Ask most people their opinion of pre-democratic societies, and aside from a few D&D nerds, most will decry the monarchies and aristocracies of yore as tyrannical nightmares. The king and his barons–possibly with some oversight from the Church–made all the important policy decisions, and the common man got no vote. If you got saddled with a mad or wicked ruler, you had to wait for him to die and hope his heir turned out better.
Liberal democracy proposed to address this problem by expanding decision-making power to include the populace at large. After all, it only made sense that those affected by government policies have a say in the agenda.
But there’s no perfect form of government, and democracy, too, has its quirks and drawbacks. While government affects everyone, not everyone has equal skin in the game. The Framers of the US Constitution recognized this fact and restricted the franchise in an attempt to mitigate the inevitable demagoguery of bribing Peter with Paul’s tax money.
Aristocrats, too–at least the successful ones–realized they weren’t wholly without accountability. They cultivated the tradition of noblesse oblige out of the Christian understanding that rulership means leading by serving and the practical understanding that resentful, immiserated people are expensive to rule.
The triumph of Liberal democracy means that everyone reading this was raised on a steady diet of pro-democratic propaganda. Instead of just one system among many, democracy was presented as the default, the ultimate model of social organization that would usher in the end of history.
It is equally ironic and predictable that Liberal democracy would end in an orgy of tyranny to make a decadent French nobleman balk. Democracy thought to solve the problem of tyranny by letting the people replace their leaders, but our leaders circumvented that check by replacing the people.
It’s no coincidence that nobody pays more lip service to democracy than the Leftist Death Cult. Having just completed a century-long project designed to insulate them from the consequences of their depredations, the Left are feeling their oats and accordingly embarking upon a totalitarian spree once reserved for Soviet puppet states.
After spending the past few decades constantly testing boundaries like sociopathic toddlers, the Death Cultists are now confident that they will face no serious pushback against their insane edicts and will suffer no punishments for their enormities.
You can tell because they’re not even bothering to hide the election tampering, treason, and human sacrifice anymore. The Epstein debacle was the final proof. You had an international scumbag who furnished child sex slaves to other international scumbags and lived like a pharaoh until he slipped up one time too many. Then his former benefactors pushed a button on him with matching sloppiness.
Time was, the ruling party would put some effort into coming up with a cock and bull story to mollify the NPCs. Now, instead of lone gunmen and magic bullets, we get tacit admissions that foul play is afoot but zero follow up action from law enforcement. That’s why the Cult didn’t offer up the usual ablative meat shields over the coup against Trump. No need to sacrifice scapegoats when there are zero consequences for ignoring the cries for justice.
This casual wickedness has even trickled down from the thrones in Washington to the Cult’s Hollywood priesthood. In just two years, Kevin Spacey has gone from facing jail time for alleged shenanigans with an underage boy to flaunting his case’s dismissal in a bizarre Christmas video.
More than bizarre, Spacey’s message took on a sinister new subtext when one of his accusers died in an apparent suicide the day after it was posted.
Is it a coincidence that Spacey’s accuser died one day after the disgraced star invited viewers to kill detractors with kindness? Possibly, but if so, it’s the most uncanny example of prophetic TV since Quantum Leap called the 96 Super Bowl.
Now consider that Spacey has close ties to the Clintons, including at least one trip with Bill aboard Epstein’s Lolita Express.
It’s hard not to see one epic humiliation ritual behind the whole sordid affair. And the meaning of that ritual is clear: “We’re in charge. Our control is total. We can do anything we want, and we can lie, cheat, and kill with zero repercussions, so think twice before getting in our way.”
Our rulers have moved beyond simple corruption and into the chilling realm of supervillainy. Voting won’t stop them any more than it would stop Lex Luthor or Keyeser Söze. Democracy is based on negotiation, and there’s no negotiating with people who are in a position to dictate terms.
It’s worth remembering, though, that the ruling classes of old adopted noblesse oblige out of enlightened self-interest as much as Christian charity. Our current rulers have neither Christian virtue nor the practical sense to give the mob a few token concessions. If history is any guide, they may learn to their sorrow that their predecessors practiced a degree of restraint for their own protection.
For a glimpse at a future conflict against an aloof, tyrannical state, check out my military thriller series Combat Frame XSeed.
3 of Spacey's accusers are dead, and one has been silenced.
But how about that orange man
It's telling that many of the Cultists raised a fuss over Epstein's murder because they convinced themselves Trump ordered it, yet their leaders ignored them, too.
“Democracy thought to solve the problem of tyranny by letting the people replace their leaders, but our leaders circumvented that check by replacing the people.”
-Brian Neimeier
That there is the quote. Put it on a t-shirt because it even broke through my sister’s fogged, pozzed mind.
I can’t shake the suspicion that Spacey is one more scandal away from being Epsteined himself. They’re all shameless but Spacey has descended to the rubbing our noses in it stage. Somewhere, some cabal members have to be seething because of his conduct.
They may be unrepentantly evil, but they aren’t all morons. Some have to be realizing that the ride is showing signs of coming to an end, because of creatures like Spacey.
Spacey is so dark triad, he probably thinks he'll slip the noose when the butcher's bill comes due. We'll see.
As for his leash-holders, I'd like to agree with your assessment, but they're showing no signs of a course correction.
