I'm taking a couple of days off blogging for the Christmas weekend. Normal service will resume on Monday morning, December 28th. Until then, please amuse yourself with the folks (and their blogs) in my sidebar.
May the blessings of the season continue for you and yours.
Peter
I wish all my readers and friends a blessed, holy, merry and happy Christmas (in that order!). May the "Reason for the season" be alive in our hearts this day.
He came alive in my heart on a particularly bad Christmas Eve back in South Africa, the best part of forty years ago. I wrote about it in my first year of blogging. Perhaps it's time to republish it, for the benefit of those who haven't yet read it. I called it "The Night Christmas Became Real".
It had been a bad day. A very bad day.
Members of the so-called 'Mass Democratic Movement' (MDM - a front organization for terrorists) had been trying to 'politicize' a township in South Africa for some time. Most of them were members of one particular tribe - and in Africa, one's tribe counts for quite a lot. Their efforts had been resisted by many residents, who were members of another tribe, and didn't see why these upstarts from an 'inferior' tribe should be allowed to push them around.
Needless to say, the apartheid police, always eager to 'divide and rule', had encouraged the rivalry through not-so-discreet egging-on of the resisters. If Black people could be induced to spend their time fighting each other, instead of uniting to fight apartheid, it was a net gain for the State. Who cared about those who got caught in the crossfire? They were only Black, after all, and the State was White. That's the way it was, in that year, in that part of the country.
Matters came to a head the week before Christmas. The MDM moved a group of 'comrades' into the township, trying to enforce a consumer boycott of White businesses, threatening violence to those who resisted. Some women were forced to drink the liquid soap and cooking-oil they'd bought, and ended up in hospital. Others were threatened. Minibus taxis taking shoppers to a nearby town were met at the outskirts of the township, and forced to turn back. In response, the police shut down deliveries to the few shops in the township itself. Very quickly, people began to run out of food and essential supplies.
I got a phone call in the afternoon of December 24th from a pastor in the township. I'll call him 'Fanyana' for his safety (he's still working there).
"Hey, Fanyana, what's up, brother?"
"It's bad, Peter." (Sound of scattered gunshots in the background. He was breathing quickly, shallowly, the fear evident in his voice.) "The 'comrades' have been trying to shut the place down all week, and the miners have finally had enough. They've ganged together and they're out on the streets, looking for the outsiders. It's bad, man."
I sobered, very fast. If Fanyana was this scared, and didn't mind showing it, it was bad indeed. The previous year he'd dragged me clear of a riot, both of us bleeding, me almost unconscious. He had guts to spare.
"What about the cops?"
"Oh, hell, man, the usual, you know! They're sitting on the outskirts, watching the fighting, and doing ****-all. They don't care."
"What do you need?"
"Can you get the brothers and sisters together, Peter? I'm opening the church to refugees, but we have nothing. Nothing. The 'comrades' have stopped all shopping in (the White town nearby), and all the shops here are empty. We need food, medical supplies, and anything else you can find for us."
"We're on our way. Usual meeting-place?" (A crossroads on the outskirts of town, on the bush side, where the police usually didn't go.)
"Yes. I'll try to have someone there in three hours to meet you. Be careful, my brother. You've got the wrong color of skin to be in here after dark, remember."
He wasn't joking about that. To have the wrong color of skin, or be a member of the wrong tribe, or have the wrong political sympathies, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, had been a death sentence for all too many South Africans of all races in the past few years.
I set the telephone chain in motion. We were a small group of people who cared. We didn't give a damn about the politics of those in need - although all of us were opposed to apartheid, and wanted to see South Africa a genuinely democratic nation. We were all believers in our particular faiths, and saw it as our duty to help the helpless, rather than shout political slogans. We went into townships where violence had erupted, tried to get the injured to safety, took in supplies for distribution through local churches, and generally tried to bring a little light into the darkness of the turmoil that was spreading throughout the country like a cancer.
We were of all races, and all religions: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, animist, Hindu... you name it, and the odds were we had at least one member of that faith in our loose network. It didn't matter to us. If you believed strongly enough in your faith that you were willing to put your life on the line to help those in need, that was all that counted. We were brothers and sisters from that moment. We would worry about the theology later.
Of course, the fact that we were trying to help the victims of violence made us targets. The terrorists wanted to make the Black townships, segregated under apartheid, ungovernable, havens of sanctuary for their resistance. If they had to do so by a rule of terror, they had no scruples about it - and they didn't want anyone giving hope to those living in fear. The authorities, on the other hand, didn't want the true conditions in the townships to be exposed. They used the Group Areas Act and other legislation to keep outsiders away. If you didn't have a permit to be in an area reserved for another racial group, you could be - and often were - arrested on the spot. People like us, who ignored the law and went in to help others, were a threat to them. The fact that we were a multi-racial group, not segregated, made it worse in their eyes.
As a result, we faced violence from both sides. Twenty-seven of us would die in the course of the unrest, and many more of us bear the scars of those years to this day.
It took almost two hours for various people to get away from work, pick up what supplies they had available, and get them to our meeting-place in Hillbrow, a high-rise, run-down, seedy suburb of Johannesburg. Those who could brought money, and hastily shopped for essentials at a local supermarket, competing with long lines of people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. Their carts and baskets were filled with cheap, tawdry gifts. Ours held cornmeal, beans, cooking oil, kerosene for cooking stoves, bandages, disinfectant.
We loaded the boxes and bags into a rattletrap old minibus that one of the group had made available to us. It was a Toyota Hi-Ace, similar to those shown below (and the same color as the first), dating from the mid-1970's.
It smoked, wheezed and backfired with every mile, and shook like a dervish on even the best-paved roads. Rust streaked the body, and a couple of the windows were cracked, held together with tape... but it ran, and it was inconspicuous in a township environment. That could keep a man alive, in those days. To stand out was sometimes to die.
It was a hot, dry night. (South Africa's in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas falls in high summer, to the confusion of many in the Northern hemisphere who associate the season with snow and cold. To us, it was a time for salads and sodas, not heavy meals and eggnog.) We set out as the sun sank low on the Western horizon, myself driving, three others - one Indian, one Colored (mixed-race in South African parlance), and one Black - in the seats alongside and behind me, the back of the van piled high with supplies. We threaded our way through the late rush-hour traffic and headed South.
After an hour, we turned off the freeway and headed into a farming area. We were coming up on our destination from behind, through the farmlands and bush, rather than approach it from the nearby White town, where police were sure to be manning roadblocks. They wouldn't be in a good mood. They wanted to be at home with their families on Christmas eve, wrapping presents for the kids. Instead they had to stand guard while the kaffirs fought each other. (The term was originally an Arabic word meaning 'unbeliever', but in South African parlance had become a derogatory term for a Black person, similar to - but worse in meaning than - the US term 'nigger'). Those of us trying to help them were contemptuously referred to as kaffirboeties - 'kaffir brothers', meaning much the same as 'nigger-lovers' in the US.
