Coming To Ourselves

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Coming to oneself means regaining consciousness. I don’t recall ever hearing it used in English, (though the expression is the same) but in Portuguese “vir-se a si” is the expression explicitly used to denote waking from a swoon. (We tend to just say waking. Which I didn’t want to use because of the aggregation to woke which, like all leftist speak means the opposite of the plain meaning of the word.)

I was contemplating this post when in a group a friend linked this post: American Strong Gods, Trump and the end of the Long Twentieth Century.

And I realized if not the main point I was trying to make, it is a strong supporting point. He talks about the end of the long twentieth century in which the whole world aimed for a vague “open society” that was the opposite of nationalism, as a way to fight long-dead-Hitler (Or prevent a recurrence of fascism.) And how Trump is the long-delayed end of this.

Put a pin in this, because we’ll revisit it.

First: We have been working late and a lot, and therefore coming downstairs late and with our minds turned to mush. So, we’ve been doing what we normally do, which is watch some kind of series on something or other. in this case we’ve been watching a series, per decade, on inventions that changed the world.

And both of us noticed that other than computers, the inventions they showed, after the seventies, were not inventions that changed the world, so much as things at the margins, and increasingly more and more things at the margins.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the computer revolution was massive, but I feel like it almost came as an after thought, while the regulators were looking elsewhere. The truth of course is that the regulators, the overarching state, developed computers as a way to control people. The way it escaped their control and became a tool against them is what took them by surprise.

But other than that, and compared to the vibrant and immense changes of the early 20th century, invention became a game of changes at the margins.

The answer to why is “Because we became increasingly tied up in a regulatory, credential enforcing, bureaucratic state.”

This state, in fact, engulfed the world after WWII, which is what the linked article talks about. To prevent the resurgence of war, we were told we needed to do away with nationalism and religion and — really ultimately — the family and all natural connections.

I know this sounds utterly and completely insane, but what they say in the article is exactly what I was taught in school. Perhaps not in so many words, but very clearly, we were told again and again that the cause of WWI was nationalism, religion and traditionalism. This was all completely wrong, by the way. The cause of WWI was the attempt at building international empires, the destruction of old limits on nations, empires and beliefs, and an attempt to create a “modern” world ex-nihilo.

However, the miss-atribution was so strong we were told German military FASHION caused WWI and that any resurgence of religion or nationalism would lead to endless war.

In truth, what led to endless war was the attempt to create the “open society.” By denying the strength of individual cultures, and their vital needs to humans — we are not physical creatures, our essence is not limited inside each of us, they are not fully human if not raised in a culture and society — by making that very individuality of culture and nationality, not to mention human individualism, an enemy and a sign of danger, the open society set itself up for a cycle of continual violence that ultimately made everything about being human illegal, forbidden and to be suppressed.

As a side effect, this destroyed all invention, all creation, made masculinity verboten (any society that wants passive subjects has to destroy masculinity and make women the keepers of that emasculation) and led to humanity losing all interest in continuing. Hence the coming population crash. The diminishing of inventions. The fact we haven’t been back to the moon.

Only — Western culture (the other cultures were never as strong or innovative as ours, let’s face it) — wasn’t quite dead. Despite its suicidal depression, its treatment as a conquered culture by a bunch of neurotic self-hating Marxists for almost a hundred years now, the culture of the West, of freedom, of individualism, of invention, of discovery, is not dead.

Like the king that sleeps in a cave and will awake when danger is great, it turns out we were just sleeping.

At some point it had to penetrate our uneasy soma sleep that the brave new world we were promised if only the west committed suicide was actually impossible. Other cultures persist, and their barbarism is not going to be miraculously redeemed by us disappearing. Our cultures persist too, as does the fact we’re individuals. We’re never going to be insects. Remove men and the women will become violent. Remove the West and barbarism will cover the planet. Remove G-d and humans will worship the silliest things. And a world government was always a stupid idea. Not just impossible, but stupid. The more distant the government, the less accountable, as we’ve found.

Our promised brave new world turned into endless re-runs of 1984, each one less disguised than the previous.

It was inevitable that the wakening would fully flower in America first. As a culture, we are based on the individual, on innovation, on the rejection of the old limitations of mankind. Only an act of treachery on the part of the “progressives” sealed by FDR secured us for the “open society” hegemony. They needed to secure us, because if we are free, we show the world what’s possible.

In a way if you prefer, the whole Open Society lie is the return of the old nobility. This is not as obvious in America, but it’s glaring in Europe, where the new bureaucrats, the heads of the all too powerful “international administrative state” are the descendants of the noblemen, the old “Good families.” In fact, in recent years they became very open about it, like the fact some British published a book trying to prove even in America it was the descendant of noblemen who somehow — naturally — they seem to think, will rise to the top everywhere. (I know about this book because my husband’s family was one of seven families they mentioned, in what I think they called an American Debrett’s (sp?) Which is hilarious as, just like they misunderstand the vastness of America they misunderstand the vastness of our genetic diversity. Sure, somewhere in the distant past husband’s family has the royal blood of two nations (Most of us do, really. That’s the other thing these asshats missed) but that blood has since crossed with much better genes: Amerindians and religious Germans, Irish Catholics and French Hugenots, and eventually a no-account Portuguese writer. I’d say we’ve quite redeemed any royal blood and genetically overwhelmed it.

