When studying the two great revolutionary events in European history, the thing that always jumps out is how revolution was something of an accident. In both cases, the ruling class had chances to avert disaster. The sovereign had people in his inner circle or just on the edge of it who warned about the brewing trouble. In the case of Tsar Nicholas, his ascent to the throne was due to the ongoing unrest. Yet, in both cases the ruling class never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Dig further into the many unforced errors and the root cause is often a stubbornness on the part of the king, the tsar, or the aristocracy. They looked at every small compromise as a potential slippery slope. Instead of taking advantage of opportunities presented to them by their disgruntled subjects, they dug in their heels and made themselves seem like the unreasonable party. As a result, they left themselves little room to make necessary reforms in order to head off disaster.
We may be seeing something similar in the battle to select a new Speaker of the House, which is now in its third week. Kevin McCarthy was booted from the post to start October because he broke all but one promise he made to secure the job. The one promise he kept was to reduce the number of votes required to bring forth a motion to vacate the chair, as in remove him from the job. Because he broke all of his other promises, this was the avenue to remove him.
The House Republicans are now struggling to find a replacement. The first choice, one supported by the donor class and the Democrats, was Steve Scalise, but he reminded the rebels in the party too much of Kevin McCarthy. Like McCarthy, Scalise owes his existence to his ability to spread donor money around to those who fink on Republican voters on behalf of the donor class. Trading one fink for another would have made the Freedom Caucus complicit in the finkery, so they demurred.
Next up is Jim Jordan, who is not exactly Tiberius Gracchus, but he is a serious man who is a capable political operator. He shares many of the views held by the Freedom Caucus and the back benchers of the party. This is why the people in charge tried to bump him off years ago with a phony sex scandal. They are now trying to revive that smear campaign to derail his Speaker bid. The zombies in the Republican caucus have now been activated against him.
Lost in the jibber-jabber and scheming is the fact that the donor class opposes Jordan primarily due to his politics. The Republicans sell themselves to their voters as a conservative party and Jordan is what you should expect from the sales pitch, but the donors oppose him because he is the sales pitch. They argue that having a Speaker who tries to act on the party platform is bad for business. In other words, they admit the party platform is nothing more than a scam on their voters.
The truth is this is a fight of symbolism, not real policy. A Speaker Jordan will not be substantively different from Speaker McCarthy or Speaker Pelosi. Spending bills will be a bit more transparent, and they will not drop minutes before the vote. The bills themselves will not change. From the perspective of the economic elites who control the political system, they lose nothing with Speaker Jordan, other than a bit of their pride for having had to make this small concession.
That is the core issue. It is the same issue that turned the Trump years from a golden opportunity into an ongoing crisis. The people who are actually in charge could have gotten any deal they wanted from Trump. He would have signed off on amnesty, for example, as long as he got his wall money. The people in charge could not bring themselves to give a rube from the shtetl this tiny concession. Instead, they made war on him and the public as a whole.
We are seeing the same thing in the House. McCarthy’s string pullers were furious that he gave in on those small items to secure the gavel. They were apoplectic when he started to follow through on them. Lost to the mists of time is the fact he promised to release the J6 tapes in full. He gave Tucker Carlson a small taste and official Washington was incensed at this gesture toward transparency. He was forced to fink on the rest of his promises and blow up his Speakership.
Of course, all of this is possible because House elections have no impact on ninety percent of the House members. Only about forty seats are ever in doubt, so the only risk for the other four hundred members is falling out of favor with their party leaders, which means falling out of favor with permanent Washington. Make the donors angry and you get a sex scandal, an N-word scandal or something similar, along with a well-financed primary challenger.
This is what happened to Steve King from Iowa. He was solid on immigration, so the party had him knocked off. Kevin McCarthy colluded with the New York Times to post a fake story claiming that King used the N-word on a call. Immediately, McCarthy stripped King of his committee assignments and sponsored a primary challenger. By the time the truth came out about the call, it was too late for Steve King. Every Republican voting against Jordan has that story on their desk right now.
Of course, there are other issues working against Jordan. He has been skeptical of the Ukraine project. Far too many people in Washington are getting rich off that racket to tolerate skepticism. The reason the neocons have been able to push this project this far is they bolted it too the money laundering machine that is foreign aid. The money goes out to some foreign country and much of it returns in the form of consulting contracts, defense contracts and lobbying deals.
The biggest problem is the oldest problem. Like the ruling elites during revolutionary France and Russia, the ruling elite of the American empire are convinced the state exists solely to guard their interests against the Dirt People. Therefore, any concession, no matter how trivial or symbolic, is a threat to the system. In the hive mind that is official Washington, Jim Jordan leads to Donald Trump which leads to angry mobs erecting a gallows on the Capitol lawn.
History, however, suggests the opposite. Through the nineties, the economic elite got almost everything they wanted, by giving the hoi polloi a few crumbs now and again to perpetuate the myth of American democracy. Then the crumbs were replaced with rat poison, as the ruling class turned increasingly hostile and paranoid. Like the peasants in prior revolutionary eras, the best explanation we have for the behavior of our rulers is they hate us and want us dead.
