We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – US election year edition “Power doesn’t often age gracefully. It clings and expires in a labored rush, devoured by another generation, hungry for its time in the sun. Washington can’t long remain a country for old men: Democrats will either replace Mr. Biden in a putsch at their convention in August, or voters are likely to do so in November.”
– Alex Castellanos, Wall Street Journal ($).
As an added point, it is worth reminding ourselves that Mr V. Putin of Russia is not getting younger, either, although he appears to remember what day it is – at least for now.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Even with massive election rigging Mr Joseph “Joe 10% for the Big Guy” Biden can not be elected in November 2024 – there are limits to what even Big City fake mail-in-ballot machine people are prepared to do.
So Mr Biden will not be the candidate – by Democratic Party rules anyone may be chosen at the August Convention – so the DNC (or those forces that control it) it will choose someone else, and the Delegates in the collapsing city of Chicago will cheer and pretend it was their idea.
But who will be chosen?
K. Harris would seem to be the logical choice (as the unelected [81 million votes – but not from 81 million voters] Vice President of the institutionally corrupt Federal machine) – but the lady is not popular, to put the matter mildly. So who?
Michelle Obama? After all the decaying mess that is Chicago is her “Home Town” – it would be apt to declare her the nominee (in spite of no one actually voting for this lady – for anything) there at the Chicago Convention – assuming the Convention hall is still operational in August.
Then the media would go into overdrive with their support (with the thugs of the FBI dealing with anyone who tried to disclose Mrs Obama’s corrupt, bribe taking, past) and the fake mail-in-ballot operations of the cities would churn away.
And so the Res Publica would come to an end – given how long such things as the principles of the Common Law, and the Constitution, have been in decline, it is astonishing it has taken this long.
Several Justices of the Supreme Court declared that it was all over when the corrupt “Gold Clause” judgements (allowing the government to steal privately owed monetary gold and ripping up the gold clauses all contracts – public and private) were delivered in 1935 – but they were quite wrong, it took another 90 years to destroy the Republic.
“Paul this comment will not age well – you will look very silly when President Trump returns in triumph to the Whitehouse and the swine who make up the FBI, the Orwellian named “Justice” Department, and the rest of the Deep State, are driven from Washington”.
If that happens I will be delighted to have been proved wrong.
@Paul Marks
The problem with the ‘Deep State’ is that is becoming a ‘Not-Very-Deep-State’, and the churning in the shallows has become very visible and unworthy.
How did the Roman Corn Dole (which became a lot of other things as well as corn) end?
What far sighted statesman ended the practice of giving vast numbers of people free food in return for nothing?
There was no far sighted person – madness ends when it can continue no longer, the Corn Dole ended in Rome in the chaos of the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., and the Corn Dole in Constantinople (oh yes – Constantine copied the madness practiced in Rome, thus increasing the burden on the farmers) ended with the wars with first the Persians and then the forces of Islam in the 7th century AD.
It stopped not because some great person understood the societal harm it was doing, it stopped when it just could not continue any more.
So it will prove with the United States and other Western countries – no one will “end the Welfare State” it will end when it can not continue.
By the way the Popes tried to restore the Corn Dole in the city of Rome itself – thus helping make the Papal States horribly well known in Europe for the poverty and hopelessness of their inhabitants.
Pope Gregory XIII, to fund his scientific research (the Gregorian Calendar and all that) and other projects, confiscated the property of everyone in the Papal Sates who could not prove (to his satisfaction) their just title to it – thus reducing much of the population to dependency and banditry (two sides of the same coin).
Pope Leo XIII (he of the once famous encyclical of 1891 – whose first paragraph makes the false claims that capitalism has increased poverty and immorality) remembered that when he was a young administrator in part of the Papal States, the rich were thieves and rogues (much like so many of the American rich now – who depend on “networking” for their “good jobs” with Corporations dependent on the Credit Money of the Federal Reserve) – but he never seems to have asked himself really WHY this was so, if state intervention was the cause of the corruption it was meant to stop.