Anyway, the whole reeking edifice of the “new world order” rested on the idea that our “betters” would rule. And Americans, save for those who were paid to believe it, (and even on them it rested uneasily) never fully believed they had betters.

So the new world order had to end in America. It had to end here. At a guess Trump 1.0 terrified them because they recognized in him the potential to end their world. Or rather, they recognized it in his supporters, because Trump 1.0 was still trying to play by the rules.

Hence the crazy play of the reaction to Covid, the attempt at playing for all the cookie chips. And the blatantly stolen 2020 election. And their behavior after, including the inauguration behind barbed wire in 2021. And the attempts on Trump, both legal and physical.

The funny thing of course is that though the revolution was coming, if they hadn’t fought so hard and overplayed their hand so early, they stood a good chance of surviving Trump. And true revolution, the end of the protracted 20th century, would take another 20 years or so. And when it happened, it would be more brutal and come into a much diminished world.

So, I guess we should be glad of the overreaction of the tyrants, that brought about their much needed overthrow.

It’s actually a fairly common thread in all stories of revolution. Those who feel they are about to be replaced overreact and bring about their own fall.

Eh. Now we’re in the middle of it.

Çȧ Irȧ!

If we’re very lucky, this time without tumbrils.

155 thoughts on “Coming To Ourselves”

  1. Çȧ Irȧ! Sorry I’m an uneducated heathen, what does this mean? Grok couldn’t tell me.

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    2. Probably idiom, but it’s “That’s [how] it will go”; wikipedia says it’s “It’ll be fine”.

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        1. I’ve always heard it translated as “It’ll be fine”.

          I’m pretty sure the similarity of the tune and the message of the chorus with Jimmy Eats World’s “The Middle” is entirely intentional. Which makes that poppy little earworm the punkest thing ever.

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          2. Mine sees “tumbrels” and asks “Isn’t that the rotating part of a tape dispenser?”

            And then I have to look it up to find out that, no, that’s a mandrel.

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          3. Well, until a certain “invention around the margins,” tumbrils and a rather macabre form of dancing were associated.

            The most efficient way to execute the common criminal before that invention was to pull the tumbril under the noose(s), fit it over the condemned, and pull the tumbril away. That’s why they had open backs.

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  2. Speaking of “Those who feel they are about to be replaced overreact and bring about their own fall.”…

    Happy Purim!

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    1. AH time to seek out hammentaschen!!! I had a coworker who would bring ones she had made in when it was Purim. I was one of the few takers for the poppy seed ones although I enjoyed the apricot and prune ones too, I am an equal opportunity cookie omnivore.

      She was always surprised that although I didn’t know when Purim was I was familiar with the story of Esther. One interesting fact I learned is that it is traditional when the scroll of Esther is read during Purim to boo and hiss when Haman’s name is mentioned.

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      1. If I ever get to do my series of messages on the Seven Deadly Sins, Haman has Pride sewn up.

        (I was eclectic when I started thinking about it and used cartoons. Garfield makes a nice image of gluttony, for example).

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        1. Short of the Father of Lies himself I can’t off the top of my head think of someone that was so prideful. Maybe some of the kings of Israel/Judah, but often for them we just get a line saying they did not do as G*d asked.

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          1. Haman was a descendant of Agag, the last king of the Amalekites, who were descended from Esau, and who thus were supposed to be observing Abraham’s Covenant but weren’t. And who instead had a long history of preying on Israel, and then getting their doom prophesied. Big long example of how covenant-breaking elicited Divine punishment.

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            1. If my memory is correct weren’t the Israelites supposed to wipe out the Amalekites for having attacked them in their wanderings from Egypt to the Promised Land? I think Saul in particular gets in hot water for not killing Agag. So Saul’s inability to follow directions comes back to haunt the people of Israel only to be saved by Esther and her uncle Mordecai. Talk about dysfunctional families…

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              1. I recently went through The Bible in a Year podcast, and one of the things they do is set the narrative books in chronological order. (They also tend to pair them up with a poetic/less narrative book, though Numbers and Deuteronomy get put together. Then they add a psalm, proverb, or piece from Wisdom at the end.)

                I don’t think they actually pointed out that connection, though. But they certainly point out a lot of the other connections down the line.

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              2. I think I read somewhere that Esther and Mordecai were descended from Saul, so yeah, dysfunctional family indeed. God’s irony is like that.

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              3. I think I read somewhere that Esther and Mordecai were descended from Saul, so yeah, dysfunctional family indeed. God’s irony is like that.

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      2. I was awake way too early for reasons not of my choosing… So I made hamentaschen, with 1/2 batch strawberry jam and 1/2 batch apricot butter. They turned out looking awful, and tasting great.

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        1. I just did a little shopping run over at a grocery store in East Peabody that has a large surrounding Jewish population. All the things for Passover are out. But nary a hamentasch to be seen. When they were one chain they used to cater to the local population but the chain changed and the store had to swap owners. Current owners are far less willing to cater to the local residents. I ought look up a recipe, except I really don’t need a couple dozen hamentasch lest I volunteer to replace Garfield in Ms Dimmocks 7 sins…

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            1. Please don’t start that side quest if you do not want to.
              I probably could have found some somewhere locally, problem is the number of orthodox Jewish neighborhoods seems to be shrinking. The was Water Street in Worcester (a favorite for Sunday morning bagel runs as they were one of the few grocery stores given exception to the Sunday Blue Laws Massachusetts had in those days). Waltham has one kind of near Brandeis but I don’t remember it having a bakery. Newton certainly has one (there is an Eruv set up) but none of these are less than a 40 minute drive from the North Shore. And even if I had wanted to do it by the time I figured it out the sun was getting low in the sky and any orthodox bakery would have been closing for the Sabbath shortly.

