A generation ago, most Americans associated political prisoners and the secret police with communism and third world dictatorships. A dictator ignored the needs of his people and threw political opponents into dungeons, while lining his pockets and those of his cronies. The communist societies used the secret police to spy on and intimidate the people. The free world had its faults, but it lacked this sort of compulsion, because it was a rules-based system of politics.
Those not around a generation ago are left to imagine what such a world was like, because present day America is nothing like a generation ago. The last three decades have seen a steady slide into the features we used to associate with police states and third world dictatorships. The regime is too busy stuffing its pockets to attend to the people’s business. They use the secret police to harass critics and a deeply corrupt legal system to jail dissidents.
The question that is seldom asked is how did this come to pass? America more or less operated by a respected set of rules into the 20th century. There were periods of lawlessness like the civil war and the Wilson administration. The courts got out of control in the middle of the last century, but they were seeking to expand rights rather than constrict them. The reformers of the 1960’s may have been misguided, but they were still operating within the liberal order.
One argument for what went wrong starts with the Clintons. One side of the political class, desperate for a presidential win, decided to throw in with a pair of narcissistic sociopaths from the Ozarks. This deal with the devil required abandoning one old rule after another until the very idea of rules was in question. The Left’s relationship with the Clintons was a series of moral compromises. Since the Left is the arbiter of political morality, their decent was our decent.
It is not possible to overstate the malevolence of the Clintons. They are the two most corrupt people in the history of American politics. Their first caper in the White House was to steal raw FBI files on their opponents. The mere suggestion of this is what got Nixon run out of town a generation earlier. That caper was the high water mark, in terms of ethics, for the Clinton era. By the time he left the White House, politics reflected the vulgar degeneracy of the Clintons.
The thing is though, the old code of conduct in Washington never would have tolerated the Clintons. We know this because four years before Bill Clinton climbed out of the sewer, Gary Hart was taken out of contention for womanizing. Hart was never accused of murder or corruption. He liked the ladies. In 1988, his lack of discretion was disqualifying, but in 1992, Bill Clinton’s womanizing was overlooked. Something happened in the intervening years to change attitudes.
The big event was the end of the Cold War. The reason for which the American empire had been organized, the Soviet Union, was no more. It has long been forgotten, but the new generation of baby boomer politicians was ready to party. They were going to spend the “peace dividend” on their favorite projects. Bill Clinton’s campaign was an explicit rebuke of the prior generation. George Bush was old and out of touch, while Bill Clinton was cool and modern.
What made the Clinton crime wave possible was the end of the Cold War which took with it the moral imperative to maintain the liberal code. The managerial elite that emerged in the 20th century abided by the liberal code because it was necessary to fight Soviet communism. That set of rules governing both politics and the political culture were necessary to organize society for the long fight. The threat of nuclear annihilation was the exclamation point on the project.
The fall of the Soviet Union removed this great threat and with it the reason to maintain the old moral code. Rolling the dice with a couple of psychopaths suddenly did not seem like much of a risk. Making exceptions to the old rules no longer felt like a gamble, as America was the last superpower. The end of history and the thousand year Reich were upon us all at once and Washington sat atop it all. Everything was possible, so everything was now permitted.
Where we are today, with the emerging thugocracy is a result of a managerial elite that no longer sees any limits. Like the generation raised up after the Second World War, the new generation of leaders that came to power after the Cold War brought with them a narcissistic sense of entitlement. The reason they think sending the FBI to harass opponents is a good idea is because all of their ideas are good ideas. Every criticism is met with a collective “do you know who I am?”
What we are witnessing is the winners version of what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the losers in the great ideological struggle of the 20th century, Russia was prostrate to the world for more than a decade. The only law governing behavior was the law of the jungle. First it was chaos, then it was rule by the various oligarchs and then finally the restoration of civil authority. Thirty years on the new Russia has finally emerged from its past.
America, on the other hand, was the winner. More important, the new generation of leaders that took over inherited the sense of historic accomplishment that came from the victory in the Cold War. Like the degenerate children of a family dynasty, this generation needed structure to prosper. They were made for it. Instead, they came to power just when the old structure was falling away. What they have created in its place is a lawlessness that reflects their character.
Alexander Dugin observed that the end of the Cold War was a disaster for Russia because it suddenly removed the old rules. Communism was horrible, but it was better than the chaos that followed. It turns out that the same is true for America. The end of the Cold War was a disaster. The old rules were not perfect, but they were better than the evolving lawlessness that followed. Unlike the Russians, Americans are learning this slowly, rather than all at once.
Like the Soviet system that emerged after the war, the American empire that formed up after the war was unnatural. America was never fit for a centralized unitary state that was necessary for the long war. It is too big, too diverse and too fractious to be ruled by a central government. In war time, this temporary arrangement was accepted as a necessity of war. Once the war ended, the rationale for the current arrangements ended with it and what is left is this unnatural system of rule.
For that last thirty years the spoiled children of excess who sit atop the managerial class have been searching for a reason to exist. First it was the crusades against Islam, then it was reviving the Cold War with Russia. Now a war with China over Taiwan is the hoped for reason to exist. If Russia and China fail to provide the external justification, then a war against the people will be the answer. They will defend democracy from the people who seek to participate in it.
The autocratic behavior of the managerial elite over the last decade is a response to the evolving awareness of what is happening. The populism that propelled Trump to the White House is an instinctive response to the growing lawlessness. Trump was a chaos candidate only because he represented the old order. The response from the managerial elite was to smash the remaining bits of the old order. Trump’s continuing presence is what fuels their growing authoritarianism.
There is no returning to the old order, but the current lack of order will not survive the people who created it. As the collection of geezers who defined the post-Cold War era die off, their replacements will prove to be as hapless as they look. The great chaos that followed the collapse of communism will come to the West when the post-liberal American order collapses. What comes next will be different, but much more in tune with the nature of the society over which it rules.
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Which came first, the leftist agenda, or the sheeple’s mindset that allowed it to happen?
Would have to go with the leftist agenda came first. Creating a sheeple mindset was part of that agenda.
The best Z Man posts are when I’m speechless and have nothing to add. This is one of them.
America’s problems started long before the Clintons. After World War II Europe was exhausted; America wanted to forget the war, move to the suburbs, and do barbecues in the backyard. As the baby boomers became young adults, they didn’t want to grow up. They wanted to travel, stay single, do drugs, and have as much sex as possible. Those few who had one or two kids were understanding and forgiving of whatever the kids might want to do to rebel. And so kids have been goingmore and more extreme. Just having long hair if you were a guy wasn’t good enough. Neither was pot. LSD, Coke, crack, then amphetamines, heroin, Fentanyl. He had to get a tattoo. He needed interracial dating and rap “music.” Xirls needed to stick paper clips through her nose and paint their hair green and pink and explore gender confusion.
Everything was outsourced. Never mind our manufacturing base that won World War II and the customer service jobs shaped by Christian values. We outsourced child rearing to television and video games and school activities. If we had kids, we talked about spending “quality time” with them as if there is any other time available to us.
Gradually before the Soviet Union fell we started having political correctness. You couldn’t say nigger. But it didn’t stop there. There were more and more harpies would let you know you were no longer free to speak.
We’ve gotten what we deserved.
“Clintons in Waco and Serbia?!”
*Laughs in Fauci*
“They will defend democracy from the people who seek to participate in it.”
This is the political version of a “singularity”. Where logic and reason give way to a tyranny that swallows everything up with endless contradiction.
Z, sometimes you really know how to put complex ideas into a simple sentence.
There’s that scene from “A River Runs Through It” where the pastor-dad grading his sons writing constantly tells them to “make it shorter”.
Zman excels where many bloggers don’t: length is not insight, brevity is wit, the shorter, the better.
The real reason for the Chaotic Evil by our ruling class is the lack of sumptuary laws.
Ordinary people can fly on airplanes. Eat meat sometimes, Drive cars. Take vacations. And the rich and powerful HATE that. They are appalled that you do not bow and scrape because they went to Harvard or Yale. That they had the best grades. The most powerful diversity statement. They are your moral superiors, and you dirt people just don’t worship them enough.
So they are out for blood. That’s how these people are. Liz Cheney is a good example. She’s had it with Wyoming and dirt people. And she will have her revenge. Because she’s a Cheney. Deep State all the way. There will be Hell to Pay just like for Hillary’s loss. Hell. To. Pay.
I see Liz Cheney as a crazed assassin…squinting through her rifle scope.
I’m pretty sure she’ll be using a shotgun.
Every couple weeks a smarter than average young libertarian writes his “Every law carries the death penalty” essay—because if you start by drinking vodka in a crosswalk and you continue rejecting authority as it escalates at you, eventually you get shot dozens of times by the cops.
The “Every law is a sumptuary law” genre is underpopulated.
you are absolutely correct . if you go to the WEF site and dig into their documents they openly say as much.
Liz went from a net worth of $7 million to a purported $44 million in two terms.
She’s bought and paid for.
We the people have a very untapped capacity to give back as much or more hell as our so called better give us.
We don’t want the responsibility for the utter ruthlessness required but we can do it.
The biggest hope I’m seeing are all the primaries , not the wins, that is at best a delaying action but the working together to common goals and yes class consciousness its building
I don’t believe that we entered into a “crusade against Islam.” If we had done so, we’d have been ganged up on by more than certain Shi’a and Sunni Arab TRIBES. Our troops would have had to endure attacks from the mass of Shi’a and Sunni Arabs, Kurds (Sunni), Druze, Alawites, even the Sufi mystics, to the amusement of the bystanding Arab Christians (Assyrian and Chaldean). As it happened–no doubt out of consideration for Our Greatest Ally–our military invaded the keystone state of Iraq and entered into the middle of a Middle Eastern donnybrook. Later on, we sort of infiltrated into the whackamole of Syria, mostly with special forces and JTACs (airstrike coordinators). Meanwhile, Trump remains under siege, Our Greatest Ally looks approvingly as our military continues to bomb The Enemy of the Week in Syria, and our troops keep Iraq on life support, without a plug-pulling strategy available.
