Some on this side of the great divide have come to accept that the West is not going to vote itself out of its current decline. If the West is to survive, it will require a radical change in the political arrangements outside the democratic apparatus. Not everyone on this side accepts that. Some still cling to the hope that the ruling class will have an epiphany and begin to accept reality. Others think that if enough of the public wakes up to what’s happening, this will force the political class to yield.
It is an interesting question as to how people in the West, particularly heritage populations, really think about democracy. The new comers mostly think democracy is free stuff and a comfortable lifestyle, but the heritage population still has the residue of civic nationalism The Left, of course, despises democracy, despite their yelping about it. They see democracy as a means to an end. The rest have been conditioned to say they think liberal democracy is the best, but how many really believe it is unknown.
It is a worthwhile question to consider when watching the Brexit drama unfold over the next two weeks. The official version of this process is the British people had a referendum and they voted to leave the EU. The law put March 31, 2019 as the deadline for leaving and Parliament had until that date to work out a deal with the EU. If there was no deal, then Britain unconditionally leaves the EU. A deal to leave slowly and gently, however, would need to pass through Parliament. That was the orderly process laid out for Brexit.
As of this writing, the government of Theresa May has tried several times to get the deal she struck with the EU through parliament. The deal is an insult to the intelligence of the average British subject, so it has failed to get through parliament. The deal she cut is to leave the EU in name only. Britain would continue to allow Brussels to dictate terms on things like regulation, trade and most especially immigration policy. Those rooting for democracy have to be appalled by the craven cynicism of this ploy.
The Commons Speaker, which is like the head parliamentarian, ruled that Theresa May cannot submit her deal for a vote again, unless it is substantially altered, which is an impossibility at this point. That would mean Britain is headed for a hard Brexit at the end of this month. It would also mean that a responsible democratic government would now be moving to inform and prepare the public for that eventuality. Instead, the government is scheming with the EU to delay everything so they can have a second referendum.
Americans are familiar with this gag. Back in the dark days when marriage was linked to biological reality, left-wing agitators would get homosexual marriage initiatives onto state ballots. These initiatives would fail, but the agitators would get them on the ballot again the next election. The Left sees democracy as a bus. Once it takes you to your desired stop, you get off. That means they demand people keep voting on their issues until the people get the correct result. Once that happens, no more democracy.
This is the scheme the “Remainers” have always had in their back pocket. It’s why they have been happy to drag out this process for years, right to the deadline. This week, they will argue that the country is not prepared to meet the legal deadline, so there has to be a delay in the process. Of course, the point of the delay is to then get a second vote setup for later in the year. If that vote goes their way, that’s it. If they lose again, then the whole process begins anew as they scheme to undermine the results.
For Americans, watching this unfold is useful in understanding why Trump has become Jeb Bush. After the 2016 election, we saw a parade of Washington politicians stagger around shell-shocked at the result. What we did not see is how they immediately got to work plotting with one another as to how to undermine the new administration and the will of the public. Just as the political class in Britain has spent the last few years undermining the Brexit result, official Washington has worked tirelessly to undermine Trump.
Democracy can only work if the people in elected office and the political system see the will of the people as legitimate. They have to respect the system as much as the voters, in order for the system to function as designed. The trouble is, democracy selects for the cynically ambitious and sociopaths. The former sees the public as suckers to be fleeced, while the latter simply enjoys lying and deceiving. For democratic politicians, democracy is mostly just a game they play to amuse themselves.
For the public, democracy inevitably becomes a weird game of Russian roulette. In every election, no matter how hard they study the choices, the results are almost random. You vote to leave the EU, and three years later you’re voting on the same issue again or maybe the vote was ignored entirely. People forget that the French voted several times on joining the EU and all of those votes were ignored. In fact, most of what we see happening in the West has never seen any ballot anywhere. Immigration is an obvious example.
At some point, the absurd uncertainty of voting becomes obvious to even the most delusional civic nationalist. It’s why democracy always ends in authoritarianism. The certainty of a dictator, even a bad one, beats the randomness and uncertainty of the democratic process. There are probably plenty of Brits who would welcome the monarch taking control of the government again. Even the daffy Prince Charles is an upgrade over the circus of Parliament. At least the ceremonies would be fun.
Welcome to “Black Pill Tuesday.”
Indeed, the wheels are coming off this sucker.
Best case scenario: Augusto Pinochet.
Worst Case Scenario: AOC.
You cannot have a successful “democracy” without a highly educated electorate with a stake in the game.
Instead we have an effectively programmed electorate with a ‘gibbsmedat’ mentality.
I’ve got a baaaaad feeling about this.
I’m liking Mi General more and more every day….
AS usual the truth about Gen. P. has been buried under a mountain of Pinko-commie BS!
I grew up with Cuban exiles. They knew and were not shy about pointing out what Pinochet saved Chile from. At my old firm, we did quite a bit of business in S. America. Chile was on the only place that was consistently profitable. Columbia a close second. Rest of the continent were clusterfucks of varying intensities….
Pinochet was loved by many. I have a friend from Chile whose parents kept a picture of the General hanging in their home long after he was out of power.
You cannot have a successful “democracy”. No qualifiers necessary. Humans are by nature hierarchical.
