And now for a glimpse of America’s investment world:

We’ve, thus, [reached the] market’s end time I said we would soon reach if stocks continued to rise above such basic fundamentals [sic] during the COVID era as sales and revenue. At first corporations and their investors agreed upon tricked-up earnings from fancy accounting to lay in their fantasy flight plans. [Gold star for vagueness here, but now it gets good.] Then they inflated earnings for YEARS by stock buybacks because earnings are quoted “per share,” and buybacks reduce the number of outstanding shares. Finally, the sudden stripping away of corporate taxes in the Trump era made earnings that were again looking weak suddenly look great again, but that wasn’t because business was improving; it was just because the bottom line exploded due to fewer taxes being taken out. So, throughout the past decade earnings were not rising because business (the economy) was thriving but because they were distributed over fewer and fewer shares and calculated by fancier and fancier means.

No one cared. No one cares still.

All that mattered was that the headline numbers kept getting better for years. So, the market soared far above the economy. [Trump loved it. Political leadership nowhere to be found.] Eventually, the Robinhood and Reddit crowd said, “Let’s tear all the tethers loose. Real economics haven’t meant diddly squat to this market for a long time now anyway, so let’s not even pretend to care about earnings, let alone sales and revenue or where the COVIDcrash is taking the world economically. Let’s bet this thing to the moon, regardless of the economic reality we are in.”^[1]

And hats off to the Robinhood and Reddit crowd who played by the rules established by Wall Street and our vigilant watchdogs in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) taking care that the United States investment world just could never come to resemble a Bahamanian casino.

Oh, I forgot. While you’re admiring the SEC, don’t forget how the Commerce Department and the State Department looked out for the interests of the American worker when corporate America did grievous damage to our industrial base. And how the Department of Homeland Security safeguarded our borders and sent all those millions of illegals back across the Mexican border. And how the anti-trust warriors in the Department of Justice went after our crippling domestic monopolies like leopard seals after a baby penguin (overheated rhetoric alert!). And how the FBI crucified the AntiFa and Blacks Liberating Merchandise filth burning, looting, and shooting their way across America last year. Plenty of interstate activity THERE, pilgrims! And how the Congress is just merciless when it comes to things like worthless spending projects and nation-killing debt. And how our Ginzu-knife Supreme Court jumped in on electoral theft that’s the envy of Zimbabwe.

God bless the American political class. Doing their utmost to stave off chaos, destruction, and the end of a truly grand experiment in self government.

Notes

^[1] “DON’T-STOP GAME STOCKS: Bankrupt Companies As Trillion-Dollar Chips in the Wall Street Casino.” By David Haggith, ZeroHedge, 2/6/21.

Edit: “tricked-up earnings from fancy accounting” refers to earnings from “non-GAAP accounting measures.”

…is accelerating. When will the Official Loyalty Oaths commence?

From the Victory Girls blog.

Some of that – hell, a LOT of that – is driven by fear. Fear that the Progressive March Through the Institutions is not a Sure Thing. Fear that the Left’s hold on the Gears of Power is tenuous. Fear that they might actually have to work for a living again.

And, worst of all, fear that their OWN Conspiracy Theories have a basis in fact. They really DO think that Qanon is about to sweep through the GOP, like a raging infection, and drive them from power.

To believe that, the Left has to be on some serious drugs – or True Believers in their own B$. As most of them are no longer stumbling around in a confused haze (MOST of the time), I’d have to guess that they are dumb enough to be True Believers (hard as it is to think of people quite that stupid in semi-responsible positions).

Do I occasionally dip into the Q Stream? Guilty.

I also read the old Tom Clancy books, and a whole lot of other needs-a-suspension-of-belief-to-be-indulged-in entertainment.

Do I believe in Q’s complicated theories? No.

In real life, people are seldom that prescient, brave, or prepared to die. Given an opportunity, almost all will wimp out and take the solution that lets them live/take a lesser punishment. That’s the guiding principle of the prosecutorial deal system.

All those complicated plans, all those Deep Throat operatives – well, we’ve found them to be laughable, inadequate, and – given almost everyone’s willingness to deal, easily broken.

Unless the judges are first made corrupt.

Second piece of “news” – Time Magazine (gee, I remember when that periodical favored the Right) has come out with an admission that, yes, Big Business DID have its thumb on the scale for Biden-Harris and the Left-But-Not-The-BAD-Kind-of-Left.

As Sarah A. Hoyt says, This is My Surprised Face.

This could be one of the most fertile times for Dissident Literature. Not a lot of money in it, the possibility of being sent to the Gulag is always present, but – OMZ, the Glory!

Similar to being the Official Hated ‘Out’ Party. The Quislings, Wanna-Bes, and Will-Run-Screaming-at-the-First-Opportunity types will be shed. Only those who are willing to stand up in Hard Times will be left.