We could see smoke rising ahead of us in the fading light. Buildings were already burning in the township, that was clear. We slowed down, and crawled closer to the crossroads. All of us tensed as we saw the flashing lights of a police roadblock ahead. Too late to turn back - they'd only be suspicious, and pursue us to find out who we were and why we'd tried to run.
I moved up to the roadblock, and stopped. A uniformed Sergeant came to the door. I relaxed slightly. I'd met him before. While he was no friend, and as racist as any other policeman at the time, he was amenable to 'persuasion'.
"What do you - oh, it's you again!" He spat contemptuously into the dirt. "Come to help those dumb ****ers again, have you? Just look at the stupid ****ers!" He gestured at the smoke billowing up behind him. "It's ****ing Christmas, and they haven't the sense to stop their **** and shut up for a bit so we can have a break!"
"Er . . . yes. We've brought supplies. We want to take them to the **** Church, where the pastor's setting up a refugee center."
"No way, man. The township's ****ing closed to outsiders. You know the drill. Come on, let's see your ID."
I did, indeed, know the drill. I extended my arm through the window, handing him my 'Book of Life', the fat passport-like identity document issued to all South Africans. Inside the front cover I'd tucked five twenty-Rand notes - not a small sum, at that time.
He flipped through the pages, glancing casually over his shoulder at his men, who were lounging in and around their vehicles, watching us disinterestedly. He handed the document back to me. The banknotes had miraculously disappeared.
"You get into trouble, you're on your own, hey? No way we're coming in there to get you."
"I understand."
"On your way." He waved at the two constables standing in the road, assault rifles held ready, and they stepped aside. I accelerated past them, weaving my way down the dirt track.
We arrived at the crossroads as the last of the light began to fade. A stripling in ragged shirt and trousers was waiting, jumping up and down and waving at us as we approached. He ran to my window.
"Oh, Baas Peter! Baas Peter! The Pastor says to come quick! Is bad!"
I hated to be called Baas ('Boss', a common subservient term of address from Black South Africans to White, a relic of the days of slavery), but this was no time to stand on ceremony. "Get in, quick, and show us a safe way to get there."
David got out of the passenger seat next to me, getting in the back, and the boy took his place. We bumped into the back roads of the township, the familiar smells growing stronger by the yard. The stench of excrement overlaid every other odor - this township didn't have a sewage system, and relied on buckets to catch the 'night soil' deposited by its inhabitants. Acrid smoke mingled with the fecal smell, and if you had an active imagination, you could smell the fear too. You could certainly smell it in our vehicle - all of us knew what we were facing.
The dirt roads were dusty, except where runnels of sewage ran down the middle of some of them, adding a noisome mud to the scenery. Feral dogs cringed out of our path as we drove past. No-one was visible on the streets at all. They were either locked in their homes, hoping and praying that the violence didn't move in their direction, or they'd fled to a place where they imagined they'd be safer.
We came to the church hall, a run-down mud-brick structure with a corrugated asbestos roof. No lights were on in the hall, but two or three strong men stood guard outside, armed with sticks and spears. As we pulled up, two of them moved towards us.
"Who are you? What's your business - oh, it's you!" Smiles broke out across their faces, their white teeth gleaming against their dusty charcoal-black skin.
"Yes, we've brought you what we could. Can you help us unload?"
"Yes. Pull your van over there, out of sight. It's not safe for you to be seen right now."
Our cargo was swiftly offloaded by eager hands. Within five minutes the roar of kerosene stoves was added to the distant tumult, as women set them up outside and balanced huge pots on top of them, heating water to make putu (a thick cornmeal porridge, almost dense enough to be cut with a knife). Others opened tins of beans and a few precious luxuries, cans of corned beef, cutting the meat into cubes and adding it to the beans as they bubbled in their pots. Fanyana came out and hugged us, tears of gratitude in his eyes. He had over two hundred refugees crammed into his church hall, all of them having fled from homes near the center of the violence, and they had only the clothes on their back. At least they'd eat tonight.
We passed out the paper plates and cups and plastic eating utensils we'd brought, and everyone was given a small helping of the putu, covered with a ladleful of beans and a few shreds of corned beef. For many, this was the only meal they'd had all day. There was no tea or coffee: those who were thirsty drank water from the tap at the corner of the hall. (This township had no indoor plumbing - if you needed water, you got it in cans from communal taps, set every hundred yards or so. There was no electricity either, candles and kerosene lanterns providing the only light.)
I put down my plate, to have it swiftly taken by a young child, who carefully washed the plastic utensils and put them in a bag. In a place where poverty was so rampant, there was no such thing as 'disposable' cutlery. Even the dirty paper plates, which couldn't be washed, would be kept after being scraped clean. When dried and torn into strips, they would serve as kindling to light fires. Nothing was wasted here.
It was full dark now. Fanyana and I stood silently together outside the hall, watching the skyline to the East. It glowed and flickered as burning buildings sent up the light of their flames. We could see them reflected from the smoke clouds . . . black, sooty smoke, from car tires. If those nearby were fortunate, the tires would be burning only as barricades across the street. If they weren't, some of those tires would be burning around the necks of anyone suspected of being an informer, or lacking sympathy for the 'revolution'. They'd scream their last as the gasoline-soaked 'necklaces' roasted their faces and heads into charred caricatures of a human being.
I almost lost my faith that night. I'd been on the brink for some time, furiously angry at Church leaders who preached politics instead of the Gospel, who supported political factions instead of standing for all believers, who talked a good fight instead of going into the streets and actively ministering to those who most needed their help. To me, the Gospel was deed rather than word - and all I was hearing from these leaders was words. It made me sick, and I was on the point of abandoning my membership of any organized Church. Looking at those flames in the distance, knowing that people were suffering and dying there, I cried out internally to God, asking Him, "Where are your bishops and priests and pastors and ministers now? Why aren't they here, with Fanyana and others who need them? Where is the love they proclaim so loudly, but never live out?"
I got no answer... not right away.
A man ran along the street, staggering, at the last extremity of exhaustion. He came up to us, wobbling on unsteady feet, and Fanyana and myself caught him as he almost collapsed.
"Pastor! The tsotsis (thugs) are moving towards you! They've heard that people have gathered here. You must get out!"
Fanyana looked at me. "We can head for the old factory. It was burned out long ago, but the walls are still standing, and part of the roof. I think we'll be safe there." He hesitated. "We've got some old people who can't walk fast. Some can't walk at all. Some are in here, some are still at home. Can you help us get them out?"
"Let's go!"
The next hour or two was organized chaos. Groups of men, women and children hurried from the hall, carrying kerosene stoves, the supplies we'd brought, and the pitifully meager possessions they'd been able to salvage. Some of the men formed a fighting group, armed with sticks, axes and spears, and moved down the street, to hold off the forerunners of the gang heading in our direction, buying time for us to get clear. David, Alex, Sammy and I made a dozen shuttle runs in our old minibus, loading it with old people, one of us driving them to the ruined factory building while the rest of us went from door to door, checking whether anyone needed a ride, organizing them into groups of six to eight people, ready for the next run.
