifles
rendering them unable to fire a round.

Apparently Obama’s Secret Service doesn’t trust the USMC. Simply
searching each guy to make sure he didn’t have a live round hidden on
him wasn’t enough, they had to make sure the guns were inoperable. Remember all those times George Bush (miss him yet?) traveled to Iraq
to meet the troops? Troops who had working rifles slung on their
shoulders, with loaded magazines in pouches on their belt.  I can’t recall ever seeing the troops with weapons in hand when Obama
paid them a visit and after seeing this, if anyone can find such a
photo, I’d have to bet that the bolt carriers had been removed prior to
Obama’s arrival.

It’s painfully obvious how much contempt Obama has toward the
military and the feeling is mutual…and the Secret Service knows it too.

From a purely symbolic perspective, this strikes me as a very last days of Rome motif.  What sort of Commander-in-Chief doesn’t trust the men he is commanding?  And why doesn’t he trust them?

Knock ’em dead

Keoni Galt notes how Scorpion has summarized his own feelings concerning the ultimate hunt being played out in LA:

I don’t think many people are actually condoning the fact that this guy killed innocent people.

They’re just glad that somebody is taking a violent stand against the police/government and are living vicariously through him.

Our government is so fucked up and out of control, and everyone knows it, that something like this has a bit of a Robin Hood element to it. People generally feel powerless to do anything about government overreach, so when a guy like this stands up and says, “Enough! Fuck you. I’m not taking anymore!” that resonates with the frustrations of a lot of people.

That people are willing to overlook the fact that this guy has killed innocent people is a stinging indictment of how low the police and the government stand in the eyes of citizens. A large percentage of public opinion is sympathetic to a (seemingly) crazed murderer over the government. That’s pretty goddamned pathetic and makes our government and the LAPD look like shit, but deservedly so, because they’ve earned that contempt through years of corruption, abuse of power and trampling on the rights of citizens. 

This is true.  I noticed how much things had changed when I started hearing conservative white business executives in their sixties talking about the police in a manner all but indistinguishable from NWA.  Something is wrong, something is deeply and structurally wrong, when the mere fact of being involved in the law enforcement system at any level is enough to engender contempt in the eyes of those who are upstanding, law-abiding citizens.

Forget the cops for the moment.  When you think of a judge or a district attorney, what is your first thought?  Pillar of the community or corrupt tool of an evil and unjust system? 

Another thing that strikes me.  It seems as if every drama on television about either doctors or police.  I wonder if the constant repetition of the heroic portrayal of the police saving the day and blowing away the perp, who is usually a white men, has not only programmed the target audiences to believe that white men are evil, but has also helped convince older white men to see police as the enemy. 

Descent into dirty war

Karl Denninger has his usual calm and moderate take on the subject of the LA police hunt:

This is how the nation descends into a “dirty, unconventional civil war” folks.  It happens when the so-called “law enforcement” people do what a handful of NOLA cops did after Katrina, where they shot an unarmed man and then planted a gun on him.

But those cops were (eventually) brought up on charges and tried for their felonies.

There is utterly no indication that the LAPD officers involved in this will face any sanction whatsoever.

It is exactly this rabbit hole that I have repeatedly warned of — when the so-called “law enforcers” are free to break the law without punishment, whether it be through “gun-walking”, money laundering or blatantly assaulting and killing innocent people (as, you remember, occurred in Detroit) there comes a point where the people will not only refuse to assist but will turn on the government and its visible agents and edifices along with the infrastructure that it, and we all, depend.

Heads up folks — one guy provoked this “response” among the so-called “public servants” that believe they’re entitled not only to fraudulently-promised and extorted pensions but that they’re also entitled to shoot citizens without consequence.

This is a loud, clear warning that exactly the nightmare scenario that I have repeatedly cautioned against and urged the people and our government to stand up and put a stop to has become uncomfortably close to realization.

If you haven’t figured out that these so-called “law enforcement officers” will herd you into a gas chamber or just shoot you on the spot given this incident you’re not very bright.

And if you are a law enforcement officer and you do not stand with these thugs in LA and their acts you had damned well better stand up and differentiate yourself in a loud, clear and unwavering voice, lest you get lumped in with them whether you deserve it or not.

Today, I fear not our so-called “law enforcement” agencies but rather our nation’s future and the dark abyss we stand on the edge of, peering downward, without apparent recognition of exactly how close we are to an irretrievable descent into the dark.

The fact that Karl’s rhetorical approach is impassioned doesn’t mean he isn’t correct.  The time is approaching when everyone, in and out of uniform, is going to have to take a stand.  If you’re not Team Blue, are you going to give aid and comfort to the police when they are lashing out blindly at “civilians” like wounded animals?  If you are a member of Team Blue, are you going to turn a blind eye to the criminal acts of your fellow officers?

The discussion for most of us has been completely hypothetical to date.  But barring an unexpected economic recovery, the issue is likely to become less and less hypothetical as time goes on.  We in the West have been hugely fortunate to be spared, for our entire lives to date, the historical state which most of humanity has endured.  But our good fortune increasingly appears to be running out and each of us is eventually going to have to decide who we are and with whom we stand.

EU-imposed social change

This is what happens when a nation gives up its national sovereignty to authoritarians determined to destroy the social fabric:

David Cameron suffered a humiliating reverse last night when more than half his MPs rejected his 11th-hour appeals for support for same-sex marriage. On an extraordinary day in the Commons, 134 Tory MPs took advantage of a free vote to oppose the plans. Only 126 backed the legislation, with 35 abstaining.

But with the help of the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs Mr Cameron saw the measure passed easily, by a margin of 400 to 175. The first gay marriages are likely to be conducted within 12 months.

Cameron is nothing but a water-carrier for the European Union.  Like the Republicans in the Senate, his role as a “conservative” is to conserve the changes that are imposed by the progressives, in this case, the dictates of the unelected European Commission.  As with the other member states of the EU, the UK is no longer a democracy, not even a quasi-democracy, but a pseudo-democracy that is nominally governed from London but is actually ruled by Brussels.

The gay marriage debate has very little to do with literal homogamy, as the paltry number of “married” gays in the various states where it is legal tends to demonstrate.  It is symbolic, a legal demonstration of the fact that what was once Christendom is now post-Christian, and a rejection of traditional Western civilization.  It’s not a step forward, but rather, a step back into ancient pagan darkness.  It is ironic that those who decry Islam as a return to the 7th century are actually complaining that the Muslims don’t go far enough; “progressives” want to take the world back more than two millennia.

I invite those who claim this act will “strengthen marriage” to consider the empirical data.  Name a nation where legally legitimizing gay “marriage” was followed by a statistically significant increase in the marriage rate.