The Revolution to Restore the Republic cannot be a quick one. It takes a lot of time to get the essential core team honed through battle. If a person is gonna run screaming at the first shot, well, it’s better to know that than to remain ignorant of that fact until the need is critical and the Last Battle is being fought. So, no, I don’t think of the Cowardly GOP’s outing as a bad thing.

We may still use them, for OUR own good. We may put them in fake-influential positions, where they can be cut loose when the need arises. But, they should NEVER AGAIN be admitted to the Inner Circle. They should NEVER AGAIN be trusted with strategy, secrets, or the opportunity to get information that could be leaked. They should be treated with ‘respect’ and permitted to THINK they have our trust. They should be kept ignorant of the identity of any of the core people.

As a strategy, we NLDs (Non-Leftist Dissidents) need to begin looking at who the Core People will be. They should be content to remain in the background, near the officials in power, but not openly identified as such, themselves. In essence, they will be NLD Sleeper Operatives.

This will divide the Core Team into two parts – the Open Supporters, who should be media-savvy and photogenic, and the Sleepers – who need to be crafty, not personally ambitious, and willing to cede History’s adulation to the OS types. Think of Samuel Adams, whose work was core to the Revolution, and yet is best known for the beer named after him. Others were better known; he was the glue that held that fragile alliance together.

Getting back to overarching aims, I was thinking about how history was taught in school when I was young (I graduated in 1969 – no smutty jokes, please). Looking back at the relative importance of movements of the 18th century, as emphasized in the textbooks, I realized that the Progressive Movement was emphasized, rather than the Populist Movement.

I was blessed to have had elderly relations who had some personal knowledge of the events of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and could explain them in terms of the average person’s life.

If, instead, you depended on the Official Sources for information (such as History.com), you might get the idea that Populism was the tool of vaguely Fascist/Right-Wing/Nefarious politicians, as the linked article suggests. How a site that claims to be dedicated to historical accuracy can ignore the Grange Movement, The People’s Party, and the Greenback Party – all grassroots-driven, popularly supported political initiatives – and instead focus on fringe politicians with popular appeal, is beyond me.

Funnily, these lists of organic uprisings dedicated to the interests of the average person never seem to include those popular-support causes that the Elite are involved in. That would be, because the Elite never get involved in causes that actually favor average people, instead preferring those activities that set Elite privilege in stone, with benefits to be doled out to their supporters in return for their fealty.

Actually caring about the interests of the average person?

PUH-LEASE!

Who cares what those pathetic people think?

Sigh.

Before I get suicidal, I’m going to leave you with one last link – this one from Ace of Spades. But, lest you also become miserable in despair, also check out this funny post from Weird Dave at Ace, and keep your hands off the knives in the kitchen.

…is that the Jeffrey Tambour character doesn’t seem all that crazy anymore.

The following snippet is from Robert A. Heinlein’s early novel The Puppet Masters:

     I dialed for him, and told him about the success of the experiments with the apes.
     He nodded. “Yes, I had heard. Sounds good.”
     ” ‘Good’, the man says! Colonel, we are on the one yard line and goal to go. A week from now the game will be won.”
     “So?”
     “Oh, come now!” I answered, irritated by his manner. “In a short time you’ll be able to put your clothes back on and lead a normal life. Or don’t you think our plans will work?”
     “Yes, I think they will work.”
     “Then why the crepe-hanging?”
     Instead of answering directly he said, “Mr. Nivens, you don’t think that a man with my pot belly enjoys running around without his clothes, do you?”
     “I suppose not. As for myself, I’m beginning to find it pleasant. I may hate to have to give it up-saves time and it’s comfortable.”
     “You need not worry about having to give it up. This is a permanent change.”
     “Huh? I don’t get you. You said our plans would work and now you talk as if Schedule Sun Tan would go on forever.”
     “In a modified way, it will.”
     I said, “Pardon me? I’m stupid today.”
     He dialed for another beer. “Mr. Nivens, I never expected to live to see a military reservation turned into a ruddy nudist camp. Having seen it happen, I never expect to see us change back-because we can’t. Pandora’s box has a one-way lid. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men-”
     “Conceded,” I answered. “Things never go back quite to what they were before. Just the same, you are exaggerating. The day after the President rescinds Schedule Sun Tan the suspended blue laws will go into effect and a man without pants will be liable to arrest.”
     “I hope not.”
     “Huh? Make up your mind.”
     “It’s made up for me. Mr. Nivens, as long as there exists a possibility that a slug is alive the polite man must be willing to bare his entire body on request-or risk getting shot. Not just this week and next week but twenty years from now, or a hundred. No, no!” he said, seeing that I was about to interrupt, “I am not disparaging your fine plans-but pardon me if I say that you have been too busy with their details to notice that they are strictly local and temporary. For example-have you made any plans for combing the Amazonian jungles, tree by tree?”
     He went on apologetically, “Just a rhetorical inquiry. This globe has nearly sixty million square miles of dry land; we can’t begin to search it and clean out the slugs. Shucks, man, we haven’t made a dent in the rats and we’ve been at that a long time. Titans are trickier and more prolific than rats.”
     “Are you trying to tell me it’s hopeless?” I demanded.
     “Hopeless? Not at all. Have another drink. I’m trying to say that we are going to have to learn to live with this horror, the way we had to learn to live with the atom bomb.”