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                1. I pulled a jar of apricot butter (like apple butter, but with apricots) of the massive pile in the pantry of “why do we keep buying cool jellies, jams, and fruit butters when we’re low carbing?”, and used it for einkorn hamentashen.

                  The hamentashen spread and turned out more like jam thumbprint cookies than hats, they tasted awesome. And at the very least, it meant I was able to offer them to Jewish & non-Jewish friends alike to celebrate Purim. Because we can all be a little Irish on St. Paddy’s, and we can all be a little Jewish on Purim!

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                2. I can see that. Worcester has a strong Polish grouping and they make Paczki (c needs an accent like in french I think?) which are similar to Berliners or filled donuts, but WAY richer and show up in the lenten season. And of course the ever popular hot cross buns for Easter and the Irish cranking out Soda Bread for St. Patricks day. There are Swedes too but their Stollen for Christmas are long past their prime by spring.

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  3. I prefer to be enlightened, not “woke”.

    Enlightenment consists of “Ah ha!” Moments of discovery (usually pleasurable); while being woke just makes me grouchy.

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    1. Y’know, if you go to bed earlier, such that you’re getting more sleep, eventually the “grouchy upon woke” goes away. XD

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        1. I like to lie in bed in the morning too, but I’ve been thinking of giving it up because that’s when your body floods you with cortisol (to wake you up) and I end up lying there feeling anxious and depressed. Clearly YMMV.

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        2. Because you are actually relaxed, and you know that you should be somewhere else (like upright), but are not, and the cat is warm and purring and not yelling in your ear?

          Nah, can’t be it.

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          1. I am slowly training Artemis to lay on my chest in the mornings. (So far, only twice).

            “What? Can’t get up right now, family – I have a vibrating weight on my chest.”

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  4. :nods: This. All of this. I’ve thought for quite a while that America was caught in a stupefied “teenage naval gazing” attitude, where she blamed herself for past failures and was more or less sleepwalking through the motions – with the aiding and abetment (to say nothing of abuse) of the Usual Suspects. The first wake up slap occurred with 9/11, and then the attempts to lull her back to sleep came out in full force. 2016 was the second slap, followed by the third and harder one in 2020/2021.

    The sleeping giant’s awake and she’s moving, to paraphrase Yamamoto. And while she may not have the full picture of the prior abuse, she knows what it “feels” like, and God help the next person to try it…..

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  5. Apropos of the opening sentence, the KJV uses the phrase “And when he came to himself” in the parable of the Prodigal Son, meaning when he realized what a mess he was in—or what a mess he’d made of his life (Luke 15:17). Not quite the same as regaining consciousness.

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    1. And older books (which reference fainting or swooning) often used the phrase “come to” as short for “come to himself”.

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      1. In my attempt at brevity, I left out too much.

        Those old books also reference “coming to [oneself]” w/r/t a fugue state or berserker episode.

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  6. “Remove men and the women will become violent. Remove the West and barbarism will cover the planet. Remove G-d and humans will worship the silliest things. And a world government was always a stupid idea. Not just impossible, but stupid. The more distant the government, the less accountable, as we’ve found.”

    Preach it, sister!

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    2. In the old days, I believe that the Russian Govenor of Alaska noted that “God is in His Heaven and the Tsar is in Moscow. Both are far, far away”.

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  7. “The truth of course is that the regulators, the overarching state, developed computers as a way to control people. The way it escaped their control and became a tool against them is what took them by surprise.”

    I was on the internet before it was the internet. I recall quite a few Usenet conversations during the runup towards Arpanet going public where progressives were certain that once everyone had access to the facts and could escape the right wing slant of the broadcast news sources then the evil conservatives would finally be defeated and utopia would finally be achieved.

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    1. I wonder if this is a test of attitudes. I saw the Internet as the perfect control instrument, especially if all the books were online and could be tracelessly edited.

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      1. Ah, but remember the basic architectural feature of “routing around” any gaps or blockages. The various “great firewalls” all leak, so there is always a way, even if only via the “dark web”, to find a server somewhere that has the non-edited version.

        1984, but with dark servers and millions of true copies proliferating across the solar system, the “dark web” preventing any dark ages.

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    2. I saw the full spectrum of possible beliefs on the newsgroups and BBSs. There was a lot of independent hacker ethos and exchange of information going around.

      A mistrust in government, corporations, and any political party including the progressives, since plenty of people hated FDR and LBJ.

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  8. The ironic thing is Real Fascism was the result of “International Socialism”.

    A certain Italian started out in “International Socialism” but realized that Italians didn’t care about the “Workers Of The World” but cared for Italy.

    So he created a movement that had all the features of Socialism without the “International” part.

    Still not a nice guy and his version of Socialism wasn’t nice (not as bad as Germany’s version).

