I was thinking earlier today that Harris is sort of the end result. All of us who think at all look around our world and wonder why its just all so bad. That nothing seems to work and that only bad things keep happening. We almost feel like rats in a maze – and no matter which way we go there is always something or someone even stupider than before blocking the way. I think I’ve hit upon why.
For about a century and a half the world has been continually ratcheted towards stupid: that the only way we’re allowed to operate, at all, is by agreeing to really dumb things. We’ve been again and again confronted with a manufactured crisis and our only way out – or so we perceive – is to agree to the monstrously stupid proposal of the person who created the crisis. I say it goes back a century and a half and I’m getting more and more certain of it as I roll it around.
It all started with Bismarck.
He, himself, was a very intelligent man – indeed, he might even be rated a genius if given a cognitive test under modern conditions. But he wanted something that he shouldn’t get. You need to step back a moment and realize where he was when he was essentially preparing to become Minister-President of the Kingdom of Prussia. He was a citizen of a second-rank power (Prussia) which was part of a larger entity called the German Confederation (a loose agglomeration of independent States) which was dominated by its most powerful member, the Austrian Monarchy. He looked around at this and didn’t like it – possibly out of a sense of patriotism (who likes to be part of a second-rate thing, right?) but more likely it was because Prussia was too small a field for a man who thought very highly of himself (with justification; he mostly ran rings around every contemporary: only Britain’s Disreali was unawed by him). Whatever his reason, his ambition became to dispense with the German Confederation, push Austria out of German affairs and unite all the other Germanic States into one Empire ruled from Prussia.
Nobody wanted this. Not even his fellow Prussians from King on down. The rest of Germany didn’t want it. Austria didn’t want it. France, Russia and Britain didn’t want it. Common sense dictated against it – on the Continent you had France, Russia and Austria as the three Great Powers and they were in roughly equal power relations and with no soaring ambitions to remake Europe (after the 23 years of Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, nobody in Europe was keen to disturb things and risk a resumption). Sure, there was rising German nationalist sentiment and this was working towards greater German unity but this didn’t mean that every German wanted to be ruled from Prussia…most of the nationalists envisioned German unity coming via voluntary association under freedom. If you could get Gallup to poll Germany in, say, 1864 the number who would opt for a Prussian Germany would be small. So, how did Bismarck manage his amazing trick in 8 short years (Minister-President of Prussia to Chancellor of the German Empire)? He bribed who he could, and suckered who he couldn’t bribe.
The bribes were pretty straightforward – and really got rolling after 1866 when Bismarck got his hands on the royal treasury of Hanover. This was turned into something called “the reptile fund” entirely under Bismarck’s control and he dispensed it as needed to grease the wheels. The other thing was simply lying to people until they did something horribly against their own interests but very much in line with Bismarck’s desire. Its how he got his wars against Austria in 1866 and France in 1870. Had Austria simply not declared war in 1866, or France in 1870, Bismarck’s plans would have died stillborn. But you pay some newspaper editors, you plant some lies, you threaten here, induce there and, presto, people feel like their only way out is to do the one thing they shouldn’t.
And people did observe this. They watched and learned. That is, our overall Western Ruling Class watched and learned. That you can easily own newspaper editors and convince them to say anything you want. That you can bribe your political opposition into become controlled opposition. That you can lie with impunity as long as the end result at least seems like a success. The trouble here is that what was started by a genius was turned over to ordinary people…who, to make it work, had to foster and advance people even dumber than themselves. More venal. More cowardly. More willing to do anything to get a seat at the table and do twice that to stay at it.
I’ve talked before of how during WWI the real problem with the conduct of the war – among all belligerents – was that hardly anyone in charge was a serious person. This was fifty years after Bismarck and the example he set and year by year among all Western nations the amoral liar had become ever more prominent.
