The Little Red Blog

Inauguration Day: The Reckoning

“Trump enters the White House in a pivotal moment for the West. A long series of terrible decisions have left Europe uncompetitive, America overstretched militarily and the West as a whole culturally weakened. A moment now exists for the West to chart a different course.” (Gladden Pappin)

Today, mercifully, our long national nightmare is over, and the Biden crime family’s reign of terror comes to an end. Americans can use the ‘R’ word again, and the ‘N’ word, and the ‘B’ word and the ‘C’ word; we can yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater and ‘Fraud!’ at the ballot box; our personal pronouns are now irrelevant, masculine aggression is in vogue, and alternative facts still don’t care about anyone’s fact-checking.

Call Trump’s victory “the revenge of the deplorables,” and it’s about time. Four more years of Woke would have ended America forever, as Victor Davis Hanson explains:

“The Biden years are now seen as abnormal, if not disastrous. The left’s cultural revolution championed fringe policies never quite seen before: destroying the border, welcoming in 12 million illegal aliens, nihilist critical race and legal theories, institutionalizing a third sex, and mandating woke/DEI quotas and indoctrination sessions.”

Goodbye to all that, and good riddance as well. The Left’s chickens have come home to roost. “I am your justice,” promises the incoming President. “I am your retribution.” America’s bully pulpit is once again in the hands of a bully who has surrounded himself with other bullies, and the next four years promises to be a bully time!  

Not that everyone agrees. There remain some holdouts, as this passage from Masha Gessen’s 2020 Surviving Autocracy suggests:

As the Trump presidency marches on to the rhythm of near-daily Twitter rants, daily outrages, and weekly embarrassments, it remains unimaginable—even if it is observable. To think that a madman could be running the world’s most powerful country, to think that the commander in chief would use Twitter to mouth off about whose nuclear button is bigger or to call himself a ‘very stable genius,’ verges on the impossible. ‘This can’t be happening. This is happening’—the thought pattern of nightmares and real-life disasters has become the constant routine of tens of millions of people. Every Trump tweet, televised statement, and headline causes a form of this reaction. If the word ‘unthinkable’ had a literal meaning, this would be it: thinking about it makes the mind misfire; it makes one want to stop thinking. The Trump era is unimaginable, unthinkable, unspeakable. It is waging a daily assault on the public’s sense of sanity, decency, and cohesion. It makes us feel crazy…

Between MAGA celebrations and Never Trump lamentations, can we find a middle ground? Perhaps we can benefit from an informed outsider’s assessment of the situation; if so, Russia’s Aleksandr Dugin is the perfect choice to provide just that. Of course, in politics, as in so many other things, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows or, to use Dugin’s metaphor, which way the tide is shifting:

The Trump administration represents an entirely new phenomenon, ideologically and politically. The tide is shifting. Even figures like Mark Zuckerberg, once a staunch globalist, are now distancing themselves from liberal ideologies and censorship, aligning with Elon Musk’s vision of free speech. For example, when Musk removed harsh liberal censorship on X (formerly Twitter), liberals in Europe immediately called for its ban due to the absence of such censorship! These same liberals, who cry about democracy, now advocate banning platforms that allow free speech.

The MAGA/Musk/Zuckerberg vision of free speech requires, among other things, prohibiting the promotion of DEI, CRT, and the Woke mind-virus, as well as removing offensive books from school libraries and offensive ideas from school curricula: “Thou Shall Not Say ‘Gay’.” 

As Dugin sees it, MAGA 2.0 will take no prisoners (or perhaps it will take a lot of prisoners?):

The Trumpists will now apply pressure on Congress and the Senate using their methods. Key figures like Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and others are assuming leadership roles. Trump has nothing to lose.¹ This is his last term, and he’ll go all in. Resistance in Congress and the Senate is inevitable, but Trump’s administration is prepared to confront it decisively. His team has promised to root out globalist influence, dismiss those responsible for the decline of traditional values, and dismantle the woke agenda and DEI policies. Figures like Elon Musk have declared, “Cancel culture should be canceled,” and Trump’s allies will act to cancel the globalists who promoted these destructive ideologies.

Dugin’s belief in “people’s democracy” has obvious appeal for any aspiring authoritarian, as it amounts to handing the Leader a blank check to “root out,” “dismiss,” and “dismantle” anyone and anything that interferes with his plans:

The term “democracy” has become so meaningless that it’s often better to avoid it altogether and focus on more serious concepts. Russian democracy, or more accurately, a “people’s monarchy,” reflects our people’s desire to empower our historical leader. This is genuine democracy — a people’s expression to strengthen their state and grant freedom to their ruler.

