Pages

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

UPDATED: End Of Empire?

After four years of Trump's heroic--some might say, Quixotic--attempt to return America to the greatness of its founding principles, the ruling elite staged a coup that enabled them to plunge back headfirst into the moral, political, and financial corruption that is the progressive regime. It's been a long time coming. For decades America's status as an empire rather than a constitutional republic was concealed from its citizens, but especially with the end of the Cold War the ride on the slippery slope has accelerated. 

The origins of our problems actually pre-date the rise of America as a world power--you can trace those origins certainly to the progressive era that began in the late 19th century when our ruling elite embraced the German ideal of government by science inspired "experts". Anyone with some sense of irony will note the repeated invocation the terms "science" and "experts" in support of our Covid Regime, even as our rulers abandon virtually even the pretense to scientific guidance. We find ourselves in the hands of half educated crackpots, neo-gnostic ideologues, and cynical power and money hungry elites who operate through frontmen.

Emerald Robinson put an important part of the problem we're facing well in her two tweets late yesterday: 


The reason that neoliberals are weeping all over Washington today: Afghanistan's fall is not just a crisis in credibility for Biden but for Brookings, for the Council of Foreign Relations, for the entire foreign policy establishment.

The neoliberals are self-aware enough to know that if they failed to plan a basic evacuation from a third world country then nobody really believes that they’re competent leaders of the free world.


ER is focusing on the foreign policy implications of this failure--which is natural, since foreign policy is at the core of running an empire. Ask every president since Clinton.

Nevertheless, the implications are broader. Off the top of my head, here are two:

1. The failure to plan such a doable operation very obviously extends beyond leaving Afghanistan to every other aspect of the Zhou regime--which is in collapse on multiple fronts. If I may paraphrase ER, the regime and its supporters are weeping in DC because they realize they've lost all pretense to enjoy a presumption of competence among the subject population. Once lost, that presumption is extremely difficult to recover.

2. Equally serious is the loss of credibility of suffered by our ruling elite, which gifted us this hapless regime through electoral fraud--having staged a coup against the first president in decades who wasn't their catspaw. Popular disillusion was initially fueled by the machinations of the elite to investigate and then impeach Trump. That disillusion was solidly confirmed by an illegitimate election (so regarded by a wide swath of the population) run under the pretext of a pandemic in which our elite was manifestly complicit. The subject population was supposed to tolerate these developments, based on a promise of a return to "normality". That promise was given the lie by a military occupation of the Imperial City on the Potomac and subsequent extra-legal proceedings. The failures of the Barr DoJ, the coopting of the FBI into a political police force, and the loss of nerve/courage on the part of the SCOTUS--along with the continuing Covid Regime--have left no doubt as to what's happening among any thinking people. The botched Afghan evacuation is largely a symbolic capstone to this shaky edifice.

What does the future hold? What are the prospects for recovery?

Obviously it's difficult to prognosticate. However, Conrad Black offers some reflections on the failure of the imperial rulers, whose fecklessness is now on full display to its subjects:


‘A Pitiful, Helpless Giant’

The more serious and recurrent the failures and humiliations of the Biden Administration, the more China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea will push and provoke America and its allies.


I'm personally skeptical that that group of nations will wish to fully displace the American Empire. Their fear of Chinese hegemony will be too great. On the other hand, Russia and Iran will certainly wish to gain more breathing space from the US as well as policy concessions.

That said, Black--in his usual elegant prose--evokes the haplessness of our power elite, illustrating how this failure dovetails with other serious failures:


This fiasco squares with the inexplicably stupid Biden Administration appeasement of the green extremists in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and ending offshore drilling where the U.S. government has the jurisdiction to do so, thus tumbling the United States back into the status of an energy importer, only to go back, cap-in-hand, to the avaricious OPEC cartel to ask them to increase production in order to reduce the cost of American oil imports. This request was made of such intimate and good-intentioned American allies as Iran, Venezuela, and Libya. 


"Inexplicably stupid" is the inevitable consequence of the neo-gnostic denial of reality in favor of their own fantasy construct. As I've said, and in all fairness to Iran, Venezuela, and Libya, why would oil producing countries--not inhabiting a neo-gnostic fantasy world--increase production to bolster a regime that will pay them back with badly inflated dollars--dollars which, who knows? may cease to be the reserve currency in the not too distant future. To do so would be unwise, even reckless, on their part. Those countries wisely told Zhou's handlers to pound sand. Why would they sacrifice their countries' prospects because American drivers are complaining about the price of gas?


This disaster itself followed an invitation from the Biden Administration to the human rights specialists of the United Nations to assess and report on America’s status in fighting racism within its own borders. ... It is inconceivable that any country could look upon this request by the United States to be monitored and evaluated by the United Nations as anything but an act of unimaginable naïveté or uncontrollable masochism.


Indeed! What other country in the world is in the grip of such "unimaginable naïveté or uncontrollable masochism"? I can't name a single one.


