Watching Rome Fall in Real-time

There are few things as fascinating as living during the fall of an empire. The long time questions: “how could Rome have possibly let it happen?” now are answered in real-time. 

In some ways it’s more explicable now simply because our leaders have a level of stupidity that the ancient Romans couldn't have had. Imagine one of their judges not to be able to answer the question, “how do you define a woman?”. And as bad as their military judgements were, our incomprehensibly bad pullout in Afghanistan has to be in the running. 

In the end the decline is likely as easy to understand as the quote I saw on Twitter: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.”  And so it goes, round and round and round. 

But I still have this insatiable desire to learn how to see this new completely foreign world we’re in.  Humans are meaning-seeking animals and I’d like to clue in to the big picture. 


Enter information warfare expert John Robb who has a rather unique view of things: 


“It was always kind of funny to see Trump and all these other folks during the 2020 election focus on election returns and saying they were manipulated, but the reality is the networks controlled the information flow and changed the outcome in 2020. What you saw with Trump - who had to have that direct contact with voters - was that he was heavily censored and muted and de-amplified. The outcome was largely determined by that. There was intervention on a grand scale, everyone was being controlled and the outcome achieved. 

What we’ve seen in the U.S. we see these big corporate networks have taken control of the stabilization of the U.S. Willingly the government has given them that authority and they are controlling the debate on the larger social issues, determining what is valid to talk about and what’s not, controlling election outcomes... Disconnecting the most powerful person in the world, President Trump, shows they were above everything. There’s the classic line where they say ‘the Constitution has been superseded by terms of service.’ Terms of service are now much more important to our future speech rights and everything else than our constitutional protections. And corporations can control whether we’re modern or not, or viable on a global scale or even personal scale.”

Why We Don't Make Things

Listened to podcast on a dog walk called “KunstlerCast” and a fellow named Tom Luongo lays it all out. 

“To continually grow global GDP we need to grow the supply of dollars in order to keep them both in reserve (in everybody’s central banks) and enough of them out there to flow to liquify global trade.  The dollar is three things: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Where I think we went wrong with dollar reserve system is say that the dollar needs to be all three of those things at the same time concurrently. This leads to the issuing country of the world’s reserve currency has to run a constant trade deficit to liquify the world with enough dollars to keep global trade from collapsing. That’s where we are. That keeps the currency of account stronger than it should be because we’re exporting the inflation we should be experiencing because the dollars are all going overseas and it distorts terribly our economy and gives us the false sense that we don’t have to produce anything, all we have to do is produce money and then we get goods. We don’t have to make the goods themselves. Eventually the dollar should collapse but I don’t see it happening soon or rapidly.” 

Finally Making Sense of the Ukraine Invasion

Heard very interesting interview with John Robb, author of a book on modern network warfare. He talked about how the decline of the effectiveness of the nation state has left a vacuum that "networks" like corporations and social media groups have exploited. It's why the Russia/Ukraine war, which should've been a local skirmish, has become a worldwide existential threat.

He says that networks reveal the decline of religion in that since everyone now has a different conception of the good or what's right. Networks can then only solidify, be effective and have a purpose in common is to be against a common target. This happened Mubarak in Egypt, Occupy Wallstreet, Tea Party, and the anti-Trump Resistance folks. Whether it be Trump or Putin or Wall Street, the key is to have a common enemy that unites a disparate group.  This swarm/"hive mind" takes over and ends up leading the leaders. Which is why the hive keeps pushing Biden to further escalate with respect to Ukraine. 

Here's a key part of interview provides a simple explanation for why Ukraine has been a figure of obsession (hint: and it's not because they're white unlike the Yemenis!): 

Doug Casey: "This Russia/Ukraine conflict is basically a border war, the type of thing that has been going on in that part of the world for a thousand years.. a border war between two shithole countries that really shouldn't affect anybody. And in recent history in Europe I would've compared it to the succession of Kosovo from Serbia because this was a secessionist movement of Donbass from Ukraine for reasons that seem to me just as good as those of Kosovo breaking away from Serbia. And of course with Serbia the U.S. comes in and bombs the hell out of Serbia and that's fine, but the Russians try to protect the Donbass people and that's not fine. Is this just that the U.S. controls the world media rather than the Russians?”