In the dark comedic series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” a hilarious inebriated Charlie Kelly breaks Wade Boggs’ cross-country flight drinking “record” and rips a line drive out to the outfield. Then he hilariously asks his friend Mac “What do now?”
That’s our elites in a nutshell after the Cold War. “What do now?” I agree with Z’s take that the Cold War ending was not only a disaster for the Russkies, but a disaster for us as well.
Ever since, our elites have been looking for a great project. First it was the war on the Islamic world after 9/11, our war on (of) terror. Now it’s gays, trannies and climate change. None of these projects pose an existential to our civilization and system.
The system and its minders have turned on themselves and the results will be startlingly awful. I always wondered how extinct civilizations disappeared and now I have the answer. I’m hopeful that in my remaining years, I’ll get to see a glimmer that once this rotten, awful system collapses there will be something positive to fill the vacuum. I just mourn that my children will have to live through this because our ruling class is a bunch of demonic bastards.
That’s the unspoken curse of success. Once you succeed at accomplishing a goal, the reward is to immediately feel empty inside and lethargic. Eventually you will need to find a new goal to struggle towards, because very few people find contentment in success.
Whitney Webb just released a new book titled, One Nation Under Blackmail, that attempts to tie together a lot of the points mentioned below.
Here is a podcast of her summarizing the book:
https://rokfin.com/post/95602
Her comments that technology made the Epstein operation obsolete ring true.
How did Frank Herbert put it, “the flesh the day shapes as the day the flesh shapes.”
(Thus I welcome the Zman’s reach for an objective look at overall emergent structure, regardless of the specific ethnicities under it. That’s the point that irritates him so, that lowbrows like myself ignore that we are *all* enmeshed under it. Mea maxima culpa.)
Webb’s book has been delayed for over a year for some reason, no idea what. I’ve had it on order at Amazon and its release date has been backed up at least 3 times. I’ve read excepts in various places and it seems to be a must read.
She actually discusses that on the podcast.
Apparently her publisher’s physical publication of the book was affected by supply chain issues.
The first print run of the book will be one large tome, but subsequent runs will be two separate volumes due to her publisher’s limitations.
This post makes an inference that I would agree with: the election of Clinton or someone like him was inevitable; it was party time in the empire and no one was going to stop it. Also I’m reminded of a quip by George Will (yeah) that he actually took a lot of heat over, something like “Clinton is not the worst president, but he is the worst man to have been president”
I’ve looked back on that time several times in the last few years and as crappy a human being as Clinton was, it was actually a good time for the nation. Hindsight being what it is, Gore should have won in 2000 too. I can see his response to 9/11 being less bloodthirsty than Bush/Cheney. There would have been retaliation but not 20 years’ worth of it. I can picture Gore as sort of a white Obama, gliding along just happy to be there while his minions tried to tear the country down but failed. Gore couldn’t use race to cover his screw ups and he would have likely been beat by a non-Bush candidate in 2004.
The bloodthirsty response would have gone forward regardless of who was in office. 9/11 was just the pretext for something that had been in the works long before and a trifle like the nominal party designation of the occupant of the Oval Office was not going to change things.
“America more or less operated by a respected set of rules into the 20th century…”
There’s your first false step, as Schopenhauer liked to say. America, as Burroughs liked to say, was not a new land but a very old land, filled with evil (he was thinking of the Aztecs etc.)
To a European observer like Schopenhauer, here is how “the United States of North America” appeared in the 1840s:
“The prevailing sentiment is a base Utilitarianism with its inevitable companion, ignorance; and it is this that has paved the way for a union of stupid Anglican bigotry, foolish prejudice, coarse brutality, and a childish veneration of women. Even worse things are the order of the day: most iniquitous oppression of the black freemen, lynch law, frequent assassination often committed with entire impunity, duels of a savagery elsewhere unknown, now and then open scorn of all law and justice, repudiation of public debts, abominable political rascality towards a neighbouring State, followed by a mercenary raid on its rich territory,—afterwards sought to be excused, on the part of the chief authority of the State, by lies which every one in the country knew to be such and laughed at—an ever-increasing ochlocracy, and finally all the disastrous influence which this abnegation of justice in high quarters must have exercised on private morals. This specimen of a pure constitution on the obverse side of the planet says very little for republics in general, but still less for the imitations of it in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru.”
The Clintons were just partaking of a Grand Old Tradition.
So the tiresome preaching of Euro moralizers goes back further than I thought.
Just because you’re offended by the bill of indictment doesn’t make the charges therein any less factual 😀
I love my country, but I try not to be under any illusions that today or two centuries ago, that we were somehow unique, nobler than any other nation, etc. Exceptionalism is all well and good and perhaps serves a useful purpose. Sadly, statistics and other “real world” science informs one that simply based on the laws of averages, one’s child is just as ugly as the next one, the wife no fairer than a randomly chosen woman, and that one’s shit basically stinks, just like anyone else’s.
I’ve thought of the United States in bipolar terms for a while.
One pole is represented by myths like George Washington and the cherry tree, or possibly the Honest Abe yarn.
The other pole is represented by the greasy, reptilian, anonymous carny-style snake oil salesman.
Unfortunately for us, the second pole has taken nearly complete control of the nation and is winning the power struggle by at least a country mile.
I think Z is on the right track here, but I have a slightly different take.
Z is certainly correct that the Cold War–which actually began ca. 1920 rather than ca. 1945–gave America its political cohesion, and much of its actual form. We were locked in a potentially cataclysmic death struggle with the Evil Empire and society was organized to ensure that America rather than the USSR, survived and carried the torch of civilization. Defeating global communism was the American right’s raison d’etre, and even large swathes of the Left, at least notionally, were onboard with winning the Cold War.
Unfortunately, however, America’s Cold War monomania produced domestic astigmatism, which allowed the anti-white, postmodern New Left, beginning no later than the late 60s, to proliferate unchecked, first in acadamia, and then, after the Cold War, in every other institution of society.
With the Soviet Union vanquished, the American Right no longer had any reason to exist. The Left, which had by then been converted completely to the anti-white, postmodern project, rushed in to fill the political void created by the Right’s disappearance. Suddenly, every mad idea hatched in Ivy League English and anthropology departments became holy writ in Washington, D.C. Annihilating Western civilization, which was unthinkable in mainstream circles in 1982, became America’s demonic project by 1992. Now, in 2022, the actual dismantling of a West constructed upon rationality, is occurring right before our eyes. Primitive irrationality reigns uber alles.
Magisterial, Osteii, and exactly right.
That’s the flavor and the tone of that time we remember.
Every religion needs a Devil, and the Soviet was the devil of the religion of civic nationalism.*
*(I note how both were secular religions, as well. Although I disagree that religion needs a deity to originate, we could call CivNat’s deity Uncle Sam, the Eagle now contesting with Bear and Dragon.)
Followup- just saw this on gab:
Woman, talking to her female doctor:
“I thought I’d be happy when Trump was out of office, but now I feel kind of empty.”
Her doctor:
“Be patient, they’ll tell us who to hate soon.”
Yes, there is much to what you say regarding the date of origination of the Cold War. Recall that there was a serious Red Scare in the 20s, but it did not exist in a vacuum; rather, it had the example of the highly influential, and very successful anti-German propaganda of the teens as a model, and before that the opposition to the Anarchists that befan late in the 19th century.
A good post, Ostei.
Thanks, JJ. The Bolsheviks were spying intensively on the US via AMTORG almost directly they took over Russia. And the COMINTERN was actively seeking to foment communist revolution throughout Europe. Then there were radical labor strikes, terrorism and agitation in 1919. Contrary to the conventional historiography, the Cold War didn’t commence when Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.
The thing is, it wasn’t just the political class that changed (to allow old rules to be abandoned). The population changed too, and in the same way. So that tells me there was some culturally ubiquitous ‘force’ in play. My guess is “we” learned how to use mass media much more effective, in the same way food scientists learned how to make manufactured food much more effective. We evolved to handle specific levels of stimulation, and once those were exceeded aberrant behavior emerged.
This ties into the concept of societal trust recently posted here. Mass media taps into the mind in a way that bypasses trust filters (i.e. appears to recipient as from a trusted source). A palpably evil gnome like Fauci, gets millions of people to jump to his tune.
Yes, Karl, you are quite correct about the newfound weaponization of the potential of the mass media for propaganda purposes. First, people like Randolph Hearst, and then a liberal slathering of Sauce “Bernays”.
We are way past propaganda and into direct injection through hijacking the underlying neural information processing structures.
And right you are, unfortunately. Propaganda could be challenged by another, more intelligible message.
But when the brains of recent generations have been rewired through pervasive drugging, miseducation (dumbing down, evrybody gets a participation prize…), and 24/7/365 electronic dopamine hits, where does one even begin?
The change I associate with the Clintons is that they, especially Hillary via her office’s control of the press, made Boomer Academic the language of empire. I went to “good schools” so I was accustomed to hearing nothing but what we now call wokeness, but on the day the Republicans won in ’94, every channel on every TV in the Anglosphere denounced the “angry white men” responsible—and went on denouncing them every day for the rest of our lives.
It is easy: the Left never believed in the rule of law. The Left is a religion and their gods (freedom, equality, progress) are greater than procedural aspects. The Left is in an apocalyptical crusade against Evil so it does not bother with small things like that.
If you see Nazis killing Jews, would you care about the administrative procedures of a concentration camp or trying to reason with the Nazis in charge of the camp?
They used the rule-of-law concept to protect themselves while they were weak. After they consolidated all the power with the long march through the institutions and had no rival in the Soviet Union, there was no need for the rule of law. They can exert raw power.
