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[SERVICE NOTICE: For the foreseeable future, I am going to publish one article per week, every Friday. There will still be a smattering of other quick posts, such as quotes, and links to interesting posts on other websites. But Friday will be the day for the real "thought pieces."]
In my post of 3/24/2025, I discussed Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, which states that any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing. Part of my analysis revolved around the question of high versus low culture, and the difficulty in maintaining the higher form, which is a bedrock of civilization. The entropic forces in society, always present, tend to drag us down to the level of low culture, which is one of the symptoms of Leftism. In the article below, first published on the original AWOL Civilization blog just after the 2008 presidential election, I examined this issue from a somewhat different perspective. * * * So it finally happened: a bonafide neo-Marxist has been elected President of the United States. He will have a sympathetic majority in both houses of Congress, along with a choir comprising the judiciary, the press, academia, the cultural “elite," and the most hardened enemies of America at home and abroad. This is not a macabre scene from a dystopian novel. It is our reality. In order to grasp the full significance of the catastrophe that has enveloped America—and indeed, Western civilization—we must cast our intellectual net far and wide, so that it encompasses the great thinkers of the past. They can guide and inspire us as we confront a phenomenon with which we, in America, have no experience. They can help us re-examine our approach to politics, the arts, education, and a host of other realms, a task that is part and parcel of salvaging and reinvigorating our culture. We can start by reconnecting with the thinkers of the ancient world. It is there, in the literary masterpieces of Athens and Rome and Jerusalem, that one finds clues to the riddles that present themselves to us. It is there that one sees how people prevailed in the face of upheavals that defy the imagination. In this spirit, I would like to present two ancient literary references that have been in the forefront of my mind in recent days. The first is from the Bible, the second is from the comic theater of Athens. In Genesis 25:29-33, a moving scene occurs between Esau and Jacob, the sons of Isaac. Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of pottage (a type of stew): “And Jacob cooked pottage, and Esau came from the field, and he was faint, and Esau said to Jacob, Give me to swallow, I pray thee, of that red pottage, for I am faint…And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am going to die, and what benefit is this birthright to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day, and he swore to him; and he sold his birthright…” The American people possess an impressive birthright: Living in a land of liberty, with all that is necessary to pursue their dreams. All the accoutrements are available: natural resources, a beautiful landscape, vast spaces, a noble history, brain power, and a deep tradition of opportunity. But we have sold our birthright for the slick visage of Barack Hussein Obama, our latter-day bowl of pottage. The moaning, self-proclaimed victims have thrown away their heritage. What good is it? they ask. “Behold, I am going to die," so just feed me and clothe me, and let me forget the rest. The second reference from the ancient world is The Frogs, a comedy by the great Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 450 – 388 BC). The play was written in 405 BC, as the Athenian empire stood on the brink of destruction. Dissension was rife in the city, and defeat at the hands of the Spartans was nigh (it occurred in 404). The plot is simple. Dionysus, patron of the drama, descends into Hades (the underworld) to find the greatest Greek playwright. The intent is to bring the champion back to the land of the living, to Athens, where he might be able to rescue the city’s decomposing culture. The selection process for best playwright boils down to a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in which each attempts to demonstrate that he is the greatest practitioner of the art of tragedy. Dionysus acts as moderator of the debate. Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC) represents the old world, with its fine manners, its gymnastics, its piety, and its honor. Euripides (484 – 406 BC), by contrast, is presented as the poet of decadence, sophistry, and philosophical relativism. Euripides accuses Aeschylus of using highfalutin language, of ignoring romantic love, and of being an elitist divorced from the taste and temperament of the people. Aeschylus, for his part, accuses Euripides of contributing in no small measure to the downfall of the city: “You have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted themselves to outrage, in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers…Of what crimes is [Euripides] not the author? Has he not shown us procurers, women who get delivered in the temples, have traffic with their brothers, and say that life is not life? ‘Tis thanks to him that our city if full of scribes and buffoons, veritable apes, whose grimaces are incessantly deceiving the people…” Then there is the following exchange between Dionysus and Euripides, almost creepy in its applicability to our current predicament: DIONYSUS: And you, Euripides, prove yourself [fit] to sprinkle incense on the brazier. EURIPIDES: Thanks, but I sacrifice to other gods. DIONYSUS: To private gods of your own, which you have made after your own image? EURIPIDES: Why, certainly! DIONYSUS: Well then, invoke your gods. EURIPIDES: Oh! Ether, on which I feed, oh! Thou Volubility of Speech, oh! Craftiness, oh! Subtle Scent! Enable me to crush the arguments of my opponents. We learn that Aeschylus used only heroes and god-like figures in his plays, whereas Euripides invented every sort of vulgar character imaginable. Euripides explains