Robb: "Yeah you could see it as a Slavic civil war between two relatively corrupt countries. It should've been just a subregional war. We could've sent arms into Ukraine to make it more expensive for Russia. Keep Russia connected to the world but at the same time help Ukraine. And that's the way it started out for a few days but we're in this world of networks and we had a large network of people, the Resistance, the anti-Trumpers who had been working on Russiagate. They put Trump and Putin together as a kind of existential threat to the West, the rise of authoritarianism around the world, so for the past five years they'd been working on creating this vision of evil such that when Russia invaded Ukraine it triggered them. All those years of casting Russia as the reason Trump was in office, that he'd already pretty much declared war on the U.S. by intervening in the 2016 election -- though if you looked at the stuff and the numbers it's not even a rounding error in the kind of propaganda we self-propagate. This network took it and amplified the war." 

A Poem and a Quote

The sun gesticulates

Cast-glances from the western window

Just before seven on a Saturday holy

Why so rare these late-day glints? 

Like the stones of Newgrange at equinox

Let it be writ in Columbus April sixteenth

The sun crouches low at seven

To bend to the sunroom’s dimensions. 

**

On why I like my suburban backyard even if it's a non-tropical savannah equivalent. From James Kunstler's "Living in the Long Emergency": 

“The savanna biomes around the world are the home of the majority of the world’s mammals. There are fewer mammals in a forest than there are in a grassland. There are more animals in the savanna than either. ‘And the human being basically loves the savanna,’ he continued. ‘That’s our homeland. It’s the Garden of Eden. It’s where we came from, the Olduvai Gorge, if you’re into the whole out-of-Africa genesis thing. And if you want proof that the savanna form is appealing to human beings, look at the golf course, you know, the lawn with the trees. It’s open underneath. We’ve got grass. We can see any predators come. We can climb trees for safety if we have to. There’s food on all the trees and shrubs, bushes, and vines. And there’s animals around. If we eat animals or use animal products, it’s all there. It’s a complete habitat for humans.’”

Politics and Poetry

My liberal brother-in-law recently wanted to “talk politics” but warned me not to use Fox News or any conservative outlet as my source. It's like we're speaking different languages.  I ruled out his sources of course so there’s not a lot to say.  I could tell him that all news is propaganda nowadays so we’ll have to wait till there’s journalism again. 

The difference between now and say, 2015, is that back then I was willing to give some credence to CBS, NY Times, etc... I felt like his networks were more established and credible and mine were more amateur and fly-by-night. It’d be like comparing Prudential Insurance to a small, iffy insurance company that only recently started.  But I’ve been greatly disabused of that notion in the interim. Don't judge by appearances.  It’s freeing, for sure, to no longer need to give any more credence to his sources than he gives to mine. 

I’ve heard that we’re merely going back to the 19th century in our history when newspapers were either Democrat or Republican and there was no pretense of objectivity.  So apparently it’s been done before although it would be nice to see a scholarly article based on our 19th century history on effects (beyond  polarization) of the bifurcation of media. (Well, there was a Civil War...hmm..)

**

Reading a book on the history of England and the author Joseph Pearce makes the point that I often forget, and one that applies also to America and Ireland as well as England since all are secular shadows of their former selves.  We think of history as “what was”, but it is all one moment to God. There is no past or future with God; all is simultaneous.  We ascribe firm categories of what was and what will be but those are fake distinctions.  True America is as much her Founding Fathers now as true Ireland is her saints and martyrs.  George Washington is as present to God now as Joe Biden so America is still as much Washington as Biden. 

Joseph Pearce writes of England: 


"We know that true England can never die, not because it lingers like a fading coal in the memory of mortal men, but because it exists as a beautiful flower in the gardens of eternity....England is not dependent on the awareness of those walking around in the geographical location of England today who have no clue what real England is."

I was glad to see the author of the hymn “Faith of Our Fathers” mention my own basis for my longterm hope in America (short-term despair of course):


Faith of our fathers,

Mary’s prayers,

Shall win our country back to thee;

And through the truth that comes from God,

England shall then indeed be free. 

In another Pearce book he makes the case for "wasting" time with poetry:

It might be prudent in a preface to a book entitled Poems Every Catholic Should Know to address the question of whether Catholics should bother to know poetry at all. We all live busy lives and we might feel that we don’t have time for anything but the most important things. Can we really claim that poetry is all that important? Don’t we have better things to do with our time?

