"There Are No Do-Overs."

 

 

To go along with endorsing a never-ending policy of bailouts, "stimulus packages," and foreign military adventurism, the establishment of neither major party questions the assaults on Americans' liberties... the American people are fed up. Many realized heading into Tuesday that regardless of who won the presidential election, the status quo would be the real victor.
--Ron Paul at ronpaul.com

 

The country of Washington and Madison and the culture of old Europe are as dead to the modern American as the Rome of Cicero and Augustus was to the medieval peasant who grazed his herds in the ruins of the Forum.
--Virgil C., comment at amnation.com

 Ol' Remus

VERBATIM

This election year Mitt Romney, a committed and practicing northeast progressive, lost the presidential election to Barack Obama, a committed and practicing international Marxist. When an admitted left-liberal fronts the opposition, it means the regime is running the opposition. Comparison shopping is useless when they own both stores and the products within. Some are rightly enraged the votes and the counts were rigged, at least at the margins, but this has more to do with entertaining the believers than affecting the outcome. The fix was in before the first vote was cast. It's all Chicago now. There's no losing an election the regime wants won.

The statist hardliners win elections because they know Americans are timid. When frightened—and Americans are frightened of everything—they back away and the statists advance once again. It's said Americans imagine themselves the descendents of hardy pioneers. Pioneers were admirable folks in an admirable era, but truth is they'd have failed without the textile mills of Burlington or the nail factories of Wheeling or the rifle makers of Lancaster. In the end pioneers were settlers, and settlers require industrial support and lots of it. So did the colonists before them. Colonist to pioneer to condo committeeman, there's the real story, a devolution embarrassing to pioneers and stay-at-home yeomen alike. 

The schools would be doing the nation a service if they produced more bullies. Americans are astonishingly faint-hearted, terrified of the least unpleasantness, which is why they want everybody to like them and "just get along." And like the proper hausfrau it aspires to be, America believes the real world is antiseptic and tidy by nature, merely in need of a diligent housekeeper. Men who knew better lie on the battlefields of Europe and Asia while their descendents are suspended from school for pointing their finger and saying "bang." Perhaps we need to rethink who goes to the noisy part of future wars. 

The regime will likely face a televised revolt complete with stirring events that will live forever in the annals of human liberty. But they'll lose and be destroyed in detail because it will be a sting, an in-house enterprise. They know Americans want an opposition with a cafeteria and a Rebel of the Month parking space. Only the regime can provide such a thing, and provide one it will. It's almost a rule, anything that appears to be as the regime declares it to be is bogus at a deeper level. It won't be pointless however. People deluded enough to confuse Mitt Romney with "Seldom Seen" Smith will be thrilled with a well-produced scam telecast in HD, the better to press the cautionary tale deeply into their minds. The part where common sense used to be.

However, the regime is not like gravity, something that 'just is'. It can be opposed for real and may well be. You'll know it's the real thing when you don't see it. Example: during the Korean War of the early 1950s Russian pilots were taking on the US Air Force. The US government knew it. The Soviet government knew it. The American people didn't know it. Both sides kept the secret from them, with cooperation by the news media—deeply captured toadies even then. So it would be with a real opposition. That's how it works.

A real opposition would likely be a resistance movement, ultraorthodox and non-confrontational. Imagine the Zealots informed by 4GW rather than ghost dancers. Just as no one rang a bell and announced the economic collapse had begun, so there would be no declaration a genuine resistance was underway, in fact, its existence would be in doubt until the era was over, by intent all around. Their doings would be put down as terrorism, not without cause, just as the Zealots had the Sicarii. If it materializes, a genuine resistance would eventually dominate substantial territory and conduct themselves as a parallel, legitimate government functioning as state agencies and public utilities do now, all but forcing the regime into the role of an invading or occupation force. 

The press is an appendage to the permanent government. Accept it as such. Nonetheless, should a resistance arise assume there is covert understanding to be had from their reportage. Weigh carefully: deaths or disappearances of key figures, catastrophic failures of infrastructure, implausible 'routine' military exercises, unlikely retirements and sudden resignations at high levels of government, weird prohibitions and outlier regulations, serial transportation mishaps or any similar occurence that happens over and over, headline news recast or retracted or abandoned in the days following the event, shortages of common items, or the like.

Life will be all the more unpleasant because panicky politicians direct the response of the police and military, and do it badly. This plays into the hands of a resistance. Asymmetrical warfare relies on big, bureaucratic opponents grossly overreacting and expending itself in the doing. Think of this when you see video of high-dollar helicopters firing $70,000 Hellfire anti-armor missiles at single riflemen in Afghanistan. Add the cost of flying and maintaining a helicopter, supporting the air crew, supporting and equipping the ground crew, and the bill for transporting all this to Afghanistan. Compare it to the cost of putting an Afghan rifleman in the field and you have the logic of asymmetrical warfare. The rifleman bleeds on the battlefield, the other bleeds figuratively but massively, continuously and uncontrollably. 

The manic excesses of the "war on terrorism" would be intensified, tipping ever more Americans into true rebellion. They know it, it's an accepted side effect. This is usually talked about in political terms but the practical downside is significant. Americans are a well armed people even aside from firearms. For instance, critical nodes are known most intimately by those who install and maintain them, and it's easier to get thermite or microcircuitry in Minneapolis than in Mogadishu. If much of the populace were to participate in small ways the cumulative effect would unhinge the establishment. DC would go full retard if countermeasures produced no lasting results. Imagine a thermostat where the "on" and "off" setting is the same. The furnace it controls cycles itself to destruction while accomplishing nothing. So says 4GW theory anyway. 

On the other side, it's always a stretch to believe random violence and willful destruction of wealth is an honorable thing, it diminishes the perpetrator as well as his opponent. Resistance outfits also have a history of making unsupportable demands on the populace. Often they devolve into criminal enterprises of the basest kind. It's been said as far back as Plato there are no good crowds, at the least not good for long. Recall the Mafia had respectable origins. 

Take special care when partisan fervor is afoot, the life of the mind is fully capable of destroying the life of the body. Recall it was the Zealots who destroyed the food stores of Jerusalem* to stiffen the people's resolve during the Roman siege of the year 70. A much reduced Jerusalem surrendered when the last rat was eaten. Duh. Core Zealots fell at Masada years later, well fed. Secular zealots are already among us and their numbers aren't getting smaller.

It's foolish to turn your back on a bear, if it's in sight at all it's too close. That said, all this is improbable. It takes an industrial grade tinfoil hat to entertain such notions. But history is a good predictor, if pretty much the only predictor, and there are parallels to times past. The so-called Business Plot of 1933 comes to mind. The venerable formula still applies: risk equals severity times probability. The severity is about as high as it gets, the probability is not nothing and appears to be rising. And consider this: the tinfoil hats may be underestimating what's coming. Now is the time to think about these things. The prudent have already achieved something approaching self sufficiency, well away from crowds. There are no do-overs.