Do-Over Revolution #2
Concluding thoughts on my series, Rules for Revolution
My first post in my series about Rules for Revolution, Do-Over Revolution, which set the context of why we might think about a new revolution to restore America, has proved to be my second most popular post. [also, post too long for email.]
Reading it again, I’m inclined to still believe in the need for a revolution, while at the same time I fairly talked myself out of it after writing the final of my three rules, The People Have to Be Willing to Die.
The People Have to Be Willing to Die
Civil war would mean good bye economy which would mean good bye IRA, 401K, social security, medicare, the dollar; in the short term at least, the internet, smart phones. Goodbye, American empire. Deflation to make equity a real thing, as we are all made exceedingly poorer. If you think excess mortality and reduced life expectancy in the aftermath of covid policy and the jabs is a bad thing, revolution and the resulting civil war would be magnitudes worse. Like, life expectancy reduced by decades.
It’s hard to write sentences like that and then think about advocating for revolution.
In the lead of that quote I conflate revolution with civil war, but of course any revolution is going to turn into a civil war, so many people at odds with the ideas of the revolution, people are not just going to step aside and let it happen. There are no shortage of military/law enforcement personnel who believe in America as it is and is becoming, who will backstop the empire’s “monopoly on violence,” who truly believe January 6 was an insurrection, that “MAGA” is the greatest threat in America to democracy, that Trump is an aspiring Hitler - that everyone should get their boosters and I presume who think mutilating and sterilizing children in the name of gender therapy is a good thing?
Revolution in America would absolutely result in civil war.
Also, just because I say there may be a need for a revolution doesn’t mean I get to define what it is about. The fear of many on the left is theocracy, they think conservatives want to install a repressive regime based on Christianity, putting everything “gay” back in the closet, teaching nothing in the schools but the bible, abortions for the daughters and concubines of the rich but not for the poors and professional class. That is fever dream stuff mostly, most conservatives would simply rather we teach reading, writing and arithmetic in schools, rather than what seems like the current goal of creating functionally illiterate, quasi-Marxist, social justice/gender zealots; they would like for every vote to be actually accounted for; they would like to reduce the scope of a federal government and really an every-government-level technocratic managerial State that has become like a colonizing occupier. At the same time, I don’t have any guarantee a violent revolution taking over the federal government would not empower reactionary Christians enforcing religious purity. A zealot is as a zealot does; it is not any difference to me whether that zealot is Christian, Muslim or Marxist, if my “heresy” for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights forfeits my voice or my life. There is a considerable element on the right that would institute a King, presumably throwing out everything about the Rights of Man since the Enlightenment going back to at least John Locke. I don’t presume the monarchists would appreciate my philosophical anarchism, or my periodic statements that there will not be a King in America.
In reality, the existential threat is not from monarchists, Christians, MAGA or Trump. The Existential threat is a quasi-religious cult that is at once Marxist but also like the priesthood of late, in-decline jungle and fertile crescent empires of antiquity, sacrificing children to their god of Progress, eugenically genociding people with The Science of gender, race, climate and pharmaceutical superstition, using the law like a flame thrower, chaos manifest, destroyer of worlds, the insatiable goddess of death emergent, killing indiscriminately to save the world.
Daeneryes is like liberal professional women using the fire of DEI/ESG to destroy white supremacy, misogyny and climate change, riding her dragon of the technocratic managerial State, to “break the wheel” and save “Westeros” from the rule of a tyrant, becoming worse than any tyrant before her, even her “Mad King Aerys” father.
The metaphor is apt, if not entirely accurate. Liberal professional women are merely fulfilling the mission of neoliberalism without understanding, believing themselves to be at the leading edge of evolution but merely being functionaries in a system designed for total global domination. That system was never going to dominate the entire world, the only result could be the descent into some all-pervading authoritarian dystopia, hubris and doom.
Here is a little reminder of who these people are, the kind of message that reverberated throughout the “liberal” world, HR departments and the managerial technocracy. This was not about a virus. There has been ZERO accountability. And millions are dying even now, because they fell prey to this authoritarian coercion.
A good reminder to become stronger, because all of these people are still in power.
As the saying goes, you can’t fight fire with fire. You can, when it is appropriate, but most of the time it isn’t, as a constant unending fire-fight turns the whole world to ash, as it did to most of Westeros in The Game of Thrones. To extend the metaphor, the way to extinguish such a fire is with water, to deprive it of air, and to smother it with earth.
2024 had barely started when
posted this link on notes from Jeff Tiedrich is all fire all the time. He blocked me I presume because I called him in a previous post of his an ugly, mean-spirited hatchet man for actual fascists, if I remember correctly. That was me fighting fire with fire, not very effective, though a few people liked my comment. In this post he is essentially inciting violence, while advocating for an extrajudicial response to Trump. Most of his power comes from his constant use of the word fuck, which says a lot about the strength and power of the 1720 people who liked his post as of this writing, who only have strength and power in numbers. That is more than twice the number of my subscribers, though curiously I average more than twice the rate of likes that he does, LOL. Tiedrich is so dim and blind he equated himself with actual communists, while claiming to defend democracy. Many of his readers are so dim apparently they can’t see that he is basically saying they don’t have a clue.