In essence, St. Thomas shows us that humility is the beginning of wisdom because it is the necessary prerequisite for our eyes being opened to reality. One who has humility will have a sense of gratitude for his own existence and for the existence of all that he sees. This gratitude enables him to see with the eyes of wonder. The eyes that see with wonder will be moved to contemplation on the goodness, truth and beauty of the reality they see. Such contemplation leads to the greatest fruit of perception, which is what St. Thomas calls dilatatio, the dilation of the mind. It is this dilation, this opening of the mind to the depths of reality, which enables a person to live in communion with the fullness of goodness, truth and beauty. 

Let’s summarize: Humility leads to gratitude which sees with wonder, prompting the contemplation that leads to the dilation of the mind. 

Our modern obsession with social media might be seen as an infernal inversion of this true order of perception. If humility opens our eyes to reality, pride shuts them, blinding and binding us with the arrogance of our own ignorance. Pride, or narcissism, sees only itself or, more correctly, it sees everything in the light or darkness of its own self-centredness. 

It is myopic. It cannot see beyond its own self-centre of gravity. It lacks gratitude. Such ingratitude leads to the cynicism which cannot experience wonder nor see the beauty inherent in reality. This lack of wonder makes contemplation on the goodness, truth and beauty of reality impossible and therefore makes dilatatio unattainable. 

Once again, let’s summarize: Pride leads to ingratitude which lacks wonder, preventing contemplation and therefore closing instead of opening the mind. 

Another way of saying the same thing is to say that humility takes time while pride merely wastes it. 

Truly humble souls, filled with gratitude and wonder, take the time to stop in the midst of a busy day to sit in the presence of beauty. They open their eyes to the glories of God’s Creation and to the reflected and refracted glories of man’s sub-creation in art and literature, or else they close their eyes from all distraction so that they can listen to the singing of birds or the singing of choirs. Such time taken is the most joyful part of the day, a time when the mind communes with the reality of which it is a part. 

Prideful souls, lacking both gratitude and wonder, waste their time with mindless distraction after mindless distraction, filling the vacuum that their mindlessness.

If we wish to have minds open to the presence of God we need to take time and not waste it. We need to take time in the silence of prayer or the silence of poetry. We need more time with trees and less time with trash and trivia. A tree, or a flower, or a sunset are priceless gifts for which a lack of gratitude is a sin of omission. We cannot ever be wasting time when we’re taking it in wonder-filled contemplation. To be or not to be. That is the question. To be alive to the goodness, truth and beauty which surrounds us, or not to be alive to it. To delight in the presence of Creation so that we might dilate into the presence of the Creator or to distract ourselves to death.

Algorithm to Determine Congressional Passion on a Given Issue

Working on an algo to determine extent of Congressional passion on a given issue. So far I have three inputs: 

1. Does it affect them or their legacy? 

2. Does it affect how other kids in class see them, i.e. other global ruling elites? 

3. Can it be used against the other party to gain more power for themselves? 

Scoring:

0-10: Congress could not care a fig. 

10-20: Congress mildly interested.

20-30: Congress much interested.  

** 

These criteria totally explicate why Jan 6th so excites Congress. It's sort of the off-the-richter scale event for Congress (scale 1-10): 

1. They were physically in the building, so 10. 

2. It was gigantic worldwide news and embarrassment so 10.

3. Can be used against Trump and any other political enemies so 10. This works both for Democrats and Republicans because most GOP officeholders want to Trump gone from scene. 

That score of 30 is the highest in U.S. recorded history! 

**

FBI/deep state against Trump, Russia hoax, etc... (Score 28)

1. Yes, politicians co-opted by Chinese money were hurt by Trump’s anti-China actions as well as their partners in military industrial complex due to Trump view of NATO and wars.  So 8. 

2. Yes, Trump hugely embarrassing to other kids in class, i.e. European rulers.  So a 10. 

3. Yes, to dethrone Trump this is definitionally true. So a 10. 

This is a 28, second highest. 

**

Kavanaugh hearing (Score: 20) 

1. Voting on SCOTUS candidates contributes hugely to their legacy. Everyone is watching: 9

2. Again, not much. Let's go 1 since Europeans don't care who is on court: 1

3. Yes, ding-ding-ding:  10

So that would be a score of 20. 