Either way it ends in free chopper rides for some body
sadly , I think Pinochet has left the building. The upper ranks of military leadership has been cleansed of anyone who is not a craven social justice political hack for at least 10 – 15 years. It will be AOC .
First Bernie, then AOC….
Oligarchy is behind the facade of any “democracy,” and the US oligarchy won’t allow any of the things you are afraid of. Stop listening to boomer conservatism.
No, you can’t have a successful democracy with single women and immigrants voting….No skin in the game.
It only works with an educated and *moral* populace.
“The basis of democracy is morality, not majority voting.”
Margaret Thatcher
Pinochet is the WORSE case scenario. The fact of the matter is that Europeans and Americans, like in the past, will vote their way out of their current problems. The general public on both sides of the Atlantic, i.e. the “heritage populations”, are acutely aware of the issues and seek viable solutions to them within our democratic apparatus. In particular, Antifa and the Alt Right both view representative democracy as a bus–it takes you to their desired stop even if you are ringing the buzzer to get off. Each group seeks to be the driver. Fortunately, normies understand the intention… Read more »
I’m reminded of the time Massachusetts had a ballot initiative to repeal the state income tax. It passed with a large majority and the state legislators had a hearty laugh about the whole thing.
How about the California homosexual marriage initiative. The court invented a reason to strike it down. That reason was, the people who voted against gay marriage are mean.
Sure – but at least they pretended the election meant something. In MA, they just laughed the whole thing off and continued with business as normal. No re-vote, no court case, nothing.
MA voters love to virtue signal by electing a powerless GOP Governor. They have never been satisfied with giving the RINO party a legislative majority, or even enough seats to sustain a veto.
Any fair (lol) application of the ’65 Voting Rights Act would force a gerrymandered “Safe GOP” district in that state, akin to the black majority blobs you see in the Southern states.
I left long ago – but always assumed the Republican Governors were a sort of admission that they know their Democrats are crazy and need somebody to keep a lid on things. I think their string of crazy Senators is the virtue signal since they can’t screw up the state (at least not without screwing up the whole country).
but the bottom line always comes back to the “voters”; Ours and Theirs. Then let’s remind ourselves that “Ours” elect the McCains and keeps Mitchy McCuckold as “leader” of the Senate Republicrats.
Lyin Ryan and Mittens Romney and most of the Repubs are worthless offal in the face of Marxist-Muslim democRats.
It doesn’t take a savant to See that TINVOWOOT.
The question unanswered is do We slumber into slavery or resist?
and if resisting; which is not a foregone conclusion; How and what methods would promise success?
When judges legalized gay marriage in Iowa, the judges were voted out in the next election. Apparently this was the first time Supreme Court judges were voted out in that state. The Bar Association promptly complained about “political interference in judicial decision making”. The implication is that lawyers own the law, by virtue of being predominantly leftist.
Yes the lawyers are priests of the prog death cult. Voting is merely a means to sort the proles, like a census to measure compliance and dissent for social engineering budgeting purposes. I remember as a kid in the 80’s hearing about how Japan was minting something like 50:1 engineers to lawyers whereas the USA was the opposite. I suppose we could debate whether that worked for them or not vis a vis the ‘global economy’ but it undoubtedly worked from the standpoint of innoculating against the multitude of lies that leftism demands on the road to cultural suicide. The… Read more »
That California gay marriage initiative shows you how the people in this state are nothing like the people in power lording it over us. We popped them with the Prop 13 property tax limits a long time ago, and they have never forgotten. They will never allow us to actually influence their rule, ever again.
My state, NC, passed a constitutional amendment against gay marriage by a vote of 61% in favor and the courts not only struck it down but legalised gay marriage overturning state law in one fell swoop!
The federal court in question was in Asheville, probably the gayest city in NC.
Sorry, no, Carrboro is the gayest. But Asheville is a close second.
So many of those petition-driven ballot initiatives have gone against the wishes of the Massachusetts General Court that they’ve decided that merely getting enough signatures will no longer guarantee your question appearing on the ballot.
I found a web site once upon a time that allowed you to tinker with demographics from, I believe, the 2014 election of the House of Representatives. If you eliminated women’s votes, there would have been zero democrats elected. I have two sons, a daughter, and am happily married to a smart capable woman, but the 19th amendment was a serious mistake. I believe the meme is equal rights / equal responsibilities. Universal suffrage is ridiculous. Perhaps a compromise: If you receive funds or are professionally licensed, however tenuously, from a government entity you cannot vote in that government’s elections.… Read more »
Sorry, women didn’t give this country Tammany Hall or the Curley Machine. But we’ll never know what might have been.
They also didn’t give us a civil war, though one of them gave us a ghastly novel to pump up the hysteria.
The fairer sex may not have FOUGHT in the war of northern imperialist aggression, but women certainly contributed their fair share to starting it. Abolitionists were majority female. A “let’s you and him fight” situation if ever there were one.
Whoa, there! Gone With the Wind is awesome.
There are those that would say that New York and Boston were better places under those Irish Catholic political machines. Both seem to have gone down hill since Roosevelt busted up the machine. I, of course, don’t care, them being damn Yankees and all.
we occasional get it wrong , they almost always do . there’s a difference. even my adult daughter agrees. She is appalled at what a college “education” has turned her friends into.
