Imagine if tomorrow, a space ship descends to earth, hovering over some part of the United States. At some point, when the eyes of the world are fixed on the event, the ship lands and out pops a bunch of aliens. These aliens are able to speak to the people of earth in a way that everyone can understand them. They explain where they are from and that earth is just one of many planets with sentient life. Further, most of the people in charge of earth are aliens sent to run things while the talking monkeys get up to speed.
For a fuller presentation of this concept, you can watch the John Carpenter movie, They Live. One thing I liked about that movie, is that when people realized the truth, they were stunned and confused. Paranoia immediately set in as they tried to reorient themselves to the new reality. That’s what would happen in the above scenario. Suddenly confronted by the truth, everyone would know most of what they have been told was a lie. That would lead to questioning of everything else, then mass paranoia and fear.
Something like this happened in revolutionary France. Instead of space aliens, they got a collapse of the old order. Feudalism had been under great strain due to the new economics of the age. Trade and the beginning of the industrial age challenged the old economic system. There was also the rampant corruption in the French economic system that was slowing bankrupting the government. The King was not just broke. Massive borrowing to keep the system running had made the system insolvent.
The French Revolution was not just a money issue. Within one year, the King went from being god-like to merely a citizen. That was not a small thing. Symbolism is an important part of the normal rhythms of human society. The social order of France was built upon the King having a divine right to rule. Once the king became just another guy, the whole system stopped making sense. It was a short trip from there to conspiracies about the aristocrats plotting against the people. The result was the Great Fear.
That has been coming to mind often of late. My twitter feed is full of posts that can be charitably described as batshit crazy. Scan through the news and you see “reports” that range from the ridiculous to the deranged. I don’t have a Faceberg account, but I’m told that all sorts of crackpot stories are popping up there too. I’ve had to reconfigure my news reading in order to filter out the crazy rumors and made up nonsense. It feels like the wheels have come off the cart and we live in a world of nonsense.
The reason, I suspect, is the growing awareness that much of what we have taken for granted is, at the minimum, not what it appears to be. The open hostility of so-called conservatives toward the people they claim to represent, for example, has been quite an eye-opener for a lot of people. You don’t have to be a red-pilled conspiracy monger to think the whole conservative movement was just a money scam all along.
That also means the Republican Party was something other than a good faith attempt to counter the other party. When prominent leaders in the party appear to be backing the other party’s candidate, the system does look rigged. It’s not hard to imagine what these people are saying when the cameras and microphones are off. Throw in some leaked e-mails that seem to conform people’s worst fears and it is not surprising that the peasants are getting a bit paranoid about the ruling class.
The shenanigans in the news media has breached that wall in our minds that separates bias from conspiracy. When allegedly solid opinion polls swing by a dozen points in a few days, it is not unreasonable to wonder if they were fraudulent all along. The revelations in WikiLeaks has made clear that it is not just bias. It is an organized effort by our “news media” to fool people on behalf of the government party. Rigging the debates by feeding Clinton the questions is a pretty big deal.
Just this week we have learned that the FBI and the DOJ may very well be colluding in order to conceal very serious crimes by the Clinton Family from the public. Seeing that the current FBI director let the Clintons off the hook 15 years ago, when he was tasked with investigating them, naturally makes people think the whole system is rotten and corrupt. When people see e-mails from the Clinton campaign chair revealing that he is best buddies with the Feds, it tends to confirm and amplify their suspicions.
Probably the biggest blow to public trust has been the revelation regarding the Clinton Foundation and the shenanigans involved in covering up what looks like very serious crimes. Everyday we get new stories that make a Hollywood thriller sound pedestrian. All of a sudden, the conspiracy guys don’t sound so nutty as their theories are playing out in the news. If the Feds can accidentally find a laptop that brings down the Clinton Crime Family, name a cloak and dagger scenario that is still implausible?