All of this is a glimpse of what lies ahead in 2024. The people unwilling to budge on the Speaker issue are not going to budge on the Trump issue. The road to ruin for this ruling elite is the same road as that of prior elites. They are becoming increasingly ossified and stubborn. They miss every opportunity to lower the temperature because even small concessions are viewed through the lens of contempt for the people over whom they rule. The end of this road is the gallows.
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Another way to look at this is that the ruling elite has realized that they no longer need to throw crumbs in the masses.
Maybe I comprehend a bit incorrectly, but is this an argument against the slippery slope?
For me, that’s been one of my newer “revelations”, as in when you give the inch the next miles are gone.
I’ve taken to saying, in correct company of course, “ya know, I kinda understand the logic behind the burka now”.
I guess it all depends on your perception of the top of the grade and it’s percentage…
Damn Z you run some tight… tight political game!
“The end of this road is the ga11ows.”
***cough***
PHED POAST
***cough***
From our perspective throwing crumbs to the masses seems like a harmless way to keep the system chugging along with everyone happy, but you’re forgetting the dysgenic pressure that applies to an entrenched aristocracy. An aristocracy starts out with Ragnar the Fearless slaying a thousand orcs single-handedly to claim his kingdom, but within a few generations his descendants are all effete ponces in maquillage and powdered wigs whiling away their endless leisure time tickling one another’s bottoms with ostrich feathers. If the elites don’t force the middle classes down in the mud with taxes and inflated grocery bills, they might… Read more »
“An aristocracy starts out with Ragnar the Fearless slaying a thousand orcs single-handedly to claim his kingdom, but within a few generations his descendants are all effete ponces in maquillage and powdered wigs whiling away their endless leisure time tickling one another’s bottoms with ostrich feathers.”
LMAO
My brother in law made a fortune and told me that the hardest part of being rich is raising his kids to not be entitled shit heads.
One of the things I find really striking if you watch the normie youtube recommends there are a lot of “content creators” who are just the children of wealthy parents, and they are unbelievably stupid.
The worst thing for the aristocracy has been the internet, since they can’t resist the urge to draw attention to themselves and out themselves as being unworthy of their privilege. Not to be a commie or anything, but it is grating to watch some broccoli-haired trust fund faggot make soylent grin mouth-gaping videos in his Lamborghini.
The one early-Twitter thing that Elon has almost successfully brought back is academics constantly getting “owned” by regular dipshits who actually know things.
You’ll still probably get banned for proving yet again that Laurence Tribe is the dumbest man alive, but you won’t *always* get banned *forever* for it.
And as they lose power internationally, they are going to increasingly take out their frustrations on us
That historically is the usual trajectory and it is in fact underway now. Smarter factions realize they have lost all social trust and probably would like to tamp things down but they obviously do not have the upper hand.
Zman: “They are becoming increasingly ossified and stubborn. They miss every opportunity to lower the temperature because even small concessions are viewed through the lens of contempt…”
This is how the Ukraine war started and continues. “They” are too arrogant and contemptuous to consider a negotiated peace, either before the war began, or even now, when there is no realistic path to Ukranian victory. Not that they have the skill or wisdom to conduct productive negotiations…
For all its faults that we endlessly chronicle here, the GAE would be about as invincible today as it ever was if it retained the support of its dirt people. You can’t really say enough about the irony there. Gallows seem to me less likely than a devolution of power to other centers. We are no longer the kind of people who construct gallows. Or use them. We will submit to whoever fills the vacuum left by a waning Regime that will prove itself too dysfunctional to exercise power broadly, in spite of all its technological whizbangs. The Speaker… Read more »
I loved Red Storm Rising. I have no defense.
No shame. I was a huge Clancy fan up until he died. The stories and characters were fun and exciting. They fit in the world as I (mistakenly) understood it.
Without Remorse had a certain charm.
Red Storm was by far his best. He lost me in the Jack Ryan series when he kept moving up the ranks and became President. I stopped a couple beooks before that.
You didn’t miss anything good, wish I had stopped who you did.
That was the only me I read. Trume or something. All of a sudden he was president and I thought it was lame. Jeepers I was like 13 yo.
Red Storm Rising was a fairly plausible take on a late ’80s WW3 scenario.
Clancy also had a lot of interesting side characters, like the F-15 ferry pilot “Buns” Nakamura who was worked into a side plot about shooting down satellites.
I still remember a line Clancy used to describe her, “Her father was the only one to ever call her beautiful…”
I agree with the power base part. I think one of the reasons we saw Ukraine’s invasion and the Hamas incursion is the world seeing what Americans can’t. Namely, that the GAE is running a color revolution against the historic American nation. They went mask off anti-white including in the military. They pissed off the next and current generation warrior class by declaring war on them. They have destabilized their position domestically to prepare for a mask off, hard power tyranny. Foreign powers with time pressures of their own seized the moment. It is tempting to project our docile and… Read more »
Put them in a decompression chamber … one at a time. You know who I’m talkin’ ’bout.