You won’t have many voters. Everyone has to have a license now.
Well you know what they say, if you don’t vote you have no right to complain.
Another way our fine republic/democracy works is putting an initiative on the ballot so Joe and Mary Blow can vote on it. If our real rulers don’t like the result ,one of their judges will deem it unconstitutional.
I don’t mind down voting my opinion but be aware of the sarcasm first.
The thing about sarcasm is, it works best when there is at least a small tell in the message maybe an emoticon or an /s if there isn’t a clear indicator. You provided none of these so for anyone who left their psychic hat in their car by accident your message seems dry and pedantic. Just FYI…
Of course the proof is in the pudding , correct. Sometimes too dry.
The thing about sarcasm is, it works best when there is at least a small tell in the message maybe an emoticon or an /s
An emoticon or a /s ruins sarcasm as surely as explaining the pun of a joke before you tell it.
The clue here is in the last sentence.
Democracy is the worst form of government…except all the others! Amirite!…is this thing on?
Actually, a Constitutional Republic is better than a Democracy, but I digress.
There is a second option… Keep voting until we give the correct results.
I want to congratulate you, Z-man, for penning such a clear and concise account of what’s happened with Brexit. Scour the major media for straightforward reporting, and you’ll find plenty of “analysis,” “perspectives,” and flow-charts. But it’s all gobbledygook. you’ll certainly be hard pressed to find a word about subverting the will of the electorate.
Sowing confusion about consequential matters like this is one of the ways a decadent, one-party system exerts dominance over the people. It’s an old story, but we’re watching it in real time.
The Mueller investigation is our version of Brexit. The left didn’t like the outcome of an election so they snapped into gear to show us why and how we were wrong and they’re gonna fix it for us. Like it or not.
I was saying the other day to a friend that I thought the decline of Britain started with the female monarchs ceding far too much power to the Top Men running the parliament. The Victorian era was the pinnacle of British power as Empire but already in decline. Edward seemed to try to arrest the decline, but he was, like Trump, far to close to the financier class. He even attempted to stop giving Muslims Honors (but eventually lost that battle). After Edward died the Commons seized power in basically a coup with the Parliament Act of 1911. The current… Read more »
Did she allow her doofus son to become a literal cuck, to a Muslim no less, or her grandsons to be Woke Royalty?
The Hanoverians and “Windsors” were ALWAYS a creature of the Parliament. Victoria could playact the Queen, but a Parliament that had executed one King, exiled another, and invented the Act of Succession were the ones determining policy long before a teenage Victoria was crowned.
So the rot goes all the way back to 1701? Or does it go all the way back to Cromwell?
Waterloo
Guy Fawkes did nothing wrong
Other than failing.
He’s known in England as the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.
I’m always willing to blame Cromwell, if for no other reason that he reversed Logshank’s excellent decision and allowed the return of Jews to Britain.
Luther
The English Parliament made itself into a permanent institution, unlike the French counterpart which was dispensed with when Richelieu found new ways of raising revenue, bypassing the feuding nobility.
The Anglo system has its benefits, the army has not removed a civilian government since 1660. The French army removed governments as recently as the 1960s.
And that a good thing?
British royalty is largely a PR exercise. The Queen is very good at it, but her progeny are a bunch of losers.
Women should not be allowed any political power unless they are a hereditary monarch like Her Majesty. Otherwise you get the results we have today.
I suppose I’m a but modern in that exceptional women should be allowed in the military and some into the police which is kind of political power but we do need a female touch for certain kinds of work and I know a bare handful of women with exceptionally rare skills we need.
You let them in, they begin to make the changes, and long-standing, objective standards must be lowered to allow them to succeed. Speaking from experience.
“Women should not be allowed any political power unless they are a hereditary monarch like Her Majesty. Otherwise you get the results we have today.” LOL. You were born in the wrong century. The results we have today are due to white men. They held the power and authority. “I suppose I’m a but modern in that exceptional women should be allowed in the military and some into the police which is kind of political power but we do need a female touch for certain kinds of work and I know a bare handful of women with exceptionally rare skills… Read more »
WWI doomed the British Empire; it bankrupted that nation. They should have followed the same policy as they did during the Franco-Prussian War, which was to not get involved in yet another one of those continental European wars. Much later, Maggie Thatcher became PM. She was hated by the UK establishment; a shop keepers daughter and not part of the elite society (that alone is two strikes against you). As an ordinary person for most of her life, she was wise to the stupidity and bankruptcy causing policies of the “command and control” types within UK politics which she did… Read more »
Thatcher was pro-abortion and a gun banner, and is responsible more than anyone else for the deindustrialization along with (((Lawson))) in the UK that didn’t occur in comparable France/Germany/Japan.
She was an impersonator of Enoch Powell, using his rhetoric but never delivering on his goals, nor sharing his suspicion of the US.
