Victor Davis Hanson writes (in part):
We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is $1.5 trillion budget deficits. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes.
Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware—and hard-earned deterrence.
We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or stroll at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.
The FBI has imploded. It has all but become a Third World retrieval and investigatory service for the Democratic Party. Its last four directors either have lied, misled, or pleaded amnesia while under oath.
In 2016, the bureau with the Democratic National Committee sought to destroy the integrity of an election by fabricating a Russian collusion hoax. Its continuance and coverup ultimately required FBI agents and lawyers to alter legal documents, to lie under oath, to destroy subpoenaed phone data, and to outsource illegal suppression of First Amendment rights to Silicon Valley contractors. The nation now fears there isn’t anything the FBI might not do.
For a decade, with impunity, the Biden family gorged multimillion profits from selling the “Big Guy”/Mr. “10 Percent” Joe Biden’s name and access—sums for the most part hidden and likely not completely taxed. We all know it is true, and we all know the FBI and Department of Justice know it is true, and we know further that the truth means nothing.
A tiny powerful minority has more leverage than any other elite in the history of civilization. And a large underclass of subsidized poor shares with the wealthy a disdain for the struggling middle class, the old bulwark of democracy.
The idea of 330 million American citizens of different incidental races and ethnicities united by a common American identity of shared values, customs, and traditions is all but mocked. In its place is arising something like the former Yugoslavia—an undefined mishmash of competing and increasingly hostile tribal interests, with residents sorting themselves out into red and blue states that eventually will lead to two antithetical Americas.
A once famously lawful America has become a veritable land of thieves. The criminal is all but exempt. And the middle class and poor suffer as a result from poor services, higher prices, reduced hours, and fewer stores.
We know the solution is to deter crime by assured punishment for the guilty. But the majority of Americans either cannot or will not demand a return to sanity for fear of some sort of undefined pushback from their elites. Pick your charge: “racism,” “privilege,” “bias,” “discrimination.” Any will do.
We have seen lots of cultural revolutions in this country, but never one that was so singularly focused on razing the foundations of America—until now.
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The Biden Administration’s exchange of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA player Brittney Griner is an unequivocal embarrassment for the United States and a moral victory for Russia. No Soviet “active measures” could make the United States look as foolish and decadent as Biden has just done.
It is one thing to give up a real-life James Bond villain nicknamed “The Merchant of Death” in return for an accused spy like Paul Whelan. It is quite another to give up said Merchant of Death for an entitled anti-American pothead who got herself into a jam through her own stupidity and carelessness.
There is simply no will in the White House to rescue a white man in distress, for the same reason there is no will to protect the nation’s borders. Biden could have brought Whelan home. But Biden’s people don’t waste time doing things their voters don’t care about.
Under Biden, black supremacy has gone global. His absurd rescue mission sends a message that if you are the right kind of American, if you check the right identity boxes, Washington will stop at nothing to save you from the consequences of your decisions. But if you are not so lucky, well, you can go kick rocks.
This is a hard lesson that many are learning from everyday experience in our increasingly lawless, dysfunctional, rigidly unequal society. The racialist poison of black supremacist politics makes a mockery of justice and is turning this country into a pressure cooker.
All the “cultural revolutions” we’ve seen in this country have been leading us to this point.
The ones we’re seeing now are basically the same ones, just updated. The big difference now is that it’s all being ramped up to warp speed as they move in for the kill. It’s all so over the top that it’s obvious to everyone, but they don’t care if anyone notices because at this point they think they’ve got it in the bag. All the banks, all the corporations, all the governments are in lockstep - so who cares whether the people like it or not.
The signs of America’s decline have started coming along so frequently, that it’s getting boring.
If someone had written a futuristic sci-fi novel in 1960 based on the events of the last few years, it would never have been published, because it would have been considered too improbable. (The only one I know of like this, about the UK, not the US, is When the Kissing Had to Stop, published in 1960.
[ https://www.amazon.com/When-kissing-stop-Constantine-FitzGibbon/dp/087000199X/ ] )
So, the question is, what’s going to happen? The US now is like that game – whose name I forget – where a tower is built out of little wooden sticks, and then each player in turn carefully pulls one out … until the tower collapses.