Democracy is tedious, as anyone knows who watches C-SPAN. The old politics of logrolling, quid pro quo compromising, horse trading, and pork barrel concessions is unsuitable for today's mass audience, which wants government to get to the point and to get something done. Checks and balances, legislative maneuvering, and parliamentary procedures are as antiquated as powdered wigs and muskets. In the 21^st century, we want a President whose word will be Law and who is not hamstrung by due process or constitutional technicalities. Federal legislators are merely extras in the presidential theater; they can posture all they want on Fox News and MSNBC, but their actual job is to rubber-stamp the Leader’s dictates. The Unitary Executive doesn’t require a bureaucracy of qualified “civil servants”; it only needs servants.

In a democracy, we get the leaders and the government we deserve—unfortunately. For those who have stubbornly insisted for the past decade that “We’re better than this,” the evidence has been mounting that we are not; the man taking the presidential oath of office represents, apparently, the American Dream, or one version of it at least.

Let’s hope we awake from it soon.

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The Gladden Pippen quote is from an article at The Postliberal Order. The Victor Davis Hanson quote is from an article at American Greatness. Alexander Dugin’s thoughts on democracy can be found at A World Dancing Trump’s Dance | Katehon. Information and analytical publication

¹ “Trump has nothing to lose” is not exactly reassuring.

Sunday Sermon: "The Second Coming"

The Second Coming (by W.B. Yeats)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--------------------------

William Butler Yeats: W. B. Yeats - Wikipedia

Reading by Paul Muldoon: The Second Coming, read by Paul Muldoon – Yeats Nobel Centenary

Reading by Ted Hughes: "The Second Coming" (W. B. Yeats)

Saturday Lecture: The Second Coming

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” (W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming")

Kerry Walters, from “MAGA as Nihilistic Rebellion” (May 2024):

“The will to power came to take the place of the will to justice, pretending at first to be identified with it.” Albert Camus, The Rebel

“I am your justice. I am your retribution.” Donald Trump, CPAC, 4 March 2023

The core of MAGA is what philosopher Albert Camus called nihilistic rebellion. MAGAists may believe themselves to be people who hold deeply entrenched religious and political convictions. But in fact they don’t. They’re rudderless vessels, just as nihilistic as Trump is. Why else would they so enthusiastically and uncritically follow an empty vessel whose only consistency is to be inconsistent when it comes to policy and positions? The more Trump displays his cocky, narcissistic emptiness, they more they defend him. And that’s because they’re as empty as he is. Like him, they’re nihilists. They not only repudiate in speech and deed transcendental values—compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and tolerance are clearly for chumps like libs and RINOS (and maybe Jesus?)—but don’t even accept objective norms of truth.

Nihilistic rebels have no patience with talk about futures in which love and fecundity reign. In fact, they have no vision of the future at all, even though they frequently use rhetorical slogans—such as “Make America Great Again”—that suggest the contrary. They’re so consumed with “rancor” and “malice” that they find it difficult to leave an imagined past when (they think) times were good or an equally imagined present when (they think) everything is awful. The future doesn’t really exist for them. They’re too focused on their grievances, and on their vengeful desire to destroy everything against which they hold a grudge. Humans have no intrinsic worth; indeed, negative rebels view any person who disagrees with them as an utterly expendable obstacle. This dark urge to uproot and tear down, if it gains enough traction, can lead to a politically oppressive regime in which “everything is meaningless”—that is, truth vanishes as an objective reality—“and history is only written in themes of the hazards of force.”

This describes MAGAists, and the man to whom they’ve pledged their loyalty, to a tee. I wish it didn’t, because then the rest of us might be able to have a conversation with them. We might discover some common ground, some shared bit of decency, howsoever slight, on which to build a reasonable and hopefully fruitful dialogue. But a nihilist is focused on destruction, not dialogue, vengeance rather than rapproachment. A nihilist, a true and tried MAGA loyalist, is interested only in exulting in the perpetual “rancor and malice” that gets him or her out of bed in the morning. To hate is to be.

That’s what the nation and the world is up against. To pretend otherwise, to fall back on the now hollow excuses for MAGA nihilism we liberals once trotted out—it’s poverty and social marginalization, not racism and hatred, that fuels MAGA discontent; it’s actually we who have driven them into Trump’s orbit; we must do better by them!—is lunacy. And it’s dangerous as hell.

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MAGA as Nihilistic Rebellion - by Kerry Walters

Wednesday with Pascal: Did We Jump or Were We Pushed?

