Preparing For Armageddon

     A funny way to open a column in the second half of Advent, eh? But it’s what’s on my mind. The eighteen entries in my “Future Columns” folder can wait another day.

     Here is the stimulus for today’s exercise in futility:

     Please take the twelve minutes and watch it. It’s one of Tucker Carlson’s best and most important intros. It got me thinking about what’s to come: not economically; that’s already written in the stars, but in sociopolitical terms.

     Why do I say that the economic consequences are already foreseeably guaranteed? Because I know some economics. Even more important, I know people. Ludwig von Mises knew people, too. His knowledge resulted in his most fundamental proposition: the Axiom of Action:

     Praxeology rests on the fundamental axiom that individual human beings act, that is, on the primordial fact that individuals engage in conscious actions toward chosen goals. This concept of action contrasts to purely reflexive, or knee-jerk, behavior, which is not directed toward goals. The praxeological method spins out by verbal deduction the logical implications of that primordial fact. In short, praxeological economics is the structure of logical implications of the fact that individuals act. This structure is built on the fundamental axiom of action, and has a few subsidiary axioms, such as that individuals vary and that human beings regard leisure as a valuable good. Any skeptic about deducing from such a simple base an entire system of economics, I refer to Mises’s Human Action. Furthermore, since praxeology begins with a true axiom, A, all the propositions that can be deduced from this axiom must also be true. For if A implies B, and A is true, then B must also be true.

     There are a few assumptions built into the Axiom of Action, but all of them are self-evident:

• Human action is, in the main, conscious, and therefore volitional.
• Humans pursue what they want, and attempt to avert what they don’t want.
• Such goals, whether positive or negative, are synthetic: that is, they take into account, as far as possible, the aggregate of incentives and disincentives associated with the goal before choosing whether or not to pursue it.
• A positive goal to which excessive costs or penalties are immovably attached will be set aside. Likewise, a negative goal (i.e., an undesirable outcome that a human would like to avert), if it is less costly or painful than accepting and enduring it, will be accepted and (hopefully) endured.
• For many reasons, our decisions about these things are not always accurate.

     Just now, government policy is to inflate the dollar and to discourage work. The inflation of the dollar inherently renders it less valuable, and therefore a less desirable thing to pursue through any kind of effort. Work is being discouraged in a number of ways: munificent unemployment and “stimulus” payments; mask and vaccination mandates for employed persons; the tide of illegal aliens flooding into the nation over the southern border. In combination, work-age / work-eligible persons are steadily dropping out of the labor force, resulting in a massive slowdown of American economic enterprise. It could not be any other way.

     This will continue until the destructive policies of the Usurper Administration are halted and reversed. Even should that occur in the immediate future, the effects will not be instantaneous. So we’re in for a period of stagnating productivity – a reduction in the quantity of goods and services available for purchase – as our dollars deteriorate in proportion to the inflation of the currency.

     As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

     Now, humans normally intend, quite consciously, the foreseeable consequences of their decisions and actions. This, too, flows from the Axiom of Action. As the consequences of government policy I outlined above are easily foreseeable, we must accept that the Usurpers who designed and enacted those policies meant exactly what I have predicted…especially as some of those consequences are already visible. Beyond that, we have seen that the Usurpers have no intention of reversing any of their existing policies, which implies that they consider the consequences of those policies preferable to the consequences of reversing them.

     Read the previous paragraph over slowly. Ponder what it means about the desires of those who command the Usurper Administration. Ponder also what it implies about the Usurpers’ political expectations.

     Chances are that if you weren’t a hard-driven enemy of the Usurper Regime before this, you are one now. But have a caution: there are consequences for the possession of knowledge the Regime does not want you to have. For those who elect to share such knowledge, the consequences could become dire.

     Tucker Carlson’s video above got me thinking about (surprise, surprise) a passage from 1984:

     Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:
     ’Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction.’…
     One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

     A regime which cannot allow people to know certain things will act to prevent the knowledge from being disseminated. A regime which cannot allow people to say or hear certain things will act against those who say them loudly enough to be heard.

     Pray for Tucker Carlson.

     The central question I’ve been pondering is one that Ayn Rand introduced in Atlas Shrugged:

     “You should have expected me, James. This is the great, formal, nose-counting event, where the victims come in order to show how safe it is to destroy them, and the destroyers form pacts of eternal friendship, which lasts for three months. I don’t know exactly which group I belong to, but I had to come and be counted, didn’t I?”
     “What in hell do you think you’re saying?” Taggart cried furiously, seeing the tension on the faces around them.
     “Be careful, James. If you try to pretend that you don’t understand me, I’m going to make it much clearer.”
     “If you think it’s proper to utter such—”
     “I think it’s funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that’s all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns—just somebody naming the exact nature of what you’re doing?”

     I don’t know if we’re in such a situation today: i.e., one in which merely stating what you know (and is plain to anyone with a functioning brain) is enough to blast the evils of the Usurper Regime to Hell. It would surely be nice, but I doubt that any individual voice would suffice. The Usurpers have weapons with which to quench adverse sentiments: deplatforming, lawfare, slander, vandalism, and others. Those weapons are already “in the field,” and are garnering more victims daily. If you’re considered a large enough threat to them, they will train their guns on you…if they can target you to advantage.

     This points in what might be the only low-risk direction for reversing the evil tide: millions of individual voices, armed with irrefutable evidence and pitiless reasoning, raised in de facto unison against the Usurpers. If they cannot profitably target us individually – if each of us is a single mosquito in a horde of millions – what then? Repeal the First Amendment? It’s been tried. I doubt the Usurpers could withstand the backblast they would experience then.

     I’ve been a bit downcast about the nation’s chance to recover from Usurper malevolence. Perhaps it’s possible after all. But even if we should go down in flames, let’s make our voices heard. As valuable as Tucker Carlson is, he’s one man on a heavily attacked and defamed network. From the perch he commands, he can stimulate and inspire us…but he can be targeted, and the trends suggest that he will be, one way or another. The work the Usurpers cannot practically counter lies with us.

     Food for thought.