It started in Vietnam. The men who chose to fight for America on Vietnam’s front lines did so for honorable reasons. While there was no immediate threat to the US, some were concerned about falling dominoes and the march of communism. Some were animated by an idealistic desire to secure democracy and liberty in a land that had never known those blessings. Some went believing that if the leaders of the country said this war was in America’s best interests, it must be so. For those who were drafted, they did, perhaps reluctantly, what they perceived to be their duty.
Whatever their motivations, those who fought found their idealism shattered. Many of the South Vietnamese they thought they were fighting “for” despised the US as the latest in a succession of imperial powers using a corrupt, puppet government as the cat’s paw for its domination. Short of total immolation of both friend and foe—it was often impossible to differentiate the two—there was no effective strategy against guerrilla warfare waged by the enemy fighting on its home turf. The Viet Cong proved as difficult to vanquish as hordes of ants and mosquitos at a picnic. The victory the generals and politicians insisted was just another few months and troop deployments down the road never came, and the soldiers knew it never would, long before reality was acknowledged and the troops brought home.
Brutal disillusionment gave way to abject disgust when they returned stateside. They cynically, but understandably, concluded that the antiwar protests had more to do with fear of the draft (there were no major protests after Nixon ended it), and readily available sex and drugs than heartfelt opposition to the war. That conclusion was buttressed by their reception from the antiwar crowd. If they were expecting support and understanding, they didn’t get it. The US victims of the war, those who fought it—the wounded, the physically and psychologically maimed, the dead—were branded as subhuman thugs and baby killers. It was the first time in the history of the US that a substantial swath of the population turned on those who had fought its wars. Those who fought regarded (or, in the case of the dead, would have regarded) those doing the branding as preening, posturing, spoiled children. A subterranean fault line split into a gaping fissure, since widened to a yawning chasm.
The idea that the elite—by dint of their education, intelligence, rarified social circle, and moral sensibility— should rule had reached full florescence during the New Deal, when FDR and his so-called brain trust promised change that most Americans could believe in. Although the elite failed, prolonging the Great Depression, it seemingly redeemed itself directing World War II, leaving the US at an unprecedented pinnacle of global power. Forgetting the failures of the Depression and basking in the hubristic glow, a bipartisan coterie from Washington, Wall Street, industry, the military, and the Ivy League set out to order the world according to their dictates. The US would lead a confederated empire opposing the Soviet alliance. The epochal nature of the struggle justified, in their minds, whatever means were necessary to wage it, including propaganda, espionage, subversion, regime change, and war.
While the Kennedy assassination offered the American public a glimpse into the heart of darkness, only a few independent-minded skeptics challenged the Warren Commission whitewash. Vietnam was different; hundreds of thousands returned knowing not just that the so-called best and brightest couldn’t win the war, but that for years they had lied to the American public. In the following decades, it had to have been especially galling for the Vietnam veterans that the hippies, draft-deferred campus protesters, the “fortunate sons” (google Credence Clearwater Revival) whose numbers never came up, and the mockers of the values they held dear ended up among the elite. The Clintons, of course, became the prime example.
Disaffected veterans were the core of a group that would grow to millions, their “faith” in government and the people who ran it obliterated by its repeated failures and lies. Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors. The mainstream media is filled with vituperative, patronizing, and insulting explanations of what’s “behind” the Trump phenomenon. It all boils down to revulsion with the self-anointed, incompetent, pretentious, hypocritical, corrupt, prevaricating elite that presumes to rule this country. It is, in a word, inferior to the populace on the other side of the yawning chasm, the ones they have patronized and insulted for decades, and the other side knows it.
Peggy Noonan is one of the few mainstream writers who has tried to understand, rather than insult or condemn, the Trump phenomenon. In a widely cited article, she ascribed it to the split between the “protected,” those who run the government and its allied institutions, and the “unprotected,” the government’s and its allies’ victims (“Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected,” The Wall Street Journal, 2/25/16). It was a nice try, but Ms. Noonan is attempting to straddle a chasm that cannot be straddled. She writes for the Journal, an establishment organ, some of whose writers have been either so clueless or disingenuous that they have denied the existence of an establishment. And ultimately, the protected-unprotected differentiation doesn’t fly.
Most Trump supporters don’t want the government to do something for them; they want the government to quit doing things to them. They viscerally revile the elite—it’s personal—and they want no part of that class or its government. They know how to take care of themselves, and many know the government hurts the most those whom it ostensibly protects.
Elite sons and daughters have not been in the ranks of front line military that have fought the elite’s disastrous wars. The top and bottom of the service economy swell—lobbyists, political operatives, debt merchants, Internet wizards, lawyers, bureaucrats, waiters, bartenders, nurses, orderlies, sales clerks—while what used to be the heart of the economy—manufacturing—shrinks. The bailouts from the last financial crisis went to Wall Street, not the homeowners with underwater mortgages facing foreclosure. Whose pockets were picked to fund those bailouts? And whose pockets were picked to pay the higher insurance premiums necessary to fund the Obamacare disaster?