That interventionism might be the cause, rather than the cure, of problems is something that people in charge do not naturally think of – which is why such systems tend to collapse, rather than being carefully rolled back.
If you are cynical and so pessimistic that you have pretty much given up on ever getting decent treatment from the politicians, media and hidden figures who truly rule us the only pleasure, and it’s a very dark pleasure indeed, that will be available to us will be to watch the different press treatment of Michele Obama and Donald Trump during the campaign.
DiscoveredJoys – yes I had not really thought of that.
When most people (and I think it is most people now) KNOW that the Deep State is corrupt, is it really a secret “Deep State” any more, or is it just “the government” – which ordinary honest people hate and despise.
For example, every time Donald John Trump is “convicted” of something by the courts his popularity goes UP – as most people (and it is most people now) know that the “Justice system” is politically motivated and totally corrupt – with no proper legal code, just random “laws” that the authorities can twist to use against anyone (not just DJT – anyone) they do not like.
At this point only a minority of people believe the endless lies of the Corporate Media – so the establishment are reduced to the following….
“We have the military, and the paramilitary FBI, obey – or we will hurt you and your family”.
The mask is off – and the face of tyranny is openly on display.
Paul Marks said:
Do they? Do they really?
I don’t think that you or “they” really, truly understand the balance of forces at play here. How many are on “their” side? Where do they live? Where are their families spending the time when Daddy isn’t home to protect them…? How do you suppose this all works, when the point is reached where everyone else is looking at each other, and realizing that the “magic” is all gone, that “they” cannot possibly put enough force into the field to oppress the rest of us?
What do you suppose happens, on that morning when everyone figures that out? When they withdraw their consent from this rigged game, and decide to get out of it?
Governance is a tightrope that must be walked between that which is possible and that which is not; the idjit class has forgotten this, and has stepped entirely off of the tightrope. Gravity will have its due; we’re all going to witness that in our lifetimes.
The sheer numbers involved are daunting; just how many FBI agents do you think it would take to suppress even a medium-sized city in a midwestern state? Where are they coming from, when the whole state has gone into a state of unrest? And, as an aside, the National Guard has gone over to the insurrectionists? Who do you think mans that organization? Do you suppose the cops are just going to materialize out of thin air?
It’s going to end about the same way the harangue Ceaucescu delivered at Timisoara did.
My tuppence worth is,
I imagine the only guy Trump could possibly beat is BidenHarrisClinton, so my [Dem] cunning plan would be, wait till you’ve goaded the enemies of the regime into nominating Trump, and then nominate A.N. Other. Result: handsome D win. Likewise, the only guy Biden could possibly beat is Trump, so my [R] cunning plan would be, wait till the deep state proffers Biden, and then if otherwise, drop Trump. Result: R cakewalk.
The R convention is July, the Dems in August.
Republicans speak first, and therefore lose after an August putsch. I don’t see how the Rs can get round this.
Building on what Kirk writes, latest data indicates that there are now some 29 million Modern Sporting Rifles (MSR) in circulation in the US. MSR is convenient shorthand for AR-15s and other weapons of a similar design and function.
That means that there’s one MSR out there for every 12 men, women and children in the nation, or about one MSR for every 8 adults. When you look at it in those terms, and consider that those 8 adults likely skew somewhat to the right of the political spectrum, you would need literally millions of law enforcement officers, willing and able to kill their fellow citizens in large numbers, in order to subdue them if it really came down to cases. Those MSRs are not being held for hunting, or for target shooting, although of course they’re very good for those things as well. They’re being held to defend against bad guys, and if the bad guys turn out to have been sent by the government, they will work just the same. Sure the first few who resist may meet an unwelcome fate, but as soon as that story becomes clear and public, the gloves will come off, and all those coppers and National Guardsmen will disappear (in the immortal words of Warden Norton) like a fart in the wind. Christ, today’s coppers won’t risk dealing face-to-face with a nutter who is killing kids, they certainly won’t risk going up against a population that knows what they’ve been ordered to do and knows they’re coming.