We are in a period where no one takes anything in the news at face value, but lots of people are willing to accept all sorts of outlandish rumors. After all, the crackpots and conspiracy nuts have been right a lot lately. When every scandal starts with WikiLeaks or some anonymous tweet, it is not unreasonable to pay more attention to that stuff than the main stream media, which is often working to conceal these stories. You cannot blame people for being a bit paranoid, given what we see happening.
Off in The Isles, the Brits have discovered that their BREXIT vote was merely a plea to their betters. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we find the DOJ has joined forces with some officials in the FBI to block others in the FBI from investigating Hillary’s emails and the Clinton Foundation.
If the world were fair, the US Marshals would already be in possession of all Clinton assets.
You Americans need to vote for change, as we did for Brexit. Trump is the first step in bringing your elected filth to order. Once we have change, we can get the system we deserve and back from the crooks we currently have running the show.
I’m trying very hard, but I’m having a tough time seeing a scenario that doesn’t end in a good deal of bloodshed. Back when they taught Civics in high school, “legitimacy” was one of the core concepts. It’s what all those Dead White Guy political philosophers were all on about. And back when they taught History in high school, they showed that crises of legitimacy invariably end in civil wars, invasions, or brutal crackdowns that almost amount to civil wars. Americans have been pretty successfully sheep-ified, but we’re still the most heavily armed country on earth….
the idiot elite have no idea how radicalized *we* are becoming. there will be violence, and lots of it.
Not necessarily. It’s more important that people stop believing and obeying, than that they go on attack. Yes, the minions will inject violence that must be dealt with somehow, but their usual tactic of ganging up on a lone individual will not work when half the population opposes them and won’t tolerate that shit.
no, it’s time for a “cure” not “treatment”.
Blogs like this one are the new monasteries for a new dark age.
The violence almost always comes from the left – that’s where the deluded, hot-headed idiots hang out. Once the facade of propaganda crumbles, they are the ones most likely to get really angry with the frauds who have been promising them a life of ease, if only they vote correctly. Working people cannot relate to the anger of the jilted freeloader – working people know their worth, and feel they will be needed one way or the other. What does a useless parasite do, when the fraud they subsist on ends?
Our ruling dynasty has forfeited the Mandate of Heaven.
One thing that has struck me: Given the staggering avalanche of evidence of the Clinton’s criminality that has emerged in recent days, just how is it that so many GOPe Hillary endorsers (Romney, the Bushes, etc.) haven’t revoked their endorsement? Do they support Hillary’s crimes? Money laundering? Bribery? Obstruction? Espionage? Treason? Do they support the shadow government/banana republic that the Clinton’s have fabricated and which extends it’s corruption into every crevice of government, many major corporations, the media and Wall Street?
Their silence is eloquent proof of their complicity.
The Bushes and Rommneys are cut from exactly the same cloth as the Clintons. Exactly.
Sometimes one is forced to take a side, and they have chosen theirs. They will deny it later, of course.
So, here’s the useful idiot Frum, just the other day in the Atlantic, in an article titled “The Conservative Case for Clinton”: “I have no illusions about Hillary Clinton. I expect policies that will seem to me at best counter-productive, at worst actively harmful….But she is a patriot. She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States. She will defend allies. She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality. She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage. She will not outright defy legality altogether. Above all, she can govern herself; the first indispensable qualification… Read more »
One line of thinking says that depression or suicide kicks in when one looks in the mirror and truly sees what is looking back at you. With that in mind, the amount of self-deception required to write crap like this and then look in the mirror is really not much at all. Humans are very good at conjuring up the “realities” they choose to live in.
Frum is Canadian. Let’s vote him off the island
Frum can safely be ignored; he is a douchenozzle from way back,
Frum’s delusions are no worse than George Will. Talk losing his sanity.