     The malady that Nivens and Kelly are discussing in the above is a sentient macroscopic parasite – an amoeba-like creature about the size of a dinner plate – that takes over the afflicted man’s mind and all his decisions. While the campaign against them has achieved a smashing victory, it could never be a complete victory, for the parasites can never be deemed completely extinguished. Thus, the measures instituted for the emergency – i.e., Schedule Sun Tan, a nationwide de facto ban on the wearing of anything that could conceal the parasite – could never be retracted in their entirety.

     That fictional parasite threatened to enslave Mankind completely and permanently. By comparison, the Wuhan Virus merely threatens us with something about as serious as conventional influenza. However, viruses, once they enter the Earth’s biosphere, never go completely away. Like the fictional inhabitants of Heinlein’s novel, we’re going to have to learn to live with the Kung Flu. What will that entail?

     The first requirement will be the radical de-escalation of the Pandemic Panic. A high percentage of Americans have been scared out of their wits, largely by a campaign of “fear porn.” They’ve been living radically constricted lives for almost a year – and to what end? Except for those with aged family members who suffer serious co-morbidities, the constraints have cost them far more than the exceedingly modest peril the Chinese Lung Rot poses. It is impossible to conduct normal American society when half or more of the nation is paralyzed with fear.

     The second requirement will be the acceptance by Americans that some among us will remain fearful, even extremely fearful. In any interaction with them, we who are less burdened with fear will be expected to accommodate their concerns. It’s easy to see what that will mean for retail commerce, a bit harder to envision the effect upon non-commercial society. The most fearful among us might become hermits in effect. Those slightly less burdened might demand that the rest of us wear masks, “social distance,” and obsessively wash our hands after every contact with any surface or object.

     The third requirement will be general acceptance that people will fall ill with the Kung Flu…and that some will die. If the statistics amassed to date continue to hold, the disease will prove lethal to about 3 out of every 1000 persons infected. That makes the virus just one more among the many we already suffer.

     The very fearful will continue to hope for a vaccine that genuinely immunizes the patient against the virus over the long term. At this time, there is no such vaccine. The ones already devised confer partial immunity that lasts for less than a year. Moreover, those vaccines are reported to possess side effects that can be more serious than the disease itself. Whether these problems will ever be conquered, no one knows.

     One way or another, the Chinese Coronavirus is here to stay, and we must learn to live with it: live, not cower in terror, and certainly not consign ourselves to a living death.

I’m generally a reader. I read fast (over 1,000 words/minute, unless it’s very technical or containing unfamiliar concepts), which makes it my preferred way to get information.

But, most people – particularly those in the 40 and under crowd – are not like that. They prefer to get their information through video.

So, I decided to make the time to start working at improving my consumption of documentaries/commentary-type videos, and pass along some recommendations.

One of those recommendations is “Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World”. It tells the story of Sowell’s life and influences, through interviews with those who’ve known and interacted with him, through interviews, and in his own written words. It’s a great introduction to his body of work, and should provide some incentive to read it.

This is an edited and updated version of an article I posted in January of 2013 at my website. It seems timely.

It is rare for those who commit evil acts to openly acknowledge that their actions are evil, even to themselves. Very often the evil-doer will justify his actions to himself and others by claiming some over-riding superior purpose or moral imperative which supposedly outweighs the ‘disadvantages’ of the evil act, or by altering his perception of his target, or both. Historically, when action against a particular group is envisioned, (for the greater good of course,) that group is often depersonalized or demonized prior to action being taken. After all, if the subjects of your depredations aren’t human, and if they won’t do what they’re told, then whatever happens to them is their own fault, isn’t it? “Look at what you made me do!” Such wicked moral inversions are common among those who commit evil acts.

Some of those who wield authority in these presently united States are engaging in exactly this sort of psychopathic behavior. Characterization of those who respect the Constitution and the rights of the individual as ‘bitter clingers,’ ‘extremists’ or even ‘terrorists’ are an effort to depersonalize those who oppose the present stampede towards collectivist totalitarianism. But those who presently wield authority have a problem. Not only are most of those who oppose them armed, and resolutely intent on retaining their arms, but the government does not know who they are or what weapons they possess. Further, most of those who support the push towards victim disarmament are unarmed, and an unknown number of police and military members would probably fight on the side of the Liberty movement. The Left and their allies recognize this, which is why we have seen various attempt to legislate away our rights.

Opposing these totalitarian thugs are over 100 million gun owners in the various united States, owning hundreds of millions of guns, including an unknown number of unlicensed and unregistered ‘illegal’ machine guns. Obviously those who possess such arms, possession of which is severely punished, do not admit to owning such, so the real number will never be known, but various estimates range from 200,000 to a million or more. These possessors are already willing to defy the law. Of the 100 million plus legal firearms owners in these presently united States, surveys show at least half appear utterly determined to retain their arms. The huge surge in firearms purchases since the November 2020 election and the ongoing demand for ammunition argues powerfully that many Americans intend to maintain their rights.