Bad times may very well be ahead, and I don’t know what forms they may take, but trying to suppress the population by direct force seems to me to be just-about the least-likely approach – if I could even think of a reason for doing so, which I can’t.
The best hope seems to be for Trump to be re-elected and then (since he has no re-election to worry about) a Milei-style housecleaning, only more. But I very much doubt whether he (and much-more-so a Republican Congress, assuming they gain a meaningful majority and can be persuaded to stop voting their own majority away) has the stones to do that. So we’ll just continue the decline, just maybe a bit slower than before.
llater,
llamas
Policing has always depended on the population pretending that they don’t realise that they outnumber the police.
@llamas
That means that there’s one MSR out there for every 12 men, women and children in the nation, or about one MSR for every 8 adults. When you look at it in those terms, and consider that those 8 adults likely skew somewhat to the right of the political spectrum, you would need literally millions of law enforcement officers
No, I don’t think you are right. The way they do these things is to determine a few test cases, determine they have the “illegal” weapons and use other means, such as throwing them in jail. Do that with a thousand gun owners and the large majority will give them up and be content with their shotguns and pistols. They way you control a huge population is to crush the leaders and loudest, and then the rest slowly capitulate. Look at J6. How many anti Biden protests have there been since then?
I think a few spectacular Waco style raids too just to scare the crap out of people will help. But most people don’t care enough about their guns to threaten their freedom or their lives. Some do, for sure, but that is a small number. For this reason the gloves will not come off. You are, sadly, greatly over estimating the mostly safety-over-freedom citizens of America.
today’s coppers won’t risk dealing face-to-face with a nutter who is killing kids, they certainly won’t risk going up against a population that knows what they’ve been ordered to do and knows they’re coming.
That’s probably true of most police, but there are certainly lots and lots of them who are wanna-be SWAT guys, more than enough to string up a few loud offenders to intimate the masses.
The best hope seems to be for Trump to be re-elected and then (since he has no re-election to worry about) a Milei-style housecleaning, only more.
I doubt Trump’s election will make much of a difference, for several reasons: firstly Trump isn’t really all that much of a freedom love — his agenda does overlap a little, but honestly his actual agenda is really his big ego. He will probably lock up the border but I doubt he will do much more consequential than that, some tax cuts maybe? Some regulation cuts? Certainly nothing transformative. Second, he’ll be gone in four years, so the left plays a long term game. Third the senate may go republican, but not by much and certainly not enough to override the filibuster. So the best he can do is EOs and short term financial stuff (maybe tax cuts? Not sure.) Fourth the opposition to him this time around will make his last go around seem like kindergarten.
Don’t get me wrong, things will be better under Trump, or at least get worse more slowly, but we are so far down the hill it’ll take a lot more than that to come up with a fix. How the f**k does one pay off a 33 trillion dollar debt? When the debt service is almost as much as the bloated military budget? And especially when you have a guy like Trump leading the charge — a guy whose whole life and success is built around debt.
Sorry, all the data indicates the USA is done, and there is no way out for it (or come to that most of western Europe.) Time to make a plan B. We are are all moving to BobbyB’s coffee plantation in Costa Rica and watching the West collapse in on its own contradictions, self loathing and idiocy.
Trump & Milei are not at all on the same page philosophically. Milei is ripping up the rule book & actually reducing the reach of the state, whereas Trump is a Big Government protectionist who doesn’t want a smaller state, he just wants the Big State to be doing stuff he likes. Trump loves tariffs and regulation, just different ones. Trump wants to piss in the deep state’s cornflakes and then find a podium to receive rapturous applause, Milei wants to stop the state taking other people’s cornflakes & then fire the bureaucrat who was eating them.
For example, every time Donald John Trump is “convicted” of something by the courts his popularity goes UP
Equally, whenever a Biden or a Clinton seemingly escapes justice.
And when J6 justice starts getting compared to Antifa/BLM justice.
I think people notice.