Wood chipper.
Think of the TV rights.
The saddest part for me is that too many of them will be dead before they have a chance to feel the lash.
I think advanced age is why they quit “boiling the frog” went full speed ahead with the woke agenda.
They wanted to see the fruits of their labor before they expire.
“The end of this road is the gallows”
I can only dream.
Mr. Z……Spot on! You are observant and correct. Here in Southern Utah, nothing will prompt the sheep to stampede until they get hungry, miss house/rent payments and can’t pay utilities. These people are in big debt. Looking into the future, the prophet will tell them to all and everyone take the next peck. Even then their brains are so f’d up, they will rile up in obedient circles and run off a cliff. Never underestimate the lack of survival instinct in these people that once had a strong survival instinct. (Be nice! Love everyone! has done a number on their… Read more »
Yeah. Well, somebody is going to have to do something. Not sure we have any sort of rebellion movement, tbh
Wait till people get hungry.
And cold, this winter’s gonna be very chilly, and the jews who run this country are fine letting you freeze to death. They dance the hava nigila every time a white person is killed or beaten or raped. Every jew condones that, by virtue of their remaining jewish.
The dominance of the J factor in our elite explains a lot of the hostility towards the dirt people. Back when the elite was WASPish, the natural elite class hostility was somewhat tempered. Now it is over the top.
We’ve been hearing about “the cold winters” for a decade. When the GAE sanctions – Ukraine – Russia war. broke out, it was the Germans are going to freeze this winter, and finally freak out, and topple their govt… Never happened!
Chicken Little this… Chicken Little that..,
That’s because Germans, like all Europeans, are a defeated people. The jewish terrorist regime of America in the 1930s and 1940s killed millions of innocent civilians in Europe, on purpose, because they were jews. I promise, winter time can get very cold north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and there isn’t going to be any heating oil. The reserves are empty, the jews who run the country are declaring war on the rest of the world, and we shut down all our domestic energy production. Keep packin that FUD though loser.
But slippery slopes, like conspiracies, do exist. Desegregation led to rule by gibbering Hutu. Granting women the vote led to workplace and digital Karens making life hellish for normal people. Allowing heauxmeaux to marry results in pederasty and child-mutilation as fundamental so-called “human rights” that must be imposed on the entire planet even if it means the slaughter of millions of people and global economic meltdown. Would allowing Jordan to be seated as Speaker of the House result in the Hilldebeeste swinging from a lamppost on Pennsylvania Avenue? I’m afraid not. That reality does not, however, vitiate the concept fo… Read more »
This was an interesting debate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i3cQdopu2po&pp=ygUNZGF2aWQgYXplcnJhZA%3D%3D
I feel the anti-disparate impact debaters sort of had their hands tied. Because if you flat out say; “access to whites and there stuff is not a human right” then you’ll be seen as a moral ogre
Not to be pedantic, but (excluding the fall of the communist bloc nations) there were actually three European revolutions… other than the French and the Russian, I think we need in include the English Civil War and the overthrow of Charles I.
It’s important to remember what transpired in England in the 17th century, because America’s Founders were profoundly influenced by it. Separation of powers, disestablishment of religion, a Bill of Rights, no taxation without representation, and Lockean natural rights were all a consequence of the English Civil War and it’s ultimate political resolution.
Also Hobbes, and explicitly so. State of nature is war of all against all, etc.
If that’s the state of nature, what does it say about natural rights and classical liberalism? Why would later thinkers, to the contrary, contemplate it as a basis for order?
Idk, I find the ethnic angle fascinating. Roman-Britons, Roman Catholicism, Vikings, Protestantism, Cavaliers, Roundheads, etc. Quite a cauldron! Quite a problem we’re still working out.
Hobbes was profoundly influenced by the overthrow of Charles and the Puritan dictatorship of Cromwell. If I recall correctly he actually went into exile for a while during this period. Those events surely informed “Leviathan.”
The Founders, however, were influenced not by Hobbes but by Locke and the Glorious Revolution, which included the English Bill of Rights.
It’s a great point you bring up, though. Contemporary politics is schizophrenic insofar as we utilize Lockean traditions, laws and language, but in fact we have a Hobbesian Leviathan for a government.
What about 1848? Or is that characterized under the French Revolution?
Perhaps we ought to say “successful revolutions” to address the 1848 issue…
It lead to quite a diaspora to the US from the German speaking lands, and an infusion of political thinking from these immigrants.
Correct. The USA is the product of three revolutions: Protestant, anti-Stewart royalty (the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution), and the American Revolution/War of Independence. Appeals to some sort of revolution naturally resonate with the American people.
The assassination of Prince Henry Stuart is the moast important event in world history which no one has ever heard of.
Henry Stuart has been almost completely forgotten by history.
There’s a county, called “Henrico” [meaning literally Henry’s County], outside of Richmond, VA, which is named for him, along with an “Henricus” museum, plus a “Cape Henry” at the northern extreme of Virginia Beach.
Then there’s a tiny little hamlet, on the Virginia/North-Carolina border, in the swamps of the Roanoke River, called “Henrico”. The zip code is 27842.