But what would ‘collapse’ in the US look like? Or maybe it won’t collapse at all, but just gradually slide down into something like, say, Brazil or Argentina.
The factor that makes it very difficult to predict is that the US was recently (still is?) the world’s single military superpower, with 400 military bases around the globe, client states in actual or near military confrontation with other militarily-powerful states, and a well-stocked nuclear arsenal.
If the core of the US collapses – whatever we mean by ‘collapse’ – that military framework will remain.
Example: it is very very important to American security that the Islamist savages in various African countries do not defeat the non-Islamist savages running those countries [ Nigerian Army massacred children in war on insurgents, witnesses say ]. So we have hundreds of people working in, and spend millions of dollars supporting, something the Pentagon calls ‘Africa Command’. [ United States Africa Command - Wikipedia ]
It gives our military people another nice colorful patch to wear, and who would not want that? But since we cannot command a street corner in South Chicago, it seems a bit ambitious.
At any rate, if the core collapses, the military framework – including our nuclear arsenal – will remain. How this fact will influence events is hard to say. (It must throw a certain pall over the celebrations in Moscow and Beijing as they watch each new example of our disintegration … yes, they must be chortling at seeing our leaders go mad … but those leaders have nuclear missiles that even sexual degenerates can fire. So the laughter in Moscow and Beijing must have a certain nervous quality about it.)
So what should conservatives do, given that we cannot predict the future in any detail, and that a sweeping, deep, long-lasting domestic political victory for American patriots is unlikely?
Well, step Number 1 is: take some thought for your own and your immediate family’s physical safety and self-preservation, in the event of a severe disruption of civil society.
The quick mnemonic here is “beans, bullets and bandages”. Some very experienced people have given a lot of thought to what this might mean concretely … we can draw on their knowledge. More about that in another post.
Seems that about half - possibly more than half - the people do like it.
The Russians, who tend to think as does Aleksandr Dugin, do not want the West to collapse, nor do they want Russia to fail, even though they may not approve of the West. They support Traditionism, the nation-state, borders, nationalism…and while they seek global power, they do not approve of the WEF and The Great Reset of elite global oligarchy. They, with whomever they group with against the US, want to be their own power, not under any One World Government.
So they are concerned about the degenerate wokeism displayed in the West (US and EU) and do not want it to infect them, nor to “ruin” the West.
Nuances in the “laughter” of their media and pundits is there, or so I think based upon hearing several Russian broadcasts…and listening to Beck discuss them. And a certain nervousness, as you write, Doug.
Indeed, if any have yet to “prepare” it is never to late to start.
There are some novels written about “collapse” scenarios, which should scare the stuffing out of any sane person. Some more “how to, what to, prep list particulars, and learn this” than others, which is a bit overwhelming and tedious in a novel.
One name familiar to this forum is: Amazon.com: Kurt Schlichter: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
For EMP reality: Amazon.com: William R. Forstchen: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
For really tedious, but thorough, how to survive TEOTWAWKI: Amazon.com: James Wesley Rawles: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
It is Rawles, who wrote a technical “How To Survive TEOTWAWKI” first and then his series. When I write that while we are preppers, we are not Rawlesian by a long shot, it is to this man’s preparedness that I refer.
Short of these books, there are many prepper websites, and don’t let the knowledge of the Mormons go undiscovered, simply because they are believers.
For many areas of our country, let alone other countries, living self-sustaining as possible, and always prepared is normal…not crazy, not paranoid…just normal intelligent awareness of living.
My husband and I have been, since childhood, that sort of person, but he actually lived it, while I just always felt the need to be prepared; to carry needed medicines, water bottles, snacks, tools for various necessities, a travel bag in my vehicle…now also a Get-Home-Backpack. I was not then, and am not now, planning on becoming a victim, nor let those in my care become victims.
We practice situational awareness…and try not to do stupid stuff. Some of the dystopian TV series provide good examples of what to do…but more importantly, of what NOT to do.
