In terms of ignoring reality, FOMO -YOLO’ing and flimflamming our collective way into the future, I think not. Those times have passed. Certainly they have for the US government and its extensive population of dependents.
This may be cause to celebrate for the 10% of the population who won’t notice, and will likely celebrate, the end of government jobs, government pensions or social security, deprivation of a government-subsidized health care service, lack of a government-income supplements, collapsed government contractors, or the elimination of a regulatory and counterfeiting state that has created whole industries out of nothing, industries that currently support millions of American families.
The leftward momentum of the entire cadre of Democrat candidates seeking the US Presidency this year doesn’t reflect a mass desire to make the US a socialist country. The US is already a socialist country. Friendly fascism is the name of the game, if we can believe Bertram Gross, Sinclair Lewis, or our own eyes. The 2020 candidates, announced and unannounced, aim primarily to hold these socialist gains in the face of what promises to be a very frightening decade for the 90 Percenters.
Donald Trump, in 2016 and presumably in 2020, speaks to the same sentiments the anti-Trump field emotes today, sentiments of maintaining life and economics largely as they are. Rather than politicians reaching for the stars, asking that the ship of state be guided into a brighter future, we see a display of white knuckles angrily gripping the present, with a few bones thrown to restoring some of the better memories of the past. There is no imaginable future for the US that does not contain short-term tragedy for the majority of the population, and all the candidates all know this.
Against the Left: A Ro...
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2016 was a fight for stasis in America, a battle Trump narrowly won because he whispered an ancient and beneficial idea of less intervention, while dog-whistling a hope of a smaller government bureaucracy.
The past decade’s accelerating explosion of US government spending and debt, and that of US corporations, banks, and citizens, will not only end, but will end painfully.
For all of this, the majority of voters in a presidential election seem to understand that what cannot go on forever, won’t. The 2018 examination (linked above) of why Americans increasingly don’t trust government, even as government provides so much to so many of these same Americans, suggested that it’s just a matter of explaining to Americans how great their government is. Big State needs better advertising.
Even the Deep State laughs at that idea. However, it is important to see what deep staters are really doing to maintain the current status quo, a.k.a Peak Government.
Government doesn’t produce anything, but rather redistributes, manages, and consumes the wealth created by the citizenry, serfs and livestock it “owns.” Just as a farmer, who when facing lower sales price and higher costs, re-evaluates his or her operation, so too do federal and state governments. The farmer counts his or her livestock carefully, and figures out how to do more with less, the same with less, and less with less all while squeezing more cash out of what he or she “owns.” Imagine, if you will, the gentle cow or ewe. Her value is necessarily monetized, and as the bottom line sinks ever lower, her owner will become very interested in what Bessie and Belle do all day, where they go, what they eat, and how they behave.
Depending on where you stand, some citizens are not worth as much as others, and more importantly, some citizens cost a lot more than others. How to decide? Politicians are in the business of deciding this question, and they are gamblers at heart. This predisposition shapes their calculations and actions. Win or lose, they enjoy the game. Various political groupings help them assign “value” and it’s all out in the open, as ugly and insulting as it is. You are free to choose a party or a candidate based on how you value yourself and your neighbors, and what you believe is good and valuable for you and your neighbors to have and enjoy. You can vote based on a coin toss, hairstyle or spousal charm, their pantsuit, their skin tone, or because you believe whatever they are saying. It’s all good, and it’s all good fun in this nation of equals.
The Deep State on the other hand, is not comfortable with risk, does not “enjoy the game,” and it does not play. You cannot vote for it, nor can you assign values, weights, measures or limits to it, in any realistic way. The Deep State doesn’t want your vote or your political support – it wants your money, your faith, and your obedience. It is not interested in your opinion, as it is perfectly confident that it knows what is best. We don’t have time here to put the Deep State on a couch to seek clarity or find out why it turned out this way. It’s running, and ruining, the lives of 330 million Americans, and conducting coups, wars – hot, cold, trade and propaganda – in real time, as it has for over 100 years, maybe more. Increasingly, the weapons of these wars are aimed not abroad, but at the very citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If, as an American, you found that your ears perked up when you heard “land of the free” and “home of the brave,” don’t feel bad. We’ve been worked on for generations.
The surveillance apocalypse, as lamented here, is not specifically surveillance capitalism, but part and parcel of deep state agriculture, which instead of growing wheat, corn, cattle and chickens, grows compliant and cautious citizens, whose every movement, relationship, thought and action is tracked in near or real time, in order to reduce risk to the state. The data gathering itself, the panopticon effect on a society, along with state-induced rifts, debates, redistributions, and foreign wars –all of these manipulate emotions in predictable and state-manageable ways. The citizen – body and mind – is contained and maintained in the “right” fields. Atomistic and poorly educated, often fighting each other, we never realize we are continually consenting to the deep state, and its often murderous designs and livelihood.
The only thing roaring in the coming decade will be the furious road noise of the Deep State as it strains technology, and races for its very life, against the growing humanity of actual Americans and their growing awareness of reality. Appearing well-coiffed, soft-handed, clean and refined, it is kith and kin to a monster hog. People all over the country who have faced an inundation of wild hogs, running rampant, destroying property, economy, and even liberty, will recognize the squeals, the destruction and the debris. Our roaring Twenties will prefigure the death screams of this overfed demon, and the unconsolable wailing of the 90%.
Happy New Year!