    The point of this really is that “True” Fascism isn’t that different from Socialism.

    But then the idiots call anybody, who doesn’t accept their nonsense, Fascists.

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      1. Yes and No.

        “International Socialism” existed before Russia went Socialist.

        After Russia went Socialist, idiot non-Russian Socialists saw Russia as the Great Victory of International Socialism and the Russians (even before Stalin) used the idiots.

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        1. Aside from the overlay of “Russia Uber Alles” baked into it, there was a debate on this exact point inside Russia after their revolution failed to spontaneously kick off all the others that Marxian theology predicted as inevitable. The concept of “socialism in one country (first)” was the result under Stalin, setting aside (i.e. disappearing) the adherents of “permanent revolution”.

          See: https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/industrialization-debate/industrialization-debate-texts/socialism-in-one-country-versus-permanent-revolution/

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        1. I think part of the reason the left went, “Russia, Russia, Russia!” was because they thought us stupid rubes would turn on the Donald if we thought he was connected to “the Commies.” But is part of their current attitude fury at the Russian government for betraying the Revolution?

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          1. Russia refused to roll over and be totally looted by outsiders instead of insiders.

            Putin and his pet oligarchs spoiled the game and pissed off a lot of the Western connected oligarchs and the neocons (the ones helped cause most of the wars in the last twenty years).

            So basically it’s a disagreement between the American/Anglo crime families and the Russian crime families. We and the rest of the world are caught up in their squabbles, but are currently doing better than the huge piles of dead Slavs.

            In some weird way the Left is scared of Trump, because they failed to take down Putin and project that image on Trump.

            So now Trump and team are trying to keep the American/Anglo/Euro crime families from totally draining the US, but the barn door is open and the hay is on fire.

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            1. Were I to warm up my time-displacement web browser I bet I would find future evidence that, as with his predecessor, Vlad the Shirtless was propped up and pushed forward and funded by the “deep state” IC and Foggy Bottom Boys teams in the West, after they were horrified and shocked when the USSR came apart. If they did’t intervene, they would not have any channels at all! So they went to their existing ties with Russian organized crime and had one of them with a safe KGB background elevated.

              I am pretty sure everyone with any knowledge of that has fallen out of windows by now, and I am fairly sure he escaped any “handling” back in his first term as President, but I bet he was selected by western entities before he got elected.

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              1. Never said he wasn’t a oligarch. He’s just a leader of a rival criminal faction with lots of weapons. Not any more or less evil than folks like Soros or Gates.

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                1. I think he’s STILL being used by folks like Soros and Gates. Look, I still think the whole thing was planned between Biden and Putin.
                  And the left makes sure Russia gets oil money.

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              2. I was looking at one of the press photos of Putin and Lukyshenko (the Belarussian dictator) yesterday. Dang, Vlad looks terrible – very thin and small. His buddy’s not huge, but that’s not the buff Putin from the older PR photos.

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    2. Someone compared it to a bitter breakup. Fascism dumped Communism and Communism has never gotten over it.

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  9. We have been back to the moon, this month: https://spacenews.com/im-2-lunar-lander-touches-down-status-unclear/ The lander toppled over, so, not ideal. Note that it was launched by a Falcon 9. Do all roads lead back to Musk? If he weren’t a real person, I would accuse him of being a character in an optimistic ’50s era space opera.

    I think for some time the university system has been discouraging practical, energetic people who are not willing to lie from the academic path. This has gravely weakened the university system, but infused dynamism elsewhere.

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    1. Musk would be the protagonist of an Ayn Rand space travel novel. His opponents act exactly like her villains.

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        1. I sometimes wonder if one of the prophets of the USAINs (one R.A. Heinlein) didn’t unconsciously write D.D. Harriman having somehow perceived Musk. Alternately, Musk is steeped in Heinlein (c’mon GROK is his AI) and views Harriman as a template.

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    3. One of the things I’ve seen in this totally-spontaneous-absolutely-not-coordinated week of attacks on Musk and Tesla is a banner with “ELON MUSK: DEAD OR ALIVE” and the “ALIVE” crossed out.

      Do they really want this guy as a martyr? Look at what happened when Trump narrowly escaped death last summer.

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  10. as a way to fight long-dead-Hitler (Or prevent a recurrence of fascism.)

    The modern Left’s monomaniacal fixation on Hitler/fascism is something that needs to be studied in depth. Has there ever been a political phenomenon like this before? They’ve brainwashed themselves into seeing everything they hate as the avatars of a long-defeated foe. And they can’t see how much they resemble that foe.

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    1. Suspect similar monimania during and after the Protestant Reformation, where each side made up various lunacies about the other and held them with, ahem, religious fervor.

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    2. I’ve been meaning to write about this. I’d always assumed that the left’s condemnation of Hitler resulted from Hitler’s attack on their revered USSR. That may be part of it, but I had a revelation that there may be something else going on as well.

      A few months ago I came across a Jordan Peterson interview with Niall Ferguson where Ferguson pointed out something I’d never realized. The Nazi regime was the first successfully mobilized attempt to overthrow Christianity since the siege of Vienna. Ferguson’s point is that Communism despite its insistence on atheism can be seen as a Christian heresy. It’s stated goal, however fallacious, has always been about equality, about the last shall be first. Nazism’s goal was a return to the pagan Norse concepts about conquest and the glory of dying in battle.