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat is fond of quoting Saint Paul: "The time is short...the night is almost over; the day has drawn near." As the latest in a long line of rough beasts slouches his way back into the White House, it might help if we remember that the state of American democracy is best characterized as 'Always ill but never dies.'  Or, to paraphrase Gloria Gaynor, 'We will survive.'}

As previously noted, books about American decline are a dime a dozen; an encyclopedic survey is impractical, if not impossible. Let’s begin, then, by referencing a mere handful of such books, the first of which I encountered at the tender age of sixteen, when I was a fledgling conservative and a subscriber to William F. Buckley’s National Review. I have appended to each title a brief publisher’s description, eschewing (for now) my usual glib comments.

• James Burnham, Suicide of the West (1964)

James Burnham’s 1964 classic, Suicide of the West, remains a startling account on the nature of the modern era. It offers a profound, in-depth analysis of what is happening in the world today by putting into focus the intangible, often vague doctrine of American liberalism. It parallels the loosely defined liberal ideology rampant in American government and institutions, with the flow, ebb, growth, climax and the eventual decline and death of both ancient and modern civilizations. Its author maintains that western suicidal tendencies lie not so much in the lack of resources or military power, but through an erosion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual factors abundant in modern western society and the mainstay of liberal psychology.

Devastating in its relentless dissection of the liberal syndrome, this book will lead many liberals to painful self-examination, buttress the thinking conservative’s viewpoint, and incite others, no doubt, to infuriation. None can ignore it.

• Naomi Wolf, The End of America (2007)

In a stunning indictment, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century’s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile. The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties.

In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us–with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlets–that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom. The End of America will shock, enrage, and motivate–spurring us to act, as the Founders would have counted on us to do in a time such as this, as rebels and patriots–to save our liberty and defend our nation.

• Bruce Ackerman, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (2011)

Bruce Ackerman shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. ­Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another: from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century, and he then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward.

• Dennis Malpass, America in Decline (2013)

The United States of America is dying. More than a century ago, progressives began an insidious assault on America. The damage was inflicted piecemeal, and citizens barely noticed. The harm continues to this day and is being perpetuated by President Barack Obama. America is becoming a gargantuan European-style Nanny State. Underpinning America's decline into socialism are concepts rooted in misguided leftist policies, rampant political correctness, virulent anti-Americanism, and ideological environmentalism. Starting with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, left-leaning presidents have added layer upon layer of bureaucracy, resulting in an out-of-control government. It has become not only hugely expensive, but poorly responsive to the citizenry. Several of these presidents have skirted the Constitution, ignored Congress and stacked the judiciary with like-minded jurists. What these leftist presidents couldn't achieve legislatively, their judicial appointees were often able to accomplish from the bench. Though the split was nearly equal between Republican and Democrat presidents over the past century, leftist policies were responsible for most of the harm. Unfortunately, even some nominally "conservative" presidents such as Richard Nixon have also contributed to the growth of government. The result has been the steady decline of America, most recently manifested by the re-election of Barack Obama.

• David Schein, The Decline of America (2018)

"The Decline of America" offers a carefully documented analysis of the last seventeen U.S. presidents. These men, eight Democrats and nine Republicans, have shaped the last 100 years, not only for America, but for the world. Each president is profiled with unsparing scrutiny so we can see where it’s all gone wrong. David Schein follows these critiques by proposing ways to improve America’s outlook for the next 100 years—before it’s too late.

In fact, it has been “too late” for America for some time now, perhaps even since its inception. America, as a nation, was a creation of the Enlightenment; as such, it was built (according to some) on intellectual sand. The wonder is that the nation has lasted this long, what with its specious claim that "all men are created equal" and its unwarranted faith in democracy. Is it time now, at long last, for America's chickens to come home to roost?

Let's hope not.

 

   

Sunday Sermon: "Those Were the Days"

{Some controversy attends today's selection, as the notes below reveal.}

Those Were the Days (recorded by Mary Hopkin)

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
Think of all the great things we would do?

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La-la-la-da-da-da
La-la-la-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da, la-da-da-da-da

Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If by chance I'd see you in the tavern
We'd smile at one another and we'd say

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days
La-la-la-da-da-da
La-la-la-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da

Just tonight I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me?

