I refer anyone curious to the following exchange of ideas at WRSA .
(If you were busy re-arranging your sock drawer, and have better things to do with your time, I understand.)
Well, heavens to betsy, I seem to have kicked over a few folks' compost heap of treasures.
For the TL;DR folks, a linked essay espoused the idea of secession.
The notion is farcical.
The clever reader with average comprehension will note that nowhere therein did I state in reply that it will never happen, nor that it will never be attempted.
So for the rest, without naming names, who ran about like headless chickens slaying straw men and waving the internet e-penises, that makes the ripostes posted pretty pointless.
And then, predictably, comes the descent to ad hominem, ever the last refuge of a weak (let alone non-existent) argument.
Anybody who thinks they're going to successfully secede is a historical ignoramus. The very concept is comedy relief.
If there's a United States as such, the attempt will turn out about as well as the last one.
Anyone wishing to have a go should, by all means, give it their best try.
Have fun storming the castle.
But some there are honestly perplexed, including the gracious host there, and who ask reasonable questions. For them, the following:
You want to know how we find (if ever such can be done) our way back to the USA that was.
Some observations.
1) We didn't get here overnight.
Depending on whom you ask, things started to go to shite in the US of A anywhere back as early as the actual Constitutional convention. Or the Whiskey Rebellion. Or Marbury v. Madison. Or Lincoln. Or when they cancelled My Mother, The Car. Whatever. The one thing nearly everyone agrees upon, per recent polling data, is that we're on the wrong track, and have been so for some good amount of time.
2) It follows then that it is childishly magical thinking to imagine that we will find our way back to where we want to go overnight either. Secession is just one Mad Lib answer penciled into the box of We Get Back To Proto-USA By _________________.
As I stated in my reply at the referenced site, that's simply a recipe for Lebanon, Zimbabwe, and/or the former Yugoslavia. (For the truly weak-minded, that means it isn't impossible, just that it will be an endless epically biblical shitstorm for anyone who goes there. If one has any wits, the reference to Lebanon, Zimbabwe, and the former Yugoslavia should have been a rather large foreshadowing of that conclusion. YMMV. It does NOT mean none of the jacktards milling around now are too smart to try it anyways. Nothing is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.)
3) If we're not in the right place, and not on the right track, and not going to get back there overnight, there are therefore three options:
a) We get to a worse place overnight.
b) We get to a different place, at whatever speed.
c) We restore what better place we used to have, over time.
"A" is easy. History is rife with examples.
"B" is Magic Beans and hokum, based on facts not in evidence at any time in world history.
Once again, have fun storming the castle, show your work, and understand that you're probably just taking the long way around the tree to get to "A".
"C" is annoying to most people, because it takes time, patience, intelligence, planning, discipline, and a methodical bloody-mindedness that would tire a bulldog.
It is neither impossible, nor easy. What it is, is doable.
It is a truism that anyone telling you how to "get rich quick" is looking to separate you from your wallet. A wise person elects to "get rich slowly", by using common sense and discipline to achieve their desired state, and avoiding rash, impatient stupidity.
The same is true for fixing a complicated machine that's broken.
Everyone's favorite bugaboo is "What about the ____million @$$holes who want to take your stuff, or vote it to themselves (thus having the gubmint steal it on their behalf)". It is also a truism that anyone advocating robbing Peter to pay Paul can count on Paul's support.
The answer to how you undo the malign intentions of 10, 20, 47, or 62% of your nominal countrymen is to starve the goddam beast, and break it to your will.
"But-but-but...they have academia, the media, and the bureaucracy!"
"So the fuck WHAT?!? DRAIN. THE. SWAMP!"
How many worthless eaters would be moping around causing trouble if their student loans dried up overnight? How many colleges could they hide in if that gravy train went away? How many communist hack refugees from the 1960s could live on tenure if their institution depended on delivering value for the dollars spent, absent any government support for the endeavor for anyone not working towards actual useful skills like engineering, law, medicine, et al? Anyone want to see those old hippies pushing a broom, or greeting at WalMart? Beuller? Beuller...??
Turn the money spigot off. Game over.
That also undoes a few dozen film and journalism schools.
Papers and TV would have to report reality, not propaganda.
Movies would have to reflect the audience's tastes, not anti-American claptrap.
Strike two.
Oh, and BTW, politics is downstream from culture, and ALWAYS has been. Try sending your second or third kid into the arts, and kick the leftist bastards off the top of that hill, or get used to losing the cultural war forever. You can't give your enemies a safe space, and when the right bailed out of anything, like they did cultural pursuits, we started getting a steady and endless diet of shitburgers.
So when someone said "Enough!", and we got talk radio and the internet, how did that work out for the Left?
When it comes to news today, "Who run Bartertown?"
Is it this guy?
Or this guy?
And which one is the candy-ass?
And just like the fights that chickenshits ran from for fifty years and more, we're going to have to go back in, and kick the shit out of the left for fifty years more to take them all back.