You consider, for instance, the Dreyfus Case in France – an obviously innocent officer was railroaded by the military to cover up the fact that a favored man was a traitor. The spy was obviously someone else – and someone who clearly fit the bill for being a spy. But they settled on Dreyfus because it was easy to stir up a bit of anti-Semitism and blame him. It took twelve years to fix things. The poor man was shackled in a Devil’s Island cell. People were paid or bullied into backing the Army against Dreyfus even though simple patriotism – a desire for a strong France with an effective military force – dictated that justice be done as soon as possible. It dragged on as long as it did because the various false choices placed before the primary actors boiled down to them thinking that their only way out was to continue to lie. It wasn’t just one or two miscreant French officers…it was most of the officer corps, a huge number of elected officials, judges, newspapers…on and on all resolutely defending what was from the start a transparent lie. Just amazing! And even though justice was eventually done for Dreyfus (who went on to further honorable service in France’s army), it was grudging…they let him go and restored his officer’s commission. Nobody who had slandered him or railroaded him was punished…and that same officer corps who engineered that travesty was still in charge of France’s army when World War One started. And that officer corps went on to massacre the flower of French manhood in fruitless attacks against German trenches.
It wasn’t just the French, of course. At the Battle of Jutland, David Beatty had five battlecruisers and four of Britain’s newest, fastest, most powerful battleships under his command. He was confronted by five German battlecruisers under the command of Franz von Hipper. By every metric – speed, armor, gunpower, numbers – Beatty outweighed Hipper. All he had to do was concentrate his force and use his superior speed to close within range of the Germans – while staying out of their range; easy because his guns all had longer range – and he could have simply blown Hipper’s command to pieces. But, Beatty charged ahead forgetting to ensure his battleships got the order, got himself in range of the German guns and instead had his ships blown to pieces by the far more accurate German gunners. He lost three battlecruisers. Thousands of British tars were killed.
They made him a Fleet Admiral and an Earl.
John Byng was a British admiral who was charged with relieving a garrison under French siege in 1757. He failed at his task and when he returned to England he was court martialled and shot on the quarterdeck of his flagship. Bit of a different thing. Bit of a different time. Back then, Britain – and the West – were governed by serious people who weren’t about to get all weepy eyed and forgiving for someone who bungled an operation…and it wasn’t that he was defeated that got him shot. Everyone understands getting defeated…but he was judged to have wasted lives and material. He could have done more; and, really, why should he live after so many of his sailors had died pointlessly?
But to get back to our incompetents: it just went on like that, year after year and always worse. We kept on getting false crisis and stupid solutions and the people placed in charge became year by year stupider and more corrupt. Because we started with a high level of competency, it didn’t seem too bad. Sure there were horrible mistakes costing untold numbers of lives and uncounted treasure, but things still seemed to move along in a positive direction overall. And the few successes cast an aura of competence over people who really did a pretty poor job (and most of the successes were in spite of the senior leadership – it was a secondary commander who pushed things through to success in spite of idiotic orders from on high). But still the ratchet was set and the course was increasingly stupid.
When we start getting into Vietnam and later we’re really starting to see the stupid – but only in hindsight. That aura of success rather blinded all of us. Because, for instance, the Army had finished off the Germans we believed that, deep down, the Army was in good shape…we just didn’t see that while commanders like Bradley were getting caught with their pants down it was the unsung people like Lightning Joe Collins who actually got the job done. But it was the Bradley’s who commanded after the war and ensured that yet more of their like rose…and while Bradley was only a mediocre commander, his successor would be just bad…and bad…and bad…and bad…until we get a Joint Chiefs chairman calling the ChiComs to warn them about Trump. See how this goes? I mean, maybe Hoover did like to wear women’s clothing but he at least did arrest criminals…the current FBI director is trying to arrest his boss’ primary political opponent.
We got Obama because the stupid insisted that we call it a “War on Terrorism” and that Islam is a religion of peace. Had we just went right after Iran and Syria after 9/11 without worrying about semantics or offending Muslims, this thing would have been over by 2004. The current wars going on in the Middle East wouldn’t be happening. But, nothing doing – the stupid had bungled our security pre-9/11 and, none of them being shot post-9/11, they then gave us the false choice: either back a counterinsurgency war in Iraq or the terrorists have won! While the crash of 2008 finished off Bush’s GOP, it was the war that killed the brand…that made people simply tired of the old Republican party…and willing to try anything that seemed fresh. You know: like Obama. Who is an amazingly stupid person raised up entirely by corruption…but who seems like a smart guy. He proceeded to install stupid with a sense of pride – the dumber the policy or person, the more favored. People didn’t like it and so we managed to get Trump to replace Obama…but the stupid where, by then, in charge everywhere and were furious that someone non-stupid was in charge…and so they very stupidly went after Trump like a bunch of morons.
