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Why are Leftists so obsessed with the continual march of “progress”? Where does this notion originate? These are important questions because this worldview prevents its adherents from dealing with reality, keeping them forever locked in a fantasy world.
The intellectual malediction of seeing history as a linear progression from bad to good has afflicted Western thought for centuries. But it is necessary if one is to engage in constant disruption of society, which is the cornerstone of Progressive behavior. If we are always moving from worse to better, then radical “change” comes with a built-in justification, regardless of its advisability. The realist, by contrast, scours the past for both good and bad decisions, policies, and thought patterns. History provides a virtually endless laboratory, whose examples, both philosophical and practical, we can evaluate and apply to our own lives. The future is the arena for the application of lessons learned. It holds no intrinsic quality; the future societal landscape could be good, bad, or indifferent. We won’t know until we get there. This more sober view has been the norm throughout most of European history, up until the Enlightenment. Non-Western cultures, for their part, have never adopted the idea of linear progress. With the exception of the post-Enlightenment West, the world’s various intellectual traditions have most often viewed history as fitting into one of three templates: cyclical; continual decline; or anarchic/indeterminate. The Hindu tradition is a clear example of the cyclical view. Ancient Greek mythology tended to see the unfolding of history as a steady decline, with the world of the gods taking a step down to a society with demigods, and from there a further descent to a fully human world. Hesiod described the full process of deterioration (though with some interruption) in his Five Ages of Man, starting with the Golden and ending with the Iron. In the Jewish tradition, there is the concept of yeridat ha-dorot, the decline of the generations, with each one being inferior to the one before it. Seeing the “arc of history” trending downward rather than upward also dovetails nicely with veneration of ancestors. Our predecessors were superior to us—so goes the default case—so it behooves us to admire them and treat them with respect. Nietzsche gives us the anarchic/indeterminate view: “Let us not be deceived! Time marches forward; we’d like to believe that everything in it marches forward, that the development is also one that moves forward. The most level-headed are led astray by this illusion … ‘Mankind’ does not advance; it does not even exist. The overall aspect is that of a tremendous experimental laboratory in which a few successes are scored, scattered throughout all ages, while there are untold failures, and all order, logic, union, and obligingness are lacking.” These worldviews are clearly much closer to reality, as we can see when observing the broad sweep of history. Civilizations rise and fall; tremendous accomplishments are often closely followed by sensational collapse (end of the Bronze age, Rome, contemporary America). And sometimes, as in ancient Egypt, thousands of years pass with seemingly little change. But then came the Enlightenment, which despite its veneer of scientific approach, ignored all logic and historical evidence when it promoted the idea of continual progress. The notion was expanded and buttressed over time; for example, the view of some Darwinians that evolution implies constant positive development. Just think of the famous graphic representation of man’s progress from hunched-over ape to upright modern human. In contemporary Western society, the idea of linear progress shackles us with a conceptual framework that is myopic and delusional. We are intellectually handicapped, and I doubt whether anyone is completely free of the bias. The past is scorned, whereas the future becomes a glorious bed of roses, with utopia just around the corner if we could all simply embrace Progress. Remember “Hope and Change”? This could be one reason for various outbursts of insanity, such as Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is now morphing into the Elon Musk version. How can a former hero of the Left, champion of the holy electric car, be the subject of such animosity, merely for exposing waste and fraud? Naturally, there are many causes, not least of which is the derailment of the government/NGO gravy train. But I believe that part of the story is the challenge to Progress represented by DOGE. Rolling back any Leftist program, even if it is based on obvious fraud, opens the door for a potential return to the dreaded past. And this can never be allowed to happen.
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We have discussed in several posts one of the major challenges facing America at this late stage of its cultural meltdown: the seizure of power by rogue judges. This threatens to derail many of the reforms instituted by the Trump Administration, and to further tighten the stranglehold of the Left on our collective throat. The question I ask today: From what ideological septic tank percolates this audacious assault on the political system?