It doesn’t take an Ivy League degree to know that the national debt, $19 trillion and counting, is a big, scary number, and that the unfunded Social Security and medical care liabilities coming due are even bigger, scarier numbers. It does, apparently, take an Ivy League degree to believe that more debt is the answer to our economic problems, or that microscopic or negative interest rates will do anything but fund carry-trade speculators and screw those trying to fund their own postponed retirements, or that the limping economy since the financial crisis has “recovered.” Idiotic blather fills the elite, mainstream media, while much truth is suppressed and debate stifled in the name of political correctness.
Not much has changed since Vietnam. The decent besieged are taking fire from all sides, valiantly fighting their way through it, while preening, posturing, spoiled idiots congratulate themselves for running a once great country into the ground. It is a mark of the decent besieged’s decency that they are turning to the ballot box, the politically correct way to change a democratic government. The idiot class should be grateful for their forbearance. Instead, it resorts to means fair and foul to subvert them and maintain its power. Whether Trump does or does not make it all the way to the White House, the wave he’s riding will only grow stronger, tsunami-strength when the economy collapses and the world descends into war. If the idiot class and its rabble subvert him, a quote from John F. Kennedy, recently featured on SLL, will surely come back to haunt them.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
ANOTHER KIND OF REVOLUTION,
ANOTHER KIND OF NOVEL
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
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That would be 19Trillion, not billion.
Thanks as always for some great insight. I have to wonder what our immediate future holds, and when it comes to who to entrust with the next presidency, we have to look at the big picture. Who is best situated to deal with the problems we need to fix, and who can bring this country back together for our self preservation.
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that would be (at least) $26 trillion. As far as I know, there’s an (actual) sheaf of c. $2 trillion in T-bills (read: IOU’s for looted pay-ins) in the SS “trust fund”, and $5 trillion in bad mortgages festering away in the defunct mortgage agencies. No economic number coming out of the District of Corruption has any facticity
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Robert, you missed by three orders of magnitude (…$19 billion and counting…).
Honest mistake, I know you know the difference.
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yes thats 19T, not 19B, how great would it be if the debt was 19B.
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That is a truly excellent evaluation of the American political landscape and a wonderful piece of thought..
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$19 Trillion is more like it along with over $211 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. Who’s going to pay this? Slaves, that’s who.
The once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves.
– George Washington
How prophetic…twice.
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Thanks everyone for pointing out trillion instead of billion. The numbers get so big I get confused. The mistake has been corrected.
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Good article, and great insight. I’m a VN combat vet, and I started a little meme’ of my own, a long time ago. It goes like this. “VN vets have learned to be like the Indians. We’ve been fucked by so many people in govt., so many times, we don’t even ask questions anymore”. However, I do subscribe to your meme’, ” Never underestimate the power of a question”. And it’s a damned fine quotation, better than mine, because it’s positive, and provocative. Keep up the fire, you’re a voice shouting in the wilderness.
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Thank you very much, that means a lot to me.
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Just let it begin.
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Robert, excellent. So what if the switch is turned off for 5 days and a reset of all the ones and zeros , what will the landscape look like. Do we want to know ?
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“Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors. ” I would say we are well past the dawn and approaching high noon.
I’ve heard the rhetorical question asked any number of times, “How can the establishment be so clueless, out of touch, dense, disconnected, etc.” Here’s the answer: They’re not. They simply DON’T CARE what we think, need, fear or want. They see themselves as untouchable insiders with their own agenda’s being achieved and they are NOT going to upset that little apple cart. To them it matters not if Clinton or Sanders become CIC. They’ll continue to loot the treasury and trust with either.
What they most fear is being identified as as the tyrants they are being held accountable.
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I’d like to leave a reply but the regime’s persecution of conservatives (i.e. Alito, Finicum, Breitbart) is very real. Nothing changes anyway, so there’s no point.
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The most effective censorship is self-censorship. Things may never change despite our efforts, but if we never make the effort, things will assuredly never change.
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Excellent article and one of your best–explaining the origin of government distrust for many millions of us (namely Vietnam) with continual compounding of frustration with the Uniparty and supporting/controlling elites. Trump is riding the wave but he has helped to show who these bad guys are and what they wanted in 2016: Clinton vs. Bush, so the payola could continue. They will do what it takes to try to get Hillary elected, but the lies are pretty much all out in the open. Your article helps keep the light shining.
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Thank you. This article seems to have struck a chord with some Vietnam vets and that’s gratifying.
