Civilization

Civilization Requires Force

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Some years back, I wrote about Bill Buckley and National Review’s successful efforts to purge the Birchers from the Conservative movement. The problem Buckley and others perceived what the JBS’ penchant for conspiracy theories – the kooky idea that there was a genuine global Communist conspiracy to undermine America and that this conspiracy had agents all through the US government and other institutions. The breaking point came when Welch – the founder of JBS – implied that Eisenhower might be some sort of Communist agent. That was, of course, ridiculous and Welch, himself, later distanced himself from it. But the crucial thing was that the Communists, at the time entirely subservient to Moscow and now just operating on their own, really were trying to undermine the USA any way they could. There really were Communist agents all through the government and other American institutions. And the primary failure of Conservatism was in not rooting these elements out – which, in my mind, was really Welch’s primary complaint about Ike. Part of the reason Truman didn’t seek re-election in 1952 was because the penetration of the US Government by Communists had been exposed and it was a horrible scandal especially as American troops were fighting Communist forces in Korea.

Ike could have cleared out the infiltrators. He didn’t; for normal GOPe reasons, he let them go…some to retire, others to be transferred to some other agency. For all the Progressive talk of a anti-Communist witch hunt in the 1950’s, the reality is that there wasn’t a witch hunt. Had there been one, we’d be a lot better off today. Had we gone on a truly forceful anti-Communist crusade in the USA, purging them from all positions and jailing those who were de-facto Soviet agents (very many of the leaders were), think of all the societal decay which wouldn’t have occurred…a huge amount of our social and economic disintegration over the past 50-60 years was caused by people who hate us being left in positions of power and influence.

So, why bring this up? Water over the dam, right? Can’t undo the past. Nope; we can’t. But we can work on the future. And over at National Review they are informing us that we Conservatives had better not like Nayib Bukele.

I know: your first question is, who the heck is that?

I, too, had never heard of him before NRO told me he’s bad. Turns out, he’s the President of El Salvador and he’s gotten a bit infamous of late for his massive crackdown on the horrifically violent gang MS-13. It had gotten really bad in El Salvador, guys; with some sources claiming the murder rate a few years back was 40 for every 100,000 people (most recent stat for us is 7 per 100,000…which, BTW, is a huge spike from just a few years ago). The gangs pretty much did whatever they wanted in El Salvador (as they do in so many Latin American countries) and, remember, these gangs aren’t like the US Mafia or even things like the Crips and the Bloods…for whatever reasons, Latin American gangs are simply inhuman brutes in their violence. Not just killing (via unbelievably savage means) rivals and witnesses (the normal run of gangland killings) but seeming to go out of their way to cruelly kill people who pose little or no threat, just to keep people terrified of the gangs, as such. Bukele did mass arrests and the murder rate in El Salvador has dropped precipitously.

Naturally, the Ruling Class is upset with this. You know the real reason why: a lot of them are owned by the criminals via bribery. But they are officially upset that, to put it mildly, Bukele didn’t ensure that the legal i’s were dotted and t’s crossed on the arrests…and it looks like arrested gangsters who were defiant…didn’t end so well.

Cry me a river.

Bukele is fighting for his country. He’s a bit of an odd duck having risen out of the Marxist FLMN and then dumping them for a more populist/nationalist ideology (which is another likely reason the Ruling Class hates him: can’t abandon the Commies!). He’s also clearly an opportunist (as a young, ambitious pol often is); there are claims he made some side deals with elements of MS-13 from time to time (which is logical to do; hold off one band while dealing with another of more immediate concern). But the thing is you can’t have a civilized nation if crime is running rampant. Your right to free speech and to vote is worthless if at any time you can be robbed or murdered by criminals acting with near-impunity (especially while your Ruling Class is safe and dry behind well-guarded walls and secret deals with the criminals). Before anything else, we must be secure in our lives and property. It isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it is the bedrock of any functioning society no matter how primitive or advanced. Bukele is simply reacting to reality – unless his people are safe, they can’t build anything.

In a civilization we have carefully constructed rules, written and unwritten, about how things work. And when everything is functioning, these rules are sufficient. Most of the time, we simply obey the unwritten rules: going to work, paying our bills, keeping our houses tidy, being polite to others. In those rare instances where something slipped, we then refer to the written rules and, being civilized people, we go to court and let lawyers, judges and the law figure out the best possible result. But at the back of it all, the thing which made it and ultimately must sustain it, is force. Brutal force. A force which can kill everyone who won’t obey the written and unwritten rules. Bukele is just demonstrating this – and it is causing some alarm among those who are continuing to live well as the current system globally collapses into lawlessness.