That’s the way I see it as well. By deindustrializing the UK she crippled the white working class and they never recovered. Those industries she privatized and allowed to be gutted weren’t the best, but they gave gainful and meaningful employment to millions of men and women. They were also part of the social fabric that kept small towns and communities alive and healthy. Worse she started gutting the military. Had Argentina waited a couple of more years, they could have rolled into the Falklands and the UK wouldn’t have had a military response to it. All in all she… Read more »
Nicely put. Thatcher did enormous damage to England so her new rich masters could make more money of the working class The backlash to her economic policies as much as anything else put Labour in charge and that created the issues with immigration as well. No matter who is in charge, our next leaders will need to be thoroughly nationalist . However they are put in the preferred being elections but if all else fails at gunpoint they will have to be from the working and middle classes, the lower classes mainly being too damaged and the upper too detached… Read more »
Threw Rhodesia to the dogs as well.
Twas she who signed the Single European Act.
Agreed. It was WWI that killed us. The cost in blood and treasure broke the nation and it was never the same again. We lost the flower of our human capital in the trenches on the Western Front. The remainder was mopped up by bomber and fighter command in WWII.
Agreed. Edward VIII might have been a king to turn things around, but he was removed on the pretext of his marriage to an American divorcee, Wallis Warfield Simpson. He was also rather pro-German prior to World War II, but, in fairness, he saw the Nazi government as an anti-Communist bulwark in central Europe and he had had relatives murdered by the Bolsheviks.
From time to time, as required by events, this picture resurfaces.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kwx7ge/royal-family-nazi-salute-british-empire-history-fascism-832
It was a centuries long process of parliament eroding the monarch’s power.
The Queen has no actual power and, by custom, must remain politically neutral. If she raised so much as a squeak of protest about anything, then the monarchy would be abolished altogether. The bald fact that the little democracy we did have has been stolen from us has not gone unnoticed. Expect interesting time ahead in the old country.
Analyzing historical trends is not the way to go circa 2019 on the dissident right. You are supposed to blame the boomers. The UK therefore was a paradise until they came of age
I came across this interview w/ Thomas Massie (R-KY) that perfectly illustrates your point, Z-man. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-antiwar-rebels-arent-extinct-yet/ The people of KY vote him in because they like his positions. The Republican party apparatus undermines the will of the people at every turn. Pressuring his donors, running candidates to primary him, and stripping him of his chairmanship. All because he doesn’t bow down to Banksters or the MIC. What we have is a pseudo-democracy.
A pseudo-democracy is a banana republic. And we’re in one.
“Some still cling to the hope that the ruling class will have an epiphany and begin to accept reality.”
Isn’t this the Sailer wing of Dissident Right?
The CivNat force runs strong in the comment’s board over there. I can’t take it anymore. Mocking the bully behind his back isn’t a strategy.
Yeah, Steve clings to the hope that one day, one of his posts will crack break the seal. The older wing of the dissident right remains convinced they can talk the other side out of genociding us.
Yeah. It’s frustrating, in part because I have such tremendous respect for Sailer. The guy has been writing about HBD under his own name for 20+ years. Sailer gave up a lot to help countless normies (myself included) cross the great divide. He’s on our Mount Rushmore. That said, it’s not 1995. More than anyone else, Sailer can see the writing on the (promised but not delivered) wall. We’re not going to debate or joke our way out of this. He knows this (or should know this), but he refuses to pivot. I can only hope that in true Sailer… Read more »
It’s not much of a plan, but you have to admit that it’s not different than hoping for a Pinochet, or waiting for (or accelerating) a state collapse.
Indeed, I think Sailer is correct in thinking that we can “break the seal”, at least on some things. The problem is democracy itself, so even if we get a more sane set of rulers, unless we have regime change, it’s temporary.
Steve’s desire to do good by noticing the insanity of the left is less delusional than passively letting the left win all the cultural battles while buying guns and dreaming of revolution. If that revolution happens it will only be over gun rights. Even if we win, the tribe will still control the media and Walk Street. the Chamber of commerce will still want cheap imported labor. Whites are very far from being intellectually where they need to be too make dramatic changes. Like with “conservative” media and donations to the uni party, the tribe will likely coopt the revolution… Read more »
Mockery isn’t much, but it is something. It’s about all that we have at the moment. Some of us, me included, sometimes talk about civil conflict and separation. But it’s only talk. At least mockery is talk with a little sting in it.
This Brandon tarrant seems to have combined both, mockery with direct action. Hard to tell what would happen if a couple thousand of him popped up.
” Hard to tell what would happen if a couple thousand of him popped up.”
Not hard at all. That’s the wet dream of the ruling class; the perfect excuse for an emergency power grab and violent government crackdown on anyone who looks like a dissenter. It would cement the current powers that be in control for centuries. They’re praying to Moloch for something like this,
Actually no. Especially if this bunch targeted the ruling class and their associates. That would be a nightmare.
I remember how terrified the ruling class was when the Beltway sniper was on the loose. They brought in all sorts of tier 1 military assets to find them and to no avail.
Richard Dorner in Los Angeles had the entire police department terrified after offing two cops. He had the cops shooting innocent people in the streets.
If you had several thousand Tarrants willing to pay the ultimate price, the ruling class would cease to exist within a week.
Mass attacks on the ruling class would start a shitstorm of mythological proportions that the commoners would drown in. Fantasies about toppling the system by violence are stupid fever dreams. They’re fully prepared and equipped to snuff out an insurrection.