Failure is contagious. So is success. Every time we take back another hill, we have that much less to go, and that much more territory to exploit.
And third, you're going to have to take back the government. That means doing to the bureaucracy, and to union employment, at every level - which is overwhelmingly public sector unions - what happened to PATCO in 1981, and Wisconsin teachers in the early 2000s. It's going to be mean, ugly, nasty, and brutal. And absolutely necessary.
You take out the government unions, you defund the opposition by the time Trump is out of office in 4 or 8 years.
You take back education and defund academia, and you get back the next generation.
You take back media and the culture, and you salt the soil they used to shit in to grow their foetid brew of the current crop of sugar-coated safe-space triggered crybabypants Special Snowflake Social Justice Whiners. For. EVER.
Put THEIR goddam frog in the frying pan for a change, and spend every day turning up the heat.
You get Normandy, you got Caen.
You got Caen, you get Cherbourg.
You get Cherbourg, you take Paris.
You get Paris, you take Berlin.
And then that big boat ride home.
Or, you can just fall back on pussing out, and planning to die on some little hill, dreaming of better days.
How did that work for you from, say, 1960 through last week?
Maybe not so bitchin? Then maybe quit yours.
You want a little defensible slice of heaven on earth?
A Galt's Gulch?
Camp TheWholeWorldCanKissMyAss?
For prudent just-in-case? Or simple everyday peace and quiet?
Hey nifty, me too.
That's today. Maybe tomorrow.
What about the day after that?
If that's all you want, that's all you'll ever get.
And maybe not even that.
You turn a nation around, and resurrect an entire culture, you've got a shot at the world.
Or you can bunker in, and pretty much count on the other side regrouping.
And then you'll get shot at by the world.
And if all you want is to be the shitlord of your own little mound of cow dung after you help pull the entire civilization down in flames, save time: kill yourself, and go rule in Hell.
If, in the meantime, the other side decides to take this to the streets, we can accelerate the transition with suitable application of therapeutic lead injections.
You want easy, switch sides, and let Uncle Sam be your daddy.
I know what I'm choosing. Trump is just a beachhead. Not the grand prize.
13 comments:
Not to defend the folks you're criticizing, Aesop, but it seemed to me CA asked your opinion in that space, and you neglected/declined to participate.
Your rebuttal is only correct, however, for those who insist on outsourcing their liberty to a collective. The more independent you are, the more you've seceded already. Try a little disobedience, and build on that.
I like your writing, but you seem a bit narrow-minded here.
For your dining and dancing enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1p6WBU-WwE&feature=youtu.be
Uh, no. I neither neglected nor declined any such thing.
Replies were closed there before I could respond in that space.
If it were otherwise, my response would be found there.
(Google the concept of "zero", then Google "number of times Aesop has ever shut up on a subject". Note that the result is the same web address.)
Some of us work nights for a living.
As far as "virtual" secession, ROWYBS. Seriously.
But I wouldn't start imagining that you therefore don't have to pay your taxes in the real world.
That being the case, it's thus far more profitable to spend your time changing reality than it is to live in an alternate one. That's not outsourcing your liberty to a collective, it's planting liberty trees in dense-row orchards.
Do, by all means, be as personally self-sufficient as you can manage.
that's exactly what freedom is: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
But unless you're just a totally selfish bastard, invest a modicum of effort into something that will benefit others in the truest sense, and outlast your own brief span of years.
"As far as "virtual" secession, ROWYBS. Seriously.
But I wouldn't start imagining that you therefore don't have to pay your taxes in the real world."
Au contraire, mon frere. There is no provision in the Uncle Sugar tax code for an American, doing work in America for Americans to have any income tax liability (if that's the tax to which you refer). So, to be clear, I don't and I won't.
I agree: Zero Pinnochio's that WRSA comments get closed up too quickly some times.
"But unless you're just a totally selfish bastard, invest a modicum of effort into something that will benefit others in the truest sense, and outlast your own brief span of years."
By consenting to and paying the Jizya to a fraudulent system, you mean? I'm a pretty selfish bastard, but then I build things (including but not limited to roads!) and expect to keep the fruits of my labor. Think of me as robbing your screwy collective, if you like, or think of me as having the nads to say "fuck you" to Tony Soprano's protection racket.
Let's get together one of these days and compare modicums, m'kay?
Resolved: Life truly approaches the point once again of Sherwood Forest under the benevolence of Prince John and his celebrated sheriff.
The effort to build resilient establishments of traditional liberty serves as a hedge around yourself. In my limited research, they do not establish themselves, but properly laid foundations of same tend to outlast the founders.
If anyone could point to little enlightened anarchic freeholds having any impact in history, I would sign up for that newsletter, but actual historical examples seem to be about as thick on the ground as Bigfoot carcasses.
I will therefore take a restored vintage vehicle that works, to a notional saddled unicorn, six days a week and twice on Sunday.
Such a restoration requires time, purposeful effort, and persistence.
