The Wheel

     First, a little “inspirational” music:

     Beautiful stuff, eh? Among “what’s the use?” songs, it’s a favorite of mine. And it’s highly relevant to today’s exercise in curmudgeonry.

     Now let’s have some links:

• A “Grand Alliance”
• Political Insanity in the Empire State
• “Don’t Get In!”

     Let’s add a passage from Robert A. Heinlein:

     “I saw all around me this enormous plant, cities farms, factories, churches, schools, homes, railroads, luggage, roller coasters, trees, saxophones, libraries, people, and animals. People that looked like me and who should have felt very much like me, if what I was told was the truth. But what did they appear to be doing? ‘They went to work to earn the money to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to buy the food to get the strength to buy the food to earn the money to go to—’ until they fell over dead. Any slight variation in this basic pattern did not matter, for they always fell over dead. And everybody tried to tell me that I should be doing the same thing.” [From “They,” collected in Damon Knight’s anthology The Dark Side.]

     …and ram it all home with an illustrative GIF:

     There! Doesn’t that make you want to rush out, buy a gun, and kill yourself? Well, don’t…not until you’re finished reading this piece, at least.

     The three articles I linked relate to the theme of futility in varying ways. I shan’t insult my Gentle Readers’ intelligence by explicating them here. Rather, I’d like to add a fourth set of ideas that the events of the past few years appear to imply.

     We look at the actions of the Usurpers and their allies at the state and local level, we note the obvious, easily predictable consequences of their policies, and we shake our heads in disbelief. The consequences are always bad for ordinary Americans. Every one of them conduces to a poorer, less safe, less peaceful, less fecund, and (of course) less free society. And the majority of Americans say wonderingly, “Isn’t that as obvious to them as it is to me?”

     Well, duh! The people doing this to you are not stupid. Evil? Yes. But they know what they’re doing. It pleases them that so many of you continue to think them misguided rather than malevolent.

     The commentator in the video at the third link says it flatly: We’re being made to run on a wheel. Our existences are being reduced to futility by the application of ever harsher constraints and survival pressures. We’re getting nowhere, we’re tiring from the effort, and the Usurpers are making the wheel ever harder to spin.

     The Tennessee Star editorial proposes a “grand alliance” of the great mass of us who want our country back as it was. The Usurpers hope to prevent exactly that, which is the central reason for their policies. As they force Us the People to struggle ever harder to keep ourselves and our loved ones alive, adequately provided for, and reasonably safe, they drain us of the energy that would make it possible to resist them. A man who’s barely succeeding at “treading water” can spare no thought for anything but survival.

     Does that sound like anyone you know, Gentle Reader? Does it sound like you?

     Believe it or not, Gentle Reader, I’m not trying to depress you. As in my favorite movie of all time:

Sir Thomas More: Have I your word that what we say here is between us two?
The Duke of Norfolk: Very well.
Sir Thomas More: And if the King should command you to repeat what I may say?
The Duke of Norfolk: I should keep my word to you.
Sir Thomas More: Then what has become of your oath of obedience to the King?
The Duke of Norfolk: You lay traps for me!
Sir Thomas More: No, I show you the times.

     …I’m showing you the times. I’m not alone in this. Neither am I alone in not knowing what to do about it.

     There is one possibility, but it seems remote today: a nationwide outbreak of “Irish Democracy:” passive noncompliance / civil disobedience toward the Usurpers. That would need to be coupled to armed resistance to the Usurpers’ paramilitary forces: i.e., any person or organization that attempts to compel our obedience. But who has the time? Who has the energy or the savings? Who has the courage?

     Beyond that, deponent sayeth not.