And why prepare? Why not? I don’t want to give in or give up, because if I do, then how do my grandchildren inherit America. That can be a political decision barring chaos, but should chaos come, it should be a moral decision than can be made because of preparedness.
I know this topic is not unfamiliar coming from me, and maybe most here don’t agree. But…I also write for those, who only read this forum. I don’t know how many members that may be, but we all write for them, as well. Don’t we?
Whoa … what an interesting, informative reply!
Although I lived in the Soviet Union (Kharkov, as it then was) for a few months in 1985, and have Ukrainian and Russian friends – all of them lovely people – I have no feeling for what they now think about the current situation. I do hope Russian patriots are not simply West-hating Slavic nationalists – they are part of the West too … and I believe that if we had approached Russia differently after the USSR collapsed, things might have gone very differently.
But … this is a very tricky issue. It’s the one deep, substantive issue that divides the patriotic movement. (The division is both substantial, and serious, unlike the question of Trump, where the differences are not about fundamental politics, and the anti-Trump forces (among whom I count myself) are far outnumbered by those who appreciate him. Anyway, we need a non-corrosive discussion about this issue.
As for ‘prepping’. The first rule of war (according to Doug Clausewitz) is ‘prepare your base’. This means you and your family’s home, so that whatever happens, you don’t have to worry about the necessities of life during the crisis period.
But having done that, we need local organizations of like-minded people. Two dozen isolated individuals/families are far, far weaker than the same number who have worked out a method of secure communications among themselves, taken advantage of the division of labor that any group will find, have some sort of structure, have run through and practiced for several possible ‘what if’ scenarios.
I think the former Oathkeepers (there is a tragedy!) in Yavapai County, Arizona, are on the right track. You might like to have a look at them: https://YCPT.org
The fellow who is their leader is a former Army Ranger, but he really understands the importance of avoiding the ‘look at us, how scary we are with our AR15s, come infiltrate us Mr FBI man’ syndrome that a lot of good people exhibit. Gentle as doves, wise as serpents, to steal a bit of wise guidance from our Christian friends.
Jeanne, I believe there is danger in listening too trustfully to Beck. He does not always get geopolitical issues right. From what you say he says about Dugin, for instance, I gather that he has not got what is most important about that highly influential man. There is a good article about Dugin by a Hoover Institution senior fellow, John Dunlop here:
Dunlop explains that Dugin is “a new-fascist ideologue”. His nationalism is not the same as the patriotism of American conservatives. It is a belief in an imperial Russia; a belief that the Russian people have a sacred calling to rule over “Eurasia” - “an empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok”. Ukraine has no right to be an independent state in his view - it is merely a region of Russia.
“‘The nation is everything; the individual is nothing.’ This slogan encapsulates one of Dugin’s most cherished beliefs.”
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It should be noted that Dugin does not focus primarily on military means as a way of achieving Russian dominance over Eurasia; rather, he advocates a fairly sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services, supported by a tough, hard-headed use of Russia’s gas, oil, and natural resource riches to pressure and bully other countries into bending to Russia’s will. Dugin apparently does not fear war in the least, but he would prefer to achieve his geopolitical goals without resorting to it.
Dugin’s geopolitics are mystical and occult in nature, the shape of world civilizations and the clashing vectors of historical development being portrayed as shaped by unseen spiritual forces beyond man’s comprehension.
The ethnic Russian people are seen as the bearers of a unique civilization. Russians are a messianic people, possessing universal, pan-human significance. The Russian people, Dugin insists, can serve only as the core ethnos of a vast empire.
Russia is a dictatorship. Putin is its dictator. He is a cold-blooded murderer. He has invaded a neighboring independent state - Ukraine - more than once. He most certainly does “want to ruin the West”. Ardently. Devoutly. Cheered on by Aleksandr Dugin. I cannot understand why some American conservatives, individualists who normally hate fascists, dictators, and cold-blooded murderers, feel sympathy for Putin. Or for fascist, mystical, imperialist Dugin.
I think the key to understanding what appears to be “sympathy for Putin” is that, in the big picture, he’s simply the lesser of two evils.