And that’s about all the world knows of Henry Stuart.
Not to be pedantic, but (excluding the fall of the communist bloc nations) there were actually three European revolutions… other than the French and the Russian, I think we need in include the English Civil War and the overthrow of Charles I.
It’s important to remember what transpired in England in the 17th century, because America’s Founders were profoundly influenced by it. Separation of powers, disestablishment of religion, a Bill of Rights, no taxation without representation, and Lockean natural rights were all a consequence of the English Civil War and it’s ultimate political resolution.
In retrospect, every kind of bad outcome can be styled as a “missed opportunity,” so the conclusion that previous elite classes were simply stubborn is underdetermined. The myth of the stodgy elite is a feature (and a foil) of the whole Whig-Historical narrative with its emphasis on inevitable progress, which is the dominant narrative for all of Western modernity. In reality, the truth needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and we need to seek to understand what the elites who were living through those times were really perceiving and thinking. In the case of the Russian Revolution, for… Read more »
proposed a gigantic $100 billion joint aid package for Israel and Ukraine
—
I half suspect though that they made it so huge precisely so that it would die. For as dumb as they are I don’t think they believe that they can still issue infinite debt dollars, the market certainly doesn’t.
If it does pass like that though that will mean that my suspicion was incorrect.
“The good news is, you won’t have to worry about all the globalist schemes anymore: the Green New Deal, the WEF, Affirmative Action, sexual confusion, Covid, open borders—all that will be over, not to return in our lifetimes.” Easier said than done. It’s not just that we have all these terrible policies that could just be undone. We have a population incapable of thinking those types of thoughts. It causes them pain to even imagine that anyone could think such bad thought. It would involving undoing 80 years of non-stop brainwashing and propaganda. OTOH, I admit there are experiences that… Read more »
Very well written hypothesis, but I differ on a Ukrainian collapse. There will still be some serious fighting when the money and meme-weapons stop flowing. Keiv could be expected to hold out for a long time like Sarajevo. And, if the Ukranians have the heart, insurgency is not expensive.
When viewed through this lens, RFK Jr.’s assertion that his uncle was murdered by the CIA begins to make a little more sense. JFK was, I have read, against sending more troops to Vietnam and in fact wanted to begin bringing the ones that were already there home. Am sure the defense contractors did not like that.
It’s also said that Kennedy had begun to rethink his earlier enthusiasm for sending man to the moon. He apparently thought a contest with the Soviets to see who could get there first wasn’t really necessary.
The Donald Sutherland scene is my favorite part of JFK too.
Another example of the ruling elite shooting themselves in the foot is the Jewish billionaire response to universities and university students showing any support for the Palestinians or even just saying that there are two sides to the war. Ackerman telling his fellow Wall Street tribesman and gentiles to blacklist Harvard students who signed a pretty benign letter. All the Jewish millionaires and billionaires cutting off (or threatening to cut off) donations to colleges that allow any form of Palestinian speakers or events, even cultural ones. All of this could have been quietly, but the Jews just had to make… Read more »
Sorry, Ackman, not Ackerman.
Citizen: As you note, it’s their usual heavy-handed way of demonstrating that they’re in control while furiously decrying any mention of their power and influence as ‘anti-semitic.’ Personally, I find it absolutely hilarious that all the blaqs and various sorts of browns brought in and championed by the juice in their anti-White animus have now turned on them. And they are still certain they can control the moral narrative by controlling the money and scholarships and endowments – but quantity has a quality all its own. Now that AINO is barely 55% non-hispanic White (officially 58.9% which includes juice, arabs,… Read more »
I saw that births to “White” mothers made up only 50.1% of American newborns in 2022.
Take out Arabs, Jewish people, Iranians, and White women with a non-white father, and you get… like 38-40% of newborns are White?
Quite a horrifying number, not even UK, Canada, Australia, or even France are nearly that bad. Some ground is made up from White Hispanics ie. Cubans counting in the Hispanic category, but still very bad numbers.
It’s not the blacks and Mestizos that are the problem for the Jews. Investment firms – which are now located everywhere and not just Wall Street – are increasingly staffed with South Asians and East Asians, along with a fair amount of whites and a falling number of Jews. Granted, none of these people give two farts about Palestinians, but they are very aware of Jews, and the willingness of Jews to be play as a team even as they tell everyone else that doing this is the worst. thing. ever. You can bet that the South Asians and East… Read more »
Citizen and 3g4m3 state the case against the chosen so effectively that I wonder why so many whites don’t see it or resist it. When I think of those who resist the explanation that the chosen are anti-white, I think of Derb and my brother. They have two objections to the explanation. First, they have friends who are chosen and these friends support traditional values. I have trouble respecting this objection because both Derb and my brother have no problem admitting that, while there some good blacks, blacks as a group are anti-white. Why can’t Derb and my brother view… Read more »
It’s just theater. The reality is that these elite U endowments are now so big that the schools really don’t need to listen to alumni any more. They are effectively Sovereign Wealth Funds with universities attached to them. That said, I’m supporting the boycott at my school (one of the ones in the headlines) because I think it will at least call some attention to the suppression of free thinking on campus. It’s probably a waste of time but it’s fun watching the intra-tribal warfare over the issue. At the same time, getting some influential Jewish leaders to rethink the… Read more »
Since ethnic nepotism is the future of the West, maybe Whites can corner the job market on plumbing and waste management. Just a thought.