After I commented on Phisto’s note, we had this exchange:
I wonder how one cracks that particular bunker. The TDS bunker.
I mean, Jeff is obviously full of shit or crazy but at the end of the day the money he makes from this stuff spends.
But the people who buy it, even if we pull one or two out it would be worthwhile, right?
What do you think?
Jan 2, 2024
A quote I read last night comes to me, from Manly Hall, “Do not try to destroy evil, posit good. Do not destroy the body, posit consciousness. Do not attempt to destroy vices, posit virtues.”
Any time I confront people like Tiedrich I’m not talking to him as much as I am the people who are lurking. There are always people who read but won’t like or comment, and they do read comments.
Also I think we need to embolden and strengthen each other.
I like this answer quite a lot. Your quote rings like a church bell.
Thank you. I’m reminded this is a spiritual battle at the core.
We can’t fight evil by becoming evil; we fight evil by convincing more and more people to embrace and support what is good, supporting all who do, strengthening the self with everything we do.
With enough of us violent revolution would not be necessary. One of the reasons the woke have overrun our institutions is so few were ready, willing and able to stand up against what is false. To stand up has been to receive little or no support and be easily overrun. Our Institutions public and private are now quasi-communist, the tyranny of DEI and Human Resources acting essentially like Stasi or KGB silencing dissent. That may be shifting, but it is deeply entrenched and in some cases such as Harvard and much of higher education, the institutions might not be worth saving. I’m with Helen Dale in that regard, go full Henry the VIII on the Universities, disband them like he did the monasteries and re-appropriate the endowments and property. I would argue the same for most and maybe all of the Federal agencies, and at the State level.
It is not merely the universities who have descended into the evil of authoritarianism and a total lack of accountability. Most of what passes for science these days amounts to propaganda, marketing, superstition and power. We decide the policy we want - men can have babies! - and then simply make up the science to “prove” we are right. Health Care increasingly acting like a cartel makes us chronically ill to keep us addicted to treatment - during Covid it actively killed for money, the government incentivizing murder. Every Federal institution generates the opposite of what it is supposed to do, the opposite of their mandate to improve the common good. The law schools are captured, the future of law in America is the total inversion of the law, the law will at some point in this trajectory declare the feelings of the pederast more important than the rights of your child. There is no bottom to this, the hole leads straight to “hell”.
Let them dig and bury them with water and earth. In doing so you will deprive them of air. To do that you have to keep your feet planted firmly on the earth. The more evil they become, the more good you embrace. Good is not some empty platitude, good is virtue, good is self-awareness, good is self-improvement, good is serving something greater than the self, good is physical and mental health, good is a plethora of skills, good is to show much “gratitude for all that I am, all that I am becoming, everything I have and all this beauty around me,” good is supporting all of this in others.
If you want to use fire, start by burning your fear. Be not afraid. Kindle the flame within, the best of what is being human. The glory of America is ours to retake and restore.
Empires collapse not from being attacked from without, but from rot within. We don’t need a revolution as much as we need to be ready to keep America from descending further into a self-consuming madness. More than planning for revolution, we need to be ready to restore order, when the center can no longer hold. We need to be a bulwark against the excesses of an elite in collapse - DC is so pathologically insane at this point they might unleash the proverbial Kraken on their way down, and that cannot happen. We do not want to have to restore order in a world turned to ash.
It seems clear chaos is going to reign in 2024. The only thing to be done about that is to get one’s own house in order, to find one’s own center and maintain balance and equilibrium. There will be no shortage of things to throw us off kilter, the task is to be imperturbable.
Expanding on something I said in the first post, Do-Over Revolution, prepare, be patient, be ready, the path will be revealed as you take each step.
That will be the focus of this substack in 2024, tools for staying grounded, centered, clear, balanced, firm, while embracing what is good, to learn to be prepared for whatever comes. With the occasional satire to eviscerate our betters ;)
Back in 1776 and 1789, Gouvernour Morris had similar thoughts. He was a member of the old Mayflower elite, and his brother Robert was the major funder of 1776. Gouvernour saw what was coming, tried to prevent it, and failed. He then went to Paris where he also saw what was coming, tried to prevent it, and failed. Morris had some choice insights on the leaders of both revolutions. Robespierre and Tom Paine were cut from the same toxic cloth.
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2018/03/rights-vs-duties-origins-edition.html
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
(Easier said than done but I believe and that gives me strength because there is no alternative in the face of evil)
Another great article William Hunter Duncan!