Agree with Emmit on the quote. This is another post by Mr Niemeier that bears repeating in the future.
As to the Cabal and Spacey…it’s Collins like them that any red blooded Christian would love to see being crushed by Heaven or God’s Instrument. No wonder we can’t have hero stories anymore. They recognize who they are in the old stories.
They do, and straight, white, Christian men are the new bogeymen in their stories.
I tried to tell a couple of straight, white men something like that a couple of years ago. The one I went to church with a few times a long time ago accused me of identity politics. He still goes to church, thank the Lord. His politics haven't destroyed his faith, at least as far as I can tell from a few hours away.
Only white people consider practicing identity politics something to be accused of.
Only progressives mistake predicting the results of identity politics for engaging in it.
I wonder how much less vicious our politics would be if the folks now trying to re-fight World War I part II as a domestic, internal matter noticed that we aren't German and have no need to denazify ourselves, to say nothing of doing so obsessively and continuously. The German American Bund has been dead for decades, while actual neonazis are a joke. Does it go back to the Boomers' fundamental misapprehension of the War to Save Stalin from Hitler?
Many seem to not understand that when the identity is shared, aka homogeneity, you get ideological politics. But once the identity is no longer shared, it reverts back to identity politics.
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Bertolt Brecht
I used to wonder why there wasn't much in the way of movies that dealt with sex trafficking, you'd think that'd make great action movies: good guys with guns shooting up a bunch of scumbags no one cares about and saving women and children. But it's really, really obvious now why that's not the case, the elites don't want to think about the fate they deserve.
I hate all this injustice, but God does always end up punishing the evil doers in time.
God is undefeated.
Epstein's death was most certainly a "fuck you, we're in charge" moment. It might have been a bit of over reach, as you really need the mark to cooperate to make the con work, and I think they still need the con to work.
Among other things, the blatancy poisons the rest of the narrative. For instance, I think the failure of impeachment to catch the public's imagination is in no small part due to the fact that the public has lost all trust in the ruling class. People feel no need to listen to folks who seem to take a weird pride in lying to them.
That's why comparisons between the current crisis and the French Revolution have a germ of truth. The French aristocracy's ivory tower grew so high that the people living below them became total ciphers. Likewise, to the people, their ruling elite became utter enigmas behind their impenetrable walls.
So it is today. The scions of beltway families who attend the same law schools, work in the same partner, tenure, and executive tracks, and go to all the same parties have no clue how once-middle-class; now working poor families from the Rust Belt live. You can see it in every sneering caricature of flyover rubes in every TV show and movie.
The free speech absolutists got it wrong. Violence doesn't happen when people stop talking. It happens when different peoples forced into close proximity stop being able to understand each other.
The greatest lie of our system is the idea that an act becomes instantly moral (or at least less immoral) if done at the behest of 50% + 1 people living in an arbitrary geographic area.
It saddens me when I try to tell people something is immoral, and their only response is "But we voted on it." Of course, even that excuse doesn't hold up when you examine things like Roe v Wade or Obergfell v Hodges where the elites decided we voted wrong, and the same people will defend that with "It's the law of the land," as if five justices can simply assign morality and completely forgetting all of the bad decisions taught in basic U.S. History classes.
Of course, I could go for hours about how government education has obscured the fact that the U.S. federal government was designed to be crippled by indecision and that the second amendment was designed to specifically allow civilian ownership of military hardware (the norm in the oh so tyrannical "Dark Ages"), but this is your blog, not mine.
If America is to survive, the people must break themselves of two intellectual vices: 1) legal positivism, 2) civic nationalism.
Another quote to add to the list, and possibly something to expand upon too.
I once knew a lawyer (and law professor) who, when I brought up some SCOTUS ruling that conservatives were protesting but liberals loved, stated to me: "'The Supreme Court is not final because they are right; they are right because they are final.' There's nothing you can do about it except get used to losing."
I asked him, "So, no one should argue the SC made a bad decision? Interesting. If you had been alive and practicing law in the time Dred Scott, you'd call it a good ruling? You'd be okay with Plessy v. Ferguson?"
Will he change his tune when Trump appoints Ginsburg's replacement?
Stray thought came to mind about three divided but supposedly co-equal branches. Why can't Congress enact a bill, signed into law by the President, to nullify a Supreme Court decision?
Something along the lines of "No, that's not what we meant, so stay in your lane, Your Honors?"
I think I may expand the following reply in my own blog, but…
Democracy was , as you noted, an attempt to give voice to those with skin in the game, to correct an imbalance between those receiving consequences/having to accept the responsibility of choices made, and the authority to make those choices… (a gross imbalance there is either slavery or tyranny… responsibility without choice, or choice with no responsibility / consequences).
The founders realized this and didn't give authority to those who didn't have something to lose, thus the restricted franchise.
Now we have the opposite lack of skin in the game. People who not only do not bear the burden of their choices but gain from making others take the responsibility of those choices. So now we have a tyranny of the "people", or more accurately, the mob. The wreckers, high and low, taking from those who produce.
Well said. Democracy hasn't really been around that long in the grand scheme of things. The first–and probably only–experiment with global democracy has shown that it always ends in a tragedy of the commons.
fwiw: https://www.brianniemeier.com/2019/12/supervillainy.html