that his intent was to “please the people." Moreover, he says, “I introduced our private life upon the stage, our common habits…I did not burst out into big noisy words to prevent their comprehension; nor did I terrify the audience by showing them Cycni and Memnons on chariots harnessed with steeds and jingling bells. Look at his disciples and look at mine. His are…all a-bristle with long beards, spears and trumpets, and grinning with sardonic and ferocious laughter, while my disciples are [the effeminate and loquacious] Clitophon and the graceful Theramenes.” Euripides democratized the theater. He catered to the popular desire to portray the vulgar, the seedy side of life. Often, his characters were beggars dressed in rags. Theater was now for everyone, and about everyone. It is tempting to speculate: How similar was the situation in the Athens of 405 BC, the year The Frogs was written, to the America of today? Could one not easily think of a contemporary Euripides, some best-selling author or popular screenwriter, succeeding handsomely here in our dumbed-down victimocracy, with its effeminate and sophistic king, crowned by the rampaging mob? Which great cultural figure would Dionysus bring back to help save us? We cry out for our Aeschylus—who would it be? [Quotes from The Frogs taken from Aristophanes, the Eleven Comedies, vol. 2, Immortal Classics republication of the 1912 London Athenian Society edition, pp. 227, 245-46, 235, 239-40.]
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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.” 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. Few people alive today in the West can remember a time when people were free to associate with whomever they chose. It requires some mental exertion to imagine a society in which a tavern or men’s club could legally exclude women, or a commercial enterprise could hire (or refuse to hire) a person for any reason it pleased—and nobody saw it as any of their damn business.
Though human nature can be suppressed, it usually manages to reassert itself in one form or another. “Birds of a feather flock together” and all that. People find workarounds. In our current world, an approximation of free association is most often achieved via narrowly-defined interest groups. If you establish a gun club, specializing in cowboy-style revolver shooting, you will probably not be bothered by the presence of too many woke lesbian illegal aliens. But this method is far from airtight, and one is always fearful of complaints, lawsuits, and other harassment. There are, however, a number of loopholes that are entirely legal. For example, the family business, which I believe is still exempt from certain kinds of interference. Another is the residential community with an “over 55” age restriction. Money certainly helps. If you have a lot of it, you can buy your way into association with a better class of people. You can live in the best neighborhood, send the kids to private school, etc. But this path is not what it used to be, as every word and action is under scrutiny. A path to free association that once saw widespread use in the U.S. was the ethnic enclave. Remember the tapestry of ethnic neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and other large cities? The iron fist of “civil rights,” notably the destruction of neighborhood schools via forced integration, put an end to that culture. Once a common feature of American life, today a successful enclave requires extremely high levels of homogeneity and unity. The groups that can still pull it off include the Amish, Orthodox Jews, lower-class blacks, and various Asian nationalities. And let us not forget the Indian reservation, which is the gold standard of exclusivity. Strong communities and a true aristocracy cannot develop unless people are allowed to segregate themselves into micro-worlds, based on any number of parameters: education, political views, religion, wealth, to name just a few. The difficulty in achieving this detachment accounts for much of the reticence to form families. Free association manifests itself in effective separation between classes, and in social and occupational groupings that are composed exclusively of a specific human type. These types evolve and are maintained by means of closely-held traditions, and strict rules for recruitment. Naturally, the rules are set by the people within a given domain, not by the legislature. This ancient social foundation was largely in effect in the U.S. until the 1960s. In Western Europe, it lasted even longer. Today, we still have traces of this structure. Almost every field retains an image, however archaic, of its consummate type: the orchestral conductor with long, unkempt hair; the stocky, wisecracking taxi driver; the stoic, unflappable nurse; the absent-minded professor; the slimy salesman; and so on. Until recently, when you stepped onto a commercial airliner and peered into the cockpit, you were almost guaranteed to see two physically fit white men, former Air Force pilots, clean shaven, with short hair. This is the human type most suited to the task at hand. And it could develop and be sustained only under conditions of free association. Obviously, this logical and natural organization of society has been largely destroyed. This accounts for much of our dysfunction and chaos. However, as we transition back to a reality-based world (see my post of 2/10/25), perhaps free association will make a comeback. The dismantling of DEI and other forms of government meddling is an encouraging sign. This must continue until the entire “civil rights” edifice is demolished, to be replaced by a resurgent zeitgeist of liberty, and its corollary, a decentralized, spontaneous ordering of society. As the Trump Administration takes action to crush DEI, and put an end to this disgraceful chapter of American history, it is important to examine the ideological antecedents that gave birth to the plague. In this vein, I invite you to read an article I wrote in 2007 for American Thinker, entitled “Diversity, Nihilism, and the Anti-Rational Mind.”