“It’s not Hypocrisy, You’re Just Powerless” https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/its-not-hypocrisy-youre-just-powerless?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F33861109-ns-lyons&utm_medium=reader2
That link is a perfect distillation of the current political right who aren’t already deep in DR territory. Breitbart, Fox News, etc. are still banging on about hypocrisy, to who? God? The Universe? Nobody cares Not only do they not care, but as that short essay points out, the opposition finds those salty tears absolutely delicious. It doesn’t stop the whining one bit though.
Like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football though, they will line up over & over again. Both parties are filled with dimwits they just manifest in different ways. Conservatives wear the “kick me” sign on their back and pin it back onto themselves even when it falls off occasionally. Leftists are simply the useful idiots described in the Soviet Era and they will also be swept away en masse when no longer needed like their predecessors.
More to the point, the morons who natter about hypocrisy are completely blind to the reality that political parties are built around coalitions, not principles.
Some are morons; some are just complicit.
“If you see Nazis killing Jews, would you care about the administrative procedures of a concentration camp or trying to reason with the Nazis in charge of the camp?”
You nearly poison your entire argument with this line however. Why this? Why not the mass murder of the gulags? Mao? Pol Pot? You massively weaken your message w/ this tired ass trope. Muh evil Nazis! 6 gorillion!1!
I would ask your Nazis why the some of the camps were equipped with wooden doors, sports facilities, swimming facilities, and medical care facilities. Seems the “administrative procedures” are actually quite worth discussing since none of those things comport with industrial slaughter on a mass scale. And this from one of the most efficient peoples on planet earth.
As the leftists like to say— ‘do better’.
@Apex Predator
Leuchter Report(s), baby!
The Nazi thing was only an example of how Leftists think. Everything they don’t like is Hitler. And Hitler is Satan. So they are in a fight with the Old Scratch and his minions, the conservatives.
Speaking of chaotic evil, MSNBC just announced that Liz Cheney has been freed to become the leader of the Trump opposition!
Don’t be the first to stop clapping, people.
Miss Piggy takes Mar-a-Lago!
In her concession speech, Liz Cheney likened herself to Abraham Lincoln. A man who lost his Senate race, but ultimate won the presidency.
Hearing this, all I could think was “My god, they want another Civil War; righteous New Englanders coming down to purge the South and the West with fire and brimstone like the gods of old.”
I guess if she is likening herself to one of the worst Presidents ever, she’s not wrong.
If she runs as a Republican, that could present a dilemma: For whom does the Democrat machine cheat?
Abraham Cheney!
Laura Ingraham, playing Liz’s concession speech instead of the winner’s, did us all a favor. The outrageous gall!
We got to hear what a true psychopath, daughter of a psychopath, sounds like.
Truly all the restraints are off.
I am the science.
Lincoln is their new messiah in the sense that there are always guys who think they are the second coming of Jesus, but now there are oddballs who think they are the second coming of Lincoln — in a dress. That Lincolnian spirit runs through her veins and soon she won’t be talking in tongues but in pig latin versions of the Gettysburg address.
And Daddy is cheering her on, you go girl !!!
Woo hoo
With Darth Vader you got the sound of breathing. With Dick Cheney you get the sounds of his mechanical heart.
They’d find a lot more enemies behind their lines in a new civil war than they did in the first.
That, or she has a death wish.
It seems to me the post cold war era simply exposed the damage done by the cold war and by 50 years of a huge standing military and empire.
The China problem, for example, really is a cold war problem, or at least the roots of the problem. It also exposes how evil the GOP is and has been for many decades. After all, it was Nixon that went over and kissed Mao and it was George W Bush who allowed China into the WTO. If we hadn’t stuck our noses into China’s problems in the 30s and 40s, Mao Zedong would be an anonymous peasant nobody outside of China ever heard of. If not for our meddling in Europe, Russia would never have been a world super-power.
((((Never forget))))……..
Eisenhower’s farewell address hehe:
“Beware the Military Industrial Complex”
Ike was as bad as the rest – he allowed Stalin to take eastern Europe when Patton could have prevented it. Ike’s head was so far up the MIC ass, I guess he would know.
“he allowed Stalin to take eastern Europe when Patton could have prevented it”
Highly debatable. The Soviets at the end of the war were at their peak. Fighting them conventionally would have been a nightmare and i doubt the American public would have been up for the casualty numbers that would have multiplied the WW2 number by a factor of 50 or so.
c matt’s point is correct- Patton’s Army had the ability to advance well into parts of Eastern Europe before the Soviets got there (therefore taking it w/o a fight), but was ordered to halt by SHAEF. Conventional wisdom is that deal was cut @ Potsdam by a moribund FDR & broke Churchill in return for steep Russian losses & their ferocious fighting on the Eastern Front.
They could’ve just nuked Leningrad – America had just secured a thousand ton of metallic uranium from the German stockpiles.
It was “technically” possible to fight the Soviets. But not politically practical. Any more than it was practical to starve out Japan by a Naval Blockade instead of nuking them (twice). And even then they almost did not surrender.
The American public had enough of War and wanted it over. If Ike had allowed Patton to drive East Truman would have fired them both and recalled them for court-martial. While the US got off lightly compared to others, losses GREW as the war came to a close. While for the others save the Russians at Berlin (where they took very heavy losses) the losses were smaller.
Funny thing is, the stated rationale for the war in Europe in 1939 was Polish sovereignty.
FDR had been feeding, arming and fueling the USSR for years. Supposedly 7 out of every 8 barrels of oil used by all of the allies during WW2 was American oil. Stalin’s main domestic supply of oil was destroyed early in the war. But, presumably by spring of 45, they were back online, at least in “limited” capacity.
But I would think Britain and America combined would have had a far superior air force and could have bombed them. The buildup of US planes during WW2 was nothing short of astonishing. From a few dozen in 1935 to 65,000 in 1944 plus crews necessary to fly and maintain them.
And yet the majority of planes on D-Day were British.
Bro, Eisenhower didn’t “allow” Big Red to take Central Europe. That decision had been made at levels above him in the chain of command, from the Commander in Chief and the Joint Chiefs of Staff- President Roosevelt, General Marshall, Arnold and Admiral King. Eisenhower could not unilaterally order his army and the British Army into territory that had been allotted to Soviet occupation on a political level. Especially since the moment Germany surrendered, all the forces in Europe were being stripped to the bone to participate in that other war against Japan. The invasion of Japan’s Home Islands was the next priority, and no one knew if those nerds in the Manhattan Project new toy was going to work, much less force a Japanese surrender without an invasion in August. And that particular Monday morning quarterbacking ignores, as other commenters have pointed out, the war weariness and wish to be done with the casualties in the United States. Half the American casualties in WWII occurred in the last year of the war, against a weakened Germany and Japan. Does that apply to the Soviets? Betting that the American people had the stomach for another multi-year war and the likely prospect of doubling the list of dead and wounded, for no particular reason than to redraw the map of Europe 25 years after that experiment had failed so spectacularly in 1919-1939 would be truly idiotic.
That’s not how the endgame in Europe worked.
You’ve probably never heard of the treaty of San Francisco but it was negotiated in 1951 to bring a complete end to war with Japan. Before the details were even argued there were, unlike with the defeated in Europe, to be no reparations required of the Japanese. Because of this some of the most important players in the war refused to attend, China, India and a number others. Except for elements of the Kuomintang in Taiwan nobody in China feels that they got a good deal in the aftermath of WWII and a vicious occupation from 1931 to 1945 by the Japanese that kept a large part of the Japanese army busy. By refusing to mollify the mainland Chinese the US gave Mao and the Communists a free pass to take over the country, which they did.
The US intent was to maintain an effective military presence in the Japanese islands, as it does today. It’s amazing that Chinese have come as far as they have.
Chang Hei Shek fled mainland China in 1949, so Mao was already in charge of China. My guess is that is probably the reason they did it, to rob China of any reparations. There is/was no love lost between the Chinese and Japanese. The Japs treated the Chinese horribly. The rape of Nanjing was so bad, the Nazis allowed people to get into their zone because the Nazis were allies of the Japanese and they would be safe there. Then there was the medical experiments done on Chinese people. Then there was the “comfort women”
How much of any of this is actually true and accurate is probably lost to history. Japan is so browbeaten that even if its made up, they won’t be defending themselves anytime soon.
No, the reason Mao won was the late Japanese offensive in 1944 that basically wiped out the Koumintang’s manpower. Military History Visualized on YT has a good summary with maps and a discussion.
Chang Kei Shek could not fight Mao because he had no men left. They’d all died fighting the Japanese. My suspicion is that by 1945 the Generals knew the War was lost, and made sure Chang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were going to lose to Mao so Japan would be NEEDED by America. As otherwise it would not and they would be punished by America while the Koumintang were helped.
How about explaining out the increasing repressive nature of the regime in the last 30 years, with the exponential surge in computer power and the advent of internet, providing wide and capillary access for anyone anywhere?
That is, trend towards authoritarianism being simply the no-brainer consequence of the vast expansion in technical means of social control.
I suspect it’s part of a larger potential issue with technological civilizations eventually choking on their own technology. Futurists and sci-fi nerds on youtube are always talking about the Fermi Paradox, but they never mention the obvious possibilities that technology causes mass retardation over time due to dysgenic low infant mortality, or that you arrest development of the society by using AI and cameras to maintain strict social control.
Most of the technological advancement of recent decades has happened in the field of computing and information technology.
Maybe this was done because allocation of research funding was directed towards what was of interest to the military, and to intelligence departments (surveillance, telecommunications).
But also, this has had cascade effects on other fields, such as material science.
All contemporary new buildings have glass and metallic facades that would have been impossible to erect before 2000s. This rethinking of indoor space is generally despised by traditionalists, but from inside the buildings, the ‘airport terminal’ effect of walls made entirely of glass is very cozy.
The development of ‘Renewable’ energy benefited from chips as well. I read that in 2015 photovoltaic sources accounted for 1% of world electricity production, in 2021 this amount has risen to 4%.