It is coming here, folks. When you see those videos of people looting stores and beating others and such, that shows you the problem – a complete rejection of the unwritten rules and utter contempt for the written. And that contempt is well-earned as those in charge of enforcing the written rules have simply allowed crime to slide almost entirely for ideological reasons. But people can’t live like that. We can’t live forever in a society where people can rob and kill with impunity. The robbers and killers must be stopped by any means necessary.

We may already be past the point where the normal system are capable of handling this – that is, our system may be so weak and corrupted that even if it tried to address the issue, it can’t. If we are past the time of working with the rules, then we will find that the people will turn to an American version of Bukele. Someone who says they’ll get rid of the criminals and then just does so – and law be damned. Just get rid of them will be the cry and nobody is going to care what a Court which couldn’t stop the cime is going to say.

Bukele is further accused of using the emergency to gather power to himself which Constitutionally the President doesn’t have. And that is likely true, at least to some degree. He pretty much feels he has to: his people want to be saved from crime and he’s going to save them from it. This does bear the risk of the end of freedom in El Salvador – strongmen who save nations have historically been unwilling to surrender power after the rescue is complete. They come to see themselves as indispensable. They are fearful if they surrender power, their successors will come after them. Ego! We’ll see how El Salvador works this out – but however it comes out, Bukele is saving civilization. And if we let crime get out of hand here – and we are – then the American people will also turn to someone like Bukele…some who will just bust heads until the criminal element is gone. And then we’ll see if that person gives up the power.

It all stems from the fact that civilization is thin: it is a veneer over the human savage. In just a generation or two it can be lost – and if lost, that is when you’ll start seeing a disintegration among the people. I think we can already see that disintegration. We wait now to see if those committed to civilization will step up and save it…or if they’ll weakly allow the collapse to accelerate until the people forth a Caesar.

It Is the Moral Collapse, Stupid

Mark Noonan27 Comments

This one has some staying power. The most recent massacre, I mean. We might be talking about this all the way to, you know, like next Monday.

And I know that sounds dismissive of tragedy but it isn’t really: it is dismissive of the official response to tragedy. A little earlier today I saw that the Yankees and Rays will forgo their game broadcast and will, instead, broadcast several hours of DNC gun control propaganda. They didn’t call it that, but that doesn’t change what it is. As I read the Yankee’s statement is just became blazingly clear what they could actually do to bring an end to this:

Fire the next top flight player who gets a girl pregnant and doesn’t marry her.

Because that is what this all is: what is wrong with our society is entirely the result of society deciding not to enforce standards. Sure, one ball player not doing the right thing didn’t cause this all to happen, but thousands of professional sports stars over decades acting like pigs in the off season played a huge role. They taught the young men of America – and especially poor, young men – that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you can deliver the goods. That only your ability to make money matters…everything else will be covered up, paid off and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Years ago I wrote about Mick Jagger and his life and I pointed out that his persona, especially as young, was an act. He was a middle class kid. Nice, respectable life. His mother was a Tory. He did very well in school and had he not become a rock star, probably would have had a long and successful career in some square employment. But the persona, crafted to sell records, was of a wild, party man. A street tough telling it like it is via his music. Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll! But it was, indeed, all an act. A very successful act: Jagger is worth about $500 million. And I considered Mick Jagger, and many like him, and wondered how many people took it at face value and decided to live that life – live the act, that is. But by actually doing it and not having an army of people to keep things squared away and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up all mistakes?

Given the popularity and endurance of the Rolling Stones, it was probably several million people around the world who wanted to be like Mick. Or like any one of scores of other famous rock acts…which were (and are) acts. Make believe. Those few in the business who really lived that life – Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, etc – ended up dead at very young ages. Because living that life is suicidal. Neil Young sang about it being better to burn out than fade away – but he sang that in 1979 and he’s 76 now and very much fading away rather than burning out.

Let me quickly think of the people I know – friends and family – who are six feet under because they went along with all that: George, Todd, Rob, Pat, Jeff, Alex…that’s just top of the head. How many people can think of that many in a few seconds? Then we can add those who are simply a mess: a good dozen that I can easily think of. And then there’s their kids! Also a mess – though some of them have managed to rise above.

Certainly the sudden massacre of 19 kids in school is a shock – but in the grand scheme of things, in this War Against Decency we’ve been waging for 70 years, it hardly counts as a skirmish. More than 100,000 people died of drug overdose in the United States last year. That about 5,200 school shootings. And they passed almost unnoticed. Not dramatic enough. Can’t make a good DNC political point about it. And, heck, I actually saw pictures of NYC billboards which are telling drug addicts not to feel shame, but just use the drugs properly. But dead is dead – whether from a bullet or drugs. Or any other of the social ills which are causing people to die (I think I read that 28 people were murdered in Chicago last weekend…and not too long ago an adorable little girl was gunned down in a McDonald’s drive through…but, hey, she was black and so was the shooter and it was over gangland crap so nobody gonna do a major news story about that).