The Trump Administration has launched a multi-front attack on the slimy tentacles of the Deep State. We have all been witness to the blitzkrieg, and it has provided warmth for our hearts.
This campaign represents the end of an era; or more precisely, it heralds the transition from one era to another. Coming to an end is the modern era of Fantasy, perhaps the greatest and longest of its kind in world history; opening before us is the age of Reality, which is the default state of mankind. To whatever degree Trump and his associates succeed in resuscitating our bruised and battered country, there is no going back to Fantasy world. Even if they fail, whoever takes the reins of power will be staring Reality in the face. It’s here to stay. Our era of Fantasy began with the French Revolution, which instituted a slate of false, imaginary precepts by which man was expected to live. This constituted a mythological system that would put any primitive, superstitious culture to shame. The worst ideas and idols of the Enlightenment were dredged up and repackaged, forming the foundation of the Fantasy system, a foundation upon which we still stand. But not for long. The key ingredient is the myth of Equality. This is the biggest pipe dream of all, and the one upon which all else depends. It has enabled, over time, the construction of a mirror world, a parallel universe. Society devolved into two main divisions: those who perform productive work that results in the fulfillment of real human needs, and a steadily growing parasitic class. Today, virtually every sector is plagued with an internal and antagonistic Reality/Fantasy split. For example, agriculture. The Reality side: farmers, distributors, slaughterhouses, etc. The Fantasy side includes the bureaucrats and “thought leaders” that tell us to stop eating meat, and who bully the farmers into adulterating or destroying their crops and livestock. Once the Big Lie of Equality became entrenched, many other lies followed. Over time, we reach the postmodern society, in which misrepresentation is ubiquitous. We are saddled with fake art, fake religion, fake education, fake scholarship, fake jurisprudence, fake healthcare, and on and on. The never-ending train of lies has been interpreted by some observers to be the approach of the “Leftist singularity”: infinite Leftism in finite time. I believe that we reached something approximating this state of affairs as the Biden regime drew to a close. This is the hornet’s nest that was sliced open by Trump and his people, exposing unimaginable levels of corruption, malfeasance, and treason. In the Leftist singularity, or Fantasy world run amok, society deteriorates into a chaotic, dysfunctional mess. This has caused wealthy, powerful individuals like Elon Musk to defect from Fantasy world to Reality world. A type of fraud that is crucial to the operation of Fantasy world is fake money. Since time immemorial, money has been gold and silver. These are tokens of Reality world. In Fantasy world, money has been abstracted and transmuted, by degrees, into ever more empty and worthless derivatives. Cryptocurrency, the final divorce from Reality, is only the latest in a long line of these progressively more counterfeit forms of “money.” Fake money and its intellectual handmaiden, Keynesian economic theory, transformed debt from an embarrassing, temporary situation to an unquestioned and even praiseworthy status quo. Exponentially rising debt, like the universe exploding outward from the Big Bang, enabled the expansion of government to obscene levels. Needless to say, this has flooded Fantasy world with virtually unlimited resources. Until now. Of all the countless unsustainable aspects of Fantasy world, one in particular is the proximate cause of its demise, the spark that lit the fuse: the unfolding economic and financial collapse of the West. The debt/fake money system has reached the end of the road. The wealth is gone; the productive sector has been hollowed out by the parasites, and the rest of the world is no longer enthusiastic about supplying the goods or buying the debt. There are no suckers left to pay for the fun and games. Small wonder, then, that gold—prime symbol of Reality world—is experiencing a resurgence on the world stage. When it comes to international relations, Trump and everyone else knows that the jig is up. This was acknowledged by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when he admitted in a recent interview that the unipolar era of American dominance is over, and that we are now reverting to the historical norm of a multipolar world. Say goodbye to American exceptionalism; the dollar as reserve currency; “Pride” flags flying over U.S. embassies; the Fukuyama “end of history” nonsense; neoconservatism; and all the rest of the hokum. Incidentally, the Trump proposal for Gaza, whatever its merits and whatever its eventual result, is the first time an American president has proposed a solution that is based in Reality world. All previous Middle East “peace plans” were rooted in concepts derived from Leftist mythology, and thus doomed to failure. Fantasy world is in its death throes. Sure, it can still twitch in frightening