To begin with, let us note that this is nothing new, though admittedly the current surge is rather extreme. Degradation of judicial practice in the United States has a long and storied history. It received notoriety during the tenure of the Warren Court (1953-1969), i.e. the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. That period overlapped the Civil Rights Era, and the Court (along with the rest of the federal judiciary) did its utmost to stretch the Bill of Rights to a degree that would have made the Founding Fathers spin in their graves. Earlier instances of creative interpretation still bore some relation, however shaky, to the actual wording of the Constitution. But in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court gave itself the authority to extract from the Constitution whatever principles they desired. In the words of Justice William O. Douglas, “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” Penumbras and emanations, got it. Translation: We can invent any legal principle we want. The actual text of the Constitution became irrelevant; the door was opened to Leftist bullying under cover of supposed constitutional law. This brazen attack on the foundations of the American republic paved the way for the eventual complete disregard, by Leftist judges, of due process of law; nay, of the entire Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Our current judicial insurrection is an outgrowth of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ seemingly inexorable march toward totalitarianism; more specifically, the expansion of the modern administrative state to monstrous proportions. This springs from a compulsion to control human behavior by means of central planning. If it can be achieved in the realms of health, economics, education, etc., then why not the political machinery itself? It is up to us, says the federal bench, to ensure that the federal government (and state and local, for that matter) dutifully obey the maxims of the Progressive canon. In this view of the world, everything is justiciable. There can be no sphere of life that remains outside the purview of the black-robed priesthood. Whether it be the laws passed by the legislature, the executive functions of the president, or the way a man interacts with a woman, they consider it their proper role to intervene, at any time and for any reason. A natural result of this infinite justiciability and destruction of the rule of law is the proliferation of lawyers, courts, and lawsuits. The legal system has become the arena for the settling of every imaginable type of dispute or moral controversy, across nearly all tiers of society. Normal human life, under these conditions, is gradually asphyxiated. To my knowledge, no individual or institution has ever slowed the progress of this bulldozer. And here we are. "People are sometimes confused about the apparent contradictions in that wider world: What do, say, open borders have to do with the trannification of the school system? Well, it's not difficult. What they have in common, throughout the West, is chaos: you get on the bus and a 'migrant' stabs you; you send your little girl off to school and she comes back a little boy; your boy gets picked for the rugby team and drops dead on the pitch; you could really use a break, but the airport is closed.
The easiest way to figure out the purpose of public policy is to look at the universal outcome: the abolition of even the possibility of normal life." — Mark Steyn There are three maxims, or "laws" of politics attributed to the British historian Robert Conquest. One of them is,
Any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing. We see it occurring time and again. Why is this so? The default state of mankind is entropy, decay, and chaos. If there is no force to guide society into a beneficial mold, and to maintain the required level of energy, then entropy takes over. Leftism is the ideological face of chaos; it provides the justification, putting lipstick on the pig. It is futile to search for logic or consistency in any substantive Leftist program. Their “platform” is merely whatever coat of paint is needed at that particular moment to enable the entropy to flourish. For example, when the working class can be used as a catalyst for chaos, it is seen as good; when the working class is an impetus to stability, it is condemned. One might be tempted to believe that the Left is clever and quick on its feet. They always seem to have us reeling from their attacks, like a boxer on the ropes. After we expend huge amounts of time and money to neutralize one of their insane campaigns, there is no time to catch our breath before multiple new salvos are launched. Are they really that clever? I don’t think so. The apparent cleverness is largely an optical illusion, because the Left always starts from an advantageous position. It is easier to be glib when you have the wind at your back. Society’s ingrained entropic tendencies provide a permanent fertile ground for the rapid growth of Leftism’s core characteristics: envy, parasitism, manipulation, projection, and decadence. This is analagous to the advantageous position of the petulant child vis-à-vis his parents and other adults. The parent invests an enormous amount of time and energy to turn the little savage into a respectable member of society, whereas the child can destroy the work of years by committing any number of simple acts that are fully within his power, and that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. To be “right-wing” means to resist the torrent of entropy, the tantrums of the misbehaving child. It is the task of building and maintaining civilization, which requires that common sense and tradition be respected, and that high culture prevail. Otherwise, society cannot suppress the ideologies that correspond to envy, manipulation, parasitism, etc. Wherever high culture retreats, even to the slightest degree, Leftism automatically flows into the space, like a gaseous substance filling a vacuum. And thus, “any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing.” As more reports of waste, fraud, and abuse emerge from Elon Musk’s DOGE undertaking, I thought it would be an opportune time to offer some of my own personal experience in the matter.