We can change and we will change. This cannot endure. Bad as it is – and looks to get worse – the strength to cure this will be summoned. The longer we wait, the more brutal the reaction. But it has to be. Civilization is necessary in order for 90% of us to live. When our backs are really against the wall, you’ll be surprised what people are capable of. But until then, I’m going to keep pointing out what is wrong and who contributed to it.

So that when retribution comes, the right targets will feel the heat.

The Edifice Commences to Crack

Mark Noonan47 Comments

Trends continue until they don’t. It is just the way things always have been. When you look at the broad sweep of human history and the story of cultures and civilizations it is actually easy to lose sight of the fact that, at some point, things stopped working. It all fell apart.

Think about a 20 year old Roman in 390 AD. Theodosius is on the throne. The Empire is unified. Sure, there are problems, but things seem ok. The administration rolls along. Taxes are collected. Laws enforced. Sure, there is a worrying drop in population and it is getting harder and harder to find recruits for the Army. And, yeah, there doesn’t seem to be enough money to fully maintain the roads and aqueducts, but things are patched up and held together. Life is fine.

Be the time that Roman turns 40, Alaric is sacking Rome. That quick. It was like a lightening flash to contemporary observers. It was unimaginable that the Eternal City, inviolate for 800 years, could fall to an enemy. But, fall it did…as a helpless Roman government looked on, and didn’t really care that Rome fell.

What we’re now experiencing is that sort of thing. It appears that all is fairly ok and none of us envision any sort of collapse…but the roads aren’t very well maintained and urban sanitation is in decline and we’re even having some trouble getting water to everyone and keeping all the lights on. It is not quite yet bad. It is all holding together. But the edifice sways and cracks and the keen ear can hear the foundations crumble.

Why is it like this? Well, to get into our current context: we have a massive transportation crisis. For a variety of reasons – mostly government actions in the United States and around the world – goods are not getting to market. We have, in our government, a Department of Transportation which is specifically charged with this issue: making sure transport runs smoothly. It is run by the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana who, as far as I can tell, has never been responsible for transporting anything. The kicker: he’s been on paternity leave for the past two months as this completely foreseen crisis emerged. What we have is a very complex system of living which requires continual attention from people well versed in how it all works. We don’t have that. And we likely, for the most part, don’t even know we don’t have it. We just assume that someone in there knows what to do. Just as, I’m sure, the average Gaius on the street in Rome assumed that someone would make sure an Army was available to stop Alaric.

NASA people were in their 20’s and 30’s when we went to the Moon. Now NASA people are in their 60’s. How many young structural engineers are there? How many 17 year olds being taught how to weld in an apprenticeship? How sure are you that if there was an explosion at your local power plant – caused by negligence at the plant as the people there weren’t well versed enough to see the problem coming – that there are sufficient people with knowledge on how to rebuild it? And what happens is such a disaster strikes two cities at once? What happens if the people who do know decide that they’ll look after their own and to hell with strangers?

We’re in a very bad way and worse – because not only do we lack sufficient people who know, we’re also deliberately creating things which weaken the resiliency of the system. Building windmills instead of nuke plants. Building high speed rail when what’s needed is a newer and better interstate. Telling people to stop watering their lawns when we need dams and aqueducts. And all systems can stand the strain right up until they can’t. The bridge rated for ten ton traffic is fine until that 10.01 ton vehicle arrives.

Can we stem the tide? We won’t know unless we do. We certainly can’t stem it with the current leadership. But will new leadership – even extremely Trumpist leadership – make a difference? I don’t know. I had a small back and forth on Twitter where a guy – and he’s a really good guy – was arguing that the squares should just chill while the out there do their thing. It immediately struck me as false and I pointed out that, no, you can’t do that. If you are one of the Bohemians, then your moral duty is to curb yourself so that the normal – who do the actual work of life – can get on with their business. That, in fact, a society is morally justified in banning and punishing odd behavior. Taking it further, I realized that allowing slums and bums to be as they are is a crime against humanity – because it is a crime against those who do. The man or woman who makes, mines or grows things needs order, cleanliness and public decency. They can’t function where bums are allowed to defecate on the streets while purple-haired weirdos smash windows for “justice”. Anything – even the slightest thing – which causes distress for those who make, mine and grow must be prohibited and maximum force must be applied to anyone who still wants to cause the doers a problem.

And, in the end, that is what will be applied to those who won’t do their duty: maximum force. It all turns on when it will happen – before or after our societal collapse. That is, and to put it crudely, will we bust heads as we insist everyone cuts their hair, pulls up their pants and get a job before or after things fall apart? It would be better if it was before – repairing what we have is a lot easier than rebuilding what used to be (last time we had to rebuild is was about a 500 year process). All this drivel about being genderfluid, an “influencer”, an aspiring transblack poet or what have you will be tossed aside. Society is for men and women and it functions because men and women do their duty…and everyone who won’t conform to the norm will find that nonconforming is no longer an option.