That means that there’s one MSR out there for every 12 men, women and children in the nation, or about one MSR for every 8 adults. When you look at it in those terms, and consider that those 8 adults likely skew somewhat to the right of the political spectrum, you would need literally millions of law enforcement officers, willing and able to kill their fellow citizens in large numbers, in order to subdue them if it really came down to cases
Also, police are people too, and those not already right leaning would probably be joined by those whose departments got cut by blue states.
Certain sections of British society have already realised that, and stopped. But I don’t think they are the sections we would necessarily want to, do you?
@Fraser Orr – regarding “wanna-be SWAT types”, I remind you that the coppers at Uvalde, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and even as far back as at Littleton, were actual SWAT types, and they stood around and wibbled while they could hear children being killed. My experience of actual SWAT types (which I respectfully suggest is greater than yours) is that they are often (not always) wanna-be soldier blowhards, who are attracted to that direction because they get to deploy overwhelming force, heavy weapons and armored vehicles against (mostly) unarmed civilians, while dressed in the most body armour possible. There is the story (probably apocryphal) of the police chief who solicited volunteers to form a SWAT team, and immediately disqualified all those who volunteered, as having entirely the wrong motivations for the work. SWAT teams regularly run and hide as individual officers run towards the threat.
Regarding the willingness and motivations of citizens to acquire and hold these weapons, I think you miss the sea-change in the ownership of weapons that has taken place over the last few tears.
When I stood behind the counter of a neighbourhood gun shop of an evening, more than 30 years ago now, the clientele was highly-predictable. Overwhelmingly men, they were hunters and sport shooters, or they were small businessmen or people in risky lines of work. Very few people carried concealed weapons, CPLs were fantastically-hard to get, the average person had maybe a hunting rifle or a shotgun in the closet, but not much more.
Now about one adult in 12 in this state holds a CPL, and while the legal restrictions on them are mostly-removed, it’s still a pain to get one. Those people who went to the trouble, did so because they want to carry, and they do. When I go back and visit that neighbourhood gun store, it’s like the world has inverted – MSRs, which used to be the niche interest of a few hard-core shooters, now dominate, along with an explosion in the number and variety of pistols expressly made for concealed carry. When I first got a CPL, in 1989, choices were so slim, I actually had to make a pistol to carry, by cutting down a S&W model 39. Nowadays, I don’t even recognise half of the offerings in this marketspace, they are so numerous. Mrs llamas and I, who are ‘known’ to be active shooters, are now beyond being surprised at the number and variety of our acquaintance who lean across the kitchen table and say ‘we’re getting a gun for the house, and another one to carry – what do you suggest?’
You suggest that the majority of these people will meekly give up in the face of efforts to disarm them. I suggest you misread the public mood. We might consider the example of New York (the state) which passed a registration law for all semi-automatic weapons in 2014, with draconian penalties for non-compliance. To date, the compliance rate is less than 4% of the weapons known to be held in the state, and many local police departments (who listen to their citizens and not to the chuckleheads in Albany) institutionally fail to enforce the law.
As to the outcomes if/when Trump is re-elected, as expressed by various commenters, I fear you are all right in some degree. But this is the choice we have (Don’t blame me. I didn’t kill it. It was dead when I got here) and now Trump is the least-worst of our bad choices. If we must decline, let’s try and make it as slow as we can :-(.
llater,
llamas
Llamas:
I am interested in your cut down S&W 39. How did that work? Not easy to shorten an automatic, I would have thought.
@llamas
@Fraser Orr – regarding “wanna-be SWAT types”, I remind you that the coppers at Uvalde, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and even as far back as at Littleton, were actual SWAT types
Maybe, though when I think of cops verses citizens with guns what think of is Waco, or what I think of is the McCloskeys in Missouri. However, I guess my point is that that is not at all how the government would approach it, they would (and have been) taking a very different approach. The challenge for the government is that firearms are not consumables, they don’t wear out, and so they can’t choke the supply and wait for them to go away, though that was a successful strategy for fully automatic rifles. So what do they do? First they pass a law that, as you say, nobody much notices. Then they enforce the law gently at first.
Does the law stop people from owning these weapons? No, not entirely, though it does stop some people, and certainly stops new acquisitions. So the owner base is degraded a little.