I don’t think the numbers for photo-voltaics are accurate. Those machines have a lot of energy embedded in them for their manufacture. That energy comes from fossil fuels (diesel, metallurgical coal). That embedded energy as input subtracts from their actual output. Moreover, the source of energy they convert is intermittent. This means that you need to have an alternative source on backup at quick notice when the energy source goes away. Typically this is natural gas since those turbines can be rapidly scaled up and down. It also means that something is often running in parallel.
In short, photo-voltaics are a parasite on the world’s energy system. In specific locations for specific applications it may provide some value. Notice that as Germany and California have become increasingly reliant on wind and photo-voltaics for electricity the cost of it has gone up – a lot.
Hi, I share your overall skepticism.
I took the 4% figure for the portion of global electrical production that is solar from here https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-review-2022/
The bit that corroborates my claim is in the “Data” section: “Solar generated 3.7% of the world’s electricity in 2021. This was up from just 1.1% in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed.”
The small photo of author Dave Jones looks like that of a weirdo. The thousand-yards fixed stare of the fanatical, lobotomized cult adept.
But the report has all the cool histograms and is very eye-catching. The data scientists have worked well.
For females I feel going strictly on merit isn’t the right way to go. Because that’s how you end up with Hilary Clinton.
I remember a z post from 2017 when he mentioned Phyllis George who was ex miss America on cbs sports. I’m increasingly of the view that if you want woman in power anywhere, it might as well be those types rather than the lisa Simpsons of the world.
Excellent essay, the end of the Cold War is a appropriate marker in history for where we are.
I remember when Gary Hart was taken out, now says he would have had gay orgies on the deck of Monkey Business spreading Monkey Pox and he would be celebrated unless of course the orgy only included white people then he would have problems.
The Clintons brought the weed and alcohol and cocaine to the party but exited the party before the cops showed up.
Sort of related, I’ve struggled with Christianity lately. It’s not hard to attend church or speak with purported Christians and come away feeling that the religion is the source of weakness, that woke is just the logical, Puritanical suicide on the cross it demands. (Black goes north, woke goes south, since the beginning of America.)
Yet Christians weren’t always soft, even in living memory, so I’m not satisfied with that hypothesis. The end of the Cold War, the liquidation of America’s saved capital, and the maturation of a high-tech society seem to be a more likely scenario if you ask me. The unique historical situation that gave birth to GAE turned soft like a rotten apple. Makes sense.
Still, the churches need to stop being GAE.
> I’ve struggled with Christianity lately
You’re struggling with Churchianity (which has been completely infiltrated and subverted since long ago.)
Try reading your Bible more, setting your own ego aside, and praying to God frequently and with full humility.
I suppose that’s why I still struggle. Certainly not much to cling to but faith these days.
Also try reading Christian writers from at least before the 1960s, if not earlier.
The way it looks to me, the church is wrecked, tradition is wrecked. How far back that goes is hard to say. Only faith remains, so faith must be the strongest, and faith comes from within. It’s an act of will.
Kind of like what alzaebo says about remembering who we are. I think it’s in each us.
The Puritans, despite their flaws, are a perfect example of how rigorous one must be in order to live up to (their) Ideals. Not weakness there. To be clear, I am not saying that they are “true” Christians.
To follow the infiltration angle, churches have stopped setting that standards that made Christianity a tough path to walk, at least in terms of personal behavior. That milquetoast permissibility allows the weakness of the “average” Christian.
I agree with that, caveat true Christianity for being a touchy subject. The thing that strikes me about Protestantism, as a Protestant, is the empty cross. It’s our cross to take up, I believe, but the temptation is to think crucifixion is the point of it all. Especially when you’re always beating yourself up for sinning.
Crucifixion as liturgy, I’d add.
Ferdinand Foch could not be reached for comment
I might understand what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure. What do you mean.
I’m in essential agreement with you. Foch’s brother was a Jesuit and he, himself was pious enough to defer praise of his rescue of Châlons with the Templar chanted Psalm – not to us, not to us, but to thine own name be the glory. Yet he was the most innovative strategist of the war and merciless against the enemies of France on the battlefield.
It doesn’t have to be like it is.
Yep we agree 🙂
LOL.
Merciless-he waited for the British to do the majority of fighting and killing against Germany.
There are still good churches out there, but they are getting harder and harder to find, and generally are not part of a mainline denomination to Mr. Generic’s point. Start w/ his advice, and keep looking. Paul said that their teaching has to be tested, and he was right.
Check out a Pentacostal church. Out here in the old territories, they might at times look kind of shabby, but you may find something is going on in there. My attention was caught first by one church sign with the saying:
“The Bible is our only rule of faith and practice.”
Regular attendance at another one in a adjacent small town showed the father – son “preachers” to be two of the most sincere, clear-seeing, devout and Godly men I’ve ever met.
Father had been an oilfield worker and truck driver his whole working life, as well as a tent revivalist. Tremendously well-read and charismatic man …. Could speak for an hour without a note. Son similarly gifted.
They saw clearly the madness destroying our civilization, and were having none of it. Far cry from the Presbyterian church of my youth.
“They will defend democracy from the people who seek to participate in it.” Excellent!
That is because when they use the term they do not mean the same thing you understand when you hear it.
For them, “They” are democracy. They embody it and it is them alone.
You are just there to do the pretend lever pulling. Now they get to do their own lever pulling using electronics they can have as many votes as they want and you are not needed. Hence you are their enemy.
Yes – Brilliant.
Clinton and Reno pioneered acts of aggression against people who did not break the law. Waco and the Branch Davidian massacre was a vicious crime – killing women, children and pregnant women.
I think a huge wing of the war party was missed here. Granted the Clintons with their open and brazen system of international bribery was astounding. Once we let them do that without hanging them, the ruling regime knew there was nothing they couldn’t get away with.
This analysis is missing PNAC. The Cold Warriors and the MIC actively sought to perpetuate the empire and find a means to justify the ongoing military footing and massive military spending for a century of US GAE, “Full Spectrum Dominance.” The PNAC charter was the Bush dynasty plus the neo-conservatives. While the Clinton dynasty normalized brazen lying and open air kleptocracy, the Bush dynasty embraced the neo-cons and together they did as much to lead us to this ruin if not more. In fact, at the outset of their “New American Century”, they enlisted patriotic white America in their crusade. Now, as it crumbles in year 22, (year zero Saint George of The Holy Overdose), they openly encourage and, through policy, actively pursue our ruin even to the point of our extinction.
Both of our flanks were surrounded. Can we escape? That is the question we need to answer. First order is to get our brothers and sisters aware that they are surrounded by a vicious enemy.
worth noting that the Bushes and Clintons were, and are, good buddies.
https://judysp.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/kg0zfzz.jpg
Always have been as the meme goes.
The Waco “I accept full responsibility….now let us NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN’ was a bold move.
Can’t believe it worked. It’s been the go-to line of every government overreach since the Clintons.
And yet, if Waco happened today, the government line would be, “Those ‘insurrectionists’ had it coming.”
You know, like Ashley Babbit.
Nothing new. There were various attempts at creating new American colonies as slave societies by Southerners from the 1780s onwards. Aaron Burr was involved in one of them and there was an even more notorious one one in Nicarauga before the Civil War.
The only things limiting American empire building in that period was the fear by non-Slave states that the Slave states would expand their power by adding new ones. That was one of the reasons we turned down Baja California at the end of the Mexican War.
“The managerial elite that emerged in the 20th century abided by the liberal code because it was necessary to fight Soviet communism.”
The problem of course is that the 20th century “liberal” code wasn’t really all that liberal, it was corporatist, statist, and neo-fascistic. Truly liberal America existed under the Monroe Doctrine, which was abandoned briefly in 1917 and permanently in 1941 so that the U.S. could become an international empire.
Let’s not forget that before the Cold War made the USSR the enemy, the U.S. allied itself with “Uncle Joe” Stalin and his gulags and show trials and famines in order to defeat a democratically-elected Western European whose country never attacked us, and had no ability to do so.
The abandonment of 19th century American liberalism in favor of global imperialism required moral and ethical and logical compromises right from the start. The U.S. Deep State was engaged in all sorts of morally and ethically corrupt dirty tricks as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s, but this was accepted because it was done to godless foreign commies, and of course our heroic government “fighting for freedom” would NEVER, ever engage in such underhanded police state thuggery against apple-pie-and-hot-dog God-fearin’ ‘Muricans…
“and had no ability to do so”. not strictly true; the V3 was capable of reaching NYC. also the U-boats attacked American shipping. but your larger point is valid; we helped the CCCP (and should not have).
U-boats attacked American shipping.
Correction: They attacked American vessels providing war supplies to the then Allies.
Yeah, pretty much. We (Well, Roosevelt did. Congress was dead set against it. Don’t forget, the 2nd largest ethnic was German in the US) had violated our neutrality and were basically an open English ally by the time Germany declared war on us. Oddly enough, we perhaps are doing even worse wrt Russia in their current conflict with Ukraine. If the stake grow large enough, Russia will have little choice but to extend the conflict outside Ukrainian borders.
Look like they are going to partition off western Ukraine and probably use a NATO protectorate as an occupier. There are already stories about limiting ammo to Ukraine.
They new front is to destabilize Serbia and overthrow the neutral status using the Kosovo angle. Then Hungary next obviously. These are the last two non-overthrown states left in Europe.
A couple of weeks ago there were some stories about Serbia talking to Russia about military support. Then all of a sudden Kosovo flares up, NATO says they would intervene if Serbia pushed back and Vukic just did a press conference where Stoltenberg practically held a gun to his head on TV to get him to say they were not going to have any military bases.
The other angle is to get the Baltic puppets and Finland to close off the baltic sea to the Russia navy and blockade St Petersburg as a provocation .
They are determined to get Europe obliterated one way or another, As Borrel says the EU is already at war (just no one told the proles yet).
The elephant in the room.