We’ll find out soon which way we go.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Over the years, I’ve written a bit about how I hold one of the most decisive moments for civilization was the French quitting in Algeria. I’m just reading a book about it – A Savage War of Peace, highly recommended – and I’m just past the part where DeGaulle is returned to power (very much due to the political stresses caused in France by the war in Algeria) and he’s reforming France and sent out a first-rate military commander to Algeria who pretty much whacked the Algerian rebels from pillar to post. That is now the end of 1959. The bottom line is that France had won the war – the Algerian rebels were still here and there in the interior, but only in small, hunted groups and even many Algerians were tired of it all. And then, over the next two years, DeGaulle just gave it all away to the rebels. This has been held as wisdom: France had to get out of Algeria and DeGaulle cleverly played up to those who didn’t want out until he was strong enough to dispense with them and make a deal with the rebels. This, to the Ruling Class in the West, was the only way to go. But, was it?

First off, it involved the betrayal of more than a million French citizens in Algeria; about 10% of the total Algerian population. It also involved the betrayal of at least 100,000 Harkis – these were Muslim Algerians who fought for France. Their numbers may have been even higher. This was more active fighters than the rebel ALN army had. By a lot. And you figure that for the 100k fighters, gotta be at least some family/friends who were supportive, so that might work out to another million people there who clearly preferred to remain part of France. They were completely screwed over by the French government. The French citizens were evacuated (though some were killed on the way out) while the Harkis, considered traitors by Algeria’s new masters, were killed, imprisoned or otherwise made to suffer for many years after the war.

Now, why bring this up? Because what France did was cross a bright, red line. At the end of the day, they passed power over to a group of people who, in the course of the war, routinely targeted unarmed non-combatants for death…and not just death, but often quite horrible and cruel death. In the end, Algeria did have to be independent: their current population is 44 million against France’s 67 million and it is just about impossible for that to be a colonial relationship. But recognizing the inevitable doesn’t get one off the hook for basic morality. It was a crime – a French crime – to turn the people of Algeria over to a pack of brutes, which is all the ALN ever was. The correct course of action was to simply state that this would never happen – that the future of Algeria was going to be decided by decent people, not by those who set bombs in stores or tortured people to death. The Ruling Class holds that you simply make the deal with whomever is fighting you – end the war by any means necessary. Decency requires that you only give into brutes if they are so strong there’s no way to stop them. France had won. All they had to do was keep up the pressure until the rebels quit and then – only then – would it have been time for France to work with those Algerians who weren’t brutes about what came after French rule.

And so it has gone over and over again since the end of World War Two: repeated fights between civilization and barbarism where civilization – massively restricting its use of power – still comes out first against the barbarians and then civilization just hands things over to the defeated savages. No wonder they keep at it. If you wonder why, say, the Palestinian leadership keeps it up it is because of this: they know, from nearly a century’s experience, that if you just keep being savages and merely manage to survive the retaliation, you’ll eventually be handed all you wanted. This has to change if we are to save civilization. The barbarians have to be taught that the wages of savagery is death and nothing else but death.

Fauci helped create the Coronavirus and then, from his perch, pretty much ensured our response to it would be counter productive. He’s either stupid or a traitor: I go with stupid. I recall that he’s only famous because he stood athwart Reagan during the AIDS epidemic.

Yesterday was Tank Man day: the anniversary of when that guy stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. What was entirely unsurprising was China’s efforts to censor references to it. The tech giants got caught and had to quickly re-adjust their algorithms, but for a while there a search of “Tank Man” brought nothing related to China up. Meanwhile, Facebook banned Trump for two years while China’s accounts were up and running, spewing out lies all the time. Our large corporations are owned by China: they have to go. If it takes confiscation, they have to go.

In the deep blue cities, the long term result of Floyd’s death has been a massive spike in crime, and a lot more black deaths. But, hey, at least they weren’t killed by cops.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan26 Comments

I got blocked by Glenda Gilmore on Twitter. Who is she? Well, I honestly didn’t know until after I was blocked. She had made a statement about how Trump’s desire to beautify Federal buildings was his way of ushering Fascism into the United States…Trump likes Greek columns and you know who else liked Greek columns, right? Well, Obama, actually…but, anyways; I made a comment to her Tweet saying along the lines of “maybe its just that people don’t like ugly-a** architecture”; and I was blocked.