After returning to the U.S. in 2006 from an extended stay abroad, I worked for a major defense contractor, and then a defense-related research institute of the Federal government. In both of these environments, waste, fraud, and abuse were in full swing. Let us start with the simplest aspect: basic incompetence. It was everywhere. Most of the people, from top to bottom, had no idea what they were doing. The majority of jobs were pure make-work. This was exacerbated by an inefficient, heavily bureaucratized organizational structure that suppressed any possible outbreaks of intelligence and creativity. Naturally, this state of affairs produced outcomes that were inexcusable, even by the low standards of FedGov. The problem was addressed by importing an endless stream of “experts,” many of whom were outside consultants living off fat contracts, providing zero value. They usually just added a new layer of procedure, clogging the system to an even greater extent. Speaking of systems, it seemed as though everybody and their grandmother was a “systems engineer.” In most cases, this turned out to be a pseudo-qualification, a special favorite of women and minorities. It was a way to identify as an “engineer” without knowing how to do engineering. They were very good at PowerPoint slides and Excel spreadsheets, which were excellent tools for “streamlining” (adding more bloat). Then there was the diversity grift. Its influence could be felt in every nook and cranny. Again, “experts” floating around. Incompetent minorities coddled and promoted. Constant drumbeating, seminars, emails, and thinly-veiled threats. At one “workshop,” after hearing about an hour’s worth of preaching from poster-children of the oppressed, myself and three hundred or so other attendees split up into little working groups. We were tasked with “brainstorming” ways to be more sensitive to the needs of the unqualified delicate little flowers injected into the ranks by the DEI tyrants. When it was my turn to pour forth the result of my brainstorm, I asserted that diversity is a racist, un-American institution, a violation of civil rights, and should be abolished. Later that day, one member of my little group, a feminized, twenty-something NPC type, ratted on me to the authorities. I was warned by management in no uncertain terms that if there was ever another similar outburst of heresy on my part, I would be shown the door. The amount of money wasted was off the charts. The budget back then at the FedGov research institute was around three billion dollars per annum; now it must be at least five. There may have been some real benefit to national defense hiding somewhere in that pile of manure, but I never encountered it. Some of the issues were not caused by the organization itself, but rather inherited from the broken society as a whole. Some of the old-timers were bravely hanging on, trying to stem the tide of idiocy and wokeness from the younger cohort. But it is a losing battle when your recruits are graduates of the American educational system, particularly the “elite” “institutions” of “higher” “learning.” The last straw for me was the response to the Scamdemic. As you can imagine, both management and employees were engaged in a frantic effort to outdo each other in worshiping the golden calf. Even DEI had to take a temporary back seat to the Chicken Littles proclaiming every five minutes the arrival of epidemiological Armageddon. I resigned my post at the moment when I expected a SWAT team any minute to bang down my door and force the poison needle into my arm. My only criticism of DOGE is that it doesn’t go far enough. "When I was on the other side of the wall, I never really liked the term 'fake news'. Now that I am on the inside, and I can see what they’re reporting, I think the term 'fake news' probably isn’t strong enough."
— U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent In my post of 3/10/2025 on the Scamdemic, I wrote that “so far, [there have been] no investigations, no indictments, no fines, no prison.” Unfortunately, the same can be said of numerous crimes committed in other domains, all in the name of the government.