Now, to be sure, they did manage to force him out – but only to replace him with someone who had been chosen because he was stupider than Obama. And, naturally, this stupid Biden had to then choose someone even stupider than himself: Harris. You really do have to understand that if they hadn’t been stupid they would have worked with Trump, glad handed him, allowed him to take his second term and now he’d be heading out the door…with some success and with some changes made that the stupid hate…but he’d be nearly gone and with the stupid still largely running the show, and just waiting for the next stupid person – Republican or Democrat – to come in and resume the ratchet towards stupid.
But they instead made him – and us – mad. And they are really, really afraid of us coming back…but, being stupid, they settled on Harris as the means to do us in, went with stupid lawfare and now are running an incredibly stupid campaign. Stupid does undo itself in the end – it kills itself. Because its stupid.
There is still the question: we know how stupid the Ruling Class is, but how stupid are the people? If they are, indeed, stupid then we might not prevail on 11/5. If we do, though, then we might for the first time in 150 years be able to try something smart. To actually think about what we want and then set about obtaining it…without a stupid liar trying to sucker us into shooting ourselves in the foot. The Empire of Stupid might be set to fall.
Blogs For Victory 
You’ve given (as you’re so skilled at doing) great historical context to why we’re where we’re at, but if you stop and think about it, the Leftist mantra that “this time it will be different,” was all we ever really needed to know that stupid people gravitate to positions of power. And they, in turn, attract even dumber people to support them. The phrase, ” doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” comes to mind. The failures of Leftism become a cascade of self-fulfilling prophesies .
It is like that, isn’t it? The stupid just tries again, stupidly.
After I wrote this it stayed in the mind…and it rolled around some more and I remembered that after the Battle of Jutland mentioned, it was said that Jackie Fisher was heard to say over and over again, “they failed me!”. He, of course, had built the Royal Navy which appeared at that Battle…and almost all the senior officers who commanded had been fostered by him specifically with that sort of battle in mind. And he had given them exactly what they needed – faster ships than the enemy with bigger guns. He had sacrificed armor because he felt that speed and striking power compensated for this…that if you can always go faster and shoot farther, it didn’t really matter how much armor you had. And he thought the men he fostered understood this and it turned out they didn’t. And so the frustration of a first rate man like Fisher…who fortunately didn’t live long enough to see the British commanders do it again in WWII when they sent Hood in range of the Bismarck only to be blown to pieces as fast as Beatty’s battlecruisers had been.
This time it will be different…we say under Leftist control as we stick the fork in the outlet just one more time…
as we stick the fork in the outlet just one more time…
LOL!
The thing is, most who vote Dem don’t even think as far down the line as “this time it will be different” because they are totally, 100%, issue-driven. There is no “this” for them because they don’t even think about what the “this” is or how or why it could be different because they are totally oblivious to the structure of either party and how things function. Just dangle a juicy issue in front of them, dress it up in some facile slogan like “reproductive freedom” and you’ve got your votes, without the slightest interest in the process.
Main thing, who breaks it to Cappy that Bob Casey (D-PA) has a new ad out touting how he worked with Trump?
And fought Biden…
And that 538 now rates Trump’s chances of winning at 52%…
but how stupid are the people?
Based on scholastic scores, I’d say pretty stupid. Our schools are now laboratories of political weaponization rather than learning institutions. What other country teaches gender dysphoria to its elementary students?? That, in my opinion, is straight up child abuse but yet not many Americans seem to be that upset about it. What other country instructs it’s students that climate change will probably kill is all in 12 years?? Again, child abuse. It’s no wonder we have so many school shootings, and I’m surprised there are not more of them. Our kids are being manipulated by a political agenda.