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I gave up a promising career in Commercial Art to Enlist, then Volunteer for Combat in Vietnam in 1966. When I returned to the shithole of hippies and Commies, I decided Art School would have to wait until my next Reincarnation. During my last, I died in the North African Desert. I know, because I relived my death one quiet afternoon in 1971. I digress. I love my Country, both my wonderful parents were World War Two Combat Veterans. My Dad, in North Africa, and then in Europe, he was a Flyer, my mother was a Radio Operator in the 9th Air Force. She vectored bombers back to England from their Night Raids over Germany. The Luftwaffe tried many time to kill my mother and her comrades. One night a falling Junkers JU-88 actually struck her commo van as it crashlanded in a field. She showed me photographs of the roof of her van.
Nazis, Commies, they’re ALL Socialists and MURDERING SCUM, Sanders and Clinton are no different. Neither are the GOP Elitist swine who are shitting their pants with fear that Trump is going to take away their plans of dominating America and making us all their Slaves, MORE so than we already are…FIGHT BACK! VOTE TRUMP 2016!!!
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Thank you. No one has nailed vietnam for us who were actually there like you did. I have expressed the same things verbally in peices but i’m not a writer. the entire article was superb but the part about nam hit home.
positively hate being thanked for my service by birkenstock hippies 45 years later as if that attones for the sin they committed. they crucified us and laet the bankers off scott free. at 19 i arrived there thinking the govt. would never lie, just some politicians in govt. we knew tett 68 was coming but when we say that they wanted it to happen we were demoralised but did not know what to do. we were not going to disgrace our mothers by going to leavenworth prison so we muddled through. the reception at home you covered well and i thank You. most of my buddies are dead from it or so far in to the V.A. mental health racket they can’t get out.
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Thank you very much, that means a lot to me.
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Reblogged this on The way I see things … and commented:
BRAVO BRAVO I commend you for always making sure I (and hopefully others like me – financially ignorant) can understand the TRUTH!
“Most Trump supporters don’t want the government to do something for them; they want the government to quit doing things to them. They viscerally revile the elite—it’s personal—and they want no part of that class or its government. They know how to take care of themselves, and many know the government hurts the most those whom it ostensibly protects.
Elite sons and daughters have not been in the ranks of front line military that have fought the elite’s disastrous wars. The top and bottom of the service economy swell—lobbyists, political operatives, debt merchants, Internet wizards, lawyers, bureaucrats, waiters, bartenders, nurses, orderlies, sales clerks—while what used to be the heart of the economy—manufacturing—shrinks. The bailouts from the last financial crisis went to Wall Street, not the homeowners with underwater mortgages facing foreclosure. Whose pockets were picked to fund those bailouts? And whose pockets were picked to pay the higher insurance premiums necessary to fund the Obamacare disaster?”
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I still think this is but the tip of the iceberg. We exist in a god-free theocracy but it is so pervasive that discussing it is like trying to help a fish understand what it means to be “wet.”
The West has existed in the grip of a Christian-pagan cult since before the English Civil War. Ever since then Cthulhu has continuously turned left, toward the Religious Sacrament of “Equality.”
It began with the Reformation, continued through Plymouth Colony, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Lincoln’s War, the coup de tat of 1913, Wilson’s War, The Volstead Act, FDR’s New Deal, Social Security, WW2 (which is where Progressivist Cultists shed any association with Christianity), then on to removing metal from US money (1964 & 1971), Medicare, The Civil Rights Act & Immigration Act of 1965, the Drug War and right up until our modern assaults on Reason, the defining of deviancy and behavioral aberrations (AKA mental illness) as “normal” (LGBT, and now transgenderism….which is nuttier than a squirrel turd), it is all a tapestry of a single continuous thread.
The main sacrament of this cult is equality, and the subordinate dogmas of anti-racism, open-borders, thought-crime, etc., are now enshrined in law. Any argument against these tenets is attacked as blasphemy, not debate, and numerous media organs and taxpayer-paid organizations behave as nothing less than witch-hunters, whose purpose is to level accusations and hound targets out of jobs, out of society and into destruction.
Vietnam was just part of the worldwide crusade on the part of this cult theocracy, as was World War One (making the world safe for democracy) and World War Two (allied then with history’s greatest mass-murderer to take on England’s long-running nemesis, Germany.)
This cult has no god, but it does have its saints (Washington, Lincoln, FDR, MLK) and a devil: Hitler. Whenever we see someone invoke Hitler as a comparison, we know we are dealing with a religious zealot of the Theocratic Cult.
When seen from this (cult/theocracy) perspective, many irrational conditions of today fall perfectly into place.
Trump induces apoplexy because he represents the tiniest potential to turn the USA ever-so-slightly to the RIGHT, he gives an outlet to those congregants in the Theocracy who are sick of the increasingly insane dogmas and are just thirsty for someone to offer them a safe way to stand up in the Cathedral during yet another sermon lecturing them on their pervasive sins of racism, sexism, xenophobia and such and yell, “ENOUGH! STFU!”
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