Then make it illegal to buy rifle ammunition. Does that stop people owning weapons? Not entirely, but the owner base is degraded.
Then, since a lot of AR-15s are chambered for pistol ammo like 9mm, they change the law to demand background checks for ammo — and anyone who is known to have an illegal AR-15 cannot buy ammo. They know this of course because they have been passing “sensible gun laws” for decades. Ammo is a consumable, so choking it off at the supply does work. Does that stop people owning weapons? Not entirely, but the owner base is degraded.
Then you pass a law to require id, and eventually a check with the ATF before you can shoot at a range. Being skilled through practice is a thing that wears away over time also. Does that stop people owning weapons? Not entirely, but the owner base is degraded.
So now you are left with people breaking the law by owning the weapons and so in legal jeopardy, without ammo or a place to practice. So you are left with the die hards to reload their own ammo (though gunpowder is now much harder to get), and who have to go practice in the woods. Your 28 million is greatly reduced. And on TV and every outlet this small group are constantly characterized as “Ultra extremist MAGA gun nuts and militia who want to overthrow the government and shoot all the black people and undocumented workers while keeping their wimmenfolk chained to the sink dropping babies they aren’t allowed to abort.”
So it is not a matter, generally speaking of kicking down the door, though a bit of that to scare the crap out of people will help a lot, it is a matter of attrition over a long period of time.
Hard core gun people are some of the best people in the country for sure (though they have their share of nutjobs), but they are a small minority (and not the kind of “minority” that gets special rights.) The number of people in America who are willing to say “give me liberty or give me death” is not at all high. Most people are mostly concerned with dealing with their crappy job, or crappy healthcare, or saving for a massively overpriced college education, or trying to rescue a few dollars from the federal government to save for retirement, to deal with any of this.
Regarding the willingness and motivations of citizens to acquire and hold these weapons, I think you miss the sea-change in the ownership of weapons that has taken place over the last few tears.
I know it was a typo but “last few tears” is perhaps a typo that makes the original better. Definitely a few tears have been shed. However, it is worth pointing out that part of this “sea change” has been an increase in guns and ammo from the kind of people who bought them thirty years ago. But there is also a big rise in the purchase of guns and ammo by people on the far left too. Make of that what you will.
To date, the compliance rate is less than 4% of the weapons known to be held in the state, and many local police departments (who listen to their citizens and not to the chuckleheads in Albany) institutionally fail to enforce the law.
Right but passing the law is just the first step. I think you’ll find the rural counties more compliant when federal and state aid start to become dependent on their compliance. But we will see. Moreover, compliance in some rural county is not the priority, the priority is in the cities, where people are much more compliant. The rural counties can be mopped up later.
@llamas
As to the outcomes if/when Trump is re-elected, as expressed by various commenters, I fear you are all right in some degree. But this is the choice we have (Don’t blame me. I didn’t kill it. It was dead when I got here) and now Trump is the least-worst of our bad choices. If we must decline, let’s try and make it as slow as we can :-(.
But I’d ask you this… let’s say you are in a bad marriage that is sucking the life out of you and it is getting worse and worse. Let’s say you go to couples counselling and that doesn’t make it better, but it does slow down how quickly it is getting worse. At what point are you going to file for divorce? Sure, you have a commitment and investment in the relationship, so there is a threshold of crap you will put up with being offset by the history, and sunk cost in the relationship. But isn’t there a point that you say “enough is enough” and “my happiness is important to me” and “I don’t have to put up with this shit anymore”. Don’t you feel you are at that point with your country? And if so, what’s your plan B?
There are lots of pretty girls out there who don’t give you the silent treatment for a week because you left the toilet seat up, or refuse sex because you didn’t intuit that when she said “nothing is wrong” she meant “everything is wrong.” (Or for our lady readers, there are lots of great guys out there who do want to know how your day went, and can hold a conversation about more than “what’s for dinner”.)