It was also wars that brought down the ruling elites in France and Russia. The first bankrupted themselves fighting Britain in the American War of Independence; the second fighting Germany in World War I.
Wars of choice are often a bad one for ruling elites.
Something the current lot seem blissfully unaware of…
> The first bankrupted themselves fighting Britain in the American War of Independence;
A common theme is spending too many resources spiting your enemy tends to backfire pretty spectacularly.
They are hoping that a general war will force everyone back into “safe harbor” treasury bills to keep the fiat empire going. All the while trusting in their “expertise” to fine tune the conflict to keep it from going nuclear, at least in the good neighborhoods…
The problem with Jordan is that, while he was a coach at Ohio State, he ignored sexual abuse and assault concerns that were brought to his attention.
He didn’t even reach out to former victims to say he was sorry that failed in his duties.
As a staunch conservative and Christian, such deviancy is unacceptable. I wouldn’t shake hands with such a moral coward.
I’m only vaguely familiar with that situation and without looking it up my first thought would be that the accusations were bullsh!t and maybe that’s why he didn’t grovel about it.
Perhaps more likely, the accusations were against important Hutus on the team. Sportsball coaches, although typically rightwing in many respects, are also usually negro lovers, and they won’t have a second thought about sacrificing white college girls to prized Hutus who help them win games.
Despicable, but there it is.
Yes, although that would never happen at my alma mater – it’s only those…other institutions of higher learning.
Well, recall the Joe Paterno fiasco. Joe did absolutely nothing wrong. But they forced him out, took down his statue, and quite literally drove him straight into the grave within months. Absolutely disgraceful.
They’re trying to claw it back years later, but what’s done is done. Jordan will say nothing because to do so means he gets the Joe Paterno treatment. I guarantee there are people who already have the grave dug.
Sharp take. This probably will be the last cycle in which the GOP can act even as a controlled opposition party. The only glue that binds together the United States in any way now is the economy and relative wealth of its inhabitants. The increasingly severe repression and human and civil rights violations are in anticipation of when that financial comfort goes away. Historically this only makes matters worse. Even Grillers notice and get angry when there is nothing to throw on the coals. Utopian plans to redistribute their wealth to the dusky hordes would be the spark that lights… Read more »
Jack- Even more well-said than usual. The collapse will cure many issues, but many potentially worse issues lie on the other side. As many others have said, we really are living in the good old days of relatively peaceful communities and material comfort. We should try to enjoy the short time that we have left as best we can. I say this because I see no sign the West’s Bolsheviks are going to be derailed by white-hat opposition. Even if they self-implode they are going to cause unbelievable amounts of damage that ensure life in the West will be much… Read more »
“Even if they self-implode they are going to cause unbelievable amounts of damage that ensure life in the West will be much worse for everyone going forward.”
I think we are in the opening stages of this very thing. The consequences will be quite severe. Yes, savor what little remains and if you haven’t sorted yourself the time draws nigh.
What comes out if 2024 is the largest illegal dissident party in world history. The GOP is largely dead. It serves no purpose other than to protect the Government Party from us. But what use do they have for a GOP that commands no voters. RFK Jr is now running as an independent to try and execute the Democrats’ favorite political ploy: the splitter strategy. They’ve used it to great effect in CA and NY, for example. But the real thing to ready from the polling is that 60% of the country opposes the regime. But we will have the… Read more »
Steve Scalise was shot by a militant leftist during baseball practice and nearly died. After months in the hospital, he defied danger and returned to Congress.
Why has he never used this as political capital? Why is this never mentioned?
My own theory is that this would only impress ‘The Wrong Kind’ of Republicans, and Scalise genuinely sees them as a bigger threat than the kind of people that shot him. Republicans are the practice squad in D.C., and the practice squad isn’t allowed to have heroes.
Bernie could have easily been run out of the Senate after that shooting. The shooter was clearly inspired by Bernie’s deranged rhetoric that everything the left doesn’t like, including having to show an ID to vote is “violence” and that Republicans were evil for pushing this stuff. Some of the Democrats would have privately thanked the Republicans for getting rid of him even while they publicly defended Bernie. It doesn’t seem like that would have offended their donors either. They really are the stupid party.
The last thing Republicans want is to win. Pelosi and Schumer are happy, bubbley people when in power.
McConnell, Ryan, McCarthy and the rest act they are performing an unpleasant chore if they ever get put in charge.