The real opposition to Trump from (((David Frum))) and all the other (((neocons))) is that Trump wants to stop foreign adventurism that is of demonstrably no benefit to the American people, and is in fact doing nothing more than stumbling into one hornet’s nest after another. (((Frum))) says it right there in his article: “She will defend allies.” Well who are all these “allies” and why do we have obligations to defend so many of them? How is it in America’s interests to risk open war with Russia over something happening in Aleppo, Syria? America has been turned into the… Read more »
Lot of truth in that old Chinese Mandate of Heaven catechism. But it really boils down to consent, or withdrawal of consent. A ruling class who have usurped a Republic can not survive the pure motive power of withdrawal of consent of the governed. Their only choices are to double down, impose a police state where dissent is ruthlessly dealt with, negating any remaining legitimacy or flee. People who withdraw their consent are in the drivers seat on this. This situation now is becoming a Mexican up yours standoff. The oligarchy says your deplorables, the deplorables say Fuck You and… Read more »
But they survived a long time by hiding their double-game from the people. So many here can boast of being skeptics for years, but I was completely fooled by the “conservative movement”/establishment Right until just this year, when Trump flushed all the foxes out of their holes. I totally believed that the National Review crowd, with their long pedigrees dating back to Buckley and Burnham, were our crusading champions. I couldn’t help noticing that despite having all the good ideas, good arguments, AND reality on our side, these happy warriors were taking a very long time to lead us to… Read more »
Feel like a sucker? I do. And I’m pretty pissed off I don’t care to say. I’m more than pissed off. It is cold anger my friend. The con was up for me when they did what they are doing now to trump, more to the point those of us who see a recourse and redress in a possible leader who is not a political racketeer, when Ross Pero and Admiral Scottsdale ran for the presidency. The conservatives sneered right along with the left at those two fellows and us dirt people who voted for them. There was never to… Read more »
Yes, I do feel like a sucker. And I’ve always thought myself so smart! They say that anyone can be conned, if they WANT to believe the con, and I did. But looking back, I can see that there was a first crack in the wall of my belief back during the Bush administration, and it was regarding the great War on Terror. From the very beginning, and continually as the years went on, Bush and the war supporters kept reminding us that this was going to be a long, long war. I think “decades” was suggested early on. I… Read more »
We where conned again as you say, plain and simple. Bush got away with it because he made the effort to seem like a regular guy. And conned us again. It is all a con. So much is a con, the cons are cons.
The elite live amongst us all. They live next door, down the street or over across town behind the gated entrance. Each of us know where one or two live or work or dine on a Friday night. Once “it” starts, we could all, every one of us, do our part for the Republic, America. There are only several thousand oligarchy who are in some command position. It will be easy to take them all out. Without fighting the military or the cops. One night several elite get theirs, nights later many more are served their last papers. Until such… Read more »
I have thought that the ultimate stupidity might occur when the electors hold their election after the apparent Trump victory on Tuesday. Who are the electors after all? They are the establishment writ large. Or it might happen early in a Trump administration when the congressional leaders introduce a Bill of Impeachment following a minor spat.
Its because they are all on the take. There is no difference between the parties. They all go to the same schools, clubs, marry each other etc. Vote for change.
Lot of people have invested in their entire thinking in a personal level of cognitive dissonance. Taken as a whole, the ability to look anything but little stages of thought outside that comfort zone in the eye and roll with it is akin to herding cats. This is a vast majority of people who must be spoon fed, a morsel at a time, with a bib, the truth. Take this example by the amazing Carl Denninger: Where’s The Truth? https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231606 Truth is scary, it’s like liberty, you got to become responsible, if these accounts of how nasty these people around… Read more »
(Continuing the thought of the last sentence.) . . . or who want to grab some of the $stuff for themselves while it’s still available.
Just keep your head down citizen and the spice will continue to flow. Until it stops. The spice MUST flow.