Sure they are. Just like they were fully equipped and prepared to shut down the candidacy of Donald Trump.
yes, my thoughts keep coming back to the Beltway Snipers. Those Yahoos shutdown Washington DC for what? 3 weeks?
I agree that mockery is a weapon and also works to help wake up normies. But it can’t be all that we do.
I’ll admit that I’m still struggling to figure out just exactly what we can and should do next, but at least, I’m thinking along those lines. Sailer seems stuck in mockery/debate mode. He’s great at it, but I wish he’d occasionally acknowledge that we needed to do more.
Normies are already “awake”. They are more than aware of Antifa and Alt RIght machinations. And “mocking” normies only pisses them off. What I wish is that they take that anger and hostility and take out the enemies one and for all. But we tend to be too kind and introspective.
“At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, (Ben) Franklin was queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.” Franklin replied, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.” “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” ― Benjamin Franklin And when did this happen here in the USA? When they passed the… Read more »
We lost the republic about 80 years after we got it. The rest of American History is a history of the Empire of Massachusetts.
1913 was the fateful year in which the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed, granting Congress (thereby the federal government) the power the levy income taxes. December 23,1913 was the date which marked the passage of the Federal Reserve Act – an equally odious day in our nation’s history. Woodrow Wilson, a man whom some presidential historians term “America’s first fascist president,” was in office.
Totally on board with the post. The problem is that these hard truths are wrapped up in so many layers of left-wing propaganda, that leading other people to them is like peeling a giant onion layer by layer.
It took me years of reading both books and online stuff to get from normie-centrist libertarianism to here. Will other people ever get there?
I’m feeling Torschlusspanik (a word I learned from a good Libertas Metapolitics video, https://goo.gl/5WAwjV), literally gate-shut-panic, the panicky feeling that time is running out.
Yep. I look at my own journey and realize that it took quite some time, and I’m likely naturally disposed to be here. How long will it take other whites? Probably pretty damn long. However, things are accelerating. The warning signs are becoming more obvious. Many whites will move more quickly to our side. Also, we don’t all whites, just a core. Ten percent would do it – easily. That’s a doable number. We can’t save what we once had, but we can carve out a place for a portion of whites. The number of whites will fall – perhaps… Read more »
My brother is still a die hard Libertarian, going on about how all is needed to make the third world better are better institutions (“muh property rights”). He’s slowly, very slowly, waking up to the H-1B menace in his field (IT). But he wants people to see him as a “good, nice” person. Hence the “hey i’m not crazy like those conservative wackos I think people should be able to do drugs and have lots of sex”. And he still is a full-on blank slater. I was once there, took me a long time to get here. Still not fully… Read more »
People like your brother will only wake up when they realize that they will not be granted an exception by the anti-whites. The anti-whites don’t care if you fashion yourself an abstract individual who judges each person as unique and unrelated to any larger group. They just see you as white, guilty, and someone who must pay tribute.
Babe, if I can do it—others can. Biggest problem as I see it is that Boomers are by and large living comfortably (relative to other groups) at this time. Comfort is an obstacle to change. However, as the numbers of Boomers decline and the power shifts to the takers, then such comforts will decline precipitously and change is inevitable. Where this will lead is left to speculation, but our numbers will increase at every decline in our comfort level. Hence the point often made here wrt acceleration of the process—even when such a process is demonstrably detrimental.
Boomers are hopeless. I know plenty of them. Their mind-shattering cognitive dissonance is amazing to watch. They’d rather their grandchild become Helots and a despised minority in their own lands than some Jew or magic negro even think about calling them a racist.
They live their daily lives like the Grand Wizard of the fictional KKK, but vote Democratic and spout off about how they don’t see color. God, I hate them so.
The boomer derangement syndrome here is beyond obsession. And hate to mention it, but that broad brush you’re using fits the PC millienials much better than any boomer I know. Sorry you hate a whole segment of the population that’s on the same side as you instead of saving your rage for those who deserve it. Tell ya something….nobody is more willing to be called a “racist” in order to get the truth out than people who grew up free-range in the 50s (in a what…96% white country?) and now see generations that can’t even imagine, in their wildest dreams,… Read more »
Gotta love how the Krauts can manufacture a word for
“Katie. bar the door!”.
“The trouble is, democracy selects for the cynically ambitious and sociopaths.”
Add to this malicious, mendacious, parasitical outsiders who want our stuff with us out of the way…and the ideals of democracy no longer amount to much.
Many if not all of us bought into the hope that the Trump train would save us the trouble of getting our hands dirtied and bloodied. If there were an easy way to do this we’d have already done it.
When I was younger I wanted to be a politician. Then I realized there were better and more honorable things to do with my life. The fact that politics is a profession all of its own, with its own career path, is all you need to know. There are people in government with immense power over their fellow citizens – banking, industry, technology, medicine – whose only qualifications are that they out in their time and worked their way up from some other lower level of government. And I’m not just talking about elected officials, I’m talking about regulators and… Read more »
The Yellow Vest Movement is the bellwether indicator of Europe and eventually will come to the US. As the parasite fraction of society grows, the government gravy train will eventually run out of gravy with which to bribe weak-minded voters. This process will proceed very slowly until it moves at hyperspeed. The large cities will devolve first into chaos and then into violence followed by martial law and the overt rise of tyranny. History repeats.