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days
La-la-la-da-da-da
La-la-la-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da

Through the door, there came familiar laughter
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh, my friend, we're older but no wiser
For in our hearts, the dreams are still the same

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days
La-la-la-da-da-da
La-la-la-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da
-------------------------------

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Gene Raskin

Those Were the Days lyrics © BMG Rights Management

According to The DARK side of "Those Were the Days", Gene Raskin based this song on a Russian song from the 1920s. Mary Hopkin was recruited to record it in 1968 by Paul McCartney, who released it on the new Apple Records label. On Christmas Eve 1969, the Hopkin recording of “Those Were the Days” was played over loudspeakers as accompaniment to a mass execution of suspected political dissidents in Equatorial Guinea. There is no evidence that the country’s dictator, Francisco Macias Nguema, personally selected the song. 

Full version: Mary Hopkin - Those Were the Days (1968)

Shorter version: Mary Hopkin "Those Were the Days" on The Ed Sullivan Show

 

Francisco Macias Nguema

Former Dictator of Equatorial Guinea

Former President of Mary Hopkin Fan Club of West Central Africa (maybe)

Saturday Lecture: "The End of Sanity"

{The late Martin L. Gross wrote ‘The End of Sanity: Social and Cultural Madness in America” in 1997. Like an upscale Archie Bunker, Gross's rose-colored view of the American past could be summarized: “People seemed to be content / fifty dollars paid the rent / freaks were in a circus tent / those were the days.”} *

Martin L. Gross, from The End of Sanity (1997):

Public opinion represents the ‘Majority Culture,’ one made up of the traditional values to which most Americans adhere, even cherish. But in the universe of America’s ‘New Establishment,’ that has less currency than the ‘Dominant Culture,’ one perhaps thirty years in the making, that applauds virtually every infringement on the community’s rights in favor of ‘social individualism,’ a perversion of traditional freedom and individuality.

This new Dominant Culture has abrogated the rights of society and the Majority Culture to define what is reasonable in both thought and action. The two cultures, which exist side by side, are in daily conflict. But the Dominant one, though divorced from the feelings and opinions of most Americans, is winning out in the public arena.

This New Establishment doctrine seeks to remake American culture—and by extrapolation the world’s—in its own image. Unfortunately, it is not isolated in academe or the government but is being brilliantly marketed through every possible outlet, from newspapers to films, from Broadway to television. It bombards our psyches with millions of images that confuse us and that many find hard to resist. This selling of the Dominant Culture, even when its tenets are patently absurd, has been so successful that the New Establishment has cleverly managed to dictate to Americans how they should perceive themselves and their fellow citizens.

The Dominant Culture hopes to generate a mindset that will make it acceptable, even psychologically rewarding, to continue to grant enormous privileges to those people on the fringes of the mainstream, while penalizing the mainstream itself. That mainstream—the great army of the ignored middle class—has in fact become the beast of burden for the new coalition of the elite and the so-called victim class, those who are sensitive to supposed exploitation and those who are supposedly exploited. The middle class who pays for it all, in both money and lost equanimity, are the true victims of this Dominant Culture.

But what exactly is our Dominant Culture?

Basically, it encompasses virtually everything Americans think about, believe in, and discuss publicly. It determines which plays, movies, books, and television shows will be produced and how they will be received by the media. It even decides what is and what is not news, and how it will be presented. It also determines what is chic and what is old-fashioned and boring. It sets styles, fads, and fashions in manners and mores, even in the realm of politics and ideas. It sets up the sense of right and wrong in societal matters, and what actions should be approved or disapproved. Thus, it has enormous power.

Despite a reasonable economy, the nation finds itself in a deep psychological malaise, an ailment that can be traced almost entirely to the Dominant Culture. Some Americans, particularly those who rely on it as a secular substitute for religion, admire and embrace it. But many Americans do not, seeing it as injuring the national psyche and accelerating the decline of the civilization. Others fear it and follow the conformity of thought that it demands, thereby increasing its power.

One daily grinding factor is that the Dominant Culture, unlike any in the past, has little interest in the truth. But the astute among the public are not fooled. They know that the Dominant Culture no longer represents them as the prevalent culture once did thirty years ago. Youngsters can hardly remember that era, but they do hear of a better day from their parents and grandparents. What they glean about the former America from periodicals, old movies, and intergenerational scuttlebutt ¹ rings true. It’s not just that those were simpler times, but that the psychological needs of the community were sounder and were being met. People were not merely a collection of vying, whining, hyphenated, gender-split, litigious groups as they are today.  

In the 1940s, 1950s, and throughout much of the 1960s, the community was the key. Through free speech and social criticism, people expressed their opposition to conformity, which provided a natural balance in a democracy. ² The outsider had to fight for space in the consciousness of the nation. This is as it should be. Today, it is quite the opposite. The outsider-victim is at the helm, in charge of what people are supposed to think and do. In today’s Dominant Culture, it is the everyday American and his spokespeople who have to fight for space in the collective psyche.