She, is however, a person with quite impressive credentials and is currently a professor of history at Harvard – she’s top of the Elite. Looking at her credentials, I’m not sure if she just doesn’t know anything, or knows it all and simply chooses to believe stupid things. In the end, it doesn’t matter: out of ignorance or malice, she’s yet another person running our culture determined on the destruction of civilization. The barbarians are not at the gates: they are within the walls and destroying everything they touch. Mark my words – if we don’t have a very swift reaction against barbarism, in 100 years people will be trying to cure cancer with poultices and goat entrails.

Biden in finished for all intents and purposes – but you wonder what cruelty keeps his handlers from telling him to get out? The latest bit:

On Sunday, Joe Biden snapped at a voter in New Hampshire, calling him a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.”

The dust-up came after the voter asked Biden, “How do you explain the performance in Iowa and why should the voters believe that you can win a national election?”

“You ever been to a caucus?” Biden replied.

After the voter said she indeed had attended a caucus, Biden shot back: “No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”

I’m getting embarrassed for the guy: he’s a very old man clearly of declining physical and mental capacity – he should be in a retirement home, not on the campaign trail.

The Coronavirus continues to spread as China’s government cracks down on Chinese trying to talk about it. Once again: if it just a flu, why be particularly concerned about it? People will get sick, some few will die, most will get better in a week or two. Is this just the Chinese government being stupidly over-cautious, or is this disease far more infectious and deadly than anyone is letting on? I guess only time will tell.

In New Orleans, apparently for years, the DA issued fake subpoenas. The people hit with these fakes are now suing – and the prosecutors are running to the courts claiming they have immunity as government officials. Trouble is, they are probably right thanks to some monstrously stupid Supreme Court rulings in the past. A huge part of criminal justice reform must be making prosecutors fully responsible for their actions – if they fake or hide evidence; if they knowingly send innocent people to jail, they’ve got to pay high criminal and civil penalties. Those we give the authority to send people to jail or to the executioner must be held to an extremely high standard.

A Leftist psycho rammed his van into GOPers registering voters and the news about it has been completely blacked out by the MSM. If you still needed proof that the MSM are mere DNC propagandists, here you are.

RSM notes that Populism is popular – and, increasingly, effective. The story he notes specifically is how President Duterte of the Philippines has cleaned up his country – his linked article tells of Filipinos who live in crime-free neighborhoods where business is good and no one lives in fear. You know: just like all normal people want to live. Contrast this with the Globalist Elite which wants us all to live in sh**-strewn streets where criminals roam free…all done to punish us for not being up to Globalist Elite standards. What is happening is the rebellion of the normal – mom and pop got pissed and started voting against the Elite…and mom and pop, kind as they are, really don’t mind if criminals and bums are given rough treatment.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

California passed a bill to require all corporate boards to have at least one woman – because you tender, little ladies just can’t get there on your own, I guess.

Robert Stacy McCain notes the “wilding” problem in Chicago – and links to this article:

After spending the day at Oak Street Beach, the girlfriend claims she and her boyfriend were walking back to their car at around 6 p.m. in the vicinity of the 900 block of North Lake Shore Drive when they were surrounded by “20-to-25 offenders who gathered around them,” Hopkins said.

“She described a completely unprovoked attack with no warning. Her and her boyfriend were enjoying the day on the beach. They were walking back to their car minding their own business and, with no warning at all, they were surrounded by this large group and they did absolutely nothing to provoke it,” Hopkins said.

“They started a confrontation and, at some point, the victim was struck in the head and fell to the ground.”

Civilization is a thing veneer, folks. And lots of very bad people figured that out a long time ago – mostly notable Lenin, Hitler and Stalin. You rip the lid off, and people will do the most astonishingly savage things. Not all of them – but enough will. People just take peace for granted – security of life and property. But the general security we enjoyed in our cities wasn’t a natural event. It grew over a thousand years during which time everyone went around armed and punishments for even relatively minor crimes were brutal: in 18th century London, most men carried a sword and you could be flogged for petty theft. The idea that one shouldn’t commit a crime didn’t come naturally: it was literally beaten into the population. Its been a long time since the pound of flesh has really been extracted and, meanwhile, we’ve been essentially telling the rising generations that being a criminal is cool. What happened in that article is the natural result – and the natural result of that will be everyone eventually going around armed and a return to savage punishments for even minor offenses. And don’t think this all “just happened”…as I said, bad people long ago figured out that civilization is a weak reed…and those who hate our civilization (and they are legion among us) see things like the “wilding” as just another means of tearing down the hated civilization.

What is the Trump/Russia thing? Don Surber puts it all in a very complete nutshell:

The real news was the breakfast itself, which was relegated to Paragraph 14: “One of the meetings he recounted was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, a Steele associate and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the political research firm that hired Steele, attended at least part of it.”

Ohr was not only married to a woman who worked for the company Hillary and the DNC hired to get dirt on Donald John Trump, but Ohr was meeting with the man in charge of delivering the dossier.