@ JohnK – regarding my cut-down Model 39, I would not want to give the impression that I’m some sort of idiot-savant gunsmith. I made mine by slavishly-copying an original ASP pistol, which was a commercially-produced cut-down 39 that was sold in the 70s and 80s. With that as a pattern, and unlimited use of a Bridgeport, it was relatively-easy to do. The only tricky bit was welding the slide, and I had my buddy who welded on cruise-missile engines at Williams International do that for me.
Of course, in the early 90s, Smith brought out the 3913, which amounted to the same thing. I sold mine for liability reasons, it lives in Florida now and the current owner says it’s still working fine.
llater,
llamas
@Fraser Orr – of course, you may well be right. We shall see.
llater,
llamas
Right now, due to the current mass media climate, most Americans think that they’re in the minority when they look around and say “This ain’t right… Something needs to be done…”
People are emphatically not on board with everything that the Obama/Biden operation has done, least of all the mass illegal migration and withdrawal from Afghanistan sort of things. The spending and the inflation are other worries. Nobody really expects any of this to last; there’s a clear sense of impending doom out there, and almost everyone feels it. That’s why weapons purchases are up so high…
The break is going to come when most people look around, and realize that they’re not actually in the minority, being dissatisfied with the way things are being done by the people in charge. When that moment hits, and the conditions are right…?
Hoo-boy, is it going to get kinetic. And, I don’t mean that in the sense that people are going to be taking action, I mean it in the sense that events are going to eventuate with a stunning speed and velocity that nobody will be able to cope with, least of all the dinosaurs running things these days. It’s going to be one of those deals where everyone went into work yesterday, and it was as it has always been, and today? Today, the streets are filled with overturned and burning cop cars, with the cops still in them, and everything else has changed.
I’ve got no idea how it will change, but it will change, and the mass that moves in order to create that change? It won’t be something anyone can stop, nor control. I don’t know what direction it will take, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be in favor of more of this statist bullshit the government and media keep handing out. Nobody believes them, any more: They may try, but the problem is that they’ve pissed away their credibility and trust for so long that I don’t see it coming back for this iteration of “authority”. At. All.
Although, I gotta tell you… It’s truly freaking bizarre to hear a state employee talking about revolutionary change being necessary, and a few sentences later, talking about how good they have it with the state pension plan and pay. It’s like “Dude, do you hear yourself…? Are you not experiencing cognitive dissonance, right now? Why isn’t your head exploding?”
Still, the fact that a guy invested so heavily in the “system” is talking about that crap…? Disturbing. I don’t recall this being a norm, ever: Parks and Recreation was supposed to be comedy, not real life.
This “majority” won’t even bother to vote, never mind get up and work for change through the system. FFS they think Donald Trump will change things.
They certainly aren’t about to go out in the rain and snow chasing F.B.I. agents.
Sadly, I think I have to agree with Fraser Orr on the uprising question.
There’s a lot of ruin in a citizen. We’ll hold on to our civil life as long as we can. We’ll put up with indignities and illegalities and abuse, just so we can remain a legal citizen. Taking that irrevocable step into Outlaw only comes once we have no more hope at all of a civil life. Hell, we’ve all stood and watched as the Jan 6 people were railroaded and scourged.
We’re frogs in the pan of water, and the PTB know to turn that heat up slowly. But they surely will . . .
@bobbyb
Who are the PTB? And how does a sensible frog decide when their warm cosy bath turns into a death trap in time to hop out? Not sure, but perhaps when “decency” becomes illegal, which it very nearly is. I’m stuck here for a few more years, but I’m making a plan nonetheless.
Oh, and FWIW, I just got my mail in ballot, which I am going to use, even though I utterly hate the concept.
@fraser Orr: the frog analogy in my mind includes as a main point that the frogs would be jumping out of the pan and into the fire, with the pan being the less painful choice. You’ll put off that jump as long as possible.
@bobbyb
I think you are merging two metaphors here, the frying pan and the fire and the frog in the pot, but that is ok, because it toadlly works (that was a typo, but it was so delicious I decided to keep it.) So allow me to torture the metaphor a bit more…. when you jump out of the pan into the fire you are going to burn your feet, but at least you can then hop away to safety and lick your wounds. But if you wait too long in the pot your energy and resources become so drained that you can’t make the hop out, or escape the fire when you do — especially so when the fire burns bigger and bigger every day.