Given the current topic, this seems more than appropriate:
And the new wife is a lobbyist!! Meaning this man should never be in the Senate. If this is what is needed to take this Democrat down, I’m all for it. Vote Lake
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13975609/arizona-congressman-ruben-gallego-pregnant-wife-divorce-papers.html
I will also note that Gallego was one of the strongest opponents of recent election integrity measures, and the recount efforts in 2020.
That’s the kind of thing I think is most important. Don’t get me wrong—I do judge some kinds of marital shenanigans. It’s just that many of them can fall into the general category of fleeting stupidity and are often regretted, and no one ever knows who is at fault. Opposing election integrity measures is, on the other hand, pretty clear, and the marriage of a Congressman to a lobbyist is a big red flag.
Stupidity doesn’t always get rewarded (hat-tip, Jeff Childers)
rapid unscheduled door plug relocation LOLOL
Like “rapid unplanned disassembly” instead of “explosion”. (YCMTSU)
I do believe that most of major corporate America is like Boeing – Amazon so far still keeping its act together, but how long before the DEI hires start to infect the whole thing? The problem with DEI hires is not just incompetence, but that their whole purpose – the only thing they do – is absorb resources in talking about complaints. If there aren’t lengthy discussions about complaints then the DEI hire simply has nothing to do…and, so, once you get them your primary focus shifts from the mission to dealing with complaints. Building things like a space ship comes in second…
In other words, DEI depends, among racism and fragmenting of society to generate conflict, on expanding the Bureaucratic Class. Just as we have seen it expanding “administration” in education as more and more people are required to implement DEI mandates and then enforce this implementation we will need another level of bureaucracy to adjudicate complaints, thereby gradually replacing the Productive Class with the Grievance Class.
Also from Coffee & Covid:
All things that we’ve discussed throughout this critically important election year. The proof will be in the pudding in a little over two weeks.
Their complaints really are road maps for their strategies, aren’t they? They seem to be saying that they can’t win without ineligible people being allowed to vote, without accepting ballots that violate the rules for compliance with regulations, with Republicans participating fully in the vote counting, and with equal representation of Republicans in “key election positions”—the latter tacitly admitted in the complaint that Republicans “infiltrated” key positions, telegraphing the conviction that these positions are rightfully only occupied by Democrats.
Trump has either re-written the rules of getting elected to national office…or he’s going to be the exemplar of what not to do. I think he might very well have pulled this off. We wait and see!
The Left has already been trying to demonize the word “populist”—as if a candidate running as someone who will enact the will of the people is somehow bad. I guess if your focus is on the will of the State instead of that of the people this make sense but the dichotomy of State vs People is increasingly clear.
I like this story so much … the agenda media is an extreme threat to the county
A member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked the body’s chair to take up a complaint filed with the FCC to compel CBS to release the full transcript from its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Daily Caller News Foundation learned first.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/18/exclusive-fcc-commissioner-investigation-cbs-harris-60-minutes/
When 72% of Democrats say they are better off now than they were during the Trump years, they confirm the observation that Democrats are just plain stupid. Either that or they lie because they know the truth will make it harder for their party to gain and retain power, and believe that this kind of lie is OK because it is for The Greater Good. The thing is, neither of these explanations is a good look for Democrats.
The party basically validates the observation that its base is just not smart. From the blatant need to pay people to attend Harris “rallies” and even resorting to using photos of faces in the background to give the impression of high attendance, to having to bus people in from other locations (even other states) to fill seats, to having speakers like this and this showing awareness of the IQ level of their audiences, the Left is basically now just a movement for the dumbed-down, the terminally gullible and/or the dishonest, with a lot of overlap.
Millions will vote for this woman.
The event was attended by several Arizona Republicans backing Harris in the election, including Mesa Mayor John Giles. These “Republicans” need to turn in their credentials and little “R” lapel pins, just as “Dudes for Kamala” turned in their boy bits.
“I want people to come in … and kick the tires on ideas.”
Translation: I have no idea on how to run the government so I need input from others to make me look smart. Then, if things blow up I can blame them
But there sure is a lot of stuff…