The last run was the worst. The 'comrades' had been setting fire to buildings and tires as they moved in our direction, and the wind had shifted, covering us in the rank smoke. We coughed and spluttered as we urged the last group together. One old man tried desperately to persuade us to bring his bed as well - the only possession of any value in his home. We had to be brutal in forcing him out, leaving the bed behind, great wracking sobs coming from him as he abandoned all he had in the world to the violence he could not understand.
We loaded the last group, and Sammy headed for the factory while the rest of us ran up the street with Fanyana, yelling to the fighting group to disengage and fall back to the hall. They did so, several of them bleeding from cuts and bruises, two wounded by bullets. Some of the 'comrades' had brought AK-47's with them, it seemed. We heard several full-auto bursts of fire, the distinctive sound of the Communist weapon a familiar and dreaded backdrop to the discordant symphony of violence being played on the stages of townships across the country.
Fanyana's wife, Miriam, stood at the hall, waiting for us. His face contorted with fear as he saw her. "What are you doing here? I sent you to the factory! Where are the children?"
"They are there, safe. Did you think I'd leave you to die, not knowing what had happened?"
I had to smile. No shrinking violet, this. She'd stand by her man in the face of mob violence and death if she had to.
Fanyana wasn't impressed. "I'm not dead, and you're a fool! Come on!"
As we ran up the street into the darkness, abandoning the church hall, the rest of us had to try desperately to hold back our laughter as his wife told Fanyana in no uncertain terms that she was no fool, and if he thought she would leave him to die alone, he'd better think again, and... One of the men muttered, "Hau! And to think my parents want me to get married to a good Christian girl! What do I want with a woman who'll talk to me like that?" Those around him chuckled grimly. In a male-dominated tribal culture like theirs, the pastor's wife was an exception to the rule.
We moved out of the township into open scrub land. About two hundred yards ahead of us, the silent, black ruins of the old factory loomed up beneath the starlight. We ran across the grass, stumbling on hummocks and stepping in holes, wrenching at our ankles, our breath catching in our throats. We slowed as we came to the walls, and stopped, and looked around. Behind us the glow of flames and the billowing smoke was higher than ever, moving in our direction. We knew the church hall would most likely not survive the night. One of the men said as much to Fanyana, and he shrugged. "Buildings... are just buildings. At least we are alive."
We walked into the ruined main building. Its walls were standing, but most of the roof was gone, leaving only a third of it covered. Already those who'd first arrived had swept the concrete floor clear of the debris and detritus of years, and several hundred people were sitting down in family groups. Candles and kerosene lanterns flickered here and there, shedding an eerie dim light over the scene.
Another group of women had lit the kerosene stoves from the church, and were boiling water. As we came in, they beckoned to us, and cleaned and bandaged the wounds of those who'd been injured covering our escape. They organized men to go with buckets to fetch more water from the nearest tap in the township, and David took the minibus to help them get it as quickly as possible. He made several trips, and they filled every available container to the brim. We didn't know when we'd be able to get more, after all.
I knew the four of us were stuck here until at least daybreak. We wouldn't be able to see whether we were driving into danger, so we couldn't risk trying to return to Johannesburg. While the others found their families, or fetched water, or helped in other ways, I walked outside, looking up at the stars. I was in a foul mood. Anger at the pettiness and political shenanigans of organized religion, frustration at not being able to protect these people's homes from destruction, bitterness at yet more destruction in the seemingly never-ending cycle of violence that had engulfed my country, the disgrace of police sworn to 'protect and serve' who instead sat back and let rival groups destroy each other, enjoying the spectacle... I was in a bleak state indeed. I couldn't even pray. If I'd tried, at that moment, I'd probably have cursed God.
I don't know how long I stood there, my mood as black as the night. It was a long time.
I was brought out of my miserable reverie by a tugging at my hand. I looked down. A small girl was standing there. She'd got hold of my finger, and was pulling at it.
"Baas Peter, come. Come! We are going to sing."
Sing??? What on earth could there be to sing about, on such a night? Still internally numb, angry, withdrawn, I allowed her to lead me back into the ruins.
Fanyana and Miriam had cleared a space in the center of the factory floor. The children had gathered together there. There must have been five or six hundred people inside, of whom maybe a quarter were kids under the age of ten. They were from two or three different tribes, and several different churches... but tonight, that didn't matter.
As I stood there, my tiny escort smiled up at me, then scampered to join the others. She reached them just as Miriam raised her hand.
The kids broke into a soft, gentle song. The words were in Zulu, but they'd originally been written in German... and I knew them well enough in English.
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
'Round yon virgin mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace;
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent night, holy night,
Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heav'nly hosts sing Alleluia;
Christ the Saviour is born;
Christ the Saviour is born.Silent night, holy night,
Son of God, love's pure light.
Radiant beams from Thy holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth;
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.
And I went outside, and I wept from the depths of my heart and my soul. I wept for Sue, my fiancée, who'd answered a call such as this on a night several years ago, and never came home, and was buried far away. I wept for my friends who'd died serving this seemingly hopeless cause. I wept for myself, for my own heart, which had hardened to near stone under the blows of the world, and which I'd allowed to harden... because I hadn't listened to the words of the One who came to us on that blessed Night, almost two thousand years before.
My concerns about church leaders preaching politics instead of the Gospel?
Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)
Children are not born with these things. They become thus after learning from adults. I'd forgotten to learn from God, rather than the chaos and anarchy around me. Those leaders had made the same mistake. Many of them are still making it to this day.
My inability to see God even in the midst of suffering?
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
(Habbakuk 3:17-18)
The press, and the politicians, and the so-called 'religious' leaders, preaching doom and gloom and disaster, hatred and violence, envy and rebellion?
The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation
And increased its joy;
They rejoice before You
According to the joy of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
For You have broken the yoke of his burden
And the staff of his shoulder,
The rod of his oppressor,
As in the day of Midian.
For every warrior’s sandal from the noisy battle,
And garments rolled in blood,
Will be used for burning and fuel of fire.
For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:2-6)
The lack of care shown by most so-called Christians, so few of whom were willing to share burdens such as ours, on this night?
And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.
Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger.
(Luke 2:1-16)
Jesus didn't come to a cathedral, or synagogue. He didn't appear in majesty before the prelates of the Sanhedrin, or the hypocrites of the Pharisees. He came as the lowliest and most helpless of humans, a new-born child: one for whom there was no room at the inn, and who was placed in a manger of straw. I think he - and Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds - would have felt right at home in that ruined factory, that night.
And so a new journey of faith began for me that night, one that was to lead me to become a pastor. Even so, I've grown more and more disillusioned with organized religion in all its forms: but the message of Christmas has never been in doubt for me since that night.