So, coming back to the non metaphorical world of “what do do about America”, it seems a useful analogy. If I wait too long I will be exhausted of the capability to do anything, the longer the wait the less options I have. So it seems prudent to at the very least make a Plan B right now and make preparations for Plan B, even if you don’t execute it right now. If it all goes to hell, what am I going to do? And let’s be clear, it could all go to hell in 2024 — I don’t need to tell you that this is going to be a crazy year.
Of course I might say “I’m going down with the ship”, which is a perfectly legitimate decision to make. If I going to my bunker in the woods with a basement full of ammo and canned beef stew, that might be a legit decision too. If I decide I’m going to go live in Switzerland, better get busy making the necessary preparations.
All I’d say is I should at least MAKE the decision myself when I have options, rather than have it forced to me as the US descends into chaos, anarchy and tyranny.
I might add the same applies to most western countries too. They are all sick with the same disease, though some are further along than others.
Kirk – they certainly have the (paramilitary) FBI – conservatives have been systematically weeded out over many years (going all the way back to 1993 – so over 30 years). What is left is mostly Dems and RINOs – “Republicans” who will obey.
Sometimes they will obey with regret – such as the prison guards who said to the man who was put in prison for the “vote by text” meme (a joke that he did not even invent – Hillary Clinton supporters invented this joke, one of the very few joke memes the left invented) “you should not be here – you have done nothing wrong” say the prison guards, but they still LOCKED HIM UP.
In the Soviet death camps the unofficial motto was “You today – me tomorrow”.
Some guards even said that as they murdered people (as a sort of chant or mantra) – there was no pretense that the people being killed were really guilty of anything, it was all about filling the quota (the guards themselves could be next – hence “you today – me tomorrow”).
You are in the military Kirk – I am not.
How many of your comrades-in-arms were forced out for not accepting the Covid “vaccinations” (that is, of course, what the mandate was for – to push dissenters our of the military) or for wrong-think on some other matter.
And how many have retired or left in some other way.
How many people in the United States military are still like you Kirk?
The American Progressive regime, at both the Federal level and in Democrat States, will always find “crimes” that its domestic opponents have (supposedly) committed – and will punish them for these “crimes”.
And juries can be found who will go along with this – indeed that will enjoy doing it.
If you live in area where most people are decent, they will hold the trial in Washington D.C. or New York City – a pretext can be found for this.
“Someone in this city read what you posted”, or “you sexually assaulted a woman here in New York – whilst being thousands of miles away that day – we do not care that this is physically impossible”, or whatever.
And the “jury of your peers” will laugh and show their fangs.
I find that current events in the USA remind me of the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s/early 1990s, with Texas (particularly with its border ‘stand-off’ wit the Feds, being like Slovenia, on the rim, confident in its own place and culture and with the ‘Feds’ the Red-Start wearing Serbian-dominated Federal forces giving up after a few token shots to concentrate on their key battles, against Croatia and Bosnia. If anything causes the USA to collapse, it will be the economic disintegration coming with rising government debt and inflation, with some key States, Texas, Florida and their natural ‘satellites’ Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi looking at throwing their hats in with the big two. With the economic powerhouse (despite itself) of California behind it, the ‘Serbs/Feds’ could stagger on for a while, and suppress any secessionism in ‘Flyover country’ by sheer weight of numbers and firepower, as well as geography.
No one in the Northern states would look to join Canada for liberation any more than anyone would have looked to Ceausescu’s Romania for it.
Mr Ed – interesting. Although I think you underestimate the power, and the viciousness, of the Corporate State. For example, Americans have been indoctrinated for many years to regard the FBI as “the Good Guys” – the truth about the FBI, that they are despicable scum, is a difficult pill to swallow.
As for Serbia – in spite of its terrible problems, it is now, perhaps, not doing as badly as the United Kingdom and the United States are.