Don’t be in a city. Don’t despair. Get robust and wait for the smoke to clear. Most importantly, don’t forget how we got here.
The gravy has already run out. They’re living on borrowed money and borrowed time.
Ol’ Remus: “stay away from crowds”
Exactly, the only thing paying attention to politics now is good for is anticipating when the cell phone system goes down and what mistakes to avoid when rebuilding civilization.
This is what the boomer-cons holding out hope that if we pass just one more tax cut or move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or point out that black unemployment is down, suddenly our new non-white “Americans” will vote Republican just don’t get. They wave the Constitution around like a magical talisman but only one party even pretends to give a crap about what the Constitution says. For the Left the Constitution only means what some prog, elected-for-life, judge says it means. Like democracy they use the Constitution when it is convenient, and ignore it the rest of the… Read more »
My brother is convinced that the fact that Trump has lowered black unemployment will cause many blacks to vote Republican. I marvel at his naiveté.
The United States is in turmoil, more so that at any other time in history. States hate other states, the electoral college is under attack at every turn and the races are at each others throats. On top of this is a two party political system, split by racial, social, cultural, linguistic and class divides. The end result is a nation in gridlock, unable to respond to any great change, unable to commit to any great projects. A political and social stalemate that makes any advancement impossible. Meanwhile the 10000 ton boulder of demographic change rolls ever forward, gaining momentum… Read more »
You’ve heard of the American Civil War, right? Deadliest conflict in American history? Nearly 655,000 men killed? “more so than at any other time in history” doesn’t give history a lot of credit.
Well the source material was written by an Australian….
Just give it little more time, BT… this one will put CW 1 in second place.
That was a cobbled together estimate made after the war. A recent effort, extrapolating census data from 1860 and 1870 as well as other sources suggests the number to be 850,000. Add disabling injuries and you have a very significant fraction of white males 16-30, a number that would translate today to eight or ten million white men. One rural Georgia county reported three remaining alive and intact.
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The internet is a fascinating conflict-accelerant, a totally new element whose pivotal role may only be understood after the smoke–perhaps literally–clears.
Even if we don’t fully understand it, we’ve got to work it furiously. People say the right is under-networked, and that’s true. But only in terms of traditional networks. We’ve got this whole giant new network that connects all the computers in the world. That’s not half bad.
Keep posting, keep meme-ing, keep sharing.
Using the French Revolution as a template, the way to get change is to have the middle class acquire more monetary power and influence by means of new forms of commerce and new markets while developing its own propaganda network. The class remains somewhat content until a point is reached where expected continued progress becomes stifled and there is a crisis in leadership, at which point the class then overturns the old order. Our elites know this all too well. It is the reason for the continued beatdown of the middle class, and importation of more compliant replacements. It is… Read more »
Somebody asked about the FR, and I didn’t chime in and say we’ve got a resident scholar right here. Always felt guilty about that, and was hoping you’d give a summary lesson on what you’d found. This will do nicely, thanks.
“The Left sees democracy as a bus. Once it takes you to your desired stop, you get off.” – This is the exact terminology that the Muslim Brotherhood uses in countries in which it operates. Erdogan in Turkey only had to be elected once. He took care of the rest. The constitution, had it been followed, would have prevented this. The 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) was the death knell. Constitutions are like trophies. They’re only important to the generation that won them, and are subsequently covered in dust and then thrown out. What will amaze us in the… Read more »
Voting: the mechanism by which men impose their preferences upon their neighbours …. without having to face them.
Maybe a typo (or maybe I’m just not hep the latest Brit-pol jargon).
“This is the scheme the “Leave” loyalists have always had in their back pocket.”
Did you mean “Remain loyalists”?
Btw, fully agree with much of your complaint about democracy. It does appear to me to be one of the “roads to serfdom”.
I think he means the folks who claim to be “Leave” loyalists but are secretly Remainers at heart. Theresa May, for example.
Yes, that’s a possibility. I hope that he clarifies.
The only way democracy can work is if it’s not a lucrative career, representatives need to see themselves as volunteers doing their civic duty to represent their neighbors. They should be older men who have the free time to devote and the financial means to do so without remuneration beyond expense reimbursement. And it should be part time.
I’m not sure democracy can work at all at the national level, but locally, where the majority and minority of the electorate don’t differ at a fundamental level, it maybe can.
Yes – I grew up in a small New England town where town hall meetings decided how tax money was spent and what the town was going to do. Some of them were very lively and contentious but it worked. It worked in Athens too when it was basically a big town and only landowning men participated. It crashed when Athens tried to become an empire.
>>>I’m not sure democracy can work at all at the national level…
For a “nation” of 300+ million residents, there is no ****ing way democracy can work, which is one reason we in the USA don’t have one. I’d guess the upper bound for a functioning democratic republic is probably well under 10 million.
I’d guess the upper bound for a functioning democratic republic is probably well under 10 million.
Absolutely.
But there’s a lower limit too: if you’re too few people, your democracy will descend into small-town nepotism. This is what happened in Iceland during the financial crisis. The legislators and the pirate bankers were practically blood relatives to a man.
