A reader comments:
You seem to be taking the present situation pretty hard. I think you will find that, as Trump was unable to implement his agenda due to the “swamp” that the same effect also works on the Democrats. The country is too big and the Constitution puts too many blocks in the road for massive changes that you envision. The big challenge to the country occurred in 2008 when the GOP alone was blamed for the meltdown and the most left wing Democrat assumed the office of POTUS with a filibuster proof Senate and full control of congress. The people rose up and gave the GOP full control again. I don’t think the Democrats are going to be anywhere near as powerful this time around.
I answer:
This is a misread of my reaction to the establishment’s theft of the election. Longtime followers of this blog know I’ve been calling out the GOP’s complicity since before Trump ran for office. Right after he was elected I gave him a < 1% chance of success.
The main reason is that the Swamp is a crooked police precinct, and the GOPe are just the good cops to the Dmes’ bad cops. They’re not going to help the new chief clean up the corruption. The silence of hacks like Mitch McConnell, Nimrata Haley, and Brian Kemp speaks volumes.
Far from depressing me, both parties dropping their masks has me excited. It gives us a rare chance to cast off our own blinders and return to a sane society ordered toward God, family, and the good.
At this turning point in history, Classical Liberalism has failed. We’re living in the ruins it was fated to crumble into.
Now, I agree that establishment puppet pals Harris and Biden will most likely fail in implementing their agenda–but not because of any checks imposed by the GOP or the Constitution. Which Constitution would that be, anyway: the one that allowed slavery, the one that denied women the vote, or the one that enshrined infanticide as a human right?
Recent history tells us that the pretenders are doomed to fail simply because Democrats can’t govern.
Bill Clinton’s legacy is banging an intern in the Oval Office. Obama failed to enact any of his campaign promises, with the partial exception of a botched attempt at health care reform. Take careful not that the only reason a shell of the ACA remains is because the Republican Senate blocked a full repeal.
The truth is, the GOP were never going to betray their paymasters. Trump was never going to save the Republic. A system of government is not synonymous with the nation of people it governs. The United States fell a long time ago. The American nation still has a chance at salvation, and we’re being given one of those precious chances right now.
A perusal of Scripture shows that God’s M.O. is to offer a rebellious people multiple chances to repent between periods of escalating chastisement.
And boy, do we deserve chastisement!
The populist moment that swept the world in 2016 was the previous invitation to mend our ways. Instead, we largely squandered that olive branch to follow grifters hawking lifestyle brands and dig deeper into Red v Blue political theater. Bread and circuses.
Now the populist movement is spent, with little to show for itself. The leaders who rode the wave have either moved on to other things or are being made examples of. Trump is currently hanging on by his fingernails to avoid the latter fate. The party he supposedly leads is nowhere in sight.
Plenty of online pundits will tell you that national populism failed due to the lack of some wonkish plan or the overwhelming power of globalism. The historically proven truth is that victory comes only from God, and He gives it to those who serve Him.
Yes, the proximate end of politics is building up and maintaining the conditions necessary for public order. Low crime, low taxes, and even a secure border aren’t ends in themselves, though. The ultimate end of political action is to facilitate the consecration of the temporal order to God.
God made everything. He therefore has sovereign claim of ownership to everything. He allots his property to us as gifts which we are morally bound to return in better shape than we found them. See the Parable of the Talents.
What did for the populists wasn’t a failure to know what they wanted. It was a more fundamental failure to understand why they wanted it.
And contrary to Classical Liberalism’s claims, there is a right answer.
I shed no tears for a movement that ultimately wanted the same creature comforts that drive small-souled bugmen, but was more honest about why it wanted to live in homogeneous neighborhoods. Trumpism failed because it never managed to counter the prevailing false Death Cult morality with the right morality.
Most of the people currently declaring the end of the world are disappointed Trump didn’t take us back to 1988. Yes, a functioning economy, clean streets, and good video games are nice to have. But if they’re distracting you from growing in virtue, you’d do well to let them go.
Our enemies are most likely going to gain total power over us. Despairing over that turn of events bespeaks disordered attachment to worldly things. Now, we’re not Buddhists. It is licit for Christians to love created goods. But, we are to love them only for God’s sake, not as ends in themselves. Getting that relationship wrong is called idolatry, and it’s the main reason we’ve reached this point.
Said point, by the way, has the makings of an Optimate moment. Our only hope is to reorient society away from fixation on freedom as an end in itself and toward the true and the good.
Instead of holing up for the apocalypse, use the Death Cult’s oppression as an invitation to humble and purify yourself and simplify your life. Like a muscle, virtue is strengthened through exercise against increasing resistance. Now is the perfect time to cultivate courage, wisdom, and charity.
That’s the whole point, really. The Death Cult only has as much power as God allows, and He’s allowing it to break our vices, especially the errors of Modernity.
The best action you can take right now is to ruthlessly identify and weed out anything in your life that’s obstructing God’s grace. Cut it out with the porn, already. Go to church. Get right with anybody who’s got a beef with you. Pray–not primarily that God will give victory to the GOP–but that He will give you victory over your sins.
