Tuesday, February 20, 2018
The Rabbit Hole
Excuse my weak abilities in dealing with internet concepts, like this blog. I can’t seem to get links to my other sites to show up at the top of the page in a mobile format. Anyway, for anyone who likes the Arts, Education Theory, astrology, or other such things, please be further enchanted, bewildered, or annoyed:
OTHER PROMETHEAN STUFF
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Striving for a Dopamine Rush while Rome Burns
Like a lot of people today on the right of the political spectrum, I often waver between the libertarian and conservative side of issues (they’re not completely the same). In the past I really didn’t care much about issues like abortion, trans rights, or drug use. I basically still don’t. I must confess however that the more the woke left pushes its agendas on the public and the more leftist-controlled power structures like google unjustly manipulate access to information, the more I find myself digging my heels in with the cultural right. It is of course a common tendency among most — a psychological principle — to hold one’s ground more strongly when the opposing views argument becomes a mere command to obey.
The firmest positions from the political right that I hold relate to the value of keeping government authority limited and power diffused. My greatest fear for the future is that statism will triumph and every citizen of the world will become a mere cog in a global bureaucratic wheel that constrains human creative expression and codifies stasis. For the whole world to be like North Korea would be hell on Earth but for the world to be an embodiment of Maxine Water’s vision would be a close second (her authoritarian idealism would likely lead to a North Korea-type scenario anyway).
Beyond the political tug of war currently occurring in the west is something possibly even more dubious. Andrew Breitbart famously said that “politics is downstream from culture” — an insightful observation that recognized the role that culture plays in manipulating political thought. The right can pen articles and essays, speak at colleges (though that is easier said than done), and create blogs and Youtube videos. But, no matter how convincing one may be, impact will be limited so long as Hollywood, the music industry, education, and establishment news sources are dominated by the cultural Marxist menu of grievance.
Cultural Marxists’ belief, along with “progressives’,” has been the guiding force behind the West’s ever leftward momentum during the last half a century or so. Suffice it to say that Cultural Marxism is a philosophical belief system that sees the final advance of socialism most easily obtained through a direct attack on the daily cultural milieu we live within. A cultural Marxist will not bore their audience with lectures on “class struggle” or “dialectical materialism.” Instead, they may organize a march for a concocted crisis of oppression against a victim du jour (and their contrived gripe will be covered by the likes of CNN to their favor).
So we now find ourselves daily bombarded with whining concerns for the plight of the transgendered LGBQxyz...”community,” as if anyone really cares about their victimization or adoration. Some people have jobs and bills to pay.
A half century ago, mention of alternative lifestyles would elicit a snicker and eye roll. To be sure, reaction would not be marked by “acceptance” but it wouldn’t be marked by “hate” either (and it rarely is today). The Cultural Marxist goal is to import as much rot and chaos to the body politick as possible and then paint all aspects of society as corrupt and in need of total upheaval for not accepting every possible choice of lifestyle and for simultaneously being decadent for having done so. Then, they can insert the socialist “guardians” they fostered upon millions in the last century. One must remember that a socialist of any stripe ultimately seeks to control others. The means by which it gains that control is irrelevant so long as the goal is reached.
More than a few people have noted our own time’s similarity to Weimar Germany, a cesspool of decadence and cultural decay. As a libertarian, I don’t care if someone is using drugs and I don’t like the idea of a threat of punishment if one chooses to. On the flip side I don’t think that dealers on street corners and addict parents are a good thing either. I don’t care if others think they are a different gender than their biology indicates. Where the march into Gomorrah becomes problematical is when “choice of lifestyle” becomes a strategy to disrupt societal stability. The famous Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” well depicts the negative course of civilization when it has lost any sense of moral bearing. The Romans — and history — could see the results of a civilization where the prime goal is indulgence and gratification at the expense of all that is innocent, pure, and dignified. Freud had hit the nail on the head when he noted that humans’ simple prime impulses were to seek pleasure and avoid pain. One could also note that an excess indulgence in pleasure often results in pain; physical, emotional, and societal.
I’ve never been into religion at all and have always been annoyed by those who think I am in need of “[their] truth.” That said, I’m not so sure that the quiet family who goes to church on the weekend, prays before meals and vows relative adherence to standards of morality is such a bad thing when compared to “revolutionaries” dedicated to the overthrow of common goodness. The Jacobin alternative to stable living can be seen as even worse when one considers what occurs once they’re in power. There isn’t a single “revolutionary” movement that, upon destruction of their host body, doesn’t become puritanism on steroids. The Taliban outlawed music, the Soviets sought to eliminate any art form that veered away from “Soviet Realism,” and North Korea today is hardly a great place to go clubbing on the weekends (unless one is a high-level member of the “workers’ party”).