The only collusion with Russians was Steele and his sources at the Kremlin getting together to put together a dossier aimed at bringing down a duly elected American president.

It is all anyone needs to know – the Trump/Russia thing was cooked up by people determined to get Trump. The end. Shut it down – fire Mueller.

The reason we don’t have a Democracy is because our Founders knew that a full Democracy was too risky – remember, all the Athenians had to do to win the Peloponnesian War was not vote to execute a batch of successful admirals. The Founders kept the people away from full power, and that is a good thing, because popular passions can get out of hand. On the other hand, those yapping about “saving Democracy” under Trump dislike Democracy as much as the Founders did…especially as a fully functioning Democracy would probably force into exile most of those now claiming to be Democracy’s defenders.

We’ve Been Ruled by Idiots: and Conservatives Defend This

Mark Noonan6 Comments

August 8th recently passed and it was the 100th anniversary of the Black Day. This was the day the British began the Battle of Amiens. While it was, of itself, a big victory, the more important aspect of it was on the morale of the two sides. The German commander, Ludendorf, named it the Black Day because of the very large number of German soldiers who merely surrendered rather than fight or retreat. From that point on, the Germans knew they were beaten and were merely trying to hold on to as much as they could before capitulation. Meanwhile, all of the allied armies were stimulated by the victory as they now knew they could break the German lines at will and steadily push them back no matter what the enemy did (it was, of course, the mass use of tanks which played the decisive role here).

This was the point when the whole German war effort in World War One was shown to be stupid – and done by people who, for all their intellectual achievements, were quite stupid. Think about how the war started – Germany, faced with the need to help their Austro-Hungarian allies fight off Russia, decided that the smart course was to attack France and Belgium, thus bringing Britain into the war against them. That was their plan! Their long held, carefully organized plan was to create more heavily armed enemies from the first minute war started! And no one who came up with this plan was shot for Supreme Idiocy or even so much as committed to an insane asylum. We’ll leave aside the Allies response: charge straight ahead into entrenched German machine guns and artillery. You get the picture: We’re dealing with a lot of dumb.

I mentioned Ludendorf, and he was one of the smartest of the lot. Simply brilliant. A superb organizer. But, in the end, he couldn’t count. He launched a “win the war” offensive in March of 1918 with the idea being that Germany could conquer victory before the United States, which had entered the war the year before, could exert it’s full power (which would happen some time in 1919, if the war went on that long). As I said, he couldn’t count: he couldn’t count up all the military aged males in the UK, France and the USA and realize they vastly outnumbered the military aged males in Germany. He also, seemingly, couldn’t read a map and failed to realize that even taking Paris in 1918 would not alter the overall strategic situation. The only wise course open to him – too all Germans – once the USA got in was to pick the time to concede defeat and surrender….and that such a time was before the German soldiers started surrendering in tens of thousands.

But that isn’t the end of the dumb for the German leadership. Some weeks after the Black Day the supreme allied commander, Foch, was heard to observe, “that gentleman (the German) can still escape: but he’ll have to leave his luggage behind”. What he meant was that if the Germans would leave behind the mountains of supplies they had built up in France over 4 years of war, they could get their army back to the German border in excellent defensive positions and it would be the Spring of 1919 before the allies could launch a serious attack…and they might not want to by then. With the Germans out of France and Belgium, all impetus to attack would be gone. Germany would still have had to negotiate a loser’s peace, but it wouldn’t have been an abject surrender followed by a dictated peace. But the German military leadership, chock full of very smart men, simply couldn’t make up its mind to do that until it was too late to try. In the end, the Germans fought for 51 months and suffered millions of dead – and inflicted millions of deaths – only to lose a war they didn’t have to fight, but stupidly got themselves into, and then stupidly refused to get out of when the game was up.

I bring this up because rolling around in my head for a while now has been a dawning understanding that for quite some time, our civilization has been run by some very dumb people. Unserious people. People who are quite willing to, as it were, fiddle while Rome burns. And then I got into a bit of a debate with a Facebook friend – nice guy, fellow Catholic. But, he hates Trump and that has colored his views in astonishing ways. What he was on about a couple days ago was how Conservatism is in bad shape because it listens to Sean Hannity rather than George Will. I pointed out in response that even supposing Hannity is a carnival barker, Conservatism is better of with him than with Will. He asked, why? And I said that people like George Will are erudite, well-dressed people drinking the correct wine while justifying the destruction of our civilization. People who, like the German High Command in WWI, are very, very smart and have all sorts of credentials but simply cannot, or will not, see what is right in front of them.