If you do this, and you come out the other side of Clown World holier than before, you can rightly thank Joe Biden’s handlers for a gift that’s precious above rubies.
And if that’s too lofty for you, the insanity doesn’t stop until we as a people repent, so you may as well start going through the motions. Who knows? Faking it may just lead you to making it.
Either way, a necessary first step to conquering vice is to stop cooperating with grave intrinsic evil.
Brian
A thoughtful post.
TL;DR the Great Reset is God's in the end.
And it's a spiritual reset.
If I'm familiar with our Lord, He'll dispense his justice ( I tremble at the thought) where he'll purify us via the death cult's apparent ascendancy and then burn the death cult when it thinks itself eternally unassailable.
xavier
If memory servers, God used Assyria to punish the Kingdom of Israel, then used the Neo-Babyblonians to crush the Assyrians and punish Judah, before in turn using the Medes and the Persians to crush the Neo-Babylonians.
Whom He loves, He chastises. I tremble when I consider the punishment we seem to deserve, but the thought of being crushed because we missed all the chances He gave us to reform and repent is even worse.
For the record, when I say "seem to" I do not mean to minimize the evils in our society. I only have questions about the nature of the punishment and whether there are more evils I'm not taking into account. If anything, I am amazed that God has been so patient with us.
"A perusal of Scripture shows that God's M.O. is to offer a rebellious people multiple chances to repent between periods of escalating chastisement."
Kipling has a couple of thoughts about that.
Your commenter misses that there's a big material difference between Trump and Biden's goals relevant to their chance of success – Biden will generally be doing what the people who have the power to stop him *want* him to do, whereas Trump had to kick everyone (even his direct reports in the Executive Branch) kicking and screaming.
Yeah, GOP may hold the Senate. But how much time did Obama spend trying to pass laws? Almost none. It's not the leftist way. Anything worth doing is worth doing by fiat, or by getting NGOs to sue you and "force" you to settle on doing what you wanted to do but couldn't do under your current rules.
If Biden gets inaugurated, it's going to be a horrible 4 years for anyone who cares about proper government processes. But none of this affects your perspective in this post, of course.
"We aren't like the ancient Near East. They sacrificed their firstborn children to avoid punishment evil gods and were forced to give 10% of their income to a king they worshipped as a god, hoping to reach old age so they could finally get respect. We sacrifice 15% of our children just because we want to and give 25%+ of our income to a faceless bureaucracy we depend on as god, father, and husband, hoping we die before our children decide to lock us away in a home."
You right with this article I couldn't say better myself.
I will point one good thing that has come from this election. Only few people will have any faith in Democracy after this.
It is dead as an idea and a system. Yes we will have some elections after this, maybe for a few more years. The rigging in 2020 will go down in history as the point of no return. The Republic as we know it dies years later. Like what Sulla did to the Roman system years before Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The crossing might of mark the final end but it already die when Sulla took power and kill his political opponents. The senate pretend the republic still existed but most people knew it was over.
One of the big contradictions of Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism is denouncing "Statism" while refusing to accept that the State and the Nation are different things. The Nation is the People, the State is one of the ways or means they may organize themselves for the common welfare.
Once you understand that most people these days consider only the State, effectively for fear that any even slightly nationalistic concept is RACISMismismism, you start to understand the fear and lust driving them. Fear because the apparatus of State is the only higher principle – to lose an election is the same as tribal annihilation; lust because to win an election is to obtain both total power and a perfect wholeness of self-identity.
Whereas in fact it's a rickety, unreliable and expensive bureaucratic machine of questionable utility, and they're fighting over who gets to hold an unmarked lever that looks important but can't really be shown to do anything.
That's an Anglosphere phenomenon. Europeans and Latin American preservers recognize the importance of the state and its institutions.
Nevertheless there seems to be a reassessment Adrien Vermurlle and Cass Sustein's book on the administrative state.
xavier
One can only pray that we as a whole work quickly enough to mitigate the severity of the chastisement which is to happen
Also here’s the evergreen sage advice of stocking up food, potable water, ammo (if you can swing it) and any meds you and your family might need in whatever quantities you can acquire and store
Finished reading your book "Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You".
Some comments:
1. A very good idea in general.
2. Could been polished a bit more. The "Scott" story, for one, would have been better simplified, IMO.
3. Suggesting the reader should do their own stories is fine if it's fan fic, but professional level work is a difficult level to achieve and doubly so if you have to rely on SJW publishers to see print. Check the underground comics of the early 70s. They self published and even self distributed ( in shopping carts some times out on the street) but the popular ones were on a professional level. I would also suggest that anyone with some money start a conservative oriented distribution service, even if it's mail order to begin with.
Finally: The book assumesw the people reading the book have already figured out that SJW media sucks. Perhaps that's true, but including additional examples of the more cliche SJW scenes wouldn't come amiss in further convincing them, not to mention getting their dander up. Particularly for those sitting on the fence.
In any case a worthy effort and I wish you the best of luck on your future work.
Is it deckbuilder style? Reminds me a little of Star Realms.
Your question is a bit OT, but the Combat Frame XSeed card game is planned as an LCG.