Yes, Putin is a dictator, but so is Xi. Putin is focused on ruling only Eurasia (at this point) - Xi is already focused on ruling the world.
Being at war with Putin over part of Eurasia is a waste of resources we should be using against Xi, who is a much greater threat to us, and the entire world. He’s already infiltrated and is close to conquering us from within - our own president is totally under his control, having sold himself to Xi for 10% of a few billions.
And our war against Russia has caused them to ally with Xi against us - destroying the strategy we spent the last decades building to our advantage, of dividing them and thereby weakening their threat.
Jillian, if you remember my previous posts about Dugin, based on Beck’s reporting on the research that his specially assigned team had done, our analysis of Dugin is the same. He is a large “T” Traditionalist, not a conservative traditionalist as we are. He is NOT a friend to America, as I stated in those posts.
Beck is fully aware of what Dugin is (evil incarnate seeking to bring about apocalypse to alter global power) and how “innocent seeming” his supposed nationalism and Traditionalism is to unaware conservative traditionalists.
Putin is his acolyte, who wants to return Mother Russia to her supreme empire.
All of this is dangerous to America. All of the above, I stressed repeatedly in any posts I made about Dugin and any other influential people that he has had influence upon, such as Steve Bannon and Brazil’s Olavo de Carvalho.
I doubt very much that there is anything that Dunlop knows from his research that Beck does not now from his. Beck has been warning of Dugin for many years, and advised Trump to avoid Bannon, because of his long on and off again relationship with Dugin, which made him suspect in Beck’s opinion.
Because of my past posts and our discussions about Dugin, I did not think I had to repeat that here, but I guess I should have been more explicit about both Beck’s and my opinions on the danger of Dugin. My fault…I should have not left anything to doubt, and should have been more thorough and the nuances in the behavior of Russian media, etc.
Doug, I also thought that after the collapse of the USSR, we should have reacted differently. I kept thinking that now was the time to support the people of Russia in all ways…and it didn’t happen. What an opportunity wasted. I expected change between our countries to benefit both, but mostly to help establish something besides a police state in Russia.
Yes, there is Russia’s government and the Russian people, there is China’s government and the Chinese people, just as there is America’s government and the American people.
As for Trump, I was a Never-Trumper and yes, highly influenced by Beck and others, and from Trump’s past dalliance with politics; I didn’t think he was serious and was sucking all the oxygen out of the room full of very good candidates. But, he proved to me that he was serious, and I still doubt that any other man besides him could have halted the Leftist train, which was threatening to mow down America for good. His presidency gave time to us and allowed us to understand what Democrat establishment, elite leaders actually thought about the USA and The People…and the Constitution and Bill of Rights…and of plain decency and rule of law. We saw what America could become, and then we saw what happened under the Clinton/Obama/Biden transformation, which we are currently suffering during. And, we understood that the transformation must be stopped.
For whatever that pause was worth, Trump did it. He may still be the only man that can halt US decline, so that others (Ron DeSantis perhaps) may continue after his final term. 2024 is both very near and far away at the same time.
I take your point(s), Liz. But it was Putin who started a war, not Xi.
Should America, the West, NATO have simply allowed Putin to grab Ukraine - what remained of it after his last grabs? If so, NATO has no reason to exist. And all former Soviet-dominated states have reason to fear re-conquest.
Negotiations? Did Putin indicate that he was prepared to negotiate? What was his starting position, what were his demands?
I recall that Putin did, at the beginning, present a list of demands to NATO. That Ukraine remain neutral, not join NATO, and that the two border provinces be independent (I dont remember the exact terms, but thats approximately the gist of it).
If our leaders had done their job (as Trump would have) a successful negotiation could have been achieved, in my opinion.
But because our CIA, under the direction of people like Victoria Nuland, thinks it is their business to orchestrate “regime change” with countries - including our own - as if the world were their chess game, they chose instead to escalate the whole thing into a war, using Ukraine as a proxy, in order to depose Putin and claim another scalp.
As a side benefit they’re also profiting off of the arms sales (which are ending up in the hands of terrorists in Africa.)
You’re right Jeanne - among the many great things Trump did, one of the best was that (without even trying) he exposed the whole vermin infested sewer of our government for what they are.