Ancient Rome didn’t go from a city of a million people with excellent water and sewage systems to a city of 40,000 people living in filth and drawing their water from the Tiber all in a day. Nope, took quite a lot longer than that. Several centuries, in fact. The last great building project in ancient Rome was Trajan’s Forum, early in the second century. The next big event in the life of Rome was the sack of the city by the Visigoths early in the 5th century. Neat, 300 year period there…where not much was actually done, other than people living off the wealth and power built up by their better ancestors. Sound familiar to your modern ears? All it would have taken for Rome to endure forever was a bit of maintenance. Do you understand that? All the heavy lifting had been done. Just maintain the infrastructure and keep the army up to snuff and, presto!, things remain great. Forever. But, no; they failed.

They did do lots of things, of course. They weren’t just marking time. They had a few civil wars in there. Assassinated a crop of Emperors. Watched people getting slaughtered in the Colosseum. Sat on their asses on welfare. Let foreigners do the grunt work. Watched as their domestic industry and agriculture was moved away from Italy and over to other parts of the Empire. They also had some brilliant political leaders such as Septimus Severus and Diocletian. And the social life was quite brilliant! Excellent food, fashionably dressed people, well appointed homes. They had towering intellects like Dio Cassius and Tacitus. And in religion you could pretty much get whatever you wanted – and be sure that whatever you wanted was ratified by the religious and philosophical authorities of the day (except by those pesky Jews and those outrageous Christians, who proposed to actually live the virtues everyone said were good…the bastards!). Once again, does all this sound familiar?

But, don’t go too far in making parallels to ancient Rome. We’re actually doing worse. To give you an idea: back early in the Russian Revolution, one of Lenin’s female comrades (I think it was Alexandra Kollontai, but I’m not 100% sure), opened up a vision for Lenin of sexual relations being treated as no more significant than quenching one’s thirst with a glass of water. Lenin didn’t go one way or the other on that, but he did observe that no one would want to get a drink of water from a gutter. Of course, Lenin was wrong: we now have people eagerly looking for gutters to get their drinks from. Furthermore, they insist that if you refuse to drink from the gutter, you’re a hateful bigot! Here’s the really funny thing: given what he said about it, Lenin wasn’t woke enough to be acceptable among the modern left! If he magically appeared to today, the left would despise him for his petite bourgeoisie insensitivity. So far, and fast, we have traveled downwards!

And at least the Romans built stuff to last. The Lake Homs Dam in Syria was built in the 3rd Century by the Romans and it is still in use. It was modified last century, but only to make it hold more water. The basics of the dam are still the original Roman construction from 1,734 years ago. Our stuff isn’t built like that. We, too, have to do maintenance, but we have a much weaker infrastructure to keep up…we can’t neglect it nearly as long. But, we’ve been neglecting it. You might recall the infrastructure bill from 2009 that we spent a bazillion dollars on…well, it looks like we’ll need another bazillion for the same thing…now, we can assume that everything has run down again after nine years…or, we can assume that the first bazillion was thrown down the toilet and wound up in the hands of politically connected people who didn’t get a lot of actual work done. Take your pick on those views. I’ll let you guess where I fall on the guesses. We have weaker stuff as our basis and we’re doing worse than the Romans at maintenance. In the realm of morality, we’re traveling down a road (get that drink from the gutter!) of immorality faster than the Romans ever dreamed. Sure, they liked to watch people being killed in the arena, but at least they weren’t going about massacring unborn children, nor legalizing the practice of effectively putting a pillow over granny’s face when she gets too old and irritating to deal with.

We’ve got people covering themselves with tattoos like painted savages. We’ve got people who father multiple children by multiple women without ever making any sort of commitment to them. We’ve got people in the military who are merely punching tickets to ensure their rise in rank. We’ve got corporate officers who spend more time working out their diversity program than they do working on their products. We’ve got people who despise liberty and who think there’s a right to have a house. We’ve got religious leaders openly or covertly denying the very aspects of their religion. But we’re banning plastic straws! Tell me, what of any decent thing has been conserved? Where is the maintenance of societal norms which would allow us to survive long term as a civilization? There is none – nothing has been conserved. Not by the Conservative leaders…each time the push against civilization has come, the Conservative leaders have found an excuse for why we have to allow it to happen.

Back in 2016, I was just desperate to stop Hillary. She’s corrupt to the bone and clearly an amazingly stupid person. She even lies when telling the truth would work to her advantage. All she amounts to is an appetite for power and wealth. She gathers it endlessly and is never satisfied. And she’s not alone in this. Think of all the people who are just there, grabbing whatever they can and then working out ways of defending their ill-gotten money and power. They don’t give a damn what is happening…all they care about is getting and then getting some more…and then squashing anyone who questions how they got it, and whether they should keep it. If they were at least smart enough to make sure our Navy ships didn’t crash into freighters and that the streets weren’t crumbling, they’d be tolerable. But, they can’t manage that. They can only do what the very stupidest person can do: grab and then lie about it. My vote in 2016 was just a desperate plea against that sort of thing. But then something strange happened: the guy I voted for turned out to be pretty darned good.