This is why the collapse is inevitable. The elites will spend and spend until the house of cards falls, and the ensuing chaos creates an opportunity to finally impose an overt tyranny. In their models, the bottom of the social pyramid will square off against each other and the illegals in a mad scramble for limited resources. This mayhem and violence results in a mandate for a crackdown and elimination of civil liberties. In steps the Jackboots and the crisis gets solved with brutal repression and mass incarcerations. And in this fever dream, the root of the problem is totally… Read more »
I concur and would add this for consideration:
Before and during the French Revolution, many of the nobility and bourgeoisie gave generously to the poor and supported leaders in the revolutionary movement.
They were very surprised to be brought to the guillotine with their peers.
I’ll also add (a quibble, I know: Z’s thesis is absolutely correct) that the ruling class of Russia actually showed orders of magnitude more awareness of the necessity for reform than our own. They had a longstanding reform movement of many decades that in the end proved too little, too late. Aristocratic reformers were in large part hamstrung by their Liberal movement who insanely preferred supporting violent revolutionaries rather than in implementing (when offered) their own proposals for reform. I suspect that one reason that Russia doesn’t have anywhere near as much of a liberal problem that we do, is… Read more »
Governments are in greatest peril when they attempt to reform. Both tsarist Russia and the USSR are examples of that truism. The Chicoms, on the other hand, have maintained control because they’ve hoisted in that verity.
Excellent point about the peril of reform
I suspect the dirt people are more in danger from drones than the cloud people are. As somebody said, there will come a day when our rifles are about as useful against the regime’s drone swarm as the zulu spears were against the british.
Jeffrey Zoar: Drones really do so seem to be a game changer. While it’s reasonable to assume a certain degree of privacy or anonymity as an average person when it comes to satellites (i.e. they can see incredible detail but highly unlikely to be utilized to surveil every anti-regime individual), drones are cheap, highly mobile, and there are tons of them. I’m amazed at the detail and maneuverability of the ones youtubers use. Adding some sort of weapon to the civilian models will be likely. Still, the thought that individuals or groups against the regime could somehow move around or… Read more »
Much as I’ve enjoyed your comments to date, it’s tough to take this drone swarm bit in the spirit (I believe) it was offered. Didn’t we all just spectate the biggest failure of cyberfence HAL 9000 sorcerer’s apprentice gadgetry since, uh, Pearl Harbor? And nope, I don’t buy that the Arabic banditos had the path cleared for them, there aren’t any CBP agents with clippers there.
Get back in the kitchen and make me a samitch!
Drones require infrastructure: safe operating bases, teams of technicians. Little Sarah Goldstein didn’t go to Harvard to learn how to overhaul a drone engine. In a civil war, you don’t go after the drones, you go after the drones’ support infrastructure. Supply lines are just as important now as they were 1,000 years ago. In a civil war, the enemy looks just like you, and may be the guy you trusted to run the maintenance cycle on every returning drone. That was an ongoing problem in Afghanistan — an enormous percentage of the “Afghan National Army” were Taliban or Taliban-friendly… Read more »
Maybe the drones achilles heel is that they all have to be built in China
A Confucian heel, wot…
THE Vizzini: I stand corrected. Obviously I do not know enough about the subject to comment intelligently. Thank you for the information.
Using indiscriminate violence or genocide against a civilian population only grows the resistance movement (as Israel is about to learn for the umteenth time). And its a numbers game. They are few and dirt people many. Life is very good at the top of the heap, and so when you have a lot to lose, they will choose exit versus stand-and-fight. Good riddance, don’t come back. Every basement, garage, and small business backroom can become a drone factory. And sole proprietor makes OPSEC easy. Most importantly, the only real skill possessed by most young men nowadays is expert hand-eye coordination… Read more »
Yaya! I’ve been wanting to talk about drones and the battlefield for a while! Background: The two greatest principles of combat (not warfare as an endeavor) are Fire [weapons, their employment, and their effectiveness against a specific enemy] and Maneuver [coordination of units and speed]. Which is more important is an ancient debate, but is generally determined by technology. In modern times, Blitzkrieg made Maneuver the King to every military that can’t do human wave attacks. Starting around 2010, the U.S. military predicted that drones (think 10′ wingspan, command trailer, 4-5 at the brigade level) could negate concealment for miles… Read more »
Perhaps five years or more back, I regularly read a blog by John Robb called Global Guerillas in which he was warning about the forthcoming onset of drones, and even moreso about drone swarms. He apparently is now posting on Substack; I should check it out. He was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and was a great proponent of Col. Boyd’s OODA Loop paradigm. Drones and drone swarms are great tools for getting inside your opponent’s OODA Loop. We are seeing this already, particularly in the Ukraine conflict, and their potency in this regard will only become more… Read more »
The acronym, OODA, stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. Good explanations of this paradigm and its applications can be found online.
I think both sides can play the drone game. Insurgents use hobby drones already. It seems no one really knows how to use drones optimally and it will be a bloody learning curve for all involved.
Thing is, the failed oligarchies of old at least attempted reform before collapse. We’re not even trying!
Louis XVI had an eye for talent – Turgot, Necker and Calonne were all way more competent that Janet Yellen. The Tsar did too – if we now had a man in government as capable and sincere as Pyotr Stolypin, we would have a fighting chance. In the end, it was too little, too late and the entrenched interests stymied all reform. Oligarchies are often incapable of self preservation.