As far as I know, the steps taken by the Trump Administration to right the wrongs of the Biden regime have been exclusively remedial; that is, fix the damage and stop the bleeding. For example, pardons for the victims of malicious prosecutions; cutting off the flow of money; gutting the institutional bases of Leftist corruption; and closing the border. These are all excellent and necessary moves. But they are not sufficient. In his speech of March 14, President Trump declared that during the Biden regime, “a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government….weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people….They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home….” Well? What are you going to do about it? When it comes to this “corrupt group of hacks and radicals” responsible for the incalculable damage done to the nation in recent years, as well as those causing damage right now, the most severe personal punishments have been loss of employment and the revoking of security clearances. And I see nothing more severe on the horizon, despite the bluster, and the hoo-hah over the appointment of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino at the FBI. There is still no fear of consequences. Governors, mayors, and other state and local officials can publicly proclaim that they support and defend illegal aliens. This means that these officials are bragging to us that they are committing a felony crime. Has a single one of them been arrested? No; all we get is threats, heated rhetoric, withholding of funds, “lawsuits,” etc. The same dynamic applies to the mini coup d’état being rolled out by the judiciary. Numerous Leftist judges in the Federal courts, low-level apparatchiks of the Deep State, are taking over the policymaking functions of the Executive branch, casually nullifying the actions of the President. They do this because nothing is done to stop them; they have no fear of personal consequences. Some commentators have called this behavior “judicial overreach.” I would use much stronger language. The reaction of the Trump Administration: Dag nabbit, by gum, by golly, we’ll appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. That’ll show ‘em! Well, guess what? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Deep State. Some observers have expressed shock that two “conservative” justices joined the Leftist clown-car contingent in ruling against the President. But I am not surprised in the least. We are not living in the 1950s, when one could debate the fine points of constitutional law over a glass of bourbon and a pipeful of Cavendish tobacco. If the tortured years of the Biden regime demonstrated anything, it’s that we have descended to the level of pure power relations. The Left peeled away any remaining veneer of civility and rule of law, and mobilized the full brunt of the law-enforcement apparatus to lower the boom on anyone standing in its way—from the president on down. Thousands of innocent people went to prison, or worse. The unwillingness of “our team” to use this same apparatus to suppress actual criminality could easily lead a wishy-washy Supreme Court justice (and others in the same situation of confronting the Deep State) to make the following calculation: The Deep State might return to full, formal power within a few years. And Trump could be neutralized even before then. If I rule against the Leftist Establishment, they will eat me for breakfast, and throw my carcass to the dogs. If I rule against Trump, nothing will happen to me, other than a few strongly-worded letters to the editor. Hmmm….whatever shall I do? The bottom line: The President must seize the power of the presidency. We need to see handcuffs and perp walks, immediately. There is no reason for further delay. And for goodness sake, stop obeying the illegal orders handed down by the black-robed priests of the Progressive cult. Perhaps Donald Trump is not the person who will take us into the Promised Land. He is our Moses, leading us out of Egypt, across the desert, to within view of our destination. Now we are waiting for our Joshua, a warrior who can raise the standard, and rally the troops to conquer the territory that is held by our latter-day Philistines, the Leftist Establishment. In my posts of 12/27/24 and 1/17/25, I examined the work of Friedrich Hayek, who with consummate skill helps us understand the ideological roots of the Left. Continuing in the same vein, below is my discussion of Karl Popper, whose work in this domain provides an excellent companion to Hayek. The post was first published in 2007, on the original AWOL Civilization blog.