For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
May His birth be a reality for you, this night.
God bless you all.
In this tumultuous 2020, it's worth reminding myself of the lesson I learned that night. May we all remember it in future, no matter what our future may hold.
Peter
That's the conclusion of J. Robert Smith, writing at The Federalist.
What’s triggering the second American civil war? Trump’s unexpected election in 2016, and his four highly successful years -- despite implacable opposition and attempted subversion by the Democrat-led axis -- and the prospect of a final Trump term, when the president would not only consolidate his achievements, but push new initiatives to break the corruption and imperiousness that infects the nation’s “elite”… these were the Rubicon. Anti-liberty forces have long been marching through the nation’s institutions. But this became a double-time as they grasped Trump’s primal threat to their fortunes, present and future.
Liberty’s enemies have opted for brinkmanship to settle matters, once and for all. They haven’t mustered armies to seize Washington, D.C. (would they have to anyway?) and occupy red states. Give them credit. They aim to achieve their coup without firing a shot. Call it a velvet-gloved coup d’état. Some are terming it a “Color Revolution.” The war they’re waging to seize power is conspiratorial, innovative, multidimensional. It relies on subterfuge, misinformation, misdirection, audacity, and a gamble: that while millions of patriots may now squawk and shake their fists, they will go no further… that when Biden is installed as president, and the cabal he fronts holds the levers of power, resistance will be futile, anyway. Anger will give way to sullen resignation.
. . .
Antiliberty forces -- Democrats, leftists, Big Tech barons, monied interests of all stripes, Deep State players, and other establishment elements (and lurking in Great Oz-like fashion, Xi Jinping) -- underestimate patriots. They regard working- and middle-class Americans as inferiors -- rubes to be had. Anti-liberty forces occupy many -- if not most -- of the power centers in the nation. And, as stated, they’re pursuing a highly complex silent coup. The war being waged is far too sophisticated and devious for patriots to ever figure out, much less counter effectively, they reason.
The enemy’s conceit is its Achilles heel. As of January 20 and moving ahead -- if there’s a pretender president -- millions of patriots will remain defiantly unreconciled to consigning American liberty to history’s scrapheap. Patriots are neither complacent nor fearful. They’re confirmed in their dedication to the Republic and resolved to restore it to its fullest measure. Patriots will not surrender to tyrants what God granted as a birthright. They appreciate that life without liberty is base existence.
. . .
Don’t let this phony war fool you. The present is deceptive. The cabal that failing and corrupt Joe Biden fronts knows that if it succeeds in installing Biden, it will have 48 months to cement its hold not just on presidential elections, but elections down ballot. 48 months to scuttle Trump’s achievements and impose its own radical, antiliberty polices and edicts, thereby forever changing the United States. If successful, the Constitution won’t be worth the parchment it’s written on. And if Trump returns to the White House? War it will still be.
We’ve entered momentous and perilous times, comparable to the four years of the Civil War and the eight years of the Revolution. How this war evolves is unknowable. Wars tend to have lives of their own. No patriot should assume a favorable outcome. The days ahead must be hard fought, for victory must be hard won. It’s simply the price of freedom.
There's more at the link.
I've got nothing to add to that, except that the struggle for freedom is both necessary and worthwhile. I'm proud to be an American - by adoption rather than birth, but nevertheless an American. When entering law enforcement service, I swore an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". That oath, was, and is still, binding on my conscience. That oath has no expiration date.
Peter
Some of you have noticed that Old NFO's blog is down. It's a server problem, and will take some time to sort out. However, he's fine, so you don't need to worry about him. In case his blog doesn't come up before tomorrow, he sends Christmas greetings and good wishes to everyone.
Peter
A speech given by John Garnaut to an Australian government seminar in 2017 has just come to my attention. In it, Mr. Garnaut puts into a nutshell how China's leaders see the world and their own country, and how they're working to ensure their ongoing - indeed, perpetual - control of both.
Here's a lengthy excerpt from a much longer speech. I can't emphasize too strongly that you should click over there and read the whole thing. It explains China's internal and geopolitical policies better than almost any other short work I've read. It also explains how - and why - China is using its influence in the USA to influence not just our politics, but also our culture, both internally and as they're directed towards China.
I want to make these broad points about the historical foundations of [Chinese Communist Party] ideology, beyond the fact that it is important:
- Communism did not enjoy an immaculate conception in China. Rather, it was grafted onto an existing ideological system - the classical Chinese dynastic system.
- China had an unusual veneration for the written word and acceptance of its didactic value.
- Marxism-Leninism was interpreted to Mao and his fellow revolutionaries by a crucial intermediary: Joseph Stalin.
- Communism - as interpreted by Lenin, Stalin and Mao - is a total ideology. At the risk of being politically insensitive, it is totalitarian.
- Xi Jinping has reinvigorated ideology to an extent we have not seen since the Cultural Revolution.
I’ll hold off on the practical contemporary implications of all this until we get to the subsequent discussion.
A Dynastic Cosmology
It was clear from my work as a journalist and writer in New China - to use the party speak - that the formal ideology of communism coexists with an unofficial ideology of old China. The Founding Fathers of the PRC came to power on a promise to repudiate and destroy everything about the dark imperial past, but they never really changed the mental wallpaper.
Mao and his comrades grew up with tales of imperial China. They never stopped reading them. The Dream of Red Mansions, The Three Kingdoms - the Chinese classics are all about the rise and decay of dynasties. This is the metanarrative of Chinese literature and historiography, even today.
Mao in particular was obsessed, as Mao’s one-time secretary Li Rui explained to me. He told me: “He only slept on one third of the bed and the other two thirds of his bed was covered by books, all of which were thread-bound Chinese books, Chinese ancient books. His research was the strategies of emperors. That was how to govern this country. That was what he was most interested in.”
And the Founding Revolutionaries passed these same tales down to their children. The daughter of Mao’s leading propagandist, Hu Qiaomu, told me that her father raised his voice to her only once: when she confessed that she hadn’t finished the Dream of Red Mansions (which by the way runs to a million characters). Hu Qiaomu was furious. He told her Chairman Mao had read the book 25 times.
So this is my first observation about ideology - ideology in the broadest sense, as a coherent system of ideas and ideals: the founding families of the PRC are steeped in the Dynastic System.
. . .
Xi Jinping has exercised an unwritten aristocratic claim to power which derives from his father’s proximity to the founder of the Red Dynasty: Chairman Mao. He is the compromise representative of all the great founding families. This is the starting point for understanding the worldview of Xi Jinping and his Princeling cohort.
In the view of China’s princelings - or “Revolutionary Successors”, as they prefer to be known - China is still trapped in the cycle which had created and destroyed every dynasty that had gone before. In this tradition, when you lose political power you don’t just lost your job (while keeping your super) as you might in our rather gentrified arrangement. You lose your wealth, you lose your freedom, you probably lose your life and possibly your entire extended family. You are literally erased from history. Winners take all and losers lose everything.