Still, perhaps the most serious retreat into the appearance and conduct of a pitiful helpless giant has been on the southern border of the United States. Virtually every week for the first six-and-a-half months of the new administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has solemnly explained, “The southern border is closed.” Finally, on Thursday, he was overheard explaining to some border officials that the position was extremely serious and “unsustainable.” As people from all over the world are now flooding in across the southern border at the rate of more than 200,000 a month, and border control officials are giving interviews every day in which they indiscriminately tell the media what a desperate and hopeless situation it is with tens of thousands of the incoming migrants being COVID-19 carriers who are then released into the United States, the only excuse White House press secretary Jen Psaki can offer is the administration came into office and found an immigration system that was “badly broken.”

In fact, the southern border was in better condition than it had been since the time of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. ...


Could anything so clearly expose the hypocrisy and cynicism of the entire Covid Regime, let alone devil may care insouciance of the power elite toward the general welfare of the subject population? 

Black goes on at further length to detail our reckless conduct toward Mexico, dismantling all the progress that Trump had made in our relations with an important neighboring country. He also, but wisely and cautiously, indulges in some speculation on the possibility of China exploiting US disarray by making some move with regard to Taiwan. As of now, I expect China to act cautiously. It's expansion of power and influence in its immediate abroad has been successful, and it will not want to provoke full military confrontations in the region when it is achieving its goals by other means. Further, China has its own domestic problems. Nevertheless, this is a worrying situation.

Black concludes by reflecting on the likely satisfaction that many, even, of our "allies" will feel at our comeuppance:


Americans should be in no doubt that with the fall of Kabul, the world, which has become rather tired of American leadership anyway and is not an inexhaustible reservoir of Americophilia, will, at least for a time, be mindlessly consolable in believing that “the land of the free and the home of the brave” has indeed become “a pitiful, helpless giant.”


However, it's Black's penultimate paragraph that presents the real dilemma for the rest of the West. How much of the rest of the West--how many in America itself--will appreciate the wisdom of what he says, and the consequences of ignoring its meaning in coming history?


The entire security of Western civilization and the preeminence of the Western languages and alphabet and of governments officially devoted to the Judeo-Christian values of the rule of law and respect for individual rights, however imperfectly observed in practice, depends on the United States maintaining its position as the world’s most influential country. That is to say: the almost undisputed priority in the world of the major Western powers that has prevailed since the Greeks repelled the great King of Persia, Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B.C., 2,501 years ago, also depends on the United States retaining its status as a superpower with all the strength of example and deterrence and alliance leadership that it has successfully exercised since World War II. 


The alternative is a world without even lip service given to such values. That will be the culmination of the centuries long, slow motion philosophical collapse of the West. That is the importance of each person recovering that tradition as a personal matter.

UPDATE: OMG! I was just listening to Tucker Carlson, and he pulls so much together about the political establishments crash and burn loss of credibility and legitimacy--over the last 20 years:




19 comments:

  1. "the loss of nerve/courage on the part of the SCOTUS--"

    Mark, would you clarify on this point?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You’re kidding, right? For hours of reading pleasure, just plug “supreme court,” “election,” and/or “john roberts” into this site’s search engine (at the very top of page).

      Delete
  2. The title of Black's column made me think of this famous cartoon from the New Deal days:

    https://erenow.net/modern/give-me-liberty-american-history/give-me-liberty-american-history.files/image878.jpg

    To update the cartoon, just think of the Lilliputians as the Biden administration and Democrats in general.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ". It is inconceivable that any country could look upon this request by the United States to be monitored and evaluated by the United Nations as anything but an act of unimaginable naïveté or uncontrollable masochism."

    No. They would likely see this for what it really is, just a maneuver by a regime to provoke its dissident population and curry favor with global commies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Anon, you may be right, but you may also be giving them too much credit. A lot of them actually believe this nonsense, just as a lot of them truly believe the UN is a force for good in the world, instead of a brokerage house for kleptocrats.

      Delete
  4. OT: El Gato Malo has a very good piece on the implications of the leaky vaccines. Lots of data and warnings to the health professionals but he does not claim that the question is settled yet--only that the data supports the hypothesis... and that the results would be dangerous:

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/leaky-vaccines-super-spreads-and

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thought provoking essay by Angelo Codeville, one of his best:

    The Silence of the Shepherds
    The combination of establishment misrule and Republican impotence leaves the field open to whomever takes it upon himself to lead.

    What he misses is the GOP Establishment is a junior party of the elite establishment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ray, that's clearly another of his ongoing attacks on Trump. Except that he apparently also hates Cruz and Hawley. Nobody measures up to his standards.

      Delete
    2. What Codevilla misses even more because of his long-standing distaste for Trump is that Trump is irreplaceable. A fearless leader with charisma will be eaten alive by the Washington establishment, who were able to prevent any timely investigation into election fraud in 2020. Trump is a fighter, he has the evidence, he has demonstrated his know-how and ability to deal with the situations that face us, and yet he continues to be be denigrated by the likes of Codevilla.