* * * Every period has a handful of commentators that grasp the essence of their era. In our time, one of them must surely be Karl Popper (1902-1994). Well-known as a philosopher of science, his writings in the sociopolitical realm are some of the most extraordinary of the twentieth century. Probably the most widely read of these is The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Impressive as the book is, I believe that Popper’s greatest achievement in this area is The Poverty of Historicism (1957). In this work, he deconstructs one of the founding myths of modern totalitarianism, a conceptual idol that underlies the thought of Hegel, Marx, and Lenin: historicism. This is the belief that there is a predictable regularity to history, that its course is based on immutable laws. As Popper puts it: “The belief…that it is the task of the social sciences to lay bare the law of evolution of society in order to foretell its future might be perhaps described as the central historicist doctrine.” This myth enabled Hegel to concoct his “world-historical spirit," in which history is a “court of judgment" and “the exposition and the actualization of the universal spirit." This vague spirit has come to rule human affairs, as “the spirit in and for itself prepares and works its way towards the transition to its next and higher stage.” Popper shows that this sort of phony analysis is derived from a key error, that of mistaking trends for laws: “This, we may say, is the central mistake of historicism. Its ‘laws of development’ turn out to be absolute trends; trends which, like laws, do not depend on initial conditions, and which carry us irresistibly in a certain direction into the future. They are the basis of unconditional prophecies, as opposed to conditional scientific predictions.” Popper debunks the scientific pretenses of Comte, Hegel, Marx, and their disciples, who misapply the methods and lexicon of the natural sciences to social phenomena. It is one of the great essays on this subject, alongside Hayek’s Counter-Revolution of Science. To understand the ideological roots of the contemporary Left, Popper's masterpiece is a must-read. [Quotes from Popper taken from The Poverty of Historicism (1957), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1960 edition, pp 105-6 and 128. Emphasis in original. Quotes from Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821), Cambridge University Press, 1991 edition, pp 372-3] These days I read and listen to an enormous volume of commentary on the deepening economic and financial collapse. Much of this verbiage is repetitive, tendentious, and confused. Once in a while, however, I come across an article or a podcast that sums up, in succinct fashion, the situation as it stands at that moment. Such was the case with YouTuber “Jeremiah Babe,” who yesterday did just that. Worth a look.
The Trump Administration has skillfully wielded the chainsaw against the outrageous excesses of the Left, throughout the vast machinery of the Deep State. These moves have been decisive, vigorous, and rapid.
One task that remains to be addressed, however, is the undoing of the Scamdemic. The only action of significance, as far as I know, is that the military has reinstated and compensated those who refused the mRNA death shots. But beyond this, I can’t recall any newsworthy measures. Did I miss something? Perhaps RFK Jr. and associates are hatching a big event, but one would expect at least a preliminary announcement, or one of those cozy signing/press conference sessions at the White House. So far, no investigations, no indictments, no fines, no prison. All those involved in a crime against humanity are walking around free, and in many cases, working diligently on their next assault. This was apparent, for example, in the ridiculous “Stargate” press conference of January 21, in which Larry Ellison boasted of a new round of mRNA “vaccines,” this time to cure cancer, no less. Perhaps it would be too much to ask, if a commission of inquiry could be convened to investigate the multiple levels of fraud and malfeasance involved in the original fabrication and dissemination of the SARS-CoV-2 mythology. But at a minimum, punish the instigators of the lockdowns and the murderous hospital protocols, and above all, the criminals responsible for the injections of poison that killed and maimed millions. In my post of 12/9/24, I cited Edward Dowd, who asserted that if all mRNA “vaccines” are not recalled from the market within six months of the inauguration, then we may conclude that Big Pharma is too big to touch, and/or that the country cannot handle the truth, and life will go on as if nothing happened. Well, we are admittedly still far from the six-month mark, but the lack of activity is not encouraging. Even less encouraging is an op-ed at Fox News penned by RFK Jr., in which he suddenly becomes a vaccine advocate, to fight the measles "outbreak" in Texas. In a stunning about-face reminiscent of the Scamdemic playbook, he tells us that "vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons." Huh? Was this article ghost-written by Dr. Fauci? We must not allow the Scamdemic to be forgotten. No consequences = no accountability = no deterrent against similar crimes in the future. |
Dystopian literatureWelcome to the blog! While you're here, check out the six dystopian novels by Gary Wolf. His latest is The Cubist Supremacy. 
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