The root problem is eventually going to have to be addressed. The disease cells must go, that is simple reality, not cynicism. And that will not be an easy task. Jackboots are a real thing too, and they will formidable. That is why the Soviet Union lasted for 70 years. The right way to go about this is to be smarter, and not just stumble into a chaotic jumble of attempted solutions until one of them finally works. That just gets a lot of people dead unnecessarily.
So don’t fight the Jackboots head-on. Focus on the root of the problem, the numbers are actually quite small. If everything is solely within the confines of your cranium, you can’t be betrayed. Spontaneous, but from the shadows, only from the shadows. As such, it’s best to wait for the fog. Use the interregnum to hone your skills.
There is enormous power in the unknown and unexpected. The stampede for the exit will do the rest.
did you know Darpa dogs can’t look up–like hogs?
you are absolutely correct . if you go to the WEF site and dig into their documents they openly say as much.
The real fun begins when the gerontocracy finally moves on, especially for the Left. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and their handlers are from another time. They grew up in a very different world and learned different lessons.
The upcoming Left grew up in a world where they were taught to hate the current society and its founders – and the current descendants of those founders. Their rules will flow from that morality.
When faced with evil (and they believe that they do face evil), any action or deception is reasonable. To them, it’s the old line: If you could go back to 1920, you would kill Hitler. Well, we and our society are Hitler to them.
My sense of things is that when the gerontocracy dies off they will leave behind a “bench” that is extremely weak. And I see a lot of young libs/progs, the ones with an independent steak, falling off and joining the right once it becomes clear the left is a rudderless mess. The gerontocracy is thus the head of the chicken, and once it gets lopped off the left will running around aimlessly making lots of noises but on its last legs — at least for a generation.
The young people on the right remind me a tad of the Ralph Reed bloc. And he was quite influential for a time, but he also faced a highly intelligent and organized opposition. The near-future strength and quality of that opposition will be a fraction of what it was, and on the other hand the passion, anger, and determination of the right is stronger than it was for Reed and his crew.
Long story short and in the spirt of football season:
Groypers 35, Blue hairs 13
Who are the Dems going to run for president? The younger ones we hear about are AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Whitmer, Buttagieg, Stacy Abrams, Kamala and a few others. None can be described as sensible and normal.
There’s Tulsi Gabbard, but she’s a dissident dem, and isn’t welcome. They have a big problem that only massive election fraud can solve.
The gerontocracy’s “bench” is represented by the “Squad.” A bunch of very dumb women and soyboy men, who can only appeal to emotion, and hate Whites with a blistering passion. Cori Bush, AOC, Rashid Tlaib, Ro Khanna – those are the future of the “elite.” They are sick of the gerontocracy, to be sure, but right now they know that is where their bread is buttered, so they keep (mostly) quiet. A handful of Gavin Newsom types might try to stick around, but at some point him and his ilk are going to get snuffed out, either with trumped-up charges (see: Cuomo) or just by telling them to step aside White man.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens then. Not just in an electoral sense but a governance sense. These people are incredibly incompetent and extremely stupid. They exist now to rile up the anti-White mob while people like Schumer do the real work in the background. With Schumer gone, what do they do?
I don’t know. I hope you are wrong about the bench. I hope the bench ends up like the perennial backup quarter back who gets paid, but never takes a snap. Instead, it goes from the starter to a the new rookie first round draft pick.
Maybe there are some lower level Dems lurking around in a state agency somewhere to whom the geezers can hand the baton and bypass the current bench.
Plenty (((more))) where Schumer comes from.
I have a Q.
As our replacement proceeds, one is put to wonder, how low can the average national IQ go, how many barely literate obese dummies graduating from HS, how many ppl riding in the wagon for free outweighs the productive tax payers pulling the wagon, before the wagon begins to roll backwards, gathers more and more momentum & goes boom? Before the whole shooting match (better metaphor, no?) goes bang!
They can’t all work in the DMV or Department of Housing or Department of Education or the Department of Miscellany.
The Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Team is hard at work..
Your vision is too narrow. The glorious utopia can be achieved by dolling out universal basic income, building the pods and making the bugs more savory and delicious. Be happy!
Man’s, I get what you’re saying. 😉
But the reality is that UBI, in order to be worth something has to be backed up by a productive populace. This is one of the reasons I’ve never took it seriously. It is precisely that the productive populace is being eliminated that the whole situation must descend into chaos. Not totally unlike what befell the USSR after the collapse. Too much dead weight needed sorting out. Similarly, our dead weight will sort itself out once the dole dries up.
Why not? They just increased the IRS by 87,000 how about 100,000 for Education and another 100,000 for the DEA? I could go on and on.
There will be a multi-pronged struggle. The political class, like President Stacey Abrams (and President Kamala, both are coming guaranteed), will vie for power with the Administrative hereditary class like Comey, Strozk, Wray, Garland, and the like, who in turn will fight with Bezos and Musk.
Bill Gates, he can just count his money and his exploits at Epstein’s Pedo Island. Bezos and Musk have space ambitions and both President Abrams and Wray/Garland stand in the way of hiring smart White guys to get to Mars and the Asteroid belts (source of untold wealth). D Shontay and Hamid are not going to cut it.
President Kamala or Abrams will want to start the purge of White guys fast and hard, including particularly the security services which will resist that part. We might see Wray (the real power in the Administration) just rule openly — with successors found in the First Bunch of Idiots. Generally in a war between politicians, oligarchs and the Security Services the Security Services win.
1992 was also the “Year of the Woman” in politics. As someone who was involved with the Buchanan campaign at the time, I have extremely vivid memories of that era.
One thing we were never able to figure out was why Ross Perot (1) got into the race (2) dropped out of the race, and (3) got back into the race. I never bought the explanation he gave, nor his paranoid act. The vibes we got from the Perot people were always really strange, which is why guys like Ed Rollins and Hamilton Jordan eventually ran in the other direction, too. The campaign had a spooky feeling to it, and along with the death of Ron Brown in that plane crash, it’s one of the two or three events from the 90s that keep me from seeing that era through sepia-colored glasses now, as many of my fellow Gen Xers do. 1992 was a bad, bad year, and marked the full entry of Boomers into politics like a virion bursting through a cell wall.
(Parenthetically you also had Tailhook at this time, which was the beginning of the end for the military — all of the cultural pathologies choking us out in 2022 can be seen sprouting from the ground as buds just 30 years ago.)
I agree that Ross Perot dropping out was puzzling back then. I was a listener of Chuck Harder’s For the People radio show, and he always said Perot was threatened. Harder knew Perot’s running mate Pat Choate (96, not 92 which was Admiral Stockdale) pretty well, so perhaps that’s true.
Perot was on a roll before he quit, and never recovered when he got back in the race.
Great points. You have to look at Perot now in light of what was subsequently done to Trump. Some of Perot’s seemingly wilder claims–people disrupting his daughter’s wedding, some whacked out Israeli professor at Vanderbilt, his daughter’s college, threatening her and him, and so forth–now seem completely plausible now given how the Security State has openly acted against Trump recently. There is little doubt the State has involved itself into electoral outcomes for decades.
Yeah, no need to view ’92 as good times, either, just better times.
It is incredible how the Ross Perot phenomenon dropped out of the public mind almost as fast as it appeared. I tend to see the whole thing as a psy-op. Perot was eyeball deep with the intelligence community as his company was a major supplier. My theory was that he was talked into running as a way to dilute the Buchanan insurgency, but then things got out of control. No one expected the gut who looked and sounded like the Martian from Bugs Bunny to resonate.
Perot resonated despite his oddball manners because of his message: Preserve American Manufacturing Jobs! In that sense, Trump in ’16 was a resumption of the ’92 election. After 24 years of selling off America to the highest bidder and imperial expansion, Perot’s popular message was re-animated by Trump.
I don’t see how that worked.
Bush had already defeated Buchanan in the primary before the race.
The only reason consistent with that view is that the IAs ran this to ensure that Clinton would be placed in.
Given both the Bushes heavy involvement with the Clintons as part of drug running up through Arkansas, Bush’s CIA background and the saving and loan involvement for both players and the IAs, it seems then that as a logical conclusion that the whole election was a charade in its eternity for all parties.
I won’t discount that as a possibility, either. There certainly was a deep division within the Security State between what we now label “globalists,” with Daddy Bush as the senior representative, and “nationalists,” whom Buchanan represented (his candidacy was the first I supported). So, yeah, it is plausible the destruction of the nationalists prompted the Security State to advance Perot to dilute Buchanan’s support. I might take a closer look at the timelines as to when Buchanan got into the race and Perot appeared.
I also submit there were two Clinton Administrations. The one from ’93-’97 was more nationalistic, and one from ’97-’01 was blatantly globalist. That probably more reflected where the money and grift was than anything else.
Good point. Although NAFTA was passed in Clinton’s first term in 1995. That was the same year the Jordan Commission report came out which Clinton in his typical duplicity endorsed and then did nothing to implement any of the recommendations. I suspect the Clintons figured out early going with the globalists gave them access to the really good money and anything they ever said to oppose them in the first term was simply a political calculation. It isn’t like the Clintons had standards or deeply held beliefs they to betray.
Serendipity plays a role too. Perot could simply have been frightened by his sudden rise in standing. The air gets thin at that level of politics which is why so few reach that level. Still, his sudden dropping out never made any sense based on what we knew at the time.
You might be right about Perot, I don’t know. My impression of him was that he was deeply concerned about the direction of the country.
His company’s (EDS) employees were trapped in Iran during the revolution, and he saw it as his responsibility to rescue them. Ken Follett’s book “On Wings of Eagles” is about that mission. Perot comes across as a hero.
After reading that book, I thought Perot was on a mission to rescue America, and I was an enthusiastic supporter.
But as the years have passed, and discovering that the more I learn, the more I realize what I don’t know, maybe I was wrong about Perot. He did go quiet immediately after the elections, and Choate explained that Perot felt he did as much as he could do.
100%. After you read that book, you’ll have a vastly different view about R.P.