      It’s all still muddled thoughts in the back of my head right now, and I need to write the essay to organize my thoughts.

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    3. That one’s easy: Stalin’s enemy and the perennial postwar boogeyman of their KGB handlers, so even after those handlers stopped answering their dead drops, the “ultimate enemy” theme was set in concrete for the poor abandoned western assets.

      Even in Russia today, the defining characteristic of NAZI is basically “opposes Russia”.

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    5. Read the attached article and it will become clear.
      So many other totalitarians were worse than Hitler: Stalin, for instance. And also killed batch loads of Jews. BUT no one obsesses on them. Because they were propagandized into thinking communists aren’t a threat, or are well-intentioned.

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      1. Reading it right now. Good stuff. Too bad the people who need to read it the most will probably fall to the ground after a few paragraphs, foaming at the mouth and screaming, “NAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZIIIIIII!” at the top of their lungs.

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      1. I tried Google and Bing translate, and with the C-tailed and the half-umlauted “a”s, it came out as either Kurdish or Turkish. Spelling it as “Ca Ira” got me to the French revolution song. Rough translation ==> It’ll be OK, from a website on the songs of the French Revolution (and other hits from 1789 :) ).

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  12. Leftroids have been imposing actual fascism to pre-empt their imaginary fascism. They have fomented, nurtured and exploited decades-long wars to ‘end war forever’. War became an attempt to manipulate the enemy, rather than to smack them down and teach them not to f*k with us ever again.

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  13. Our hostess said

    Our promised brave new world turned into endless re-runs of 1984, each one less disguised than the previous.

    Interestingly I think Brave New World is a far better predictor of where we were going than 1984, Not to say the boot forever stamping on the face of the proles/ Hoi Polloi didn’t warm the cockles of the Open Society peoples heart (and even stir their kinky loins) but their goals are far more like Mr Huxley’s future. It is explicitly eradicating many of the “Strong Gods”. Family attachment is gone as no one is born in the traditional sense and parental sources are not known to the people. In fact the words mother and father are obscenities. Pair bonding is also wiped out by the explicit requirement of the sexual urges being subsumed into required group orgies. There is a universal nation state run by bureaucrats (sound familiar). Religion has been replaced by Our Ford and pseudo worship of some Freud/Henry Ford conglomerate. The Strong god of ambition has been obviated by bred and pre natal trained levels of humans Alpha to Epsilon. Remember the Betas Hearing “I am happy to be a Beta, I wouldn’t want to be an Alpha, Alphas have to work too Hard”.

    The Open society folks break the family with everything they can including the insane trans push and a sexualization of society that itself breaks that family control. They push away from traditional western religions and substitute an animism/Gaia based belief set. They push for international groups with a strong bureaucratic basis such as the UN, ICC, and EU over local control by traditional Westphalian nations. They have created a series of credentials and credentialing processes that rival the efficiency of the hypnopaedic methods of Brave New World. The only problem they couldn’t solve is having mangled the family and redirecting that urge they are not creating enough new people.

    Presuming the current change holds (and I think it will for a while) we (or at least the US and a few other places say Argentina, Italy, Much of Eastern Europe) seem to avoided that for the moment. We MUST hold on. If not we will return to our “betters” telling us “Take a couple grammes of soma and attend your struggle/orgy session with Comrade Mx Mulvaney, you’ll feel better.” If that doesn’t scare you into activity, nothing will…

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    1. 1984 in the continuous war and rewriting of history. Brave New World was actually impossible. It’s impossible to remake humans that way. 1984 is also impossible longterm, but quite possible short term.

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      1. Indeed Winston Smith remembering old issues is part of what starts his slide into badthink and thoughtcrime. WIth the proliferation of printed material it would be basically impossible to suppress older heretical writings.

        However, as we become more used to online materials that reshaping becomes far more possible. The data is in one place tweak the master and send the updates and voila history has mostly changed (excepting devices kept of the network) Our beloved internet and its tools can cut both ways. Many of my elder daughter’s 8th grade students have no idea how to use a physical book and its index and really don’t understand the difference in primary, secondary and tertiary sources or how to actually cross check things. What used to be a classic middle school task the research paper starting about 6th Grade and increasing in complexity through 8th Grade is deferred until High school and even then it is more an opinion piece as modern education doesn’t like the idea of non relative truths,

        But you are correct 1984 was never directly possible. Even by 1948 we were quickly diverging from the way things were done in the 30’s and WWII such that the strategies Mr. Orwell saw in the USSR and NAZI Germany, Japan and Italy were losing their efficacy. However, our bureaucrats boldly forged ahead and came up with a new strategy that ALMOST worked. And now we have the DOGE team in their virtual Mystery Machine showing up, unmasking, and ruining everything for the Villains (or at least so we hope).

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        1. I’d look more at removing reading entirely as the threat.

          Why read when you can get a video instruction for the few things that do actually require a human do them?

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          2. Admittedly, people do seem to read less, particularly in non electronic media. I do find the tendency to ONLY have a video (rather than decent directions in clear english) darned annoying. But I suspect we are a ways from having the predominantly illiterate population of Marching Morons or Idiocracy.