I agree, Liz. While the US had promised Ukraine protection (under Obama), it did not happen. NATO only has obligations to the nations that belong to NATO. A sticking point with Putin was that he was against nations that abutted Russia joining NATO…assuming that he had some sort of guarantee on that from NATO or the US as the big power of NATO.
This whole Ukraine thing has stunk for many years. Corrupt government notwithstanding, Ukraine has been used by the US in their relationship with Russia.
Face the facts, Xi, who is China, has been at war with the US and every other nation that either stands in his way of global domination or is useful to China’s desire.
The CCP has invaded subtlely those nations, which they want to dominate…own…use, and Xi is the CCP.
All points taken. Except - it was Putin that made war, not America. (Not even the human (?) political bomb Victoria Nuland.)
What in your opinion, Liz, should the West have conceded to Russia? Part of Ukraine? All of it? And why?
So what should have been done, or should now be done, to stop China’s war against the nations?
That’s a book, Jillian. But, there are intelligent US leaders, who would better answer that than I…and they should address the issue. Why won’t they? Or why won’t they listen to those who insist that they must? What is their real agenda? Is it too late to stop China’s long planned victory? Why did our leaders wait and wait before addressing it?
20 years ago, Frank Gaffney was sounding the alarm…still is.
Here’s the real kicker: You can make a very good case, in my opinion, that the foreign policy wing of our Deep State is ultimately responsible, both for what it did not do and for what it did, for the current situation in Ukraine.
Basically, the Russian dictator has done what the US would do if Mexico signed a set of economic and miltiary agreements with China, had its military trained by Chinese ‘advisors’, bought Chinese military equipment, made a military alliance with China, and looked like bringing in a few divisions of Chinese troops and nuclear missiles.
There is an added element: Putin is a Russian (ethnic Russian) nationalist, and there are many Ukrainian-citizen-Russians living in Ukraine where there is also a serious hate-Russia Ukrainian nationalist movement, some of whom are open Nazis. (Please note that Ukrainian nationalists were guilty of mass murder of Poles and Jews just before WWII.
[ Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia - Wikipedia]
Nationalism where ‘nations’ are geographically interpenetrated is poison, despite the idiot-Left’s Orwellian chant that ‘Diversity is Strength’.)
Be that as it may, it was Putin who did the invading. And whoever fires the first shot, loses a lot of moral authority. (It’s why the US worked to make sure Japan would fire the first shot.
[“We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move. … The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot.” From the (Republican) Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s diary.) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1897543]
It’s an argument among historians, but there are many who believe that when the Great Powers stumbled into WWI, plenty of blame could be served out all round. But … it was the Germans who moved first. Forget the strategic reasoning (the Russians had begun to mobilze and if the Germans waited to be attacked they would face a war on two fronts – but if they struck first and eliminated the French, they could then pivot and move their divisions to face the /Russians). Nonetheless, they fired the first shot.
As the Versailles Conference was concluding, the German deletate, with all the horrors and social descrution of the war fresh in everyone’s mind, sighed, and said, “Gentlemen, whatever will history say of us?”.
To which the French delegate snapped back, “Well, whatever she says, she will not say, that Belgium invaded Germany.”
Too bad Mr Putin didn’t take that on board.
Now: we ought to have a thread where everyone posts all the best, most relevant links on this topic, so that we can all read ‘the other side’ (or ‘both sides’), and make up our own minds on it.
But I strongly suggest we don’t get into a cat-fight over this issue. What’s going to happen is going to happen, whatever we think. (I hope it’s not going to be something that brings down civilization, even for a short time and partially.)
We have to build the patriot movement in the US, and this means working closely with people with whom we disagree on the Ukraine issue … whichever side you’re on. Both sides are good patriots who want the best for their country.
Atheists ought to be especially skilled at doing this, since almost every conservative organization I’ve had anything to do with has been heavily populated with serious believing Christians.
I’ve been sorely tempted, believe me, to respond with something woundingly-sarcastic when some of them have posted especially stupid things … but it’s a war, soldier. Point your weapon at the real enemy.