How many American CEO’s would defy the US gov, assemble a mercenary team to extract employees trapped behind enemy lines, and risk a long prison sentence?
We voted Perot, (young wifes first election) came across as genuine to us. Trump same.
IDGAF I’ll vote for the bastard again knowing there is no voteing a way out of the coming shitshow.
Ross Perot sounding like Marvin the Martian?
The only thing he lacked is the giant laser.
I remember the ’92 campaigns. Bush was dead meat for his “read-my-lips” promise breaking.
I was living in California and Barbara Boxer was campaigning on cutting the Cold War military and “spending that money at home”. I was thoroughly shocked at that statement – it was a portent for many bad things to come. She also ended her campaign with a series of sleazy dirty tricks accusing her opponent of being a pervert.
A good view of Russia in the late 1990s is the movie “Brat” (Brother). It’s very popular to this day.
Brat 2 is also a good movie. The first Brat movie is very realistic about life in Russia around that time.
Another thing that set the Clintons apart was their acceleration in selling key US technologies to China from the very top of the US government. The examples that stick in my mind are key technologies for accurate navigation and nuclear warheads.
That was a paradigm shift versus what had come before. A toy factory in flyover country moving to Hong Kong so it can produce rubber dog crap more cheaply is nothing compared to technology that set the US military apart versus its adversaries.
Great point. Foreign aid and policy always involved grift opportunities, as did war, but the Clintons blatantly plundered the kitty in ways previously unknown. It evolved into a 20-year revenue stream for the MIC to bring modernity to Afghanistan, and to prop up a purportedly winning and constantly retreating Ukrainian Army. From memory, there was just as much jealousy as there was anger that emanated from the loyal opposition.
Yep
Submarine propeller tech and the machinery for campaign cash.
I’d say that Gary Hart was sex-scandaled so George H.W. Bush could have a third term in office as POTUS.
It had nothing to do with morality.
Its funny, but Bill Clinton was just a more well spoken version of Trump who played the saxophone. Why not the outrage over him? Perhaps it was his Ivy league credentials? Or perhaps the reason the George H.W. Bush’s of the world didn’t lose their shit over him like they did over Trump is because Clinton was in on it with them? The mainstream trying to normalize Bush 2 the past few years has also been a strange thing to witness.
No, Ross Perot was the Donald Trump of the ’92 election, and you saw what they did to him. Clinton’s campaign platform was remarkably similar to Bush’s, just that he was packaged to appeal to an entirely different type of voter. If anything, 1992 might have been the first “Uniparty” presidential election.
Yep, uniparty. To that effect, I give you NAFTA being signed by Clinton. As Perot said, something to the effect…’hear that sound, it the sound of jobs being sucked out of the country’…
Prior to that, the Dem’s were still thought to be the party of the working man.
I thought at the time and still think GHW really didn’t want or expect a second term. He would always have President attached to his name and that was good enough for him. His whole life was nothing but chasing after credentials and once he had the ultimate one, he could call it a day.
If you get Bill you get Hill!!
Trump 2015 was a combination of both Perot (on the economy( and Ron Paul (on the permawar state). Trump didn’t even drop the hammer on the Bush wars until the South Carolina debate (I think it was SC – in any case, it was getting pretty far along in the primary campaign.) He blew the roof off of the place because he said this shocking thing that Conservatives were never willing to say – that George Bush’s war was “a big fat mistake”. That nite was the END of Jeb! and the Bush cabal.
“Communism was horrible, but it was better than the chaos that followed.”
This is reflected in the strength of the various political parties inside the Russian Federation: the Communist Party (institutionally descended from the CP of the old Russian Soviet Socialist Republic) is the primary opposition party to Putin’s United Russia party, not the neoliberals. Only morons, traitors, and the usual foreigners with papers vote for them.
Late stage Soviet communism saw the Russian people again being ruled by Russians again. It was ethnic Russians, working their way into the senior ranks of the CP, who ended the mass murdering. They didn’t bring prosperity, but they ended the worst of the lawlessness of the internationalist trash. Then they fell from power upon the collapse of the Soviet Union and the internationalists again gained power and significant control over the institutions of authority, this time acting through oligarchy and bribery controlled fake democracy. Life expectancy for Russian men fell to 55. Women fell, too (61-63 or something, can’t recall exact number). The same deaths of despair that we suffer in former America they had on steroids.
It’s why the old Soviet flag has been seen being waved in some Russophilic parts of the Ukraine (I think it was Kherson). It’s not like they were likely to have Russian Federation flags laying around, but old Soviet flags, yes. Ukrainians old enough to remember recall the Soviet Union as their ‘good old days’. The young have no direct experience with anything but living under oligarchy.
The looting of Russia after the collapse of the U.S.S.R showed the realities of the rules based order our overlords in Washington preen about.
I’ve heard some commentators mention that many older Russians sense echoes of the Great Patriotic War (what we know as WW2) in the current conflict.
Those comments make sense to me because that war was fought under the Soviet flag and the status of Ukraine is an existential issue for the Russian nation and her people.
From my point of view where I live, things still seem pretty normal – granted, I reside in a relatively jogger free area, so there is that. But most of the chaos I see is emanating from the government. It seems like one hysteria fit after another, desperately trying to gin up the rubes, but nothing really sticks. While the bulk of the (former) country are basically just trying to live as normally as possible day to day, the screaming mimis in DC just won’t stfu. Now it’s Trump, yet again, getting their panties in a wad. Got to give the guy credit in that he’s living YUGE and rent free in their collective heads. Their demise can’t come soon enough.
I’ve stopped watching any national news entirely, and have been accumulating more paper copies of books, and dvd’s. I find I am much less anxious and worried now. I get my updates from ZH and TBP and here. I once on accident scanned over to CNN when turning on my TV and it was as time had stood still, it was a month later and they were still yammering on about Trump Russia Covid.
I don’t blame bill Clinton for the degradation of the ruling class. I feel in some ways he (temporarily at least) prevented the democratic party from going too moonbat. He also won the votes of a lot of conservatives in places like west Virginia Kentucky Tennessee Arkansas. I think Obama is more to blame for the direction of the party.
First term candidate Clinton talked about dealing with crime and welfare fraud. His Republican opponent said “We are going to have a New World Order!”
I do agree with Z’s proposition (as I understand it) that Clinton normalized formerly unacceptable behavior to the ruin of the republic. However, the political and social culture was ready for Clinton. If it hadn’t been him, it would been another globalist roach, Dem or GOP. He was in the right place at the right time, to have himself a good time, and he did.
My argument is that Clinton was a symptom. The end of the Cold War ended the rationale for the rules that used to prevent people like Clinton from infesting the public square.
Clinton was pliable, subject to manipulation, and presented himself well to the ladies, at least on the Dem side. A confluence of effluence. His downfall was inevitable, and the country is still paying for his follies.
Many make the case that W was a knee-jerk response to Bubba, lurching from one dysfunction to another.
Clinton never downfalled. He was re-elected, escaped all consequences and went on to become a billionaire. His maw hooked on as Secretary of State where she most likely auctioned off state secrets for hundreds of millions to their slush fund. Unless the two of them contract a horribly painful disease and linger on for a generation, they pay for their sins in the next world.
Well, sorta. Bill had his cadre of wreckers and their policies. NAFTA pushed through, lotsa kowtowing to China and the corresponding bleed of manufacturing and technologies, both of these hollowing out life for the middle class, bulwark of what still remained of the Republic. Pulling down the firewall between commercial, Main Street- serving banking and the irrational exuberance of venture-capitalist banking, much to the disadvantage of the former. The beginnings of the pernicious alliance with the techies, the dot com crash to follow. Just for starters…
But on the bright side, the war against the Serbs finally got the Russians fully alarmed, and got Vladimir Putin into a position that he could save his nation from the oligarchs, and get them on the path toward restored national sovereignty and control of their own society.
The hubris of the (((West))) led to the nemesis of the unapologetic resurgence of nationalism guided by tradition. Clear win for them. Our house, now built on the sand of blank-slate neoliberalism, and engaged in the service of ancient ethnic score-settling, ain’t looking like it will have the foundation to withstand the flood tide of chaos that TPTB have unleashed upon us.
And Bill and Hill have had a lot to do with these developments, either by initiating negative trends, or by forwarding their destructive courses.
Yes but, we agree on everything, but NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Steagall would not have happened without enthusiastic Republican cheerleading. It was uniparty even then.
Bill’s first term R opponent also pushed NAFTA and immigration. That let Perot siphon off enough to give Bill the win. Sans Perot, who knows?
I would wager strongly that it would have been an identical set of policies.
I heard shiftt on NPR yesterday, he said that if fox was around in the early 70’s , Nixon wouldn’t have been run out of town on a rail. He also mentioned that his wife’s name is eve. Get it ? Adam and Eve. He also stated the tucker was unpatriotic and dangerous.
Blaming Fox is a cope with the Left as they differ on very little. People simply have come to realize only propaganda is permitted on mass formats and tune out more and more often.
In support of your position, I submit Brian Kilmeade is Exhibit A.
I’m trying to figure out why you are listening to NPR. I’m going to assume it is to ‘keep tabs on the propaganda of your enemy’ but I also know better. So you “sort of” like some lefty stuff and support the machine by giving them attention.
No different than keeping that Netflix subscription active “because you like that one show”. I watch some of the rare non-woke Netflix, Amazon, etc. shows, and I’ve pirated every single one of them w/o remorse or regret. I refuse to give a dime to people who hate me.
NPR was the only station reliable enough for my clock radio alarm at 5 a.m. in my area. I cringed when they interviewed the head of the USA communist party for his political opinions on a regular basis, but when Newt took away a big chunk of their budget, it was very entertaining listening to them grovel.
Your paranoid. Been around this comment section for a while. I won’t even eat out because of the little brown men in the back cooking and washing dishes. Say hi to the fellas at grub hub for me. Mute motel in your cards I’m thinking.