It is impossible for those presently in authority to clamp down hard enough quickly enough on enough of these people to be certain that they could prevail in a civil war. Unless they knew who owned the guns, and especially who owned arms of military utility. That allows all sorts of incremental pressure to be put onto such persons, one by one, rather like the way a pack of hyenas extracts their prey from the herd. Over time, if they knew who the gun-owners were, the authorities could marginalize, harass and penalize gun owners for their ‘unacceptable individualism.’ The Left, in an obvious attempt to consolidate their hold on the reins of power, are aware of this, and have introduced legislation, HR 127, to require universal registration of firearms and firearms owners, along with political reliability interviews, permits, harassment of firearms owners, and a variety of other violations of the individual right to own weapons.

This bill departs from the past gradualism of the Left, and is a direct frontal assault upon the right to bear arms, changing it to a permission, which is clearly intended to target those in the Liberty movement. This bill, if passed in any part, can be expected to ignite an extremely bloody revolt. Given the control that the Left and their allies in the Fourth Branch presently have over the Federal authority, the result of such a revolt is not certain, but what is certain is that such a conflict would be ugly beyond words. Regardless of the outcome, many on the Right would lose a great deal, up to and including their lives.

Why would gun owners engage in such a conflict? The honeyed voice of the tyrannical Left is already asking, yet again, “What is wrong with registering your weapons and getting a license? Do we want deranged individuals buying weapons from ‘private dealers?’ Why won’t you people be reasonable? Guns are dangerous!”

Those gun owners who have studied history know the answer- “NO! We have tolerated too many infringements already. Much of what you decry as “gun violence” is the entirely predictable result of the Left’s policies of victim disarmament. It has been abundantly proven that locations where the law-abiding are armed are more peaceful and less violent. It is utterly unreasonable for you to ask me to surrender any more of my rights because of the perfectly predictable result of your victim disarmament policy. WE are not the people burning and looting our cities!” Gun owners know that criminals will not obey the law and will not be disarmed. The insanity of expecting the deranged or the criminal to play by the rules has been repeatedly demonstrated. This push for universal registration is not about ‘public safety’, for if public safety were a real concern for the Left, the thugs looting and burning the cities controlled by the Left would be in prison now. The Right can see what is going on. The purpose of the Left is obvious- to disarm their enemies, just as has been done by every totalitarian regime that ever took power. History shows us the dangers of allowing any government, especially a totalitarian government, to know who is armed.

Some years ago I had an interesting conversation with one of my favorite in-laws, an aunt who has since passed on. She was not Jewish but married to a Jew and was extremely upset by her discovery of the some of the information available on the Internet. She had apparently found out that there are various publishers who sell books on all sorts of topics, including explosives manufacture, how to make machine guns and flamethrowers, and all sorts of other topics involving applied violence. She fumed, “It’s absurd! Nobody needs that sort of information! That simply shouldn’t be allowed!” I calmly replied, “Really? Why don’t you tell the Jews in Warsaw that?” “Warsaw?” she replied, puzzled, “I’ve been to Warsaw, and there aren’t any Jews in Warsaw!” At that point, her Jewish husband leaned over towards her and very quietly said, “Dear, you had better quit while you are behind.”

Her husband knew, as his wife apparently did not, that Warsaw in 1939 had the largest Jewish community in Europe, about 375,000 Jews out of 1.3 million or about 30% of the population. While there are in fact presently a few hundred Jews in Warsaw, Poland today, they are but a tiny fraction of the vibrant Jewish community that existed in Warsaw and throughout Poland prior to the division of that country between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in 1939. Most of the former Jewish inhabitants were murdered by the Nazis during WW2; the survivors emigrated, to Israel, Europe or the United States after WW2.

Warsaw was the site of one of the most famous episodes of Jewish resistance to the Nazis during the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  Fewer than a hundred Jews resisted the Wehrmacht, SS and Gestapo for over a month with only a small handful of small arms. Almost all of these Jews died, a grim example of people fighting with no hope of victory, simply because it is better to die fighting. My uncle-in-law knew that the Jews of Poland would never have been in that Ghetto and would never have been exterminated in German death camps, had they each possessed arms, military munitions, and the willingness to use them. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto desperately needed arms, but had almost none.

The point of this little vignette is that the German weapons control laws did not disarm the Jews on Kristalnacht (November 9th and 10th, 1938,  which was the start of the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jewry.) The disarmament of the Jews began many years before, with ‘reasonable’ registration and licensing laws, not only in Germany, but throughout most of Europe, which got less and less reasonable over time. Once disarmed, it became safe to blame the Jews, for the Germans knew that they had no arms. They had the records, the registrations, and they took the Jew’s guns, first in Germany and then in the countries that they conquered. After the Jews were disarmed, then they took the Jew’s property, their freedom, and ultimately, their lives. This is by no means the only example of what happens when people allow themselves to be disarmed.