With these stakes, the English idiom “life-and-death-struggle” is far too passive. In the Chinese formulation it is “You-Die, I-Live”. I must kill preemptively in order to live. Xi and his comrades in the red dynasty believe they will go the same way as the Manchus and the Mings the moment they forget.
China’s veneration of the written word
A second point, related to the first, is that China has an extraordinary veneration of the written word. Stories, histories and teachers have great moral authority. Greater than anywhere I can think of with the exception of Tsarist Russia. This may have made Russia and China culturally receptive to propaganda and the ideology transmitted by propaganda. What is more certain is that China was particularly receptive to Soviet ideology because Chinese intellectuals found meaning in Russian literature and texts earlier and more readily than they did with other Western sources. “Russian literature was our guide (daoshi) and friend,” said Lu Xun.
In classical Chinese statecraft there are two tools for gaining and maintaining control over “the mountains and the rivers”: The first is wu (weapons, violence - 武) and the second is wen (language, culture - 文).
Chinese leaders have always believed that power derives from controlling both the physical battlefield and the cultural domain. You can’t sustain physical power without discursive power. Wu and wen go hand-in-hand.
. . .
Mao’s discursive advantage was Marxist-Leninist ideology. Language was not just a tool of moral judgment. It was an instrument for shaping acceptable behaviour and a weapon for distinguishing enemies and friends. This is the subtext of Mao’s most famous poem, Snow. Communist ideology enabled him to “weaponise” culture in a way his imperial predecessors had never managed.
And it’s important to remember who was the leader of the Communist world during the entire quarter of a century in which Mao rose to absolute power.
The “Great Genius” Comrade Stalin.
Mao knew Marxist Leninist dogma was absolutely crucial to his enterprise but he personally lacked the patience to wade through it. He found a shortcut to ideological proficiency with Joseph Stalin’s Short Course on the History of the Bolsheviks, published at the end of Stalin’s Great Terror, in 1938. According to Li Rui, when interviewed by historian Li Huayu, Mao thought he’d found an “encyclopaedia of Marxism” and “acted as if he’d discovered a treasure”.
. . .
Stalin’s Short Course is a manual for perpetual struggle against a roll call of imagined dastardly enemies who are collaborating with imagined Western agents to restore bourgeois capitalism and liberalism. It is written as a chronicle of victories by Lenin and then Stalin’s “correct line” over an endless succession of ideological villains. It is perhaps instructive that many of the most “vile” internal enemies were said to have cloaked their subversive intentions in the guise of “reform”.
The practical utility of the book is that it prescribes an antidote to the calcification and putrefaction that inevitably corrodes and degrades every dictatorship.
The most original insight in Stalin’s Short Course on the History of the Bolsheviks is that the path to socialist utopia will always be obstructed by enemies who want to restore bourgeois capitalism from inside the party. These internal enemies grow more desperate and more dangerous as they grow increasingly imperilled - and as they collaborate with the spies and agents of Western liberalism.
The most important lines in the book:
“As the revolution deepens, class struggle intensifies.”
“The Party becomes strong by purging itself.”
You can imagine how this formulation was revelatory to a ruthless Chinese leader like Mao who had mastered the “You Die, I Live” world into which he had been born - a world in which you choose to either kill or be killed - and who was obsessed with how to prevent the decay which had destroyed every imperial dynasty before.
What Stalin offered Mao was not only a manual for purging his peers but also an explanation of why it was necessary. Purging his rivals was the only way a vanguard party could “purify” itself, remain true to its revolutionary nature and prevent a capitalist restoration.
Purging was the mechanism for the Chinese Communist Party to achieve ever greater “unity” with revolutionary “truth” as interpreted by Mao. It is the mechanism for preventing the process of corruption and putrefaction which inevitably sets in after the founding leaders of each dynasty leave the scene.
Crucially, Mao split with Kruschev because Kruschev split with Stalin and everything he stood for. The Sino-Soviet split was ideological - it was Mao’s claim to ideological leadership over the communist world. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao. It was Mao’s claim to being Stalin’s true successor.
We hear a lot about how Xi and his peers blame Gorbachev for the collapse of the Soviet state but actually their grievances go much further back. They blame Kruschev. They blame Kruschev for breaking with Stalin. And they vow that they will never do to Mao what Kruschev did to Stalin.
Now, sixty years on, we’re seeing Xi making his claim to be the true Revolutionary Successor of Mao.
Xi’s language of “party purity”; “criticism and self-criticism”; “the mass line”; his obsession with “unity”; his attacks on elements of “hostile Western liberalism”, “constitutionalism” and other variants of ideological “subversion” - this is all Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by Stalin as interpreted by Mao.
This is the language that the Deep Red princelings spoke when they got together and occasionally when I interviewed them and crashed their gatherings in the lead up to the 18th Party Congress.
And this was how Xi spoke after the 18th Party Congress:
‘‘To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the party’s organizations on all levels.’’Today, the utopian destination has to be maintained, however absurd it seems, in order to justify the brutal means of getting there. Xi has inserted a couple of interim goals - for those who lack revolutionary patience - but the underlying Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist logic remains the same.
This is the logic of his ever-deepening purge of peers who keep getting in the way.
. . .
The essence of Maoism and Stalinism is perpetual struggle. This is the antidote to the calcification and putrefaction that has destroyed every previous dynasty, dictatorship and empire. This is why Xi and his Red Successor peers believe that Maoism and Stalinism is still highly relevant today. Not just relevant, but existential.
Xi has set in motion a purification project - a war against the forces of counter-revolution - that has no end point because the notional utopian destination of perfect communism will always be kicked a little further down the road.
There is no policy objective in the sense that a Wall Street banker or Canberran public servant might understand it - as a little more energy market efficiency here, or compression of the Gini coefficient there. Rather, this is how you restore dynastic vigour and vitality. Politics is the ends.
. . .
Engineers of the human soul
At my first team bonding session in this building I asked who was the world leader who described artists and authors as “engineers of the human soul”.
Was this word image the creation of Stalin, Mao or someone else?
If you’re thinking Joseph Stalin, then you’re right:
"The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.... And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul".. . .
The quote is from Stalin’s famous speech at the home of the writer Maxim Gorky in preparation for the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in October 1932 ... to use the engineering language of the original Man of Steel - Joseph Stalin - literature and art are nothing more nor less than cogs in the revolutionary machine.
But, if you think the answer is Chairman Mao, then you’re also right. Mao extended Stalin’s metaphor a decade later at his famous Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art delivered in two parts in October 1942, and published (in heavily doctored form) one year later:
“[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.”
This is when Mao made plain that there is no such thing as truth, love or artistic merit except in so far as these abstract concepts can be pressed into the practical service of politics.
There's much more at the link.