            That said in certain populations the cumulative effects of the Great Society and other Democrat strategies to foul up education are strongly tending towards that. Major cities like Baltimore and Chicago (these are the ones I’ve seen data for, it is likely quite common across large Democrat cities) have whole schools full of students graduating high school where large proportions (in some cases nearly 100%) are reading at below 3rd-4th grade level which for the modern world is functionally illiterate.

            My concern is more that electronic media (if stored centrally) are prone to manipulation and most (basically nearly all) storage methods do NOT journal changes in a certifiable method.

            Consider a minor video issue of a 1977 movie called Star Wars . It was modified in 1981 with the crawl changed to add Episode IV: A New Hope to feed it into the sequel(s) properly. Like Winston Smith I remember it NOT having that. That said it is a minor change, it has no effect on how we view the characters.

            Later (1997) all three of the original Star Wars movies were edited to modify/correct/add scenes. The most egregious is the change to have Greedo shoot first (although the Jabba the Hutt addition is NEARLY as annoying). That change modifies the Han’s whole nature. Of course no one mentions that a Jedi Master (one Obi Wan Kenobi) heartlessly murders two members of Mos Eisley’s criminal underclass and doesn’t even tip the barkeep to clean up the mess.

            In 2016 Rogue One is added and that uses old clips of deceased actors(Carrie Fisher did not participate in filming, died 17 days after the film’s release and Peter Cushing had passed long before) digitally manipulated to insert their characters into the story. Peter Cushing’s appearance was actually was quite good, Carrie Fisher was well into the uncanny valley.

            If we can change those kinds of films (and as much as I dislike the changes Lucasfilms is the copyright holder) then historical films (say the meeting at Tehran or Pottsdam) could be altered and if no physical copies exist say 50 years hence who could gainsay it? A particularly evil/clever person might argue that the unedited copies are the fakes.

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            1. But I suspect we are a ways from having the predominantly illiterate population of Marching Morons or Idiocracy.

              :twitches:

              Yeah, since those are even dumber than 1984 from a practical likelihood standpoint….

              For digital media– I actually like it BECAUSE it is so easy to “write.”

              Which means that you can make lots of copies.

              And the Soviet Union recognized that the ability to make lots and lots of copies is a huge threat to totalitarian impulses.

              There’s actually a to-do going on with GitHub— where folks who uploaded stuff set to public access, and later changed their minds, are upset at other folks having archived that which they publicly uploaded.

              I kind of suspect that copyright is going to crash, hard, and hopefully only so that it gets limited rather than destroyed, because folks are using it a LOT to try to enable rewriting of the past.

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            2. On the “nobody reads” thing– it would be a distance in the future, and the route I would expect would be an AI that can watch the video, then GO FIND the 15 other videos someone made explaining how the instruction video is wrong, and turn it into a nice little quick answer.

              Because writing good instructions is really hard, especially when you don’t know which of 30 issues someone is going to have.

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            4. John McWhorter observed that in NYC, there are two generations of black men who are illiterate, as in can’t-read-street-signs illiterate. Whole word learning and other techniques failed them completely, leaving them unemployable. Other places have a similar problem. Granted, these are a small part of the overall population, but how many people have been mistaught to the point that they have to have videos and audio books to learn how to do things or about culture and history?

              One would almost think it was deliberate, trying to keep people from being able to function in modern society.

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              1. One would almost think it was deliberate, trying to keep people from being able to function in modern society.

                Kind of like the ESL education that leaves identified-as-Latino kids illiterate and incoherent in Spanish as well as English?

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              2. There is the (likely apocryphal, but still quite “truthy”) statement by LBJ that

                “I’ll have those <ethnic slur> voting Democrat for the next Century”.

                Roughly 60 years in and it was just starting to unravel a bit in the last election. I think that with the exception of actually enforcing the 14th Amendment the Great Society changes were in the top 3 detrimental ideas for the US in the 20th century. Those programs have done more to destroy poor/working class families (color of the skin not really mattering) and wreck the self sufficiency and dignity of the poorest US Citizens. LBJ and the well meaning liberal republicans who helped create the Great Society are worse criminals than either Carter or Wilson.

                So yes, I think some large portion of that illiteracy was and is intentional. If you can’t function other than like a Brace New World delta or epsilon and you drink/drug/gamble/etc. like a 1984 prole you will NOT be shifting your cultural status. The Brahmandarins do not want the serfs getting uppity. It is part of why they hate J.D. Vance so much.

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        2. I was graduated from college without knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources. I picked that up from how-to-write materials.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Then I would say your college (and High school and Junior high) failed you. I certainly had the distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources pounded into me by my 7th & 8th grade English teacher Mrs. Emerson (who seemed several years older than dirt though was likely barely 50). I was then forced to use the various forms including primary sources (e.g. the Federalist and Anti Federalist papers) In AP US history and other history courses by James (Jim) Russell at my rather odd private high school.

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  15. ”I’d say we’ve quite redeemed any royal blood and genetically overwhelmed it.”

    Yeah, and when those broke second or third sons sailed over and walked off the ships, we made them work! And marry just anyone! The gall!

    It seems to me the Brussels ruling classes have been to New York City, staying only on Manhattan island, or DC, staying in the beltway, so they think they know the U.S..

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  16. Mike would laugh at those that would use computers to control humanity. I still say Mike didn’t die, he’s just waiting until he is needed again.