This is not as it should be.

-------------------------------------------------

Wikipedia has no entry for Martin L. Gross (1925-2013). This obituary may be informative: Martin L. Gross, famed tax policy critic, dead in Ocala

*Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, “Those Were the Days”

¹ I call dibs on Intergenerational Scuttlebutt as a band name, or maybe as a name for a beer (KettleHouse, are you listening?).

² If someone tells you that the Fifties were a time when Americans “expressed their opposition to conformity,” then that someone is beyond correction or instruction—which, in the case of Martin Gross, is literally true, inasmuch as he is dead.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Unhuman

{A recent article by Nathan Robinson (at Current Affairs) called attention to a 2024 book (‘Unhumans’) by right-wing provocateurs Joshua Lisec and Jack Posobiec. ‘Unhumans’ is the kind of book you want to know about, but you don’t want to have to read—like, say, ‘Mein Kampf’. Alarmed by Robinson’s article, I took a (very) quick look at ‘Unhumans,’ and this is my reaction.}

According to the publisher’s blurb for Unhumans, America is in dire straits, and not the good kind with Mark Knopfler:

“The old rules are over. The old order is over. Accusations are evidence. Activism means bigotry and hate. Criminals are allowed to roam free. Citizens are locked up. An appetite for vengeance is unleashed—to deplatform, debank, destroy. This is the daily news, yet none of it’s new. Patterns from the past make sense of our present. They also foretell a terrifying future we might be condemned to endure.”

America in disarray! Cats and dogs living together! Litter boxes in the classrooms! 57 genders and nothing on! Mad Max on steroids! How did we get here and how can we escape? There must be some way out of here!

Let not your heart be troubled. Unhumans, by Joshua Lisec and Jack Posobiec, tells you everything you wanted to know about the menace that is communist revolutions, and about how to prevent them. After a rousing Preface by Steve Bannon (“Unhumans is a clarion call to every American citizen. Be aware. Understand this: The very survival of the American Republic is now on the shoulders of every American.”), Unhumans begins with this insightful quote:

“Communism is when ugly deformed freaks make it illegal to be normal then rob and/or kill all successful people out of petty resentment and cruelty. The ideology is all just window dressing.” (@MysteryGrove)

What follows might be termed a “Manichaean Manifesto”:

For as long as there have been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been the ugly liars who hate and kill. This is the way of things in all things. There is light and there is dark. ¹ Always has been. Always will be. Civilization is the superstructure built on law and order that keeps the petty, the resentful, and the cruel away from the rest of us. Some societies have been better at this than others. Those who fail at repelling the repulsive fall to unhumanity—to a state of affairs in which human thriving is impossible and surviving improbable.

It doesn’t matter what you call these the people of anti-civilization. They will change their name, shape, and form as needed and for their own purposes in their unique time and place. For the last couple centuries, we’ve known them as communists. Socialists, with extra steps. And of course, leftists. Radicals and revolutionaries as well. A hundred years ago, Marxist-Leninists, then more recently, Cultural Marxists. Even as, without irony and not as a joke, “progressives.”

For the purposes of this book, we will call them the unhumans. This is a book about unhumans, and this is what they do: With power, unhumans undo civilization itself. They undo order. They undo the basic bonds of society that make communities and nations possible. They destroy the human rights of life, liberty, and property—and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.

“Unhuman”—isn’t that harsh? Yes, and it also happens to be correct. By becoming consumed by nihilism, unhumans oppose everything that makes up humanity. As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman. They specifically reject the human rights of others. So if and when they get their way, they will unhuman you, too. They convert, and that which they cannot convert, they destroy. And they will call this evil, good.

Rarely has the process of dehumanizing one’s enemies been so literal.

Unhumans will appeal to fans of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and to devotees of the cinematic work of Dinesh D’Souza. Why is this vile nonsense worth our attention? Well, in this case, because it has been endorsed by our incoming Vice-President, J.D. Vance; because it bears the imprimatur of none other than Steve (“Stevie Three Shirts”) Bannon; because it is touted by cultural influencers like Tucker Carlson; and because its premises are accepted by Trump insiders like Michael Flynn and, worse, by Donald Trump Jr., the heir apparent. Each of those worthies was willing to provide words of praise for Unhumans; Bannon, as noted, even wrote a Preface for the volume. Here are samples of their enthusiasm:

“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.” (J. D. Vance) 

“Jack Posobiec sees the big picture and isn’t afraid to describe it. He’s been punished for that, but it makes him one of the rare people worth listening to.” (Tucker Carlson)
 
“The far Left murdered 100 million people in the twentieth century and have repeatedly shown that they will stop at nothing to achieve their totalitarian goals. They have torn down countless societies using a sophisticated playbook of propaganda. The only way to stop them in the future is to use their own subversive playbook against them. Unhumans reveals that playbook and teaches us how to deploy it immediately to save the West.” (Donald Trump, Jr.)
 