**

Election Security (score 14): 

1. Not so much. They successfully entered office under current voting system and see no reason to mess with it:  3

2. Europeans don't care about our voting system: 1

3. Yes can be used as weapon. 10

**

Decline of Manufacturing in U.S. (score 8): 

1. Not at all. Can still buy their BMW: 1

2. Europeans don't care what we build: 1

3. Both parties are globalist so hard to pin it on one: 6 

**

Balancing Federal Budget (score 5): 

1. No, doesn't affect them unless a default on debt:  2

2. No, doesn't embarrass them to run huge deficit as many other countries do too:  1 

3. Not so much because neither GOP nor Dems care about debt nowadays: 2

I Love Words

I think of how Eric Metaxas loves words, especially slightly unfamiliar ones, and I feel similarly. It seems an odd thing, to like words!  You can’t touch them and you can’t eat or drink them. You can’t store them in a vault and hope they appreciate in value. But I take comfort that it’s part of the ever quirky human condition.  

People have loved words since before they were written down; Homer spoke poetically some 5,000 years ago. God made us this way, or at least some of us.  The philosopher Rene Girard would say that all loves are give to us from others - if everyone valued ankles, ankles would become the body part most associated with sexual desire - so essentially it was probably a few authors in a few books in youth who transfused this affection in me.  

Partially though I think it’s a particular brand of writing that appeals - depictions of nature and of the senses.  Words are thus a conduit to relive actual experiences. The description of the beauty of trees or ocean merely triggers the feelings that I have in an actual forest or sea and so is derivative. Nearly everyone is in love with some form of nature, be it the sea or sun or moon or mountain. This is surely bred in us as well. Only humans create art and the cave dwellers 20,000 years ago drew - what else? - God’s creation.  It’s a way of extending the pleasure of scenery even when you aren’t in front of it. 

A couple examples from the Charlie Smith novel I’m reading:

She lay down on the yellowed sisal rug in the living room and listened to the little house geckos chirping like docents...Arise, she said silently, the Redeemer has come, and stopped in the kitchen—that still held its faded bundle of afternoon light like a sheaf of yellow seagrass in its arms...             

Stars everywhere like bristly bits tossed aside, crumbs.

Livin' in a Stupid Age

I think a decade or two ago Mark Shea or someone said, "we live in a stupid age." 

The last few years have been: "hold my beer". 

The asininity has reached stratospheric levels.  To borrow from Lino Rulli, it's not assi-nine it's ass-i-ten. 

How much longer till we see headline: "Local Obstetrician Tells Husband 'Don’t Bring Politics Into This' When Asked Sex of Newborn"?

Prayer is the main solution of course but I'm always under the semi-illusion of thinking money will solve problems. My longtime disdain for lawyers has abated; before I saw them as parasites but now see them as the only tool left in a insane society. 

Perhaps I’m naive but I think the last best hope for working through the system is being able to grassroots-fund lawyers who will fight for conservatives. Not that my pittance will make much difference anyway but but... it's like voting, you want your vote to count and not cancelled out by a fake one.  

Lawyers are like policemen in that the more amoral a country and its government becomes the more you need them. Obviously we need them desperately now, at least the ones willing to defend the likes of the Jan 6 protestors or to fight the courts to release documents and uncover corruption. The number of worthy charities explodes as injustice and oppression explodes.

How long till a Babylon Bee type headline: "DOJ Spokesman says "Jan 6 Trespassers Lucky to Get a Trial at All, Let Alone a Fair One”? 

Persuasion seems a joke at this point except for perhaps the small controlled experiment of a jury. The public at large is drunk off the media narrative. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum... the Left declared war on us. We were out there, mostly minding our own business, and suddenly all hell broke loose. Mostly because Americans committed the mortal sin of electing Donald Trump to the presidency. 

I'm amused by those who say that Trump is too divisive for '24.  It's like Britains saying in 1943 "Churchill is too divisive...let's put Neville Chamberlain in".  President DeSantis would become President Satan within two weeks of his inaugural.  At some point we've got to wake up to the reality that there's not going to be a "uniter" president because there's no way to unite fundamentally equal and opposite mindsets. Square, meet circle. 