Time after time, history tells us that registration is followed later by confiscation, and once disarmed, by extermination; it is a routine practice of totalitarian governments. It is the one of the definitions of totalitarian government, together with demonizing their opposition, censorship and violation of property rights. It has happened dozens of times in the last century alone.

Weapon registration leads to confiscation. Confiscation leads to repression and ultimately to extermination. Registration=Confiscation=Death. THIS is the calculus of genocide.

Even a child can integrate that calculus problem, and it is to protect our persons and our rights, and those of all such children and all the rest of us out there, that the gun owners of these united States remain opposed to ANY further infringements on our individual rights. When the honeyed voice of the tyrant asks us yet again to ‘be reasonable!’ we remember the calculus of genocide. We also remember that the Left have baldly stated that their opponents ought to be sent to “re-education camps.” The historical parallels are chilling, making the intent of those presently in power clear.

We know what happens next and just as the beleaguered gun owners of New York and Connecticut have done, we say NO. We remember the calculus of genocide and we say that not only will we not give up our weapons, we will NOT register them, or ourselves.

We will NOT ask permission for our rights.

We will NOT get a license.

We will NOT register our weapons, their accessories or their ammunition.

We will NOT comply.

Anyone who promotes or supports the insidious evil of weapon registration advocates mass murder. That is the lesson of the calculus of genocide.

Remembering the Holocaust, we say, “NEVER AGAIN!”

With regard to all who seek the Light,

Historian

I read pretty much everything I run across. Even, at times, the Leftist stuff.

I may get into a few paragraphs, think “Holy Sh**, this guy is WACK!” and back out, erasing any breadcrumbs I left.

Other times, I will use a clearly erroneous or partisan essay as a springboard to a blog post.

And, sometimes, I read from sources that, while I disagree with them in many things, they have both information and a point of view that I need to know about. Such a source is Reason.

As their name might suggest, they think of themselves as the dispassionate, cerebral kind of thinkers, that coolly look at an issue, dissect it without bias, and can formulate an essay explaining the best approach, purely from scientific reasoning.

Don’t believe it. Reason has bias, just like any other source. However, they are LESS likely to be reflexively Leftist in their positions than most, and also less likely to automatically call ‘Anathema!’ on any ideas coming from the NLDs (Non-Leftist Dissidents).

This is a good one to print out, set in public places, and use as a starting point for getting people to back off on solutions that guarantee to pulverize the extreme right, and consider just how bad these Leftist ideas are.

“Journalists and media-theoreticians right now think the solution to Trumpy delusion is to deplatform even sitting U.S. senators, sic the feds on Fox News, break up Big Tech, reject “bothsidesism,” use the most maximally negative adjectives to describe Republicans, and reposition journalism as a tool for producing better democratic outcomes through applied moral clarity.

I think those approaches will backfire. Deliberately shrinking the public square is no way to persuade consumers on the edges of the debate. Injecting more moralizing into fact-gathering is unlikely to make the end product more factual. Giving the government more power over the rules and practice of free speech is, well, dystopian.”

The Biden people, and the Congress, need to get it together, and rein in those zealots. If they keep this up, the Open Civil War will be a-starting Real Soon.

     I’ve long been an admirer of Ace of Spades HQ and its eponymous proprietor. Ace has a gift for the penetrating phrase, the ultimately concise expression of an important truth. Just yesterday, he fired off one that’s probably his best ever. No, I’m not going to present it baldly; it must be contextualized for best impact.

     The context was a statement by a former high official of the Central Intelligence Agency:

     When it comes to domestic extremists such as those who stormed the Capitol, a longtime CIA officer argues that the U.S. should treat them as an insurgency.

     That means using counterinsurgency tactics — similar in some ways to those used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

     Robert Grenier served as the CIA’s station chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. He went on to become the CIA’s Iraq mission manager and then director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2006.

     “We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen,” Grenier wrote in The New York Times last week. And without national action, he argues, “extremists who seek a social apocalypse … are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen in this country since Reconstruction.”

     Pretty dramatic, eh? It conjures up visions of FBI / CIA “midnight raids” of the homes of “insurrectionists;” loyalty drives akin to those of the House Unamerican Activities Committee; drone strikes against Americans in America. Could we be facing such developments in the near future?

     Ace points out the ground-truth reality that underpins it all:

     And it is so.

     I’ve yet to move the relevant essays here from the old site, so please excuse the lack of a link. I once wrote:

     A class is defined by its legal and social privileges. The aristocrats of medieval times were not distinguished by their lineages or their deeds, but by the things they were allowed to do, without penalty, that commoners were not. There is reason to believe that the majority of medieval aristocrats were fairly responsible stewards of their lands and of public order within them. That does not justify the creation of a class of men who could wield high, middle, and low justice over others, but who would normally escape all consequences for deeds for which a commoner would be severely punished.