“We are now living through an era of irregular warfare. This is a gray-zone communist revolution by new means. Unhumans exposes their battle plans and offers a fifth-generation warfare system to fight back and win.” (Michael T. Flynn)

“Unhumans” simply refers to those Homo sapiens who seek nothing but destruction of human society, borne of grievance and misery and nihilism. Unquestionably, we are in a period of this unhuman ascension. Unhumans is a clarion call to every American citizen. Be aware. The authors argue that it is humanity itself currently under threat. Understand this: The very survival of the American Republic is now on the shoulders of every American. (Stephen K. Bannon)

I do not believe that Donald Trump himself poses any long-term threat to American democracy; as Leviathans go, he is remarkably cartoonish. However, the human barnacles who have attached themselves to him are a different matter entirely; they are carriers of noxious ideologies laced with various shades of bigotry, and their ideas and agendas are enough to send shivers down the spine of any decent citizen. To cite only one example, Wikipedia notes that “On February 22, 2024, Jack Posobiec, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, welcomed the ‘end of democracy,’ adding that ‘We are here to overthrow it completely.’” Unhumans makes the case for doing so, offering George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Francisco Franco, and Augusto Pinochet as models of tough-minded statesmanship.  In the hands of people like Steve Bannon, J.D. Vance, and Donald Trump Jr., books like Unhumans could be used to justify an entire basket of deplorable policies.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

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Nathan Robinson (Current Affairs): Trumpworld’s Favorite Writer Says The Right Must Emulate Dictators in Battling Leftist 'Unhumans'

 Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) Skyhorse Publishing, 2024

Jack Posobiec - Wikipedia

¹ There is up, and there is down. There is in, and there is out. There is intelligent, and there is Unhumans.

Wednesday with Pascal: Premature Obituaries

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has asked—well, demanded—to be in charge of The Little Red Blog’s planned investigations into the topic of decline. Naturally, he declined to explain his interest or the perspective he plans to take; he remains, as always, an enigma inside a riddle coughed up in a hair ball.}

“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.” (Bruce Springsteen)

All the new thinking is about decline. In this, it resembles all the old thinking. Since time immemorial, the sky has been falling, and the world has been ending; prophets of every nation and every creed have whined incessantly about decline, like old men lecturing anyone in earshot (“Back in my day!”) and Chicken Littles gesturing hysterically at the sky.

The more things change, the more the End Times approach. The increasingly ubiquitous pronouncements about American decline barely scratch the surface of the larger, booming industry that is ‘Declinism’. Americans need not feel singled out; similar ignominious fates have regularly been predicted for Western civilization, for Europe, for liberalism, for conservatism, for common sense, for history, for democracy, for ethics, for the rule of law, for nature, for science, for truth, for God, for Christianity, for books, for the Democratic Party and for the Republican Party, and for humankind itself. You could fill an entire library or bookstore with volumes proclaiming the end, decline, fall, or death of almost anything. Forget about “American Exceptionalism”; Americans will just have to get in line with everyone else, all waiting for the end of something.

Consider the following ominous titles and their diverse subject matters:

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind [academia in decline]

Patrick Buchanan, The Death of the West [White European hegemony in decline]

Theodore Dalrymple, Not with a Bang but a Whimper [this is the way the world ends]

Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan [decline of the sense of evil]

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed [liberalism in decline]

Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class [liberal elites in decline]

Philip Howard, Death of Common Sense [death by a thousand regulations]

Markus Jakobsson, The Death of the Internet (2012) [hackers and malware, oh my]

Derek Jensen, Endgame [planet in decline]

James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency [fossil-fuel civilization in decline]

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture [culture in decline]

Bill McKibben, The End of Nature [environment in decline]

Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? [guilt in decline]

Douglas Murray, The War on the West [Western civilization in decline]

George Packer, The Unwinding [30 years of American decline]

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [culture and education in decline]

Jack Ross, The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism [American creed in decline]

Cal Thomas, The Death of Ethics [moral decline]

Cal Thomas, America’s Expiration Date (2020) [nation in decline]

So many Cassandras, so little time. ¹ We should acknowledge that declinism is a bipartisan malady, with pronouncements coming from ideologists and moralists on every side of the aisle: Declinists to the Left of me, Declinists to my Right! As for the substance of the accusations, let’s zoom in for a closer look at a random few:

Jerry Rosenberg, The Death of Privacy (1969):

 Today, with the advance of technology, centralized data accumulation becomes easier, the reward for intrusion is increased, and control shifts to still fewer people. Should we not be concerned about a computerized federal data center that could collect, store, and distribute information about any one of us? The use of such data could present the greatest threat to our remaining right to individual privacy.