Babylon Bee Created A Monster

I upgraded my Babylon Bee subscription and they gave me “headline writing rights”.  Which means I along with every other schlub can offer headlines which then get voted on Slido-style. 

Here are my potential entries…so far I’ve entered only the first two. Gotta spread the wealth:  

**

Minnesota Cop Used Lethal Force So Cleveland Indians Had To Change Their Name

Congress Gives Self 21% Raise To Offset Smaller Future Insider Trading Profits

Justice* Ketanji Brown’s Nameplate to Sport Asterisk Saying “Sex & Color Aided”

Trump Didn’t Make us Tired of Winning But Always Being Right is Getting a Little Boring

Male Swimmer Lia Thomas Would Be More Entertaining With a Falsetto

U.S. Elites Found to Have Been Flirting With Ukraine For Years, Hinting at NATO Marriage 

“American Hero” Job Has Been Outsourced to Zelensky

Six out of Ten Americans Would Prefer Ukraine Over West Virginia as U.S. State 

 

Put Not Your Trust In Code

Wall Street Journal inadvertently makes the case against Dominion voting machines:

“Both of these books re­veal the messi­ness be­hind crypto. Code may be law, but code is writ­ten by peo­ple. Crypto may be de­cen­tral­ized, but servers are still bought and run by peo­ple. Ethereum may be both ‘im­mutable’ and ‘self-gov­ern­ing,’ but when the code was hacked, his­tory proved plenty mu­ta­ble and the de­vel­op­ers who cre­ated the cur­rency were the ones who made the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sions.”  

Live-Tweets of the Hanks v Griswold Case

Ashe in America live-tweeted the Hanks v. Griswold hearing (Jena Griswold is the infamous Colorado Sec of State)... Griswold has been demonizing county clerks doing their job: 

Attorney for the Plaintiffs is speaking now.

Attorney is arguing the destruction of records violates the statutes.

Also argued the certification process.

Connecting Griswold to Obama. 

Claiming new evidence with the Elbert county image. 

Asking for forensic audit of Elbert and Douglas.

Talking about what Tina Peters did — I imagine this is going the route of “we can compare Elbert and Mesa”

On standing: Must have suffered injury.  May provide the requisite harm. Judge reading from a decision (Marks) against Sec Gessler (R) back in the day

Defense saying Marks is not relevant

Judge asks defense if they have an argument as to whether the system met the VSS 👀

(VSS = Voting Systems Standards)

I can’t believe this!!! He asked what the remedy is if true.

Defense: There’s lots of remedy with the Secretary of State.

Judge: If the Secretary fails to take action?

Judge: Does anyone other than the Secretary have standing and, if not why?

Defense: it has to be timely

WHOA.

Judge: so what’s the 35 day trigger?

Defense quoted statute that a verified petition would ...

State’s timing and standing arguments are destroyed by attorney Case!

Time limit is moot because Sec of State Griswold has repeatedly ignored evidence. She has the Mesa reports. Instead of investigating, she demonized clerk Peters, then clerk Schroeder, then clerk Klotz. 

But didn’t look at the evidence.

Now he is arguing administrative procedures — Jena’s assumed emergency rules.

Clerks are harmed when the SecState deletes their Election Data

Jena has prohibited clerks from hiring experts (emergency rules) which requires the Clerks to trust the SOS office.

Attorney Case: “What is she hiding?” 

Nailed it.

Secretary could have prevented this and failed to act. What were her motive?

Judge: so what’s the 35 day trigger?

Defense quoted statute that a verified petition would be an available remedy and the judge agreed.

Booooom!!  #logfileslivesmatter

Sounds like the clerks are going to have standing.

Judge: Do you agree the clerks have the duty to hold the data for 22 months?

Defense: No

Judge: a little more specificity?

Defense: You’re asking me to expand upon their allegations.

Judge just took his glasses off. In my head, it’s a good sign 😆❤️

Judge says SecState doesn’t have responsibility to preserve data to preserve records.

Judge: if they have a duty how do they not have standing

Defense: The law provides they have a duty but they are filing under the Apa which has different regulations.

Going for the technicality approach.

Ok judge questions for Case now.

Defense declines to say anything

Defense rests.

Judge to Case: We’re here to determine if there is standing and subject matter jurisdiction. Claim on rules (6th judicial review) arguably constrains the clerk and recorders. Do you believe the commissioners have standing?