In a liberal republic, the traditionalist perspective (conservatism) is largely motivated by the expectation and hope that free choice will choose what is best for one’s self and others, but the lure of pleasure can blur the lines between good living and “fun” living. There are plenty of artists and Hollywood directors that will gladly romanticize a world of wanton decadence over one constrained by reason and moderation. The Hollywood left would have us believe the average family home is (or should be) like the one in the film, American beauty...or that it’s okay if it becomes so. In truth, humans have problems and purity is hard to come by but when everyone is on the Dionysian bandwagon, madness becomes a collective standard — never a good thing.
Hypocrisy is okay, within reason. Most people want a sane world with some constraint on the tendency of humans to do stupid things, or at least do things to unnecessary excess. And most people, at some time or other, want an extra cookie, bong hit, or glimpse of a naked body.
It may be that sane people will just have to accept that the course of all civilizations eventually takes them down a road to self-destruction and we can only hope that our own lifetime doesn’t occur in such a period.
Maybe it’s okay that Donald Trump is a serial philanderer who also supports patriotism and Christian traditionalists. The “hypocrites” may actually be the best among us, drunk on Saturday night and praying in church the next day. Better than living a “clean life” in honor of an overbearing state or slouching toward Gomorrah only to find one’s self waking the next day in a the gulag.
Friday, February 09, 2018
Just the Facts...
The current political climate in the U.S. would have us believe that incredibly complex and contentious events have recently occurred and that are open to a variety of perspectives. This is not the case.
The circumstance that has put the American republic on the brink of civil war is actually born of rather simple and fact-based actions. They are as follows:
The growth and centralization of the state has progressed steadily for over a hundred years. There are many individuals and groups within the country who favor and promote this increase of state authority (they can be labeled or self-described as statists, “Progressives,” socialists, communists, etc.).
This momentum toward the growth of centralized state authority has been enhanced by a statist perspective that has reached deeply into the culture as a whole, thus coloring the views of millions. The most banal of daily cultural expressions (e.g. elementary school classrooms, pop music, etc.) contribute to the successful usurpation of power by statist ideologues.
The goals and strategies of the statists have been successful enough as to have finally reached a point where they will be unopposed and any attempts at opposing them will be met with decisive and punitive action by the state and its legal apparatuses. A complimentary media and cultural milieu will assist in any way possible to further the goals of statist action and contribute to the demise of anyone who challenges their plans.
The election of Hillary Clinton was to cement the statists’ grip on power that had been so actively facilitated by Barack Obama.
Through the use of “immigration” (and importation of new sympathetic voters) and dominance within the civil service (the bureaucracy), the state would become ideologically uniform and unopposed.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to win...PERIOD.
No one within the statist apparatus had anticipated an active challenge from a wealthy independent outsider with charisma and the ability to sway a huge part of the voting public.
Donald Trump was NOT supposed to happen...PERIOD.
Donald Trump DID happen and thus it was that the apparatus of state (and statism) felt compelled to act in any way possible to overturn the choice of the voting public.
Players within the former administration and the legal channels they held sway over (largely in concert with establishment media institutions) had actively sought to prevent Donald Trump from winning and thereafter have continued to seek his removal by virtually any means.
In our time, there literally is no one other than Trump that has the views and ability to challenge the establishment and thwart their plans.
None of the preceding observations are conjecture. They are objectively verifiable and it becomes more clear each day as the establishment/deep state’s plans unravel.
The pivotal events to come will be set in motion by the conclusions reached by the Mueller “team.” We can’t really know for certain what those conclusions will be. I would put my money on the perception that Mueller and his pack of establishment lawyers will seek to further the goals of the statists.
Their actions are full of illegalities and injustices. The fact that Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, James Comey, and other players in this fiction-like scheme still walk freely should make it obvious where it is all going.
The opinion polls are, as they had been before the election, wrong. Donald Trump has a sympathetic following that far exceeds what media and culture would have us believe. Few citizens are opposed to prosperity. Few citizens believe that a president’s role is to belittle his nation and deliberately sacrifice its success for some intellectual philosophy or social plan. Few citizens are passionate about a need to deliberately allow non-citizens to direct the nation’s fate.
Conservatives and moderates do not typically protest, hold marches, or organize mass-disruption but...
If active attempts are soon made to harm the presidency of Donald Trump, the reaction among the population will be devastating. I would guess that the country’s population of farmers, factory workers, and veterans far outnumbers lit-majors and basement-dwelling “revolutionaries.
The left is going to have to find somewhere else to impose their utopia (again). Sober-minded people are not going to allow this last big power grab by the Jacobin class — not in America.
Monday, February 05, 2018
It Begins...
The well-deserved backlash begins.