Perhaps we are not yet at this “desperate reform” stage. One can hope…..
As Z indicated, the ridiculous arrogance prohibits reform. They really are high on their own supply and these are among the least impressive leaders in history.
agree 100 % – although to state in a different way – one cannot help but be impressed by the current crop of leaders complete and utter lack of charisma, intelligence, talent, or other redeeming virtue.
Yeah, what are the odds? You’d think there would be at least a couple who resemble decent human beings.
The lack of charisma is yet another tell about stolen elections
The problem with reform, from the standpoint of the Power Structure, is that it at least tacitly acknowledges that the rabble have a legitimate beef. And once the peasants smell blood in the water they are unlikely to be satiated with a couple of sprats and a scrod. On the contrary, they will take the whole dam’ whale.
It probably is less fear of the peasantry than it it arrogance and hubris, with a liberal dose of delusion.
One of the things revealed by Trump and now the fight over the speakership is that republicans and conservatives are every bit as much about the identity politics as blacks and democrats are. Republicans used to laugh at how dumb black people were to keep voting for incompetent and corrupt dems, just because the had a d after their name – even as they made the situation worse for black people in the areas they controlled. But they couldn’t see that they were doing the exact same thing in voting for incompetent and corrupt Rs even as thing got continually… Read more »
Bingo! It takes a tremendous dimwit to poke fun at the Dems voting for the likes Maxine Waters and AOC. The Dems have delivered more for their voters recently than every Republican combined.
I could accept the stupidity of the GOP, but it’s the perfidy and treachery that’s really galling.
Trump’s greatest achievement was totally inadvertent–he lifted the veil and the entire rotten edifice became undeniable. If the retards had played it smart and coopted him, it would have bought them another decade of plunder and deceit. But, no, that’s not who they are.
Ah, how they love the smell of plunder and deceit. It’s like napalm in the morning.
I’ve made that point on occasion; Trump would’ve been the easiest guy in the world to coopt. A couple of symbolic victories and some flattery and he’s a golden retriever for the ruling class. They couldn’t even do that.
He was never going to give them the war(s) that they needed, and evidently they didn’t have any leverage over him to make him do it. They’ve made the president superfluous for a lot of things, but they still need him for that.
Only reason I can come up with why they exposed their true face instead of making deals with him
Someone on this site recommended or mentioned George Fried’s, “The Next 100 Years.” It is a remarkable treatise in grandiose ambitions, one paragraph to another contradictions, stupidity, and frightening psychopathic mental processes. As things unfold, it looks like the ruling regime all read that book. It is as if they didn’t see it as an attempted prediction, but a playbook for achieving full spectrum global dominance from space that is chiseled in stone. Perhaps the biggest tragedy is how the book takes us through the GAE bending its entire will on crushing all competitors around the globe and erecting what… Read more »
I’m an American with the mean American egalitarian streak, inherited from the Brits, inherited from the Vikings, it seems to me. Yet I’m having to grapple with the thought that the rise of the mediocrities or so-called midwits is the problem. That’s anti-American lol! Royalty was an effective solution to that problem, until Capitalism! gave the merchant-minded the whip hand. And I don’t think Royalty will ever be viable in America. Either Americans disappear, or the game changes. Happily, it looks like Capitalism! is running its course, but I’m impatient. It would be interesting to see what comes next— if… Read more »
G. K. Chesterton called it ‘Distributism”, an economic system characterized by widespread ownership of productive property as an alternative to the economic oligarchy of Capitalism and the bureaucratic tyranny of Socialism.
Sad to say, we had something like that in America before we let the bigs to get too big. Private and public btw.
We won’t win in 2024, but it will probably tell us where we stand. I’m in MAGA Land so I don’t really know but I think there’s still a lot of comfy normie resistance to radical change. Things still have not got bad enough. It’s still possible for the normie Republicans to retreat behind a wall of high property values.
And the hell of it is, they’re focusing on the wrong Dirt People. White Americans (which is redundant, I realize; there’s no other kind of American) are all Grillers at heart. You could throw them a bone once in a while and as long as they have bratwurst and sportzball 24/7 they’ll be fine. But the recent ructions in Gaza are waking them up to the reality of “America” as a majority-minority country. They obviously expected to make a few speeches, put Toby Keith out on tour, and get all the dumbasses to rally ’round the flag for another pointless… Read more »
Nobody finds its strange that as soon as Afghanistan ends, Ukraine begins, and as soon as that begins to wind down we get the middle east. Didn’t Julian Assange say the point of modern wars is not to win, but to launder money? Then again the same people that championed Julian Assange ten years ago, would probably cheer on his execution today.
To launder money and to protect the greatest ally. While tens of thousands of mostly young men die.
Been studying Military History from a very young age; every war – sans the 1776 Revolution- has been complete & total BS.
And yes – even World War II. FDR was itching to get into it, led along by the nose by the British. He waged an undeclared, unconstitutional war against the German Navy in the Atlantic & goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor.