ways, but it is a rotting corpse nevertheless. If Trump didn’t exist, he would have to be invented; someone was needed to officiate at the funeral service. The same applies to the other countries of the "collective West," many of whom are still testing the limits of the Leftist singularity. I do not intend to convey the impression that we are embarking upon some new, golden age. The Trump presidency is only the beginning of a lengthy journey into the unknown. All such interregnums are by definition unstable. We may very well emerge on the other side, healthier and happier. But it is quite possible that we descend into totalitarian madness; a host of thoroughly dystopian scenarios could ambush us. Whichever way it goes, the world as we knew it, the Fantasy world that emerged from the French Revolution, is over. Whatever comes next, good or bad, will be based in Reality. Have you ever noticed that the more woke a person is, the weaker his sense of humor? Leftist belief systems have an inverse correlation with humor; they cause an erosion of the mental faculties required for a humorous disposition.
Humor and woke are as oil and water. Comedy always makes fun of something or somebody. This means that “safe spaces” are being violated with extreme prejudice. Comedy also involves the use of satire and irony, both noticeably lacking among our Leftist friends. How can irony thrive within the soul of a person who looks at a transvestite, and, with a straight face, claims that this is really a woman? Granted, sense of humor is lacking among the majority of the population, of any ideological bent. This is because exercising the art requires a solid foundation of intelligence. Humor is how intelligent people amuse themselves, and relieve the tension in their brains caused by the unending swirl of thoughts and questions. An open-minded fellow of above-average intelligence will tend to see multiple sides to any given situation, predisposing him to sniff out irony. A left-leaning individual of reasonable intelligence may begin to feel the urge to laugh—real belly laughter, the kind that comes only from violating a safe space—but his wrongthink filter (self-censorship) is activated, and the urge is suppressed. We have all seen this on someone’s face, when the soupçon of a grin appears, only to be followed by a disapproving frown when he suddenly realizes that a commandment of the holy order of wokeness is being disobeyed. As intelligence declines, as it has in the West for decades (and at an accelerating pace), humor falls further into disfavor, shunned by morons everywhere. When garden-variety idiocy is combined with wokery, the laughter muscles atrophy. Will the inbreeding of these humanoids over the next couple of generations result in the physical inability to produce an ironic grin? In classic comedy, the joke-maker uses the moron as a foil, a role known as the “straight man.” This is what President Trump does in much of his interaction with the battalions of humorless Leftist (but I repeat myself) “journalists” who wouldn’t recognize satire if it punched them in the face. But there are so many of them, and their handiwork is so prevalent, it often seems that they rule the culture. They do, for the time being, but that supremacy is a mile wide and an inch deep. There are cracks in the edifice. Turning the Left into the butt of our jokes is one element of the cultural, artistic, and intellectual revival that is a prerequisite to the survival of Western civilization. Satire is a weapon that our side has in abundance, and which the Left does not understand, let alone possess. But the successful use of that weapon carries with it an important caveat: It must come on the heels of vigorous exercise of authority on the ground, of real state power; for example, the complete purging of illegal aliens from the territory of the United States. At that point, when CNN interviews a top government official, he can crack jokes that make the interviewer look like the dunce that he is. This will have no immediate effect on the woke “journalist,” as this species has no comprehension of satire, and no capacity for feeling shame. The viewers at home, however, will see this as a victory dance, driving the stake further into the heart of the Leftist vampire. But here’s the caveat: if authority on the ground has not been achieved, the viewers may very well see the use of humor as the pathetic squirming of defeat. Currently there is a feeling in America that we can dismantle the Woke grift apparatus: diversity, the institutionalization of sexual deviancy, the victim shakedowns, the Climate-Industrial Complex, etc. If and when these scams are smashed, we have to prevent their reemergence. The use of mockery will help seal the deal, leading to a zeitgeist in which people are embarrassed to propose the consideration of even the tiniest sliver of such madness. Keep those jokes coming; do not relent. If nothing else, it will help us maintain our own sanity. In my post of 12/27/24, I reviewed the work of the great Friedrich Hayek. Now I would like to use that discussion as a springboard to further examine the ongoing collapse of the Western economic and financial system.