     The American response to the failings of traditional aristocracies was the Rule of Law: the fundamental principle that the law must treat all men impartially, regardless of their identities or station in life. The old shorthand for this principle was “blind justice,” meaning that the law must not see one’s person, only one’s deeds. In a society that respects the Rule of Law, a king would stand in the same dock as a trash-hauler, were the two accused of the same offense. All that would matter would be the evidence for their guilt or innocence.

     In the absence of a scrupulously observed Rule of Law, classes with differing degrees of privilege will emerge. The flourishing of the members of each class will be influenced, often heavily, by the class’s privileges and how effectively they can be exploited. Men being what we are, we will be moved to use those privileges in our own interest, both against competitors within our class and against other classes.

     Success breeds emulation. If there are advantages to be had from the ruthless exploitation of a class privilege, over time more and more members of the class will be drawn into doing so. Thus, the coloration given to the class by its privileges will become stronger and more inclusive over time.

     This is not an unbounded progression; as in all other things, a tendency toward equilibrium will ultimately assert itself. However, the mechanisms by which equilibrium is restored are always unpleasant. The deterrents that curb full exploitation of a class privilege, if any exist at all, will be applied by other classes, whether through the law, other social institutions, or “informally.” “Informally” usually means lynching: the application of extra-judicial, often unmerited punishment to members of one class by members of another. In the usual case, the lynchers come from a more numerous class than the lynchees, though there are occasional exceptions.

     Lynching, if it goes unpunished, is itself a class privilege. There are satisfactions in it that are incomprehensible to moral men who live in ordinary times. As with other activities with innate satisfactions, the popularity of the practice will grow over time. A mob that’s tasted the blood of one aristocrat is seldom satisfied with just that one sip.

     Lynching writ large is genocide.

     Ponder that for a few moments while I put up another pot of coffee.

     Implied, not expressed, in the above citation from my well-known piece “The New Segregationists” is the foundation of privilege: the ability to enforce one’s class privileges. Two conditions are required for this:

1. A preponderance of effective force in the hands of the privileged class;
2. The tacit approval of whoever controls the State.

     Concerning item #1, effective force is force that is actually deployed, as opposed to “potential force:” i.e., weapons and the ability to use them that “stay home.” For example, there are approximately 100 million Americans who possess one or more firearms, which constitutes the largest potential force that has ever existed. However, the 30,000 troops currently garrisoning Washington, D.C. constitute a preponderance of effective force, for no greater body of arms and wielders has arisen to challenge them.

     The privileged aristocrats of medieval Europe maintained their privileges through a social system founded on monarchy, nobility, primogeniture, and other concepts that Americans have never respected, much less observed. They lived, in Isabel Paterson’s famous phrase, in Societies of Status, in which one’s personal identity and lineage determined what privileges one possessed. The Constitution’s prohibitions on titles of nobility made explicit that the law is to make no status distinctions in these United States.

     But persons who claim special status have always been among us. In America, they’re not born to noble families. Here, they go into politics and government. Those who rise sufficiently high acquire many privileges. Some acquire the power to confer privileges on others as well.

     The method of government is coercion. Its expressions are violence and intimidation. Those things require weapons and persons willing to wield them. The aristocrats and knights of medieval Europe were the only persons who could legally own lethal weapons. The privileged ones of contemporary America don’t wield weapons themselves. However, they command “the forces of order:” our military and the police forces that act at the behest of our 88,000 governments.

     Without those tools, no degree of privilege could be maintained.

     Consider in light of the above the riots that have reduced so many American cities to rubble. The rioters constituted a force of sorts, though they were largely unarmed and usually unorganized. The police of the afflicted cities were instructed to stand aside and let them “act out.” As citizen militias dedicated to preserving life and property did not materialize, there was no effective force to impede the rioters. They got away with immense amounts of violence, vandalism, and theft.

     The riots demonstrated with a deadly clarity what privilege means in contemporary America—and who possesses it.

     The heavily armed American citizenry is similarly passive at this time. We constitute a potential force that could bring the Usurper Administration crashing to earth, but we lack the will and the organization to do so. Thus, the preponderance of effective force remains with the Usurpers. They will exercise their privileges freely and openly unless and until a larger force arises to confront them…which might mean forevermore.

     Should the Usurpers choose to wield their forces against political opponents and dissidents, Americans who believe in the Constitutional compact and the liberty of the individual will face a severe test. That test may already be under way; it’s too soon to tell. Whatever may arise, the hard truth of the matter is this: all privileges are maintained by force and the willingness to use it.

     Violence is the root of all privilege.

Newsmax had Mike Lindell on recently and Lindell wanted to talk about election fraud. Newsmax’s Bob Sellers pulled out all the stops to shut him down with determined, relentless talking over him and revealing that Newsmax, quote unquote, has checked into this and found that there was no fraud. Yes, and the courts have all ruled against this absurd idea.