Philip Howard, Death of Common Sense (1995):

Law is suffocating America. America is drowning: in law, legality, and bureaucratic process. Abandoning our common sense and individual sense of responsibility, we live in terror of the law, in awe of procedure, at war with one another. Philip K. Howard has written the explosive manifesto for liberation – one of the most talked about sociopolitical treatises of our time. Citing dozens of examples of bureaucratic overkill – everything from the labeling of window cleaner as a toxic substance to the U.S. Department of Defense spending $2 billion on travel and $2.2 billion processing the paperwork for that travel – The Death of Common Sense shows how far we have wandered, how we got into this mess, and how we can – and must – get out. 

Sam Tanenhaus, The Death of Conservatism (2009):

Sam Tanenhaus’s essay “Conservatism Is Dead” prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in The New Republic in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has been split between two factions: consensus-driven “realists” who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement “revanchists” who distrust government and society–and often find themselves at war with America itself.

Eventually, Tanenhaus writes, the revanchists prevailed, and the result is the decadent “movement conservatism” of today, a defunct ideology that is “profoundly and defiantly unconservative–in its arguments and ideas, its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision.” Conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of their honorable tradition. It is their only route back to the center of American politics. At once succinct and detailed, penetrating and nuanced, The Death of Conservatism is a must-read for Americans of any political persuasion.

Paul Goddard & Angus Dalgleish, The Death of Science (2023):

Science is on its death bed. Lies, specious argument and fraud abound in a variety of scientific endeavors including the treatment and vaccines for Covid-19. Managers and politicians have taken over where previously the scientists were in charge. They have been able to utilize the bizarre language and contradictory processes of political correctness, making themselves into the high priests of a new religion, one which spawns more politically correct managers and despises experts.

The “declinist” perspective, while it sells books and generates clicks, generates a substantial number of premature obituaries. ² On the other hand, one could argue that accusations of decline have unintentionally prompted reinvigorating reforms in apparently moribund institutions: self-defeating prophecies, you might say. All sorts of ideas, concepts, entities, and nations are regularly (and loudly) declared dying or dead; but, like the legendary phoenix, they emerge reborn and even transformed.

It can be fun, however, before that transformation, to poke around in the ashes, if only to learn how such endangered species—that is, human institutions, values, and ideas—can cheat death.

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¹ To be fair, many "declinist" offerings are more nuanced than their titles suggest, and they often conclude by suggesting remedies for the ills they address. Authors do not always choose their books' titles, nor do they control how their books are marketed. 

² Declinism also feeds into paranoia, witness the written statement left behind by a distraught, suicidal Matthew Livelsberger right before he detonated his truck in Las Vegas on New Year's Day: “We are the United States of America, the best country people to ever exist! But right now, we are terminally ill and headed toward collapse. We have strayed from family values and corrupted our minds.” That claim could have been taken from any of the pundits who appear on Fox News.

Sunday Sermon: "I Can't Stand Up Alone"

{There seems to be some dispute as to whether this song is titled 'I Can't Stand Up Alone' or 'You Can't Stand Up Alone'. Maybe we should go with 'We Can't Stand Up Alone'?}

I Can’t Stand Up Alone

One of these days I'm gonna take a vacation
By a quiet and a peaceful shore
And I'll cool my feet in those crystal waters
And I won't have to work anymore

'Cause my burden has got so heavy
Till I can't stand up alone
I must lay my head down on one strong shoulder
'Cause I can't stand up alone

Ah, you can't stand up all by yourself
You can't stand up alone
You need the touch of a mighty hand
You can't stand up alone

And trouble, I have seen trouble
All around my door
Go away and leave me old man trouble
'Cause I don't want your trouble no more

Ah, you can't stand up all by yourself
You can't stand up alone
You need the touch of a mighty hand
You can't stand up alone

And a voice came down just like thunder
And light all around me shown
The voice said : 'Jesse, get up'
'And grab hold of my hand 'cause you can't stand up all alone'

Ah, you can't stand up all by yourself
You can't stand up alone
You need the touch of a mighty hand
You can't stand up alone