This speech is filled with nuggets of real insight that give a new perspective on China and its policies, both internal and external. I found it immensely informative. Just to take one thing from the excerpt above: if you've wondered why China is investing so much money into, and trying to exert so much influence over, Hollywood . . . consider it as "literature and art fit[ting] well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy". If China can dominate Hollywood, it can manipulate and "fine-tune" its movies and other output to further its policy objectives here and throughout the world. It's not about the money at all (although that's a nice side benefit) - it's about control.
I can't recommend Mr. Garnaut's speech too highly. If you have any interest in China at all (and you should, because it's going to be a dominant factor in the 21st century), go read the whole thing.
Peter
That's how one correspondent describes moving from Virginia to Florida.
Until recently, I’ve been at school in Loudoun County, Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam has been busy inflicting harsher shutdown orders. Masks are required almost everywhere up there, and big gatherings are out of the question. Multiple friends had to cancel their wedding receptions this month due to the new restrictions.
I got so used to wearing a mask that every time I watched a movie it seemed odd for the actors to be bare-faced. Leaving a store, sometimes I’d make it all the way to the car before even realizing I still had my mask on.
It wasn’t until I came home to Florida — where COVID-19 restrictions are much freer and usually left to local government — that I noticed how different life was. On my flight home, I reached from my seat by the window to hand my snack wrapper to the flight attendant. The older gentleman next to me took it from my hand to pass it along. It caught me off guard: this stranger was willing to touch something that I had eaten from? He wasn’t afraid of my germs?
Thoughtful gestures that had always been normal suddenly seemed surprising — which made me realize how many of those everyday connections we’ve lost this year. Since I’ve spent some time in Florida, life has felt incredibly normal. It’s also revealed how abnormal the lifestyle I followed in Virginia really was.
For one, I didn’t realize how much I was missing by not seeing people’s faces. I don’t object to people wearing masks if they feel safer; it’s their personal health decision. But when I arrived at the airport to see my family for the first time since August (mid-semester breaks were another COVID casualty), I could actually see their faces.
I went to a café to study the other day and walked past a young pregnant mother with her toddler in tow. None of us were masked, and the toddler and I got to smile and wave at each other as we passed.
. . .
While the chain coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin’ are closed to indoor patrons, my favorite local coffeeshop is open and more popular than ever. (And why buy overpriced, mediocre chain coffee anyway?) Looking around, I only see one customer wearing a mask, and only one of the baristas.
There’s a sign taped to the door that says, “The city council feels it is at their best interest to infringe upon your personal constitutional right and feel they can manage your life better than you. We will not do this…we will not force you to wear a mask!”
“All are welcome and we appreciate your supporting local,” the sign adds. I went Saturday morning with my family and we had to wait for a table; we ran into an old friend while we were there. That same day, we went to the downtown farmers’ market. Vendors offered free samples and sold fresh produce, a live musician sang “Folsom Prison Blues,” and no one told me to wear a mask.
I’ve flown in and out of the Orlando airport all my life, and I’ve never seen it half as crowded as it was this month. I can only guess that people are coming down to Florida because it’s open here. People are taking precautions, sure, but they’re also continuing to live their lives.
There's more at the link.
I guess those of us in "free states" don't realize how bad things are in the "unfree states". Our local and state governments do their best to implement reasonable, common-sense measures against the pandemic, but they expect us to use our common sense, and don't impose unreasonable, unjustifiable policies that will meet with widespread resistance. (They know they'll be out of office next election if they do!) Those who have pre-existing health conditions that make wearing a mask difficult, like asthma, COPD, etc., are specifically exempted from the need to do so, which is both intelligent and very helpful. Miss D. and I both fall into some of those categories, and we appreciate the consideration shown to us by our Governor.
In harder-hit cities, sure, the local authorities have implemented stricter measures, and they're probably right to do so; but in the "free states" those in charge recognize that there isn't a "one-size-fits-all" approach. It has to be tailored to local needs. In the "unfree states", they long ago lost sight of that in favor of a "rule-by-diktat" approach - and it's failing. Look at the statistics for infection, recovery and death. They're far higher in the "unfree" states than in the others. There's a reason for that, and it's not that the COVID-19 virus prefers them for some reason!
Peter
In 1961 editors Albert D. Biderman and Herbert Zimmer published a book titled "The Manipulation of Human Behavior".
It examined Communist attempts to brainwash and manipulate US prisoners of war in Korea. It's become a seminal work in its field, still used and regarded as authoritative to this day.
Numerous Web sites have drawn attention to parallels between what the book describes as manipulation techniques, and measures taken to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus. One has to admit, the parallels are ominous. Here's an example of the infographic that's been widely circulated.
That's the problem with measures imposed on society for even a good reason (and, let's admit, restricting the spread of disease is - at least nominally - a good reason). All too often, the measures are not fully explained, or even rationally analyzed from a scientific perspective. They're thrown out there in a desperate attempt to do something - anything! - to improve the situation. If they don't work, the bureaucrats involved try to threaten people into compliance, or manipulate them into cooperating rather than questioning.
That's how freedom vanishes. By all means, let scientifically valid measures be taken, and let compliance be not just requested, but regulated: but make sure that the measures are, indeed, valid, not just bureaucratic knee-jerks. In the case of far too many measures against COVID-19, the cure has proved worse than the disease. If we beat the pandemic, but destroy our economy in the process, what have we really achieved?
As the late President Ronald Reagan reminded us:
That applies to bureaucrats, politicians and their regulations, too! Let's not allow them to blind us to reason, or stop us from thinking for ourselves. That doesn't mean we should willfully disregard their recommendations - it just means we should judge them according to their accuracy, their effectiveness and their validity.
Dictatorial politicians like Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and their ilk, and their autocratic pronouncements from what they seem to think is the throne of their office, don't deserve the time of day.
Peter
Earlier today I wrote about the revolution that I fear is coming to America. There are many ways to work against it. However, the basic reality of the situation is that, as Tip O'Neill famously reminded us, "All politics is local". That's where we have to start to take our country back.
Rather than try to put it in my own words, I'll let Ianto Watt describe the fightback.
The choice before us now is between Cincinnatus and Lenin. One will give up power when the present danger is defeated. The other won’t. Why? Because he is the present danger. Now we are back to the present problem. Which is, America is populated by idiots.
But not entirely. Thus, the real question before us: What is the split? We know that those in the camp of Lenin will stop at nothing. But what are their true numbers and power? The same question confronts the forces of Cincinnatus. What is their order of battle? Who will lead, locally? After all, they are totally fragmented, whereas Lenin’s men are totally united, in both ideology and command.
. . .
But first, we have to identify the true enemy. No, not the visible puppets at the top. Not even the Gates’, Zuckerbergs, Dorseys, et al. No, the real work in any war is in the trenches, and those who man them. The real enemy is the guy across from you. You’ll never get close enough in the opening round to touch the top tier of evil. Not until we fight our way through their phalanx will we reach their larynx. Only then can we finish the job. Fixating now on the top tier is self-defeating. No, we must defeat them at ground zero first. That is the only hope of victory.