It would be nice to see the House of Windsor overthrown and a new monarchy with teeth ushered in. That would rattle the banking class right down to their umbrella tips.
Like Zman, I’ve wondered if Queen Elizabeth might intervene in whatever form the monarch may still intervene. If a monarch is supposed to have some kind of spiritual bond with her nation, she ought to exercise it and tell Parliament to stop playing around and leave the bloody EU. If democracy has failed, perhaps monarchy might be a preferable substitute. Similarly, an American president may simply end up governing by emergency decree and ignoring attempts by Congress to reign him or her in.
There is a legal mechanism for the Queen to put an end to this circus. The Queen could end this session of Parliament until after the deadline. This would compel a hard Brexit and largely end the debate. Parliament could rush through a bill to have another referendum or seek some sort of delay, but that would be a lost cause.
I doubt it happens, but the queen is old and she may not give a damn. She has been pro-Brexit.
That can’t happen because they haven’t made a movie about it yet.
The royalty should be pro-Brexit.
If they’re not – they’re arguing for the dissolution of the monarchy as it would be completely obsolete and pointless.
zman, you’re right about the power of the Queen to prorogue parliament but I doubt she will use it. If she did, the remain-establishment would go after the entire monarchy with a bloodlust. It would likely mean the end of them.
That said, she is getting old and may just decide to launch a kamikaze mission. But I am not counting on that.
By the way, we’re not subjects anymore. That concept was abolished in 1993. We are citizens (in theory at any rate).
The Monarch can prorogue Parliament: i,e, suspend it. The Brexit law can then be neither amended or overturned.
Then just sit back and wait .
“Similarly, an American president may simply end up governing by emergency decree and ignoring attempts by Congress to reign him or her in.”
LOL, normies would not let that happen. He or she would be hanging from a flagpole.
To quote an adage from the sportsball world, “The answer to all of your questions is money.” The US Constitution was created (as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation) in order to ensure that the rich colonists who had financed the revolution would be repaid. (See “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States” by Charles A Beard — yes, a Lefty, but that doesn’t automatically mean he was wrong.) The money today determines who works in an administration. People repeatedly wonder why Chris Kobach was never made head of DHS, etc. While I have no direct… Read more »
Trump has Thin Skin??
Have you watched Late Show with Steven Colbert?
Non-stop Trump bashing, usually very personal insults, for two years already..
Trump has pretty THICK skin, if you ask me.
Trump has never used the bully pulpit to suggest an “advertiser boycott”, presumably out of self-interest and also because he’s been wormtongued about “tortious interference”. So he says stupid things about the FCC and FEC regulations, which the appointed Commissioners will ignore.
The only way to shut down the comedians (a major element of wrecking Bush, and sparing Obama), is to go after the advertisers the same way that Sleeping Giants does. But the problem is that most conservatives are Boomers that advertisers don’t care about, and conservatives have horrible discipline at boycotting.
Everything comedians say is laughable. And if it isn’t, they aren’t doing their job.
we’re laughing but I’m not sure they can hear us over all the cheering from the studio audience
Given that Trump now wants immigrants “to come into our country in the largest numbers ever,” has put hyper-violent warmongers like John Bolton and Elliot Cohen in charge of his foreign policy, has championed a “criminal justice reform” bill that will flood the streets with criminals, is initiating a crusade to make the world safe for sodomy, etc., I don’t see the point of arguing over how thick his skin is. (Also, I haven’t watched a late night “comedy show” of any kind in at least a decade, so I have to take your word for the viciousness of Mr.… Read more »
I finally got to see Colbert, and lasted about 4 minutes thru the opening. Appalling. Completely deranged. He must imagine himself shooting Czar Nicholas’s family in the basement.
Comedy died with Rodney. And Leno’s retirement.
I’d say the left has the gold medal for “thin-skinned.” With them, it has nothing to with insulting them and they attack– naw, with them, just express an opinion they don’t hold, and they attack. THAT is thin-skinned. DT’s just bein’ alpha.
To watch the news, you would have no idea that CNN and the WP are being sued for a quarter billion each, or that Nunes just sued Twitter for another quarter billion. Or did I just dream all of it? I like that this is starting to happen, but the silence from the outlets of the moneyed interests is deafening.
The Bollea v Gawker precedent was not tested at an appeals court level. I’m a layman, but the Covington case has a stronger chance because of the lower possibility of labeling the student a public figure, and the fact that the media outlets recklessly published the video without fact-checking. There is a risk though, as only the student’s family is suing, the Diocese is not, yet at least. Nunes has a lower chance, as to a layman it looks like petulance.
DeBeers, perhaps all of it comes to naught, but I like the idea of using the Left’s tools of legal intimidation against them. I hope we get a hundred more of these lawsuits.
The strongest claim is against the Indians, but that’s bad optics and the Indians are probably judgement proof. The student’s family weakened his case by hiring a PR firm and appearing on the Today show.
There is also the risk that any lawsuit is subject to “diversity jurisdiction” and is moved out of Fed. Dist. E. Kentucky to Fed. Dist. District of Columbia. No right-wing claim is likely to survive a DC jury.