“Unpatriotic” to what? To Country? Or to ideology? If the latter, then Tucker and I (and tens of millions of others) are guilty as charged.
Cute how Shiff pretends Mark Felt didn’t exist, let alone direct, write and star as Deep Throat. Wray and Comey learned a lot from him.
No one really knows (except the FBI and probably CIA) what Nixon did (or didn’t) do in relation to the breakin. No wonder Nixon was paranoid – the same PTB had always hated him for being essentially an outsider (not to mention Quaker). He was an Original and in retrospect, pretty upstanding.
Unless you have a framework that explains why the United States provided the Soviet Union with, at a minimum, $180 billion in military and other aid during World War II and then immediately began a four or five decade global proxy war against them, the last 80+ years of history will never make sense.
The tautological thinking of the anti-Semites is an amazing thing to behold.
Perhaps I’m dense, but I’m trying to figure out how “anti-Semites” necessarily factor into NoOneImportant’s comment. Is there something lacking in my reading comprehension?
Zman’s distaste for “anti-Semites” is reasonable in the sense and to the degree that he doesn’t want a bunch of moronic Mustache Man fanboys/LARPers taking over his comment section. Can’t blame him for that. Nevertheless, his hypersensitivity toward “anti-Semitism” occasionally makes him sound like a representative of the ADL.
Their theory is the Jews financed the Bolsheviks as part of their long war on Western man.
Sure, I’ve heard that theory. It just wasn’t clear to me that NoOneImportant was advancing that particular claim. He made no mention of Jews. He didn’t even use the dreaded (((parentheses))).
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… ahh, never mind. Certainly we are not dealing with people that harbor multi-generational ambition, discipline, in-group preference, and grudges.
Probably a conspiracy theory!
what about the theory that the US gov was infiltrated by reds, and sympathizers; a case of our commies helping the mothership? I mean, Alger Hiss wasn’t jewish, so…
Not sure if our humble host deliberately or unintentionally misinterpreted “my theory,” but to clear things up:
The Bolshevik revolution (and communism in general) included Jewish influence far beyond their population in Russia, e.g., Leon Trotsky. This is beyond dispute for everyone but the willfully blind. With the rise of Hitler, the significant influence of Jews (and communists) within the Roosevelt administration promoted military and economic support for the Soviet Union. This is also beyond dispute.
At the same time that the Nazis were rising in Germany, Stalin was conducting his “great purge,” which resulted in the removal of most if not all of the high ranking Jews in the Soviet Regime.
Not long after the war ended the US reversed its position of support for Soviet Union, and later the (((Neo Cons))) took over the Republican party and championed the destruction of the Soviet Union.
But NONE of this had anything to do with Jewish influence in America. This was NOT a case of taking care of the most immediate threat first and then turning attention to the next threat. Only an antisemite would think such a thing!
(I included the triple parenthesis to please our humble host.)
Since I agree so strongly with today’s, let us take the Semite out of the picture.
What came to mind for me was the War of 1812. We had British troops coming from the Canadian border and French troops poised on the border of Mexico. They wanted their territories back, and saw an opportunity.
This is consistent with the understood order of the time. Likewise, the end of the Cold War structure freed up opportunity for subterranean gang cultures as well as the ruling class.
They had lost the same restraints as the rest of us.
Most here remember the wild, heady days of the 80s.
MTV! Chippendales! Big hair and mohawks! Living together! Gays were still fun.
Studio 54 cocaine disco had trickled down to become the masses’ Journey and Mexican weed. The Grim and Determined had become cross-dressing queens.
Things were desperate, but not serious.
The New York Semitic mafia had undone their Sicilian competitors largely due to the loss of union structure.
Hollywood’s SAG studio system fractured into affordable recording equipment and and CNN cable, while the demo tapes of unknown fringe bands became MTV concert superstars. Mexican government went from subsidising mountainside marijuana farms in poor states to being taken over by HW Bush’s Contra cocaine gangs.
These examples are proof of your thesis. The dissolution of the established order and structure allowed the emergence of formerly suppressed elements.
Addendum the Clintons’ Mena operation, and their outreach to Chinese Mosaic business spy fronts, originated with what the ruling class were up to in Colombia and Peru with banks and “military intelligence”, and at Touche-Deloitte and CalPERS with China. They, like other parasitic elements, saw their ticket and grabbed it.
The pre-war plan changed with the death of FDR.
Also, I’d suppose that Stalin stiffed his anti-Hitler Allies sometime after 1943 and they waited until the war was over to have it out with him.
I think the answer is that state-controlled “democracy” is more similar to state-controlled communism than we are generally led to believe. Not for nothing did a communist nation like East Germany officially call itself the “German Democratic Republic.”
I certainly agree. “Democracy” is communism suited to Western tastes.
“Defending democracy” means defend the new order, its blueprinters, copycats, and enablers.
” Every criticism is met with a collective “do you know who I am?””
This is the reason for every judicial/extrajudicial outrage, though.
There are some very practical reasons for how the United States and the rest of the West descended into a nightmarish tyranny. Here, chipping away at the search warrant requirement eventually rendered the need for one almost moot. It actually was liberals at the time who pointed out how dangerous this would be in the long-term. As it turns out, they were both right and love it.
The proliferation of surveillance cameras first came to our attention less than two decades ago in London. Realizing the terrorism and crime potentials of Muslims and others who have different norms, rather than stop mass migration, law enforcement decided to constantly surveil all people. These cameras are just as ubiquitous in St. Louis and Hamburg as they are in London now. Police spend inordinate amounts of time on line hunting bad thought, which is closely related.
Evolving from the decision to ignore the cultural and racial aspects of terrorism and criminal activity, the State decided to enforce the law in such a way that it put the native majorities, who tended not to be violators, at more of a risk than the duskier folks who usually were the culprits. The original reason voiced was to assure people that law enforcement and prosecution were not race-based. The current voiced reason is to crack down on White people.
I’ve written this before, but what Orwell got most wrong about IngSoc as it later manifested not just in England and North America but throughout the West was how freaking retarded the masters of the surveillance state are. So in addition to “do you know who I am?” there is a “do you know how smart I am?” quality to their petty tyranny.
I think the Cold War simply made Western authorities reluctant to emulate their Soviet counterparts for PR reasons. Once that need was gone, the gloves came off. If you ask anyone who did business in the old East Bloc or worked there in a governmental capacity, a constant refrain is that if someone avoided public criticisms and just talked among friends, they probably wouldn’t run afoul of the authorities. Today and here, it is particularly the private parts that are used to ruin and arrest.
The primary difference between the 1/6-type show trials and arrests of political prisoners in the West today is technology allows it to be instantaneously broadcast far and wide and makes all surveillance easier. Some future author will write BROAD DAYLIGHT 24/7 as a counterpart to DARKNESS AT NOON, and it will be spot on because who needs darkness anymore?
“It actually was liberals at the time who pointed out how dangerous this would be in the long-term. As it turns out, they were both right and love it.”
Never forget: LIBERALS ALWAYS PROJECT.
Always.
> The thing is though, the old code of conduct in Washington never would have tolerated the Clintons. We know this because four years before Bill Clinton climbed out of the sewer, Gary Hart was taken out of contention for womanizing. Hart was never accused of murder or corruption. He liked the ladies.
Kennedy was far worse with regards to womanizing and no one in D.C. blinked an eye. His presidency is still referred to as Camelot by people. What made the Clintons different than Kennedy, though, is he didn’t have incredibly powerful forces on his side to clear away any obstacles, but came out of nowhere and created a huge political machine through force of will.
It showed the weakness in the old Democratic political powers that he could ramp himself in like that, similar to Trump in making mincemeat out of the Republican dynasties.
But Kennedy’s womanizing was never in full view. I think that is what gets missed. The rules were more sophisticated than mere prohibitions on certain behavior. Powerful men have always had powerful appetites. The old rules said that the political class needed to uphold public virtue by keeping their vices private. That rule is what disqualified Hart. He flaunted the rules and was shown the door, while Clinton flaunted the rules and was celebrated for it.
I think this in part also explain the GAE collapse in Afghanistan. The Afghanis love buggery, especially children. However, they have their own rules on how to go about it and the in-your-face rainbow flag of public normalization was so abhorrent to them that most, when the chips were down, preferred the Pashtun Taliban (who are not loved by non-Pashtun Afghanis by any stretch of the imagination) to the Americans. Flying the rainbow flag over GAE consulates was the beginning of the end.
If I remember right, the Taliban stopped the practice by classic Taliban means, and when it reemerged in the occupation the U.S. military was told to look the other way.
Forget Gary Hart, wasn’t Bidet disqualified in 88 over plagiarism in his college papers? In 2020 you couldn’t get disqualified for having sex with a corpse on stage.
Nope, but you’re close.
Way back in fall 1987 while stumping for the nomination Slow Joe gave a speech that plagiarized Neil Kinnock, an English politician. Lies about a blue collar background, first in the family to go to college, etc. Back then old school political reporters smelled blood in the water and ran pieces on him. And exposed he was a mediocrity who didn’t perform anywhere nearly as well in college or law school as he bragged he did. And caught him on camera being a bully attacking someone asking what law school he attended and how well he did.
Gosh, good thing that doesn’t happen now, huh 🤔?
It’s almost quaint in retrospect, but the press was in the tank for Dukakis. Too bad Mike got in a tank and looked like a nerd.
Jeez what a retard you would need to be to plagarize that moron. Kinnock was a byword for incompetent moron in the UK.
Showed his true colors when he and his wife then got rewarded by being paid millions in the EU Commission.
I remember thinking at the time that no one could come back from such a humiliating revelation. It was big news that spring and the media played Kinnock’s speech right after Biden’s. The press probably believed that Biden had no chance against George HW Bush and thus had to be removed. Along those lines. the end of the Cold War wasn’t the reason why Clinton got a pass for women problems and Hart didn’t. Most people didn’t give a crap about the cold war end. Most barely paid attention to the Wall coming down in 89. It was Democrat desperation to win that changed things.. 12 years straight of GOP domination had them ready to take anyone that could beat Bush 1.