You have to marvel at the energetic performance of Sellers to shut down talk of election fraud. God bless Lindell for not having any of it and continuing to talk while Sellers was trying to get him to talk about butterflies and cute puppies. You can tell that there’s elite hysteria on this point when you see such disgraceful manners.

It’s bizarre too to see on Newsmax, which is supposedly one of the new Valhallas for refugees from Fox, pull out all the stops and abandon all semblance of courtesy or journalistic objectivity. Newsmax was in full sell, sell, sell mode. But maybe it’s not so bizarre if Sellers is right that Newsmax has gone full “see no evil.” Clearly Sellers was pushing the management line, even to the extent of walking away from the camera.

It’s getting so you can’t trust the media any more.

Watch this toad debase himself:

“WOW Newsmax Anchor Walks Off Mid-Interview with Mike Lindell.” By Danielle D’Souza Gill, rumble, 2/2/21.

Militias have gotten a bad name in recent years. The very mention of them seems to trigger a horror of their supposed intentions to revolt against the government.

Why?

Is it because the government has declared a monopoly on citizens organizing to defend themselves and their communities? Brought heavy criminal action against anyone working with a non-governmental group that is dedicated to protection of nearby citizens against violence? Or, has the idea become corrupted by the actions of a few outliers?

Or, all of the above?

American Greatness makes an argument for citizens working together in small groups, training to be an effective local defense, and acting independently of government, to protect local interests. That group is meant, and designed, to be the first line of defense against enemies – foreign and domestic.

As they have traditionally been.

Almost all of the State Guards have been brought into the umbrella of the National Guard (SC is an exception – it still maintains a state-sponsored Home Guard).

Those entities are filled with younger men and women. Their periodic training is geared primarily towards short-term local defense, disaster drills, and, over the last 20 years, periodic use in the many foreign actions the federal government wants to conduct, without having to call up a draft.

But, they cannot and do not protect the neighbors from government.

The peasants had a go at one of the hedge funds in the GameStop spasmatron last week and this was not good at all.  Shorting a stock can be a legitimate move based on analysis of market and/or company realities.  Make it a big enough short, however, and other investors might sit up and take notice possibly causing the short become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If the target company falters as a result of the revelation of its predicament, the decline in its stock price, supplier hesitancy, lender alarm, and other sequelae, well, that’s too bad.  Learn to code, chaps.

But if some mere blokes and babes learn how to work the pedals in a different fashion then that, pilgrims, is a horse of a different color.  Can’t have THAT.  As Mr. McMaken points out in his article the reaction of the anointed ones is unalloyed horror.

This “exemption from free market discipline” is what Wall Street is all about these days. The financial sector has become accustomed to enjoying bailouts, easy money, and the resulting financialization which puts ever greater amounts of the US economy into the hands of Wall Street money managers. The sector is now built on corporate welfare, not “free markets.” No matter what happens, Wall Street expects the deck to be stacked in its favor.^[1]

McMaken suggests that it’s not quite what meets the eye and bigger, more experienced entities may also have found it advantageous to take the upside position of this play, if I’ve got the Wall Street lingo correct.  But, by and large, it appears to be a Peasant Play and outrage ensued.

I remember my father in the 1950s poring over his subscription to a print investment publication called “The Value Line.”  This arrived by snail mail and his focus in managing his investments was on company underlying health, management competence, and growth.  Now, God only knows how small investors look at the market.  As I’ve written with great regularity, I think their incentive is to (1) throw money into the stock market to escape vaporous returns on their money in mere savings accounts (it is to laugh), (2) hopefully do better than that in the market, and (3) even stay ahead of inflation (horse laugh) which is zooming right along. 

Well, that’s one class of investor but Dad seems definitely in the relic class now in a world of day traders, discount brokerages, deindustrialization, dumb ass hysteria over “climate change,” superstitious hostility to “fossil fuels,” and the worship of foreigners and minorities.  Take the matter of high-frequency trading where sophisticated computer-based trading takes place with, are you ready, a fraction of an advance peek at the stock market numbers available to the HFT traders.  Doesn’t that just scream level playing field to you? 

Then there’s the matter of the hedge fund(s) in the GameStop shortfest shorting more GameStop shares than there are GS shares in existence.  Nothing to see here, ‘chachos. 

Yes, those cheeky peasants threatening to upset these and other manipulations and under-the-table scams.  A menace to decency and good order, dudes, and that’s a fact. 

It counts as one of the great tragedies of the four years of the Trump administration that Mr. Trump remained clueless about the huge insider game that Congress, Wall Street, the media, and the massive corporate monopolies play.  To the end he remained wedded to the notion that a manipulated stock market bubble of epic proportions was an indicator of economic health.  Yet the rot was all around him and he proved unable to articulate the nature of the problem or rally his supporters behind specific initiatives as opposed to vague “oppose the deep state” twittering.

Notes
^[1] “The GameStop Rebels Vs. ‘Too Big To Fail’.” By Ryan McMaken, ZeroHedge, 2/3/21.

Draw your own conclusions.