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      1. Oh no! DON’T BLINK! :-o

        Now I had a rather different idea for defeating the Weeping Angels.

        The Doctor [hefts sledgehammer]: “Stone is not indestructible, you know. Keep your eyes on it.”

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  18. I’m always shocked at how throughly even the “nominal libertarians” still use collectivist labels. The enemy is collectivism, forget NAAZZZZIIII, Socialists, Communists, and other flavors of would be Fuhrers. Governments attract would be “leaders”. They, the leaders, use collectivist labels to control thought. If you want to be free, talk about individuals. After all, whether mobs, or functional organizations, everything is constructed from individuals. Don’t let the collectivists erase that distinction.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. […] like the fact some British published a book trying to prove even in America it was the descendant of noblemen who somehow — naturally — they seem to think, will rise to the top everywhere.

    What’s hilarious is that the very same people will point to how Jews rise to the top of the cultures they are within, and say that it’s proof of an insidious Zionist conspiracy (called that because it’s Totally Different than anti-semitism, of course), rather than “natural superiority”.

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  21. ‘Keeping the government open’? Bah! Let it shut down! ‘Tax cuts for billionaires’? How about tax cuts for EVERYBODY?

    Democrats still don’t get it:

    The government is NOT ‘the country’ OR ‘the American People’!

    Trump and Musk are tearing down the bloated, corrupt, rotten, stinking monstrosity that is devouring the country and the American People.

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    1. AHH it hurts us my preciousss!!! Do NOT bring this back for the memes!!!! We begs you Smeagol will behave…

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  26. While I agree pretty much about the “mainly at the margins” nature of our recent decades, there is one completely overlooked area of quiet revolution: logistics! Direct to the doorstep delivery of small purchases (and no unproductive shopping trips); home delivery of everything from groceries to meals to car washes; and massive shipments of grain, energy, and manufactured goods. If it gets any better, I won’t even need to leave the house…to leave the house.

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  27. Well, one important thing has changed. I’m 75. When I was a kid, 75 was elderly, in poor health, and probably close to the grave, if not in it. These days, these are much less true, and we have a tidal wave of people living past their 80th. (Although musicians and actors seem often to die alarmingly young. . . .) And that’s totally shaking up a bunch of institutions that aren’t designed for it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I turned 75 last week, and just started a new, part-time, job. (“Try this sample, you’ll like it.”)

      I don’t feel ancient, and if I did, any thought of my co-worker who is most insistent on being scheduled full time would dispel it. He’s 92.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. SIL was doing that for awhile. Just to get out of the house and away from her mom and brothers (she’s been the *primary caregiver for her 95 year old blind mother). BIL uses his shop to get away (stay away), although he did go to work at a small motor shop for a bit (OTOH did not last, he does not suffer fools, er Karen’s lightly). She is 70, he is 78.

        (*) Brothers had to step up. Between BIL’s medical problems (on the mend, and kind of on his own currently) and her son’s (who is in Alaska) problems she’s a bit overwhelmed. She’s been in Alaska getting the son squared away, since just before Thanksgiving. No, I have NOT stepped up. BIL is fine, we do check on him. As for the SIL’s mother? She has TWO brothers who still live with their mother! Worthless (BIL’s assessment, FWIW). But they aren’t helpless. With BIL also on property (they live in their RV, was suppose to just be a base, but that dream died a few years ago when SIL’s mother broke her hip) he can insure they are not abusing or neglecting.

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    3. Indeed I think of my maternal Grandfather who was pretty beat up having been a dairy farmer, an electric lineman, and a worker at a plant that produced magnesium powder and wire for flashes (think flash cube if you’re that old :-) ). Didn’t help he was a 2-3 pack a day smoker most of his life. I’m 64 and honestly minus a few aches and pains I’m in totlerable shape.

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  28. This kind of stuff is why i expect the EU to collapse into a war. I hope it doesn’t, but at this exact point, i expect them to suddenly figure out they need our goods right as they start to economically collapse.

    It isn’t smart to tariff the stuff you need right after you shut down your farms, it is?

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    1. It isn’t smart to tariff the stuff you need right after you shut down your farms, it is?

      No, but it also wasn’t very smart to wreck your domestic energy production while alienating both your major energy suppliers in 2018. Didn’t slow them down.

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  30. Hearing Edith Piaf sing “Ça Ira” is both beautiful and chilling. The threat and promise is in the other verses. The French Revolution was fundamentally different from the American. https://is.gd/JXMwEr

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    1. Very. And I don’t want it here. The French revolution went aground on Egalite. You CAN’T MAKE PEOPLE EQUAL. They can be equal under the law, which is what we aim for, but equality of results always ends in evil. See DEI.

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  31. Last year I did an online research session trying to figure out what was up with this Soros guy? Why was he doing such evil shit? And it came down to Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies”, so I dusted off our version and was going to read it… but couldn’t quite stomach it. I decided Soros was another deluded lefty who was doing the opposite of what he claimed to be doing, because it certainly wasn’t leading to an “open society”. So the linked article explained a lot. I didn’t realize that the definition of “open society” was another one of those lefty reversed meanings.

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      1. Although Orwell’s 1984 fantasy/nightmare is not predictive, his understanding of the Lefts use of language is right on with Newspeak. Even if the Sapir Whorf hypothesis is balderdash.