Case: Yes, because they purchase the equipment. Purchasing decision means they can be harmed

Judge: obligation ends at funding

Case: Duties and responsibilities… and DEFECTIVE EQUIPMENT

Ok judge just said “oh actually, I understand your position.”

“Politics has no place in this courtroom and we will get to this as soon as possible.”

#recess

Sts Perpetua and Felicity

Words make things more real for me which is why, I think, Sts Perpetua and Felicity strike such a cord.  Their writings not that long after the death of the last apostle really bring home the actuality of their experience. 

Their deaths were in Carthage, now Tunisia. A big city on the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Italy. The “games” were there too, not just in Rome - “games” meaning spectacles of Christians fed to lions. 

The Roman emperor at the time was Septimius Severus who, after deposing and killing the incumbent emperor Didius Julianus, killed his other rivals for the crown. It’s unknown if the deaths of Christians in Carthage were local persecutions or empire-wide actions or decrees by Severus.

From Universalis.com: 

“With so many martyrs of the third and fourth centuries we have to say ‘they were martyred but nothing else is known about them.’ That is not the case here. We have a detailed contemporary account of their arrest, trial, sufferings and martyrdom, written partly by the saints themselves and partly by an eye-witness. Devotion to them spread rapidly and they are mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass.”

The 22-year old Perpetua wrote in prison about her father’s frustration that she would not renounce her Christianity which would only increase as her day of martyrdom drew near:

“Now when the day of the games drew near, there came in my father to me, spent with weariness, and began to pluck out his beard and throw it on the ground and to fall on his face cursing his years and saying such words as might move all creation. I was grieved for his unhappy old age.”

Quote on Twitter: "I think that in about 3 weeks the press could get the average American to support a genocide."

Interesting article in NY Sun about the civil war in the Republican Party. 

Two views of reality: “National Review thinks we can make peace with the liberals in debates over principles and policies, but we can’t go too far lest they call us radicals. The other side thinks we are in a wartime situation: the left wants to destroy us. That is a large difference.”

Another said the big difference is that “National Review thinks its job is to police the right, while the hard right thinks that our job is to defeat the left...This is infuriating because the left has Hollywood, the media, and the tech industry. Imagine trying to take on all of that and then be criticized by people who are supposed to be on your own side.” 

When did others make the u-turn and move off the mainstream GOP reservation?  My guesses: 

Pat Buchanan: 1990 

Victor D. Hansen: 2010

Tucker Carlson: 2013

Eric Metaxas: 2015

Mollie Hemingway : 2017

J.D. Vance: 2018

**

The problem with seeing the Left as an opponent of war is that it leads to further disintegration.  For example, the Left and the government will see the right as enemies of the state and thus feel well within their rights to punish and persecute the right. That is already happening with “lawfare” and judges who take it upon themselves to deny hard conservatives due process under the law.  

So you have to be sure before taking that plunge, especially with media, corporations, and government all against you. 

But on the other hand, to be in denial about what the Left wants is also dangerous. Being an ostrich has risks. To be naive towards Hitler in 1930s wasn’t a great strategy.

I don’t know what the answer is other than to pray and sacrifice that we get a religious revival. 

And the problem ever is always how to be angry with injustice and yet possess humility. 

**

St Augustine writing around 400 A.D., may as well be 2021:

"For I know very well what efforts are needed to persuade the proud how great the power of humility is. But by humility we reach a height—a height not grasped by human arrogance but granted by divine grace—which transcends all these earthly pinnacles that totter with the shifts of time. . . . This belongs to God alone, but the inflated spirit of human pride strives to claim it for itself ...so I must also speak of the earthly city [of Rome]—the city which, when it seeks dominion, even though whole peoples are its slaves, is itself under the dominion of its very lust for domination."

We can see that with America. 

We once had sufficient humility not to go fight in the European war (WW1) until it was 3/4ths over.  Again in WW2, we waited over 2 long years before entering and then only after being attacked.  

We then had enough sense not to try to make the world in our image, not to try to be the utopian who would prefer to right every wrong (by killing). 

Now we positively itch for war - sometimes even starting them - whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or now the drumbeats for Ukraine.  

