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.