Hayek helps us to see economic life for what is is: the “extended order of human cooperation,” as he calls it. This is society’s vast network of ideas, contacts, and exchange; an endless web of human interaction. This order is infinitely complex, and in a constant state of flux; as such, it lies beyond the ability of any single authority to direct it. The extended order has evolved into its current form. Hayek points to the pioneering vision of Adam Smith, who realized that a type of evolution is the driving force behind the genesis and development of economic and other institutions. (Hayek remarked that Smith and similar thinkers were Darwinian before Darwin, and may have influenced the latter.) Think of law, language, and money: none were the result of a unified, conscious plan. Rather, they evolved in a spontaneous, self-ordering process, in a series of adaptations, producing a workable framework in which people could function. The upshot is that economic structures cannot be planned. Interference with the extended order is doomed to failure, and if pushed far enough, will lead to death and destruction. The case of the Soviet Union is obvious enough. But the same principle applies to our current predicament. Consider the extent of the disease: the colossal edifice of central planning in the West, guided by Keynesian economic theory, is sufficient all by itself to guarantee disaster. It has resulted in an activist Federal Reserve, unbacked fiat currency, rampaging inflation, out-of-control debt, asset bubbles galore, and a rapacious government that now accounts for fully half of what passes for an economy. Add to this the other poisons administered to the extended order, such as DEI and the Green-Industrial Complex, to name two of the worst offenders. None of these monstrosities would exist without coercive government interference. Needless to say, they demonstrate a complete disregard, and even contempt, of economic reality. We can point to additional distortions that result from economic illiteracy. One of them is the absurd notion of a “consumer-based economy.” Consumption is a result of wealth creation, not its cause. The people parroting this inversion of reality confuse the fruit of the tree with the tree itself. And our tree is dying, and will continue to wither as long as we concentrate our efforts on simply eating the fruit. Related to the consumer-based nonsense is the notion that China is dependent on the American consumer, and therefore we can punish them by restricting access to our enormous market. This could make sense only if we were exchanging something of value for the imported consumables. If we were paying in gold, or oil, or even manufactured goods of our own, the dependency story might be plausible. However, we “pay” for the goods with depreciating dollars that are conjured up on the keyboards of the government, the Fed, and the banks. And this means expansion of debt, which, ironically, was until recently being funded by the likes of China. They stopped buying Treasuries, but we can always compensate by creating more dollars, inflation be damned. So let me get this straight. We will punish China (and other BRICS countries) by threatening to stop consuming their goods while giving them nothing of value in return. How on earth will they survive? Real-world, Hayekian economics teaches us that wealth is created by production of tangible goods (instead of financial products), savings (instead of consumption), and the use of sound money (instead of unbacked fiat currency). All of which is coordinated by means of true price discovery and other market mechanisms—not by the declarations and schemes of bureaucrats and clueless academics. What is the proper role of government? Mainly to get out of the way. Stop interfering in the extended order. Instead, grease the wheels; facilitate commerce rather than hindering it. Safeguard property rights. Enforce contracts. Prevent crime and fraud. Build and maintain infrastructure. Humanity is not a proper subject for rational central planning. The aggregate of all human action, beliefs, and behavioral patterns is unknowable. These facts, as Hayek laments, run against the grain of mainstream economic thinking. It is time for a new paradigm. The improvement-of-mankind fanatics consider man to be an input to their calculations, in the same way as one might treat a chicken, a plant, or a steel beam. In other words, in their view, man is a part of the natural world: understandable, predictable, malleable. With the correct laws in place, and the correct government subsidies, he can be forced to live in perfect harmony with nature. This is a false and dangerous assertion. Man can never be integrated into the remainder of nature. He is condemned to stand outside it, to be an observer and an actor with his own unique agenda. This means that answers to the riddles of our existence will not be found in interventionism and central planning, which pretend that society can be harmonized, as if man really were a chicken or a plant. Pondering the disaster unfolding in Los Angeles, I am reminded of the 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. The film is a masterpiece of the dystopian/futuristic genre. It portrays a society in which the job of the fire department is to light fires, specifically for the purpose of burning forbidden books.