Read this today: ‘Hillary Clinton’s Downfall And Ruling Class Collapse’ “…I lol whenever I see Huma’s Vedic mug; what else can you do? She’s the type of craven creature that can only come to exist in a late-era, openly distressed bureaucracy. Nakedly power hungry, Machiavellian, completely indifferent to the struggles of the Historic American Nation. Just a wicked, black-eyed, soulless political climber who happens to be one of the most powerful advisors in the world. Do you think she has the interests of the farmer in Kansas foremost in her mind? Does she get a patriotic rush when poring over… Read more »
Doug, you do have a way with words.
Oh no, I didn’t write that piece about yuma, but it sure was a spot on screed.
Boom!
A.T., we’re “Dune” our best!
Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein has written extensively on Conspiracy Theories. Two items of note are his beliefs that such theories need to be “regulated” and Govt entities should “infiltrate groups of conspirators”. How one goes about “regulating” a theory is an open question. I’m thinking Zuckerberg agreeing to “regulate” comments in Germany over their Moslem invaders. The recent Bundy trial in Oregon proved Govt entities infiltrated the Malheur standoff. Paid [our tax dollars] Govt Informants bought the weapons that created the Fast and Furious Fiasco. Our uber-educated Overlords never suffer the consequences of their utter failures,and worse,never ever,learn a… Read more »
Sunstein is a particularly loathsome 0bama apparatchik (Administrator of the WH Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs 2009-2012 – a bland title that conceals that he was a kind of chief commissar of the administrative state), and currently married to the equally loathsome Samantha Power (0’s current UN Ambassador.).
Eeeew. I had forgotten about that DC Power Couple.
Please read this article from 2008. Still very pertinent.
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/#.WBuGI_orKUk
It outlines how it is all set up for them to pass and never having to suffer consequences. This is from a Yale and Columbia professor who finally woke up. Real interesting read.
Thanks for that link; it is excellent.
There have been days where I think she can’t possibly win due to all the scandals. But the elites/oligarchs may be more corrupt than we give them credit at this point. They’re going to drag her to the finish line come hell or high water. The silence of what used to be called the opposition or opposite party is deafening. Which confirms the side they’re on. Instead of the usual piling on your opponent as would be done in the past. Nothing is what it used to be. Norms no longer exist. Hold on it’s gonna get bumpy.
If the election were all sewn up and HRC “is” the next President, then why would they have to continue with any sort of campaigning… Hillary reminds me of one of those people that pee all over the toilet seat in a public restroom and doesn’t clean it up, just because she can. She’s the dikhead texting on her phone and oblivious the light has turned green. And when you give a short honk to inform her, she flips you off. Hillary has become that vagrant who has taken a dump in the bathroom sink at a Starbucks because she… Read more »
You downplay Obama’s role in this. He has refused to follow protocol and has run roughshod over our system of checks and balances. He is accountable to no one, and no one is willing to hold him to account. Because his policy goals are unpopular, he has been forced to resort to clandestine methods to get them implemented that are of either questionable constitutionality or ar ham-handed and authoritarian. And let’s not forget the weaponization of government agencies such as the IRS. Let’s also not forget the Republicans utter powerless and cowardliness in holding him to account. That gives people… Read more »
the GOP *is* in on it.
Of course, the shadow play requires a designated opposition. The GOP is the Washington Generals of Politics.
The unspoken threat was always “if you don’t do things my way, I will turn the inner cities loose on the ‘burbs.”
I would have called his bluff. He would have failed and 85% of the citizenry would be “woke” as they say.
I hear a lot of people carping these days about how volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous the world has become. Things only get that way when everyone is posturing and no one is fighting. You gotta push back on buffers and bullies.
“The unspoken threat was always “if you don’t do things my way, I will turn the inner cities loose on the ‘burbs.””
He already has with the AFFA. Section 8, coming to a town or burb near you.
A race war is coming, like it or not. And the ferals are in for a whole lotta rude and concrete surprises.
The ferals are in for a solution that is…final.
A friend told me many years ago, “There’s a race war coming in this country, I just hope I’m alive for it”.