Both sides currently have the work ethic and attention span of two-year olds with poopy diapers, which is why the chief export of most of both is spackling the internet with the contents of those diapers.
CA's major contribution on WRSA is trying to get some on our side to at least occasionally change their diapers without further adult supervision being required.
Very artfully rebutted, I suppose. Yet, if there's an actual point, I can't parse it out from the spittle.
Unless you're another crybully SWATting your neighbors for every mudpuddle they fill with dirt (and I doubt you are), your own life is likely 99.9% that of an Anarcho-Capitalist. You do what's best for your own self-preservation and trade value for value to get the things you don't in fact grow or manufacture.
The main difference between us is that I refuse to wait on the blessings of The Movement, or whatever team consensus deems rebellion appropriate or timely. I think you'd do well to open your heart and mind to the fact that there are those of us who don't need (or recognize) outside leadership. Earthly outside leadership, that is, anyway.
I'm not even asking folks to follow my example, but to open their mind to breaking up the federal leviathan. You don't want to secede? Then, don't. But, YOUR central government has usurped way too much authority. And it's time for corrective measures. That break-up does not require consensus, or even collective power, but the individual will to recognize that Oz's power is just an illusion.
If, however, you choose to remain in deference to "authority", please do the rest of us the courtesy of stowing those wet blankets, rather than throwing them.
Thanks.
I would suggest you research the parable of the baby and the bath water, and then note that what you propose has existed nowhere in human history for even a millisecond. Nor would.
Those who think Oz's power but an illusion have a predictable tendency to end up serving in its dungeons for some good period of time. You can ignore that reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring that reality.
Nonetheless I maintain an open mind. Give a holler when you think you've got something going.
I thought I did, or was. Apparently the holler fell on deaf ears, but yours aren't the first.
Some minds are more open than others, and I think you give yourself way too much credit. Lots of so-called "open minds" still write checks to the teevee company of their choice each month.
Ever try to help someone else overcome their own confirmation bias? Damn near impossible.
Groovy !
Is this "Release the Lions!" or "Cry havoc and release the dogs of war!"
(big cats, big dogs.....)
So who has the stones to open a can a whup-ass and not take names? What needs to be done is not dainty, or polite.
Me thinks that when the economy goes T-U it will take out the trash with it. Mischief managed, problem solved, game over. We'll just have to help things out a bit. It will sure be ugly for a while, but we'll meet again some sunny day.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
What followed Rome? And if you say Darkness....your "education" is quite incomplete.
I do try to keep from feeding the beast as much as possible. I drive a 10 yro car, I've paid off bills, I try to shop locally owned places that care about the swamp things that proliferate our mutual area. I ALWAYS discuss politics with the owner: I never shopped a Hillary/Obama supporter knowingly. I no longer speak to some relatives. When the magic negro rose up, I made my feelings known. Upset some blood relations terribly. (Well, don't let the door hit you in the aXX on the way out). I simply threw them out of the gene pool. That being said, I hold hope that we can get our country back, but I know that it will be a bloody, long, and mean fight. But hope springs eternal.
"Planting liberty trees in dense-row orchards" is now emblazoned in a place of honor: on the front of the refrigerator. Love this thought!
Trump is a brief respite, before the festivities. I intend to take advantage of the many job openings and using it to bank some metal. I am hoping that more patriots think of ways to cut off the avenues of Leviathon Enforcement.
-Stealth Spaniel
The first go-round was both a civil war and a revolutionary war. Torries and patriots, and the King's troops. If any person believes that an insugency in the US can succeed then I would have them understand that partisan war in the age of nuclear weapons is uncharted territory. Dangerous, beyond "firing two shots and retiring" of an age long past. The Revolutionary War was won because the brothers in charge of prosecuting the war, an admiral and a general, were simpathetic to the whig movement. Make no mistake, the powers that be will not drag their feet in pursuing an armed resistance not alinged with their ideals. In the true spirit of revolution, I suggest those that would have others abandon their early victories in independence provde uniforms, subsistence, and training at least comparable to the Maryland Cadets. Draw up your Regiments sirs!
Or, accept that this is a long game and now is the time to peacefully consolidate and move forward without killing tens of thousands, or millions, or billions.
Gen. President Grant distilled into a few sentences what most loyal citizens would have said gave the most meaning to their great internecine conflict.
"What saved the Union," Grant told companions at a dinner, "was the coming forward of the young men of the nation. They came from their homes and fields, as they did in the time.of the Revolution, giving everything to the country. To their devotion we owe the salvation of the Union...So long as our young men are animated by this spirit there will be no fear for the Union."
I proffer that this is no longer the case, and that many men and women will not come forward to defend the Republic any longer. Most would feel it not worth saving. Some would I know, but most officers would resign their commissions and pledge allegiance to either their state or take their loyalties possibly to the highest bidder.
My respect for you has grown.
Sanity was taken brick-by-brick, and thusly, that is how it will have to be restored.
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