The old rule of discretion is best immortalized in Mayor Quimby’s toast at his nephews birthday: “May all your indiscretions be private.”
Clinton wasn’t celebrated for it until long after he was in office. During the ’92 campaign his political hacks went to great lengths to hide/downplay his immoral activities, and to discredit every person from his past that spoke out against him. Remember the “but I didn’t inhale”? Or the attacks on Jennifer Flowers? Or the efforts to make Hilary seem like a cookie-baking mother and First Lady, rather than the raging communist Hilary Rodham always was? Honestly, the 1992 campaign was a masterpiece in shameless perseverance and political obfuscation. A truly herculean effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the voters, who by the way only 43% supported him.
I agree, but the subtext of his appeal was baby boomer women imagining themselves as his Gennifer Flowers. He was the picaresque rogue and his efforts to downplay his immorality were part of the charm. He gave the wink to conventional morality on his way to see his latest affair.
I never bought into the claim that the people were fooled by Clinton. Those who voted for him knew exactly what they were getting and that is why they voted for him.
My impression is Hart thought he was being discrete enough and that reporters would decline to cover his affairs like they had done for many other politicians in the past, including all of the Kennedys. It was the tabloid nature of the press coverage that did him in.
didn’t he basically say to the press “catch me if you can”? maybe it was clinton who took him out 😛
He had a boat named “Monkey Business”.
Part of it is personality, personal hatred and length of time in the incestuous world of power in the Imperial Capital.
The other is whether or not that person is seen as someone to make an alliance with because they have personal magnetism, both with the power brokers and with the electorate, and is seen as a rising star.
We all know everyone in the “Washington” political class will gleefully knife each other in the back, regardless of party affiliation. Often those knives will come out even quicker to a rival inside the nominal party because these people might go to the same cocktail parties, but they really hate and fear each other exactly like the old Bolsheviks in Stalin’s day.
Gary Hart had been deeply involved in the top echelons of presidential politics and the political class in DC since 1972-long enough to make personal enemies, and long enough for the big dogs to determine if he had the chops to be a real man of power, one who it would be advisable to support and turn a blind eye to the less savory aspects if that means climbing up the ladder, or if he was the wrong horse to bet your political, and financial future on. My take is everyone in Washington in 1960, Democrat and Republican, saw Kennedy as that kind of man, a man of rising power, with personal magnetism that worked as well on men as it did on women. He had not been in Washington long enough to create those vicious personal enmities.
Hart did not have those qualities, but four years later Clinton, another charismatic up and comer, had them in spades, and they pulled up the rising star instead of stabbing him in the back, correctly reasoning that Clinton would crush George Bush. It ties in with emergent behavior, in a way. Professional politicians have gut instincts that serve them well, or else they would have never got to The Show in DC.
That explains the difference, Z. Never underestimate the personalities, the hatreds and the vendettas behind the politics as a driver of seemingly illogical behavior among the political class.
It’s like the court of Henry VIII or any other vicious Renaissance prince, but nobody knows who the king is going to be next, and they all want to be the king or sit next to him, or scheme to put a new one on the throne.
Keeping vices away from public view worked well, for decades, It’s a variation of the tacit agreement that fags and degenerates pay the minor price of discretion in order to not to pollute public values. By the end of his term, Clinton was impeached over intern panties as a slap on the hand for violating decorum,
“What made the Clintons different than Kennedy, though, is he didn’t have incredibly powerful forces on his side to clear away any obstacles, but came out of nowhere and created a huge political machine through force of will.”
Gotta disagree.
Nobody gets a Rhodes Scholarship without “powerful forces on his side”.
Somebody was guiding Clinton’s career.
Way back in the day, gosh, THREE DECADES AGO, when I was still young & innocent & as naive as a newborn, a good quarter of a century before I would wake up out of my slumber, and become cynical, and realize that the entire world actually is run by one giant conspiracy, thirty years ago, when I saw that photograph of Clinton shaking hands with JFK, my instincts leapt into play, and I knew immediately that that picture would not have been taken and would not have survived unless someone very important arranged for the picture to be taken, and had then kept copies of the picture, to make absolutely certain that the picture was neither lost nor forgotten.
Heck, just getting into Yale Law, by way of Georgetown, is an yuge eyebrow-raiser; back then, Georgetown simply was not in the running as a feeder school for Yale Law.
Many years ago, Steve Sailer claimed to have read the entirety of Clinton’s autobiography [just like Sailer claimed to have read Bill Ayers’s “Dreams of my Father”], and Sailer said that Clinton’s autobiography was simply horrible.
Somebody was guiding Clinton’s career.
The obvious answer would be Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, who created the very CIA-esque Fulbright Scholarship program, by which redneck boys like Clinton were plucked from obscurity and sent off to the Old World to acquire a proper taste for paedophilia & whatnot.
If it was Fulbright, who created Bill Clinton, then Fulbright must have felt that his own [eponymous] scholarship lacked the requisite panache necessary for an ascension to the presidency, and so Fulbright would have personally intervened, and upgraded Clinton to a Rhodes.
There are some interesting rumors I have read here and there about three letter agencies drug running operations operating with Bill’s help when Bill was governor of Arkansas, and even some before when he was AG.
rumors?
Seems pretty well documented.
This was a good essay today and I agree with it.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s essay, I would also like to say that the sort of clueless ennui you discussed, with everybody carrying on with business as usual even though it’s obvious that something major is coming at us in a hurry, is kind of what you always get at the end of an era. So it was in 1914, and in 1789. The best of times and the worst of times.
The existence of a viable alternative system keep the elite honest, or at least it put a limit on their corruption
This is one of the reasons they hate Putin, he shows us another way is not only possible, but better
They hate him because they cannot forgive him for turning Russia around. Yeltsin’s Russia was a hellhole. He basically handed the whole country over to mafia oligarchs and scummy Harvard Boy carpetbaggers. It was what Ukraine was until a few months ago: a paradise for evil people like the Bidens and Clintons to work out their fantasies and line their pockets.
I still hate the song “Don’t Stop” because I remember watching Fleetwood Mac play it at Clinton’s inaugural ball. They really did go all in for a “new era” feel.
I was shocked when Mr Rogers showed up on stage with the Clintons, as part of their inauguration festivities*.
At that point, was Fred Rogers so senile that he was completely unaware of e.g. Gennifer Flowers and Juanita Broaddrick?
Or was Fred Rogers secretly some sort of fellow traveller, not exactly the sort of man you’d want to leave your little boys alone with?
I remember being flabbergasted when I saw Fred Rogers on stage with them.
*Amongst many other firsts, were the Clintons the first to have extended multi-day inauguration festivities?
That would certainly gibe with the generally accepted 21st Century perception of Boomer entitlement & self-indulgence.
Dunno about you, but Mr. Rogers always gave me Diddler vibes.
Wasn’t Mr. Rogers only part of an event with kids – some celebration or party for them – not really political? His widow is now a big lib, but I always have a soft spot for Mr. Rogers. I get the diddler vibes, but not even a whisper has ever been uttered about him being a creep. I think he was just really a good man.
And I will say one other thing: he knew where entertainment was going. He originally got into kids TV in the 1950s because he viewed current entertainment for kids, in the 50s, as “bombardment”: too much action, lights, distractions, stimulation.
How prescient was this? The bombardment has multiplied incalculably since then. His reruns were pretty much the only TV I let my youngest watch when she was around 4.
Agree. Mr. Rogers was a kind man on the order of a Dick Clark or Pat Boone.
I’m thinking he might’ve been a secret subversive, a real revolutionary.
He likely knew what was going on in Hollywood, and sheltered as many as he could. Powerless to stop it, but determined to do what he could.
Sort of off topic but I’m 31 and when I was a kid + the anti racism lessons in school had a sort of mr Rogers vibe to it even if it wasn’t mr Rogers himself. Guys like tim wise are much nastier. Flex maybe?
Eloi, I know what you mean, but it gets worse. What’s next for the inaugural ball will be some kind of hip-hop rapper “songs,” which are increasingly ubiquitous these days. Fleetwood Mac, that’s whiteness and privilege.
Oh I agree – the degeneracy continues – Biden’s next inauguration will be akin to this (with Biden propped): https://www.tmz.com/2022/04/04/goonew-rapper-corpse-body-prop-stand-funeral-nightclub/
I do adore several Fleetwood Mac albums – Lindsey Buckingham is an amazing guitarist and producer. Rumours and Tusk still sound great today – I even like their live album (made for money) The Dance. “Never Going Back Again” is possibly the greatest rock fingerstyle song ever (and it is a bear to get up to his tempo). It’s just that I hate “Dont Stop”. I never cared for it before, but the image of balloons with them playing that song and the smugness of the Clintons is forever emblazoned in my mind.
Shudda been Dire Straits playing “Money for nuthin’ and chicks for free”. The difference between Kennedy and Clinton was Kennedy had better taste in women.
Don’t forget the welch and green era. Plenty of good stuff there too.
Its Russia’s fault and the end of the cold war 40 years ago?
That is the main reason that springs to mind.? Not demographic change, not a takeover of the power positions by small groups of inter-related people who are plainly not the old guard in the cold war days,, not a push through the institutions by the destructive anti-west ideology?
What about the same rise of the anti-native government powers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Finland, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Sweden etc all at the same time.
Is that all because of the end of the cold war as well?
I think it was
Look at South Africa, it was propped up by communism too, its just we never realised it
Wut? Did you read the post?
Reading fast on my phone
Sorry
Sure.
The current evil is plainly not a function of the offspring of the Eisenhower administration looking for a reason to exist.
Its like reading an analysis from the 80s when the US had 95% male politicians, was 85% white and the majority of the admin were heritage Americans.
If that was still true it would seem plausible.
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