Echoes upon echoes:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(Yeats-1919)
Poetry is for fag! 😛
I think it started for a lot of people when it was the National Enquirer that broke the John Edwards scandal. You knew something was wrong when they ‘scooped’ the MSM.
It started a long time ago for me, but in 2008 I learned to watch the political speeches with the sound off. What you see in Obama’s and Hillary’s eyes, faces, and expressions while they speak will blow you away. It’s nightmare stuff. These are not normal human beings.
Most fascinating election ever. No matter who wins, at this point. History is being made before our eyes, and no one has any idea how it will all go down, or when. Things happen fast when history is being made, and it is getting hard to keep up, even when you are paying attention. The Ceausescu coup is instructive. There is a YouTube out there, subtitled in English, showing how they had no idea how the ground had shifted beneath them. In a matter of hours or a few days, they went from banal proclamations of how great everything is,… Read more »
Yep, I’ve mentioned this ” history” aspect to a few friends lately. We’re knee deep in a pivot point right now. Who knows what will happen. A lot of the spinning plates are looking wobbly, and well, with the Cubs WS win last night, we’ve entered into a new paradigm. Heh. Politically, is this what 1860 felt like, or are we a few years from that? 1901 when TR came in with progressive change? 1912 , when Wilson waltzed in and profoundly went about fundamentally changing the Federal Government and our relation to it… not to mention WWI and setting… Read more »
“They Work For US”: the biggest howler in a long raft of sad jokes. When people finally give up on that one, is when they are opening their eyes, and not before. When they realize the system is not dysfunctional, but working exactly the way it was designed. When they realize government schools were never intended to educate, but instead to dumb down and indoctrinate. When they realize that cops were not for keeping society safe, but downtrodden and compliant. It takes a very long time to work through the indoctrination; some very talented people have colluded to keep us… Read more »
I took the red pill around 1979 when I realized there was not one iota of difference between the Democratic party platform and the Communist Manifesto. If it walks like a red, and talks like red, it’s a red. The Republicans as a rule were born with silver spoons in their mouths and one hand in your pocket. They were all thieves, only their methods and routes to power differed. Dems-tax and buy votes, Reps-gangster banking and buy votes. The belief du jour was all over the television and newspapers and everyone was on the same page. You vs us… Read more »
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. Bertrand de Jouvenal
Could the sheep be morphing into men and women?
RileyD, nwJ
Bill Whittle wrote of sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs in his fine essay TRIBES eleven or so years ago. The elite are the wolves today. Liberals are incredible sheep, hating to admit wolves exist, stooping to calling sheepdogs (their protectors) wolves. One shortcoming of TRIBES was the lack of religion in the sense it is pastors and ministers who readily identify evil thus acting as sheepdogs.
Sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs? I think that was Col. Grossman’s concept long before eleven years ago.
What about some of the crazier rumors being deliberate disinfo? Paid online trolls have turned out to be not just a conspiracy–and attempting to discredit the fringes by making them sound insane is an old trick.
There’s probably a fair bit of it, both official and voluntary. There are a lot of crazy people in every society. Twitter and Facebook will be collection points for these people so that the crazy is magnified. The political campaigns hire companies that attempt to persuade by flooding social media with their message. On the other hand, look at the polls. We have had a week and one revelation after another about Clinton corruption and yet we’re told by the pollsters that this has booster Clinton’s numbers. How is that possible? In fairness, not all polls show this, but it… Read more »
I consider myself a sane and rational person and a reasonably astute observer of all things in life. Eight years ago or even four years ago, I would have laughed at most conspiracy theories. I don’t laugh at them anymore. In fact, many of them sound quite plausible these days. And it scares me to death.