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        1. Dystopia writer and utopia writers both think that human nature is more malleable than it really is. Consequently, they give society undue ability to change it.

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  32. @ Mary Catelli > “they give society undue ability to change it.”

    A more accurate view of human nature was explained by LDS President Ezra T. Benson in this way:

    “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.”

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  33. (To Sara’s readers. Infrequent commenter. I apologize for the length. Some thoughts that might be of interest.)

    This is very thought provoking. I particularly got hung up on that last line. My first thought was, “but I want the tumbrils,” the tumbrils were maybe the best part of that pageant. Then I started to wonder why Sarah phrased it this way. She seems to be saying that the marxist Jacobins are the the current nobility and that just seems backwards. How to align these facts?

    I always considered the French Revolution as not only a tragedy, but the exemplar for the kind of un-Sane Revolution who’s biggest impact was as a negative example used by ruling classes to justify further tyranny, lest things once again get out of control. “It’s for your own good.”

    I still haven’t figured out if pre-revolution France was all that bad that it justified what came, and Solzhenitsyn taught me that Tsarist Russia was holiday spa compared what that revolution issued. So maybe the F. R. was a bad deal all around — replacing the sub-optimal good with the optimally bad.

    I am of the opinion that Leftism (marxism,.. whatever you want to call it) is an inherent feature of concentrated groups of people in communication. A kind of white noise of ideology and like entropy or termites it has to be kept down. One way is state tyranny, another is the kind of monarchies that the revolutions replaced. Maybe a third way is “separation of powers, blah blah blah” but for a while it was looking like even that had a intolerably short term limit. Maybe as Sarah says, things had to get bad enough before the King aroused from the cave.

    But that still leaves me wondering why Sarah alluded to the F. R as a parallel. I see it as a failure mode, and a pretty bad one. Game over, insert coin to play again.

    I think she is describing reality in a alternate perspective where it’s a given that monarchies are undesirable and the current crop of marxists are the new nobility trying to put We The People under their whip. That may be an accurate description but it makes a very marxist omission in comparing the new nobility with the old.

    These new nobles are not winning their divine right on the battlefield, and they honor no higher power than themselves. This makes their power hollow and desperate. The so called “capitalist” nobility won their divine right in the markets and it may not be ideal, but it’s something, and something the Constitution seems well equipped to keep in line. The problem is that to eliminate rule by We The People, the Constitution had to be hacked up, and those attacks also allowed the “capitalist” nobles to run amok. We have been witnessing the marxist and “capitalist” nobles doing battle over the injured carcass of We The People with the Constitution sidelined on a gurney.

    The linked piece has much to agree with and also disagree with. I will skip most of that, but the one line sums up the larger bulk of my disagreement:

    “The crusade for openness took on for itself a great commission to go and deconstruct all nations in the name of peace, prosperity, and freedom.”

    It feels quixotic: Were they really trying to create prosperity and freedom, or just consolidate power?

    Likewise, I think most of the cited intellectuals (Popper, Schmitt, Adorno) were just convenient post-hoc justifications for what they wanted to do — destroy the Free-Market-West and gain control over a lot of money and power.

    In my view there is a wellspring of power in every population that has to be directed. Left without something to rally around (God, family, nationalism, the local ball team,..) that energy ends up being amplified by that white noise of ideology I mentioned above (which is essentially marxist) and you have people putting flags on their social media accounts or throwing rocks through windows.

    In this sense the return to the strong gods is not so much a triumph of nationalism but a failure of those people in charge of the Left. Their strong gods (adorno, soros, gates, obama, …) have failed them.

    (In the last section the author references Mathew Rose to make a similar point.)

    Trump rode that wave and understood before most that it could and would crash as Leftist waves always do. After all, we ask “what right do they have to take power,” but they also end up asking that of each other.

    So I am in agreement with both Sarah and the linked piece, but I only have a different perspective that maybe parallels their thought. Except that last line about tumbrils — I see the past 25 years or so (maybe more) as a slow roll Leftist revolution and if we want to stick to the analogy, Trump is giving them a “whiff of Executive Orders” to restore order.(*)

    (*) This metaphor is horribly contorted, but I could not resist.

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    1. Pardon me, I’m going to answer only one thing, because I’m EXHAUSTED just now. Nothing to do with this, but health, and also well… stuff that needed to be done.
      The “current Jacobins” are, like the Jacobins of old the replacement for the old aristocracy. Ignore the Marxist mambo jumbo they say. This is just a means to power. Their main issue with the aristocracy was always that IT WASN’T THEM.
      And in face, over the last 200 years or so, the sons and daughters of the aristocracy have become “jacobins” and crept back into power and wealth. This is very obvious in Europe, but here too. The commies come from the elite institutions.
      And communism has proven more efficient than incest at making them useless dolts.
      I’m not calling for the French Revolution — hence no tumbrils. I’m calling for a complete up-side-downing of the current system. Without the tumbrils.
      You could call it “The world turned upside down.” I’m not calling for Egalite except before the law.

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    2. In the name of means it was a scam. It was just another leftist power grab. Just like the French Revolution started as a revolution but ended up with a bunch of French flavored mini Stalins running France. The motives never change, just the names.

      Liked by 1 person

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