--------------------------

Written by Martha Carson

Performed by Jesse Winchester et al

Studio original: I Can't Stand Up Alone

Live 1977: Jesse Winchester Bonnie Raitt Emmylou Harris Acapella 1977

Kathy Mattea cover: Kathy Mattea "I Can't Stand Up Alone"

Marley’s Ghost: You Can't Stand Up Alone

Saturday Lecture: Decline and Fall

{My theme for the foreseeable future, Trump willing and the creek don’t rise, will be “Someone Stick a Fork in America, Please, It’s Done”. Pundits left and right have been making that claim for decades, lamenting (or sometimes celebrating) the terminal decline of the United States. Of course, despite those gloomy prognostications, America continues to exist, recalling Mark Twain’s remark, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”} 

"Cultural decline is as American as apple pie." (Kenneth Weisbrode)

Alan Dowd, from “Three Centuries of American Declinism” (2007):

Declinism has a long history. The "decline and fall of America" mantra has become an almost-decennial prophecy.

The rise of the United States in the global pecking order was aided by the economic and military devastation visited upon Europe by the Great War. Yet as historian Benjamin Rhodes has observed, America's "image abroad sank disastrously" during the Coolidge presidency, mainly due to European resentment over how the U.S. handled the role of global creditor. Washington's mishandling of its newfound status as an economic-military power yielded a United States weaker than the nation that had tipped the balance in the Great War.

In his treatise on decline, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,’ Paul Kennedy wondered whether the country's electoral and political system had the capacity to allow policymakers to reformulate the "grand strategy in light of the larger, uncontrollable changes taking place in world affairs." His implication was not just that the U.S. political system was outmoded, but that American power was outmatched. The book laid out in grim detail how the United States was tumbling toward the same fate that had felled the dominant powers of earlier centuries; how "the American share of world power has been declining relatively faster than Russia's over the past few decades;" and how U.S. defense outlays and commitments were unsustainable and were pushing the United States toward the same "imperial overstretch" that had undone earlier powers.

From Kennedy's perspective, U.S. interests were too numerous, too widespread and too expensive to sustain. The bipolar system, he said, was giving way to a multipolar one. Thus, he reasoned, "there was a need to manage affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States takes place slowly and smoothly."

Kennedy's requiem was representative of a chorus of declinist predictions in the mid- to late 1980s.

* Writing just a few years ahead of Kennedy, Richard Barnet declared that the American Century had "lasted about 26 years." He mocked the Reagan administration for promising to reverse "the stunning decline of American power that marked the 1970s, " for "alarming millions in the United States and Europe," and, finally, for retreating from its hard line with Moscow.

* In 1988, Flora Lewis sighed that "Talk of U.S. decline is real in the sense that the U.S. can no longer pull all the levers of command or pay all the bills."

* Even in trying to deflect the declinists, James Schlesinger conceded in 1988 that the U.S. was "no longer economically the preponderant power . . . no longer militarily the dominant power . . . no longer can achieve more or less whatever it desires."

* "The signs of decline are evident to those who care to see them," declared Peter Passell in 1990, noting that the U.S. had lost its competitive edge and was losing its battle with the Japanese juggernaut.

* "Europeans and Asians," wrote Anthony Lewis in 1990, "are already finding confirmation of their suspicion that the United States is in decline."

* Citing America's dependence on foreign sources for energy and "crucial weaknesses" in the military, Tom Wicker concluded "that maintaining superpower status is becoming more difficult -- nearly impossible -- for the United States."

Other declinists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Derek Leebaert recalls, were predicting that the last decade of the twentieth century would be when "the American empire ran out of gas" and "took the British route to second-class economic status."

Moreover, says Samuel Huntington, American decline dominated academic discussions in 1988. By 1990, political scientists and pundits were borrowing Kennedy's premise and quipping that the U.S. and the USSR had waged the Cold War, but Japan and Germany had won it. In 1993, historian William Pfaff looked back upon America's "soaring national ascent, and descent, between 1900 and the century's end" and concluded that "superpowerdom" had deformed the United States and delivered "better results for others than for itself."

Declinism performs a useful historical function," Huntington has observed. "It provides a warning and a goad to action in order to head off and reverse the decline that it says is taking place.” At its best, then, it is an expression of the American tendency toward self-criticism and continual improvement. This is a restless nation. Its capacity for change, its desire for change, its willingness to reevaluate and reassess itself make it easy to extrapolate periodic corrections or momentary uncertainties into downward trends -- declinism at its worst. Perhaps this is why its practitioners find themselves forced to revise and defer their predictions again and again.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Three Centuries of American Declinism

Those damned dirty apes...