Watching Ohole and his gang, I start to wonder about another crux in history – when JFK ( anti-commie, tax reducer) was shot by a communist (who failed to defect to Russia, but returned with a Russian wife to keep him on track). LBJ was a skilled legislative arm twister who was instrumental in ending freedom of association (civil rights act) and establishing welfare. He also idiotically mismanaged the vietnam war in typical (D)irtbag fashion(micromanging know-it-alls) – this was a crippling blow to our ability to deter commies short of war. After the Venona intercepts, it is clear our politics… Read more »
sows
There has always been a lot of “nonsense in the world”. You just didn’t hear about it 24/7.
See Tweets 1 through 23 here. I think these tweets succinctly encapsulate what is going on right now. This would have been laughed at as a conspiracy theory not too long ago, but it is looking quite plausible these days.
https://mobile.twitter.com/hectormorenco
I’ll pat myself on the back and state that I stopped trusting anything said by politicians or the msm about 20 years ago and shortly thereafter left the USA for good. I was sitting in a bar in Spain (I lived there) with a friend (r.i.p.) who lived a few blocks from the WTC when we saw the plane hit. Right then and there I knew it would be along time if ever that the true tale came out, but three years later I’d moved to the remote location in South America from which I observe this circus with a… Read more »
Come on home, Montefrio. The party’s just starting.
Didn’t we already go through this before, though? 9/11 was supposed to be the traumatic event that pulled off the masks and forced us to realize that the world was not as we’d believed it to be. It lasted for awhile, but eventually everything went back to a kind of normal again. Will it be different this time? I feel as if it’s getting harder every time for the opinion-makers to batter us down with lies, but I can’t be sure that THIS is the moment of no return.
Well as far as aliens revealing themselves, no one would pay attention aside from those humans directly involved. The humans could take photos, have cake and coffee with the Martians, receive $24 worth of Martian trinkets in exchange for some Twinkies, etc. The Martians could implant tiny receptors into the humans to keep in touch with them. Then what? Just who would the humans contact to report all of this? No media outlet would cover it (they would think it a joke), no researcher taken seriously by real scientists would bother looking into it, the police/fire would ignore it all.… Read more »
“There was also the rampant corruption in the French economic system that was slowing bankrupting the government. The King was not just broke. Massive borrowing to keep the system running had made the system insolvent.” Also very similar to today in that the public had been very deliberately lied to, and those lies were subsequently exposed. Finance Minister Jacques Necker had insisted on publishing the “Compte Rendu au Roi”- a ledger showing the kingdom’s finances- and making it available to the general public, who turned it into an instant bestseller. The only problem was that Necker had shamelessly cooked the… Read more »
This has been an amazing piece of rational discussion following an equally rational article. Thank you to all who participated. There may be hope……even Solzhenitsyn had amazing discussions in the Gulag. So I humbly add that in addition to these discussions we keep all options on the table when negotiating with our government, especially the threat of the 2nd Amendment and the Declaration of Independence.
The red team, blue team dance has been worse than you describe. For 2 decades each has been passing the agenda that it had recently apposed when the other was in power. This fake slap fight is real and those who have watched were not paranoia.
Linked at #Gab
@ProGunFred
#2A
It isn’t just the election. Malaysia just seceded from the US Empire, following Syria and the Philippines. The USG is already bogged down in Syria, it hasn’t even had time to spool up to an invasion of the Philippines, and now another protectorate is defecting.
The Media AKA Ministry of Propaganda have been at this for a very long time. It is NOT a recent change. Just as an example, I used to write letters to the editor of the Oregonian newspaper defending RKBA, now and then, over the years. I noticed that the letters were being clumsily edited, presumably to fit in the limited space in the opinion page, so I made an extra effort to write a couple of letters that were concise and logically consistent, and well within the word limit. Strangely, these were edited too, again by someone with what looked… Read more »
“You cannot blame people for being a bit paranoid, given what we see happening.”
It isn’t paranoia if they are out to get you. Not long ago we could not have even imagined this level of corruption at the highest levels of The Feral Gov’t. It goes to the top. Barky is as deep in this as any.
I used to think Alex Jones from Info Wars was nuts. Now it seems he may be prescient.
[…] SOURCE […]