And here we are. The job of the state and local government in California, apparently, is to ensure that fires break out, and when they do, that the people and equipment for extinguishing them have been degraded as much as possible. The accomplishments of the leadership thus far: malfunctioning reservoirs; precious water channeled into the ocean; empty hydrants; routine brush-clearing protocols ignored; criminals, drug addicts, and lunatics (“homeless”) running amok and starting fires; essential equipment sent to Ukraine; funding diverted to woke insanity; a mayor who has the intellectual prowess of a gerbil; and last but not least, fat lesbians making sure that ability is the least important qualification required for the post of “firefighter.” The dystopia has arrived. We are in it. As an author of dystopian fiction, I am concerned that my vocation will be mooted by reality. If things continue on their current trajectory, it will soon be impossible to write a novel like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World. It is already problematic. How can one depict horrors that await us in a future society when those horrors are happening right now? The synopsis on Amazon for Huxley’s Brave New World declares that the book is “a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order.” Well, we’re about, what, eighty percent of the way there? We often hear that such-and-such government policy, or new piece of woke terminology, is “Orwellian.” What adjective do we use when everything is Orwellian? At that point, the term is useless; the outbreaks of depravity that plague us are no longer outbreaks, but rather the norm. Walking in the rain, you can say “I’m getting wet,” but if you jump in the pool, the phrase loses its meaning. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a mentally retarded black lesbian struggling to lift a fire hose—forever. Recent headlines have informed a wider audience that Muslim rape gangs are running amok in Britain. This has been known for some time, but it took the power and reach of Elon Musk and others to catapult the issue to prominence.
This sickening chapter in the destruction of old Blighty is not strictly about pedophilia, although the rape and torture victims are very young. Nor is the core issue Muslim degeneracy, although clearly we are witnessing an open display of such. Rather, the crux of the matter is the purposeful importation of primitive Third World tribes as bioweapons to degrade and destroy the native population. The importation of human bioweapons into Europe sprang from the same psychopathic brains that gave us lockdowns, transgender madness, death jabs, and totalitarian measures to “save democracy.” All of these are cut from the same ideological cloth. All are weapons of war. Chaos has been the intent from the outset. Multiculti benetton kumbaya diversity blah blah blah—Fuhgeddaboudit. The results of planting these savages in the middle of England (or France, Germany, Sweden, etc.) are predictable with 100% accuracy. The 1400 years of Islamic history make it crystal clear as to what we could expect. Throw the "South Asian" rapists in prison and throw away the key. But don't blame them for this mess. They're pawns in the game. Muslims are gonna Muslim; a leopard can’t change its spots. Disruptions, often violent, will occur whenever you transplant a distinct and unified group into a culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns. If your clean and safe Arizona town suddenly receives a huge influx of woke Leftist wealthy white Californians, you will soon be experiencing crime, social disarray, and urban blight. Conversely, if Pakistan suddenly became twenty percent Norwegian, there would be outbreaks of nonviolence, rule of law, personal responsibility, and orderly commerce. There is no mystery in any of this. I lived part of my childhood in London; that was back in the early 1970s. It might as well have been on a different planet. The city was safe and pleasant. I could travel alone or with a friend to any neighborhood, at any time of day, without the slightest fear. I don’t think that young people today could imagine that such a thing were possible. I grieve for the old London, and the rest of Europe, which is teetering on the edge of the precipice. We in America are heading for a similar fate, though possibly not quite as rapidly. But on both sides of the pond, unless there are drastic changes, all roads lead to extinction of European man. If Europe, our homeland, goes under, it will be a catastrophe, and will make it even more difficult for North America to keep its head above water. For decades, the U.S. Deep State has been advancing the woke agenda around the world, including the subversion of efforts to stop “refugees” and “migrants” (i.e., the bioweapons) from pouring into European countries. Presumably, with the incoming Trump Administration, this shameful chapter in American history will come to an end. The American foreign policy and espionage establishment is in love with “color revolution” and regime change. What we need is a new kind of regime change, one that liberates the people from treasonous Leftist leaders who are bent on the annihilation of their own nations. |
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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