Who then is this enemy? I’ll tell you who — their names all begin with an ‘e’. They are, in no particular order (for they all work in unison), the following four groups; editors, educators, experts and elites. And they all have a base that exists at a local level. At a level where they can be reached. Let’s look at them. Size is relative. Your local editor may not be a Sulzberger, but his influence is the same. It’s just in a smaller sphere of control. Same with the other three. The people who do run for office all hide behind these four groups to get (and stay) elected.
I’ve said many times that the most powerful people are those you can’t vote out. Why? Because they weren’t voted in. None of these four types have to run for office, so they can’t be voted out. But they can be defeated. But not by votes. No, they have to suffer humiliation, at their local level. The level of their visible power.
Let’s look a little closer. Let’s look at what has worked in the past. But only for the left. Why? Because they would do it. And we wouldn’t. And what would they do? They would engage in ‘civil’ disobedience. On a scale large enough that the local authorities couldn’t stop it. Short of mace, water cannons, police dogs, etc.
Who were their targets? The same four E’s I referred to before. But back then, they were our E’s. And lo and behold, when our editors, educators, experts and elites were hounded, we didn’t show up in their defense. We were too busy defending the Imperial front, far away from the home front. And they took our local ground. Which laid the foundation of their national network of like-minded ilk. We learn too late. What happens in our own county is always more important than what happens half a world away.
So, when all these forces arrayed against us worked together, what was their favorite weapon of choice? Bond issues. Which fed their elected puppets, who then enforced the leftist reporting, schooling, testimony (of ‘experts’) and of course, elitist opinion (and finances). Don’t believe me? Ever heard of Alfred Kinsey, the ‘sex-expert’? The one who normalized perversion? The same perversion that was supported by elitists and editors, who pounded away about ‘fairness’ for perverts? And which is now universally taught by our enlightened educators, in our gargantuan ‘schools’.
Schools? Funded by whom? By us, courtesy of the gargantuan bond issues that accrue to the benefit, in every way, of our enemies. And which enslaves us to a local property tax that we have zero control of. In other words, they have talked (hounded) us into enslaving ourselves. And selling our children to them to pay for it.
Think about it. You can’t possibly mobilize people nationally. There are too many Deep State impediments to that. Ears are everywhere. And you can’t trust people you don’t even know. And the only place you do know someone is right where you are. That, my friend, is where you should act. Because that is the only place your effort can have effect.
So, the answer I give, when asked ‘what should we do’ about the obvious theft of our nation is this — take back your neighborhood first. And then your city and county. And free yourself from the Corona hypnosis. That is the very first step. Fearful people never win.
But it will take more than letters to the editor (which are, by definition, useless, considering who controls their appearance). I’ll tell you what it does take. It takes nerve. And crudity, when warranted. Which is now. I’ve seen many stories of public ‘servants’ who are quitting their posts because of hostile public reaction to their Covid-fear-enforcement attempts. Public ‘Health’ experts and ‘educators’ who are caving to social pressure. On-the-street encounters that are not pleasant, for them.
Now expand that to your local paper, and those who advertise in them. And your local school administrators (and those ‘teachers’ that will not teach — which actually is a favor, if you think about it). If half the people they meet in public spit on the sidewalk as they pass by, it will have an incremental effect. A positive effect. Why? Because in polite America, it takes an offensive act to get the change you want. That’s how the left got what they wanted. The question is, do you really want it?
Really? Well, have you ever gone down and picketed your local store that advertises in your local paper that supports lockdowns? No? But you say you’re willing to revert to your 2nd Amendment rights before trying anything less? Listen to me — you can drive them from your local public square. It’s all about your public attitude. Most of your local opponents will melt away, if enough people began to personally act rude to them and their ideas. Show up where they are, and refuse to be silent. They won’t all go away, but they will start to shut up. And their voices are what is driving the fear-machine. And fear is the real killer. It’s time to lift our voices. Rudely. Locally.
. . .
The local face of the enemy is still the same. And it becomes more emboldened each day by our polite patience. We need to lose the public politeness. And our patience. If we want our freedom, that is. Freedom, if you haven’t noticed, is lived locally.
There's more at the link.
The time for polite disagreement is past. Our progressive left-wing opponents have intimidated too many Americans by getting loud, rude and aggressive in their faces. It's time we stopped being afraid of them, learned from their success, and emulated their tactics. Nothing else has worked, and nothing else is likely to work.
We're already seeing this tactic in towns and counties around the country. When a progressive left-wing government enacted anti-Second-Amendment legislation in Virginia, more than 90% of the counties in that state declared themselves to be "Second Amendment sanctuaries", and/or refused to enforce the new laws. Around the country, sheriffs have refused to enforce lockdown legislation and regulations pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, on the grounds that many of those rules are unconstitutional and overreaching. Higher authority may impose its politically correct laws, but their implementation depends on people on the ground - local people. If those locals know that playing the Quisling on behalf of higher authority will have consequences, they'll think twice about doing so.
It'll take a lot more than that, of course: but this is our starting point. If the house that is our society is constructed of local bricks, building up to regional, State-wide and then national politics, then so be it. Let's start by taking back the local bricks, one at a time. The rest will follow: not overnight, not even in a year or two, but in a few decades, our children will see - and thank us for - the difference.
Let's get to it.
Peter
I don't want to write this blog post. I'm certainly not calling for violent revolution, and I won't participate in the sorts of acts I'm going to describe here. However, I've lived through or passed through violent revolution, civil unrest, insurrection and general political mayhem in three countries, and I've seen this at first hand. The elements I'm about to describe happened in every one of them, and they are also evident in other countries that endured violent revolutions, whose survivors wrote about what they saw and experienced. I figure someone has to put this out there for Americans to read, because there's no reason in the world why the same thing won't happen here. I'd go so far as to say it's inevitable, if things go on this way.
We all know the polarized nature of American society. These two illustrations from the Pew Research Center illustrate what's happened to us over the past quarter-century or so.
When a society has moved that far apart within itself, there's very little chance of peaceful reconciliation. Instead, extremists on both sides will look for opportunities to impose their will, their perspective, their demands, on the other. A recent example illustrates the point.
Activist members of the student government at Cornell University are waging an ideological war against fellow Cornell Student Assembly members who recently voted against disarming campus police.
From launching recall petitions and rallying against their fellow representatives in November, to earlier this month ousting some of them from subcommittees or the entire assembly, these activist student government members say they are motivated to set right what a “white-cis-het” group of their peers did in voting down the disarmament resolution.
. . .
“Many of these assembly members are white-cis-het men and women who quite literally laughed and danced in our faces when the resolution failed,” Chukwukere said.