I had figured Trump for “one of them”, as it were. But, even though “one of them”, at least not someone who had spent his whole, adult life – like Hillary – screwing over the people. I fully expected huge doses of liberalism to come out of the New York liberal carnival barker with a penchant for pretty ladies. All of a sudden, I’ve got a President getting the regulators – the enforcers of stupidity – off the backs of the doers…the actually smart people who make things work. I’ve got a President who understands that if we don’t make, mine and grow things here in the USA, then we’re doomed (how long have I been yammering on about making, mining and growing things, guys?). I’ve got a President who is clearly not afraid to use American military power to maximum effect, but is also chary of the blood of Americans and so shies away from foreign military actions (having a President who wants to win a fight is a rather new experience for me). I’ve got a President who doesn’t care about the opinions of pretentious, credentialed twits who not only can’t change a tire, but would be afraid to even try (ick! I’d get all dirty! Isn’t there a foreigner who can do that for me?). I’ve got a President who punches back when punched. For the first time in my life – not excluding Reagan – I actually think I’ve got a President who is looking out for me and mine.

Is he Conservative? I don’t really know. Also, don’t really care. He’s doing a lot of Conservative things, that’s for sure. Does he know what he’s doing? I’ve long suspected his political actions are built to a long held plan…but now I’m starting to think that this guy might have, for the last 40 years, thought over everything and realized that we needed some radical changes in policy, or we’re doomed. One thing I know for certain, kicking him out and putting the same idiots who have presided over the destruction of our civilization is out of the question. Trump might lose, in the end, but he won’t lose because I helped beat him…nor because I failed to support him. I’m feeling very confident about our future for the first time in a long while…and unlike back in the Reagan years, I’ve no worries about what comes after this President. Pence certainly spent his life as GOPe to the bone, but he seems to really understand what Trump is about and I’m sure that if we can get Trump two terms, his successor will just do more Trump (although more politely that Trump).

Trump stands for the Mom and Dad doing their best. He stands for the sergeant and battalion commander trying to keep readiness at a high level. He stands for the farmer growing his crops. He stands for the plumbing contractor with a payroll to meet. He doesn’t stand for the tenured radical on campus. He doesn’t stand for the CEO trying to squeeze an extra percent of profit out of moving the factory to Mexico. He doesn’t stand for layabouts manning our bureaucracy. And, yep, he doesn’t stand for the Bow Tied Conservatives who talk about low taxes and tut tut about societal decay but do nothing about it. We’ll do more for rebuilding social cohesion by having a booming, Make/Mine/Grow economy allowing a parent to stay home and raise the kids than we’ll do with 10,000 more Conservative Think Tank pieces on the decline of the family unit. If Trump is this out of control moron that our Conservative Betters claim he is, then I’m in favor of idiocy…at least this idiot is actually doing some good things. But, the truth is that Trump is proving the smarter man…and, I think, proving the more morally sound man. After all, in the grand scheme of things, who has done the more immoral thing: they guy who slept with a stripper, or the guy who justified the destruction of morality? No wise person hates a sinner because all wise people know they are sinners, too. But what must be hated – despised, loathed and driven out of the public square – is those who say that the sin isn’t a sin. According to Scripture, the righteous man falls seven times a day, and most of us ain’t righteous. But it is one thing to sin and repent (even on an endless loop of sin/repent), and quite another to sin and then say, “my sin was a good thing”. The former is human and trying, the latter is an inch away from demonic. That the demon has a Harvard degree and is impeccably well mannered doesn’t help things…nor does it detract from the normal repentant sinner that he’s an uncultured clod.

And what kind of a moron do you have to be to think that a people, awash in sin, can survive? If we’re laying around on welfare, engaging in promiscuity and then congratulating ourselves for our sloth and lust, what are we going to get? Clean cities and a strong economy? Uh, guys, I don’t think it’ll work out that way. In fact, we know it doesn’t – we’ve got feces rolling through the streets of San Francisco. We’re worried about filth borne disease in the United States, guys. You know, as we allow people to come in illegally and also allow poor bodies who need mental healthcare to just wallow on the edges of our cities in unsanitary, ad-hoc camps. How do you think things will be in 20 years, if we don’t change?

So, here I am – standing athwart stupidity, yelling “stop”. Well, not exactly: when you yell “stop” at a stupid person, it usually makes them double down. But what I am doing is making sure that I’m expending my efforts in preventing a return to Rule by Stupid. If that means I have to keep electing Trump and people like him, I’m ok with that. I’ll take the odd Playmate in the background if I also get the policies which allow me to live free…and gives me a chance to help restore a bit of sanity to our society.