Kim Novak, who has just published a book about her life, also has a website with her art. The originals have been made into prints for sale to the general public.

I was mildly interested, and happened to click on the link.

Boy, I was surprised! She really is quite an artist. Her techniques are polished, her facility with illustration is evident, and – were the prints not just a might out of my price range – I’d buy one or more.

They may not appeal to you. The commentary on the artworks is decidedly Leftist. But, I’d suggest you check them out – these are not the kind of awkward, primitive-type works that attempt to hide lack of talent. She really can draw.

I have little personal knowledge of Myanmar (formerly called Burma), or its politics. What I do know of it is concerning its Woke-Beloved, now deposed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the putative head of National League for Democracy (NLD).

Here’s what CNN has to say about it (and we all know how reliable that media source is).

Boy, THIS sounds familiar (from the CNN story).

Myanmar’s election commission had previously rejected the allegations made by the military, saying any errors, such as duplicated names on voter lists, were not enough to impact the result of the vote.

That ousted leader is not without her blemishes.

The arrest of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi marks a potentially volatile moment for the fledgling democracy.

“Though her international reputation has been tarnished in recent years by allegations of genocide against the Rohingya, the former democracy icon remains enormously popular in Myanmar where she commands broad and loyal support, especially among the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group.”

So, for CNN, that ‘allegation’ is simply not that important, unlike similar allegations against the military. As long as she commits genocide against the ‘right groups’.

On the other hand, Vox Popoli has a different take on the situation.

“…it soon became apparent, according to the military, that massive vote fraud had taken place. On January 15, the USDP released 94,242 cases of election fraud in six townships, and subsequently called for a new, fair election supervised by the military and the country’s election commission.

The weak-willed election commission, which was appointed by the NLD, declined to acknowledge the evidence. “Weaknesses and errors in voters lists cannot cause voting fraud,” the election commission said in their response.”

Who is the opposition to question the results? We all know that

Election Fraud – Enough to Matter – is Just Impossible.

All the Right People – who KNOW these things – tell us that we should just go back to our boring little lives and let the Elite run things.

I’m torn when it comes to playing The Mamas and The Papas songs.

On one hand, the sleaziness of John Phillips is almost beyond belief – even for a Rock & Roll group leader. I won’t go into a discussion of the details, suffice to say that it’s a very sordid and – for Mackenzie Phillips, sad story.

The music is breathtakingly beautiful, mixing folk, rock, and old-time musical style influences in one of the most recognizable of the 60’s sounds.

But, enough of nostalgia – on to current events and commentary!

If The Left could figure out a way to kill of The Deplorables by COVID, without risking their own health, is there anyone who would doubt they’d do it? Such a position is probably why they resisted all of Trump’s efforts to fast-track the search for a vaccine (several different types came out of that push), and distribute it.

Despite that deliberate foot-dragging, Trump managed to get the vaccines ready for delivery and in the arms of those needing protection. And, then, the mistakes/deliberate sabotage began, making the Official Narrative of Trump Couldn’t Even Manage a Simple Roll-Out the Talking Point of the early Biden administration.

The individual states SHOULD have had their prioritizing of the to-be-vaccinated people in place – they could have been doing that, rather than huffing about “That Man!” for months.

The medical/nursing/health care community should have had plans in place, with teams ready to go into action, as soon as the vaccines became available.

Amazon COULD have volunteered their delivery support earlier than they did (they didn’t bother until after Biden was sworn in).

The airlines could have prepared their underused planes to ferry the shipments to drop points, and trained the crews on handling the meds appropriately.

Instead, this became a scramble that the individual states had to manage – and, it’s pretty clear, by now, that SOME governors are more competent than others. I’m proud to announce that WV, the state my father grew up in, is the BEST at distribution, with about 10% of the population already injected.

Naturally, states like NY and CA are failing miserably. In one case, workers who made a judgement call to use some leftover vaccine on people who weren’t on the list, are facing potential felony charges.

One New York health-care network that briefly offered vaccinations to elderly New Yorkers who weren’t in the highest priority group is now under investigation by the state police and the department of health for “health-care fraud.”

There are even more terrifying abuses of power that target health care workers.

In a classic case of “elite panic,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an executive order threatening any health-care provider that administers the vaccine to an unapproved person with a $1 million fine and the loss of medical licenses. With the state’s infection rate surging beyond even last spring’s horrific levels, the governor decided to focus on menacing providers who vaccinate too broadly. Doubling down, he also threatened providers with $100,000 fines if they don’t administer their vaccines fast enough.

One way or another, Cuomo will bring those “wreckers” to account!

The Faux Administration continues the Graft-Seeking Opportunities (GSO) that were so ubiquitous during the Obama years. They’re not even TRYING to hide it anymore.

Here are some links:

Frank Biden advertises for clients who want a ‘connected guy’.

James Biden, even before the election results, knew The Fix was in.

And, in weather/family news, my Chicago-based daughter is just about snowed in. The Cleveland family reports – so far – that the snow has not reached their location.