“Their faces are all over social media,” he added. “We will never forget. … Their campus careers are over. … We must disarm, defund, and disband the Cornell University Police Department.”
In November, the Cornell Student Assembly narrowly voted against Resolution 11, a bill calling for the disarmament of Cornell police.
In the days following the initial failure of Resolution 11, vulgar language and threats of violence were directed at student assembly representatives who opposed the bill.
. . .
After weeks of intimidation, online harassment, and ultimately, the removal of several student representatives who supported keeping campus police armed, the assembly’s activist faction was able to approve on Dec. 10 a new measure, Resolution 30, calling to disarm campus police.
. . .
In a letter to the editor of the Sun, the student representatives under fire for refusing to support disarming the police denounced the attacks against them ... “These actions are undemocratic, authoritarian and a flagrant abuse of the S.A.’s rules and procedures,” the Dec. 9 letter states. “It goes without saying that these efforts are unprecedented.”
“A vocal minority of the S.A. who believe everyone must think as they do has attempted to strip power from anyone who disagrees with them and browbeat them into silence,” it adds. “Their actions have created a hostile, toxic and untenable atmosphere within the S.A., hampering its ability to function and causing unnecessary anxiety and emotional distress to its members.”
Part of the tensions during the initial vote back in November included racial ones.
Student Dakota Johnson, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who attended a November SA meeting to express his opposition to disarming police, was told during the hearing by Moriah Adeghe, the SA director of elections, that “As a white man, you cannot be the arbiter of what is and isn’t racist and who is a good or bad person. … You will never be the arbiter because you are a white man.”
There's more at the link.
The same single-minded fanaticism has been visible in many institutions and locations over the past year. We see it in Seattle, Portland, and many other cities where progressive left-wingers control city government, and have "weaponized" that government in favor of their political beliefs and those who share them, and against those who disagree with them. That problem will only get worse. It will not get better. If any of my readers live in a city or town controlled by progressive left-wing individuals or groups, this is a wake-up call: get out now, or be oppressed. There are no other options open to you, except to fight back - and almost every peaceful avenue of resistance has already been closed to you, up to and including elections. I need only point out the electoral fraud that was so clearly on display last month.
So, what's the path from here on out? Here's what I've seen in other countries, and read about in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ukraine, the countries of the Arab Spring, and others.
When enough pressure has built up in society, I expect there to be acts of armed resistance against progressive, left-wing tyranny. These are likely to involve attacks against electrical infrastructure (for example, the Metcalf attack in 2014); sabotage of transport infrastructure (for example, derailing trains, or causing blockages of vital roads, etc.); disruption of delivery systems (e.g. distribution centers for vital supplies, commercial warehouses, etc.); and so on. In many cases, these attacks will seek to stop supplies being given to politically favored groups and divert them to those who are not in favor, and may therefore be deprived of what they need. It's likely to develop into an urban-rural conflict, too, with cities trying to ensure they get the supplies they need by forcing rural areas to either provide them, or allow supplies to transit through them to the cities - without, of course, delivering any of those supplies to the areas through which they pass.
The powers that be will not take resistance lying down. They'll try to crack down on resistance, weaponize law enforcement into the armed wing of their politically correct administrations, and generally terrorize people into compliance. This will almost certainly include whipping up mob violence against groups and areas that are judged to be resistant to their policies (for example, richer suburbs that can afford their own private security guards, private schools, etc.). "Lynch law" may apply, too, with resisters (peaceful or not) beaten up or killed as an example to others. There will be more and more aggressive attempts to disarm the general public, so that they can't resist the authorities.
Meanwhile, the central government will blithely continue on its way, ignoring political opposition. In fact, the "opposition" will probably support the overall trend, because they've been bought off. Many people speak of the "Uniparty" in the USA, where the distinctions between Republicans and Democrats are only skin deep. I can't help but agree with that observation. I think that all our Congressional representatives and Senators, with a very few honorable exceptions, are corrupt and feckless. I'd as soon throw out the lot of them, impose strict term limits so that their offices can no longer corrupt those who fill them, and then elect a clean slate of politicians with no ties to the political machines that control city and regional politics. A plague on all their houses!
I'm not suggesting that anyone foment violent revolution. I'm simply saying that in three violent national uprisings, this is the pattern I've seen in every case. The same pattern is evident in Venezuela right now. That country is likely to be a living example to many leftists in the USA as well, because they thoroughly approve of all Chavez and Maduro have done to entrench themselves in power and destroy any effective opposition. They regard Venezuela as a textbook rather than a tragedy. They feel the same way about Cuba under Castro.
Folks, this is what I believe is coming to the USA before long. I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. All it will take is one more major upheaval to plunge us into the morass of permanent societal conflict, including armed conflict. I think that upheaval will be economic, when the inevitable results of our politicians spending money like there's no tomorrow will take effect. I'm expecting severe inflation, if not hyperinflation, within the next year or two, no matter what "official" statistics may claim or predict. (As we've seen in these pages, the real rate of consumer inflation has been hovering at about 10% per year for the last decade or more, despite the pablum figures dispensed by the authorities.). I think inflation may be accompanied by an asset price collapse (including housing), because people without jobs and incomes won't have money to buy those assets. Those who are cushioned from the blow by having lots of money will either leave with it, or be co-opted into the ruling circle to defend what they've got against the "have-nots". Again, that's been the classic pattern, and I've seen it before.
If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say so in Comments. This is an open discussion, after all. Frankly, I hope I am wrong. I don't want to see any of this again. Three times is enough in one lifetime! Sadly, however, the pattern is already clear in this country.
So, I've described what I think is heading our way. In my next post, I'll discuss how we can respond to it.
Peter
I find it hard to say this with a straight face, but it's actually true. For once - just for once! - I find myself agreeing with AOC about something. She's commenting on the spending bills passed by Congress yesterday. Click each image to be taken to the original page on Twitter.
She is, of course, absolutely correct. Every member of Congress and the Senate who voted for these two bills, without having had any chance to read them in detail and know what they were voting for, should be thrown out of office. Primary them before the next election; campaign against them for the feckless fools they are; and do your best to disgrace them publicly. They're hypocrites who've abandoned the duty they were elected to perform. They're political rubber stamps. They're party hacks, not responsible leaders.
The irony, of course, is that AOC is among them, and just as bad as any of them. After tweeting her objections above, what did she do? She voted for the bills anyway.
Congratulations, AOC. You're nothing more than the individual pot calling the collective kettle black. You have no moral or ethical leg to stand on in this matter.
Even without the hypocrisy, this is mind-bogglingly bad public policy. As Divemedic commented:
Congress just authorized another $2.5 trillion in spending and COVID stimulus. That means we are guaranteed to have a national debt of $31 trillion by next Christmas. Our economy cannot support this level of spending.
True dat. We're all going to be paying the price for this profligacy (and all the wasteful, unjustifiable and unfunded expenditure that preceded it) for a long, long time to come.
Peter