Diamonds: Removal on diversity grounds only moves you to state us district court, ie eastern district of KY US district Court. I believe that is Lexington, still KY residents in the jury pool. A venue change to usdc for DC would require a good bit more. If I were the defendant, I’d want the jury from around Cincinnati where Covington is not the good ol boys from all of East Kentucky. If they’re pulling a jury from all of East KY, they might even get some pointy hat & bedsheet sorts in there.
The Second Continental Congress and its product, our Constitution, was indeed a coup perpetrated by indebted land speculators looking to open up more land and pass their debt onto the new government. Good discussion of this in Nock’s classic “Our Enemy, the State.”
A bit OT, but a glimmer of good news:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/03/18/devin-nunes-explains-his-250-million-lawsuit-against-twitter/
(Yes, the most vocal commenters at CTH would have apoplexy at today’s comparison of Trump to Jeb Bush. But the site does carry useful news and analysis, which happen to support the points Zman makes.)
“It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people. A constitution republican in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its… Read more »
I must correct you on one small point. You referred to ‘British subjects’. Well, anyone born after 1981 is officially a ‘citizen’ not a subject — yet another sign of Britain’s descent into a dreary, oppressive ‘modern democracy’.
Stephen A. Douglas is still the paradigm case of the kind of guy democracy produces — a “make a deal for the deal’s sake” schemer who saw the whole thing as a big game. Of course, Stephen A. was orders of magnitude smarter than the current crop of yahoos, so he was a lot better at it… which gave us the Kansas-Nebraska Act. I forget what happened after that.
“The deal is an insult to the intelligence of the average British subject, so it has failed to get through parliament”
I agree to the premise, but it is insufficient to support the conclusion. Things as stupid routinely go through parliament.
Some on this side of the great divide have come to accept that the West is not going to vote itself out of its current decline. Not under the current democratic system, where we have rule by political parties (which is to say corporations) rather than rule by elected representatives. Here’s how you could change it from the bottom up: 1) You establish a political party, get elected to the legislature. 2) You establish a website, where every item on the legislative agenda is put to a vote among the party members. The result of this vote will be transferred… Read more »
Great essay, but I had to boil it down to one sentence it’s this: “The trouble is, democracy selects for the cynically ambitious and sociopaths.”
Yes, England would be better off with their monarchy. America would be vastly improved with severely curtailed voting privileges and repeal of the 17th Amendment.
a short video with a beautiful girl for the civ nats here . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc4QR-EM9o4
wow 103 views. Are you related to her? She is attractive and she has a polished presenting Style. Hope we see more of her.
We have long since passed the” awkward stage” Claire Wolfe wrote of a couple + decades ago. Violence is now unavoidable. The question being who prevails and if we end up with gulags and gas chambers. The ugly reality is that freedom and those who really choose it cannot coexist with the commie left, just as freedom cannot exist with Islam. Both communism and Islam have SWORN to destroy freedom and that’s what they will do if no eradicated.
Plato predicted that democracy would lead to tyranny in the eighth book of “The Republic,” written nearly 2,500 years ago. He argued that democracy was the fourth worst in his schema of five types of governments, and believed it to be a degenerate and corrupt form of government.
This criticism of democracy led to the execution of his teacher Socrates.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
George Carlin on voting.
https://youtu.be/xIraCchPDhk
You joke Zman but there’s a lot of rumor/speculation that the Royal Family is a driving force behind Brexit.
They need to have a couple of Beefeaters bust May’s knees then.
This deal is only a starting point, a way to ensure continuity (after all we are taking about 40 years of integration). The real trade negotiations begin right after. Problem is, the british political class is living in a WW2, fighting alone against Hitler (eu)
“This is the scheme ‘Remain’ loyalists have had in their bsck pockets…”?
Thanks.
Brexit date is March 29, not March 31.
I was going to mention this sentence: “This is the scheme the ‘Leave’ loyalists have always had in their back pocket.”
I don’t have a window into another man’s mind, but I suspect that Z meant “Remain loyalists” rather than “Leave loyalists” in that sentence.
But if you’re right about the date, your nitpick is even more pedantic than mine! My hat is off to you, Larry Darell.
“Remain” certainly.
Back in 2009 I wrote a series of three columns explaining why democracy no longer exists in the United States of America: http://www.jpattitude.com/091107.php. Coming at the question from three different angles, I explain why it is a myth, already destroyed by lefties and the Washington establishment. As you point out above, the gay marriage question is a perfect example for showing that we no longer have democracy. Especially if you look at how the issue played out in California. After multiple times being voted upon by the people and even having a gay marriage ban placed in the state constitution,… Read more »
Z: “Some still cling to the hope that the ruling class will have an epiphany and begin to accept reality. Others think that if enough of the public wakes up to what’s happening, this will force the political class to yield.” Just as an aside, this is how MSM like the NYT does it. You can’t fairly present two sides under the pretense of objectivity if you say one side “clings to the hope” and the other side “thinks”.
Um…we actually don’t live in a democracy, but a republic. Big difference. and don’t try calling our system of government a “democratic republic”. that phrase has no meaning.
Nice call back to sperg wars gone by. I have not heard anyone use the “we’re a republic not a democracy” line since the 90’s, at least not seriously.
Britain has a permanent Government (the Civil Service) just like the USA