The downfall of the U.S. is pride and the lack of respect for the limits of our power. (This even despite the continued demonstration of the weakness of that power - see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan!) 

In our feverish desire for war, we’ve even made our economic co-dependence a weapon even though every Russian limb you cut off, you cut one off the rest of the world.

Earnestness in PJ O'Rourke and Matt Taibbi

The story of man is: sin - punishment - repentance.  Rinse and repeat. Both on a micro and macro level.  So it makes our current situation explicable. Every generation, after all, must start from scratch...we're back in the sin phase. America will be punished and then, ideally, repent. So hopefully I can tamp down my shock a bit. 

The word of the day is: earnestness.  God probably calls us to this more than I realize. This quality, according to John Podhoretz, was one of the things that made the late P.J. O’Rourke a mensch. O’Rourke never quite fit in, being an Ohioan amid a host of east coast Harvardians. Somehow O’Rourke managed to be earnest and yet funny. 

Earnestness is decidedly not a Gen X vibe. A couple days after hearing Podhoretz I read Matt Taibbi on this, flipping it around a bit: 

I grew up in the Cold War, one of those Gen-exers raised on Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five and Dr. Strangelove to believe our hawks and their hawks were equally crazy. My generation’s orientation was ironic. We struggled with earnestness because we were there during the ten seconds it took for the Boomers who preceded us to go from being Marxist revolutionaries to Apple executives. The late seventies and eighties were a strange period in American history (a lucky one, I realize in hindsight, as I think about the world my kids are facing) when war was so distant that the fact that not enough people took it seriously as a policy option was a regular complaint of Washington experts. 

My generation, which smoked a lot of weed and listened to a lot of standup, mostly didn’t buy it. Being told since birth about the thousands of civilization-destroying missiles aimed at you by lunatics on both sides of the planet tends to decrease your patience for armchair-General Buck Turgidson types who argue that with a few engineering tweaks here and there, war can be a good idea again.

Anarcho-Tyranny and It's Discontents

Heard a term yesterday that I didn’t know existed describing a phenomena I only recently became aware of.  It’s sort of akin to if you went to the hospital with a serious injury and someone else with paper cut received priority and attention. 

It’s called “anarcho-tyranny” and is defined as “the dehumanizing state of affairs whereby the state refuses to stop violent crime, yet still vigorously enforces even the most unjust and petty laws against ordinary people.”

Really eye-opening since I had no idea this sort of thing was “a thing” until the way the Jan. 6rs were treated versus the BLM rioters.  The treatment of the Jan6rs could have been a shining example of our legal system playing no favorites but became the exact opposite. 

Instead of charging them to the fullest extent of the law and sentencing them based on those laws the DOJ has spent over a year now making them sweat either with home arrest or in D.C. jail, understanding well that the process is the punishment.  

One person, who did no violence and merely trespassed in the Capitol,  recently committed suicide after hearing the DOJ is asking for 50-70 months in prison. (“Consistency in sentencing” is the goal of the DOJ they say, which essentially means, “pretend there’s no difference between violent offenders and trespassers”.) 

We’ve come a long, long, long way from when the future president John Adams defended the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre simply because even they had the right to a fair and speedy trial. 

We’re seeing in realtime how the decline of a virtue plays out in a nation, namely in a lack of adherence to due process. I would not expect that from judges, who are supposed to be impartial and “above the fray”.  They are supposed to be the best we have and now that they’ve lost virtue well... Katie bar the door. 

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More on anarcho-tyranny in Revolver News:  

“Anarcho-tyranny is why downtown D.C. was abandoned to a rioting horde last summer, most of whom will never be brought to justice, yet the largest manhunt in history seeks every person who walked into the Capitol on January 6. Anarcho-tyranny is why St. Louis only made an arrest in 29 percent of murders last year, but still brought felony charges against the McCloskeys for simply holding guns in the face of a braying mob.”

The term originated in the early ‘90s by Sam Francis, who was a Patrick Buchanan advisor back in the day and predicted that someone like Trump would come along sooner or later given the behavior of the elites.  On the term: 

He used it in the context of the crime wave of the early nineties, when armed drug gangs freely roamed American streets even as big government plotted to grab guns from regular Americans and ensnare the bourgeoisie in its regulatory and tax bureaucracy. It is a situation in which government does everything but what it is supposed to do, namely protect life and property.