See here: https://www.amazon.com/Day-of-Deceit-Robert-B-Stinnett-audiobook/dp/B007WSR60A/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2487TJ3JR9T78&keywords=Day+of+deceit&qid=1697725461&s=books&sprefix=day+of+deceit%2Cstripbooks%2C72&sr=1-1
Thoughts that have raced thru my head the last decade or so:
Did we really win WW2? Or did we hope the Germans would beat the Russians and only became involved once it wasn’t going to happen? The German advance on Moscow stalled out and the Russians began to counter attack December 5th 1941. Why did Hitler declare war on the United States when he had no obligation to do so, and common sense would tell you that was the worst thing he could do?
sans the 1776 Revolution- it’s sauf.
Also, Whiskey Rebellion.
Mr House –
Hitler declared war on the U.S. because he was hoping the Japanese would declare war on the Soviet Union. By the time you mention- December 1941 – Operation Typhoon was on (the German drive on Moscow) & the Germans were getting hit with about 20 divisions of Siberians pulled from the far east. Hitler was hoping by his gesture Japan would respond in kind which would have alleviated some of the pressure.
Think the Japanese bloody nose @ Khalkin Gol proved too sobering to allow it.
There’s a terrific work in the form of “Hitler’s Panzers East” by RHS Stolfi (of the Presidio) & his thesis is the Germans had one chance to knock the Soviet Union out of the war & could have done it by August 1941. At that time the “A-Team” was in @ Army Groups North (General Ritter von Leeb) & Army Group Centre (Field Marshal Fedor von Bock with General Heinz Guderian in command of the armor). Utilizing the classic “sichelschnitt” or “scissor cut” the two Army Groups could have cut off & surrounded Moscow in a classic envelopment move. While… Read more »
“Incredibly the German economy was not placed on a war footing until February 1943 after the disaster @ Stalingrad. ” Not that strange, they really only had a one front war at that point. Perhaps they didn’t take north Africa and Sicily seriously? Like they didn’t really expect to be pushed in those regions. To have support for a war, you must get the population to believe it won’t cause them hardship, hence no war economy until the Soviets really turned on the pressure. D-Day in 1944 and then the race to Berlin. Stalin always thought the West was leaving… Read more »
“Hitler declared war on the U.S. because he was hoping the Japanese would declare war on the Soviet Union.”
Seems incredibly stupid to just do something like that on hope.
British, like the Rothchilds?
I hate to break it to you, brutha, but the 1776 revolution was also complete bullshit. It was just a bunch of wealthy merchants and land speculators who wanted to be able to do business free from interference from the Crown. The “Boston Massacre” was as much of a false flag as the Gulf of Tonkin or USS Maine. Most of the colonists wanted nothing to do with the revolution and it only succeeded because the French Navy arrived and made it too difficult for the British to keep the colonies. There was also a rebuttal to the Declaration of… Read more »
Mr House – No – they had more than one front; there was North Africa & the Atlantic front. + the Russian Front @‘one point was 1800 miles long & the vast expanse & ever-increasing size of The Red Army was soaking up men & materièl beyond belief. In one year the Germans would lose a million men. Add to this the Anglo-American bomber offensive was ramping up in 1942 so Germany more than had its hands full. They started to have to pull fighter units off the front for Reich defense. To be @ war with Great Britain, Canada,… Read more »
No, I don’t find it strange that Russia invaded Ukraine half a year after America pulled out of Afghanistan
I hope you’re right. The grillers need a wake up call.
With respect, they are not focusing on the wrong people. They are focusing on exactly the right people, and they know it. The dusky tribes of America present no threat to the DC establishment. They are generally comfortable with government corruption, and they lack sufficient numbers and organization to present a threat. And they mostly are reliable Democrat voters as long as they get their gibs. Whites, on the other hand, present an existential threat to the regime. We are not comfortable with the type of government corruption we see in DC and we have the numbers to do something… Read more »
Precisely. And to look at it another way, there is more human capital in the average white male–even taking into consideratation the degradation of the white race–than there is in five random PoC. Were we to ever get our shit together, we would present a truly horrific threat. The PoC, by and large, have no shit to gather.
Good. We could use more gallows.
I believe the intent is to send us to the gallows, not the other way around.
There are not enough gallows for even a handful of the Dirt People. The U.S. population is north of 330 million. While our rulers number in what, the thousands?
This is what our rulers don’t get, and will be their ultimate doom. It doesn’t matter how good their bodyguards are, or how good their weapons technology is, nothing can possibly save them and their families from a truly angry mob. The numbers just don’t add up.
Once you start playing musical gallows it’s hard to say who ends up in one.
Robespierre went from being ring master of the gallows, to victim of the gallows…
Er… the guillotine.
Scurrilous behavior, more often real than imagined, by members of Congress became the norm long ago. Potential publication of said behavior is the Swordette of Damocles hanging over those poor souls as they contemplate their
existencebank accounts while ignoring their constituents.The Deep State has the goods on all of them and they know it. J. Edgar Hoover had nothing like the intrusive abilities of modern technology and he had all Washington in the palm of his hand in his day.