      Delete
    3. You are right, @Ray. I don't know what Codevilla is thinking. After all, the last time there was a guy who "took it upon himself to lead," every last Republican in Washington either actively participated in or stood by and allowed a coup to get him out of office. Why would they act any differently with the next guy who takes the initiative to actually solve problems they don't want solved? They don't like it when someone takes away their opportunities for graft - and that goes for both parties.

      Delete
    4. Agree Mark there is a back handed slap at Trump.

      My guess Codeville is too establishment/ elite and does not like Trumps gauche personality.

      An important point he made, is the GOP is seen as impotent by the majority. What he missed, is Trump supporters are not automatic gop supporters. This is seen where Trump supporters are building up a Trump controlled war chest, outside Gop control. The gop establishment has not been able to coopt Trump supporter fund raising, as they did the Tea Party (something Trump and the Tea Party share, is the elite, both gop and Democrat did their best to destroy them).

      One of Larry Elders ads actually attacked big business!

      As a California voter, I can’t express my disgust enough at the Ca Gop. They have deliberately chosen to not rock the boat, and accept bring a junior partner. Lots of failure theater. Gee, reminds me of a lot of gop Senators.

      Delete
    5. President Trump isn’t gauche. He was raised to be a gentleman and had an excellent education. He has built an incredible international business. His daughter described him as being blunt. A dictionary tells us that that means uncompromisingly straightforward.

      Codevilla is an academic who has never done much by criticize. Trump is on his radar, as are, apparently, Cruz and Hawley. Why would anyone believe that Codevilla knows best how to govern and lead our country? He’s a talker, not a doer.

      Delete
    6. By now it is painfully obvious that the GOP is only an organizational husk, devoid of any principles or guiding spirit. They are cowardly and venal. There are perhaps six U.S. Senators worth keeping and maybe twenty people in the House. Our savior is not coming from congress. The bigger question in my mind is not who the leader will be but what the party’s lamentable weakness means for whoever does emerge as leader. Trump was stymied by Ryan and McConnell in 2016-2018. A very good case can be made that the last minute mass retirement of GOPe from the House in late 2018 was orchestrated to torpedo Trump.

      If for the past seven months we have not seen any signs of life among the national GOP in countering the most radical regime in history, just what do we think is going to bestir them to a full-throated defense of liberty? Is it even possible to rally such men and women behind a leader or will we continue to see the GOP parade of cats? What are we hoping for in 2022? Swapping out loser GOPe and Dems with populist pols? How many two year cycles will it take to clear out the deadwood that keeps burning the party to the ground? Does anybody have any ideas, because given the country’s current trajectory, I don’t like the odds that we can get there before China takes Taiwan and we blow up the USD. I think we are quickly approaching the time when we will find ourselves end played—and the solution moves beyond politics.

      Delete
  6. Mark, please clarify
    "satisfaction that many, even, or our "allies" will feel at our comeuppance".
    Did you mean
    "satisfaction that many, even *most, of* our "allies" will feel at our comeuppance"?

    And, see Denninger today, in "Here's Your (Dead) Canary", on a report of fully vaccinated covid deaths:
    < this sort of ridiculous acceleration of disease progression is a screaming safety signal.
    It strongly implies, but does not prove, that the vaccine *turned on* the recipient, and when later exposed, made the progression of disease worse.
    This was repeatedly demonstrated in animal testing with the original SARS virus, when vaccine development was attempted. It was believed the cause of it was evaded by the current vaccines developed for Covid-19, but the only way to know for sure was, to take *years* of testing to make certain, that the *ordinary mutational* patterns that all viruses undergo did not result in such an outcome down the road.
    This is one of the *many reasons* it takes 10+ years to qualify a vaccine; you can't un-take the shot, and if something like this happens and then you get infected, you're ****ed.

    "She said the vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective, and there is a *4 percent* chance of failure, but she still recommends it."

    She has no evidence, to support that these patients had an actual failure to build an effective antibody response. None. Zero.
    Determining that would require a fairly significant amount of lab and pathology work, which simply can't be done *that fast*.
    These people need to be *autopsied*, and exactly what happened determined.
    It *won't be* done, because if it is, and it turns out that they had *circulating titers* of binding antibodies for Covid in their system, then it will be scientifically-irrefutable evidence, that there are millions of Americans walking around with ticking *bombs in their veins*, and there is nothing that can be done about it. >

    ReplyDelete
  7. Now we find out that the leader of the current Taliban takeover was traded by Obama - along with four other Taliban leaders - for traitor deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Released from Guantanamo and supposed to have been “detained”. That obviously didn’t happen.

    https://nypost.com/2021/08/16/taliban-leader-was-freed-from-guantanamo-in-2014-swap-by-obama/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Here's the link for the Tucker video

    https://youtu.be/FXtwuO-ZUR0

    (It wasn't showing in Mark's post for me. Good vid tho)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I don't think this a repeat on this site! Great video on Mass Psychosis. 21 minutes well worth the watch. Explains a lot.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M

    ReplyDelete