Tag Archives: revolution

On Which Hill? By T.L. Davis

We’ve known it’s coming for many years. Sooner or later we’ll have to take up arms against the scum who presume to rule us. From T.L. Davis at theburningplatform.com:

I don’t usually title a piece before I write it, preferring to let the piece speak for itself, but I wanted to keep myself on track with this one. As the title suggests, on which hill do we die? We all die, it’s just a matter of how much pain and anguish goeth before the end.

The only thing more emotionally difficult than watching the perfection of the United States die such a horribly corrupt and meaningless death was watching my father die of cancer. I don’t usually get into personal issues here, or talk much about my family; it’s just not relevant. But this time, in anticipation of death, both of myself and my nation, I’ll go outside that restriction.

My father was a farm boy, just a rural kid who watched in amazement his father work long, hard, endless years to build something out of the soil. He was plucked from that pastoral existence to shoot Koreans, or, more likely, Chinese, across the frozen plains of Korea. He was a machine gunner and spent a year and a half on the front lines, earning him a quick discharge. I don’t know how he lived through that, most didn’t.

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The Time of Our Time, by James Howard Kunstler

Something is going to give, sooner rather than later. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776. A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives

Let’s face it: most people will not read Justice Alito’s carefully crafted arguments about what the constitution says or doesn’t say about abortion, or the meaning of “ordered liberty” through our history. We do not live in history. We live in the time of our time. And, until just recently, this has been a time that discarded former modes of conduct between men, women, and children as inconvenient to the presumably greater project of self-actualization.

To be-all-that-you-can-be is a stirring notion, and it seemed to work nicely within the colossal techno-industrial armature of the past century, with all its inducements to thrive personally, at least for the comfortable elites who pulled the levers of that system — though not so much for those below caught in the gears, who produced children despite all the novel means for avoiding it. For the fortunate, motherhood became just another “no” box to check off, while fatherhood merged into the odious mists of obsolete patriarchy. History is made up of things that seem like good ideas at the time. The hard part now is moving out of a familiar time into the undiscovered country of a new time.

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The Age of Discord, by Charles Hugh Smith

We’re sure not living through the Age of Sweetness and Light. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

It’s very difficult to find common ground that supports cooperation in the disintegrative stage of scarcities, rising prices, catastrophically centralized power and social discord.

Today’s topic echoes Peter Turchin’s 2016 book, Ages of Discord, which I have often referenced in blog posts.

I’ll also discuss two other books I’ve often referenced, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker and The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David Hackett Fischer.

Turchin proposes repeating cycles of history of social integration (people finding reasons to cooperate) and disintegration (people finding reasons to not cooperate).

Clearly, we’re in a disintegrative stage.

Fischer proposed a repeating cycle of history in which humans expand their numbers and economy to consume all available resources.

Once all the low-hanging fruit has been consumed, scarcities arise, pushing prices above what commoners can afford, and the result is economic stagnation and social/political revolution.

Either humans exploit a new energy source at scale to provide for the larger population and higher consumption per person, or the population and consumption decline to fit available resources.

Parker covers the mutually reinforcing climate, political, social and economic crises of the 17th century. A long cycle of cold, wet summers reduced crop yields, leading to hunger and strife.

Parker also identifies another cause of the tumultuous, war-plagued 1600s: political leaders had consolidated too much power, enabling them to pursue disastrous wars without any restraint from competing domestic social-political interests.

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The Real Revolution Is Underway But Nobody Recognizes It, by Charles Hugh Smith

Are the employees exercising the Johnny Paycheck option (Take This Job And Shove It) the vanguard of a revolution? From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable.

The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government.

By focusing on the compelling drama of political upheaval we’re missing the real revolution, which is social and economic: the Great Resignation, a global movement which in the U.S. has largely unrecognized American characteristics.

The Great Resignation is the real revolution which few if any recognize. The status quo is going to great lengths to dismiss it, for example, The Great Resignation: Historical Data and a Deeper Analysis Show It’s Not as Great as Screaming Headlines Suggest, because this revolution is not controllable with force and is therefore unstoppable.

The sources of the revolution are in plain sight: you rig the economy to enrich the already-rich top 10% and super-size the already bloated wealth of the top 0.1%, and then you wonder why the bottom 90% are indebted, broke, burned out and disgruntled? The hubris of the ruling elites and their lackeys is off the scale, as this structural exploitation is presumed to be not just acceptable but delightful to the bottom 90%.

Alternatively, the more cynical view of those at the top looking down is: they have to work at the wages we pay in inhuman conditions because they have to: all the debt-serfs and tax donkeys must accept our pay and conditions or starve.

This is neoliberal neofeudalism with the kid gloves of PR removed.

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Nuke the Insurrectionists or Something, by Kurt Schlichter

Good luck to the government if it tries to take on that part of the populace that’s well-armed and committed to its own survival. From Kurt Schlichter at theburningplatform.com:

Nuke the Insurrectionists or Something

One has to hope that Grandpa Badfinger is merely cruising down Sundowner Drive in his mental Datsun B-210, because the alternative is that our president* is an idiot. Now, both could be true simultaneously – he could be senile and a quarter-wit – but if that were true, it would make this the first time this ridiculous timeserver ever multitasked any kind of achievements, however dubious. Usually, he’s content to fail at just one thing at a time, which makes him good enough for government work, and thereby, for the Democrat Party.

President Asterisk said something remarkably stupid last week, but that requires more specificity. This particular nimrod monologue went as follows: “Those who say the ‘blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty has not been watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been, if you want to, think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.

His clown-o-logue requires translation into English:

“Stuff words things clichés more things stuff more clichés I heard someone say this on Maddow more words where’s my mush F-15s you don’t need a 100-round clip to hunt deer Matlock forever ka-baaom!”

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The Time Has Come for a Campaign of Resistance, by Gen Z Conservative

It’s past time for a campaign of resistance, but better late than never. From Gen Z Conservative at genzconservative.com:

a campaign of resistance

As Jordan Schatchel recently wrote on AIER, Covid has killed the free world. The West, that brave group of countries that stood up to and defeated first the fascist threat then the Soviet threat, standing up for republican and democratic ideals against the tyrants of the East, has fallen into the grip of tyrants. Petty tyrants, to be sure, but, as CS Lewis noted in his quotation about the worst type of tyranny, those tyrants are some of the most insidious and evil. Well, I say NO MORE! The time has come for a campaign of resistance. We must stand up to tyranny.

First, let’s review what the Covid tyrants have done to this land and the nations of our friends.

In the US, practically every state not run by a deep-red governor is still shut down to some extent and bureaucrats with any scrap of power are abusing it. The government was prodding people to take a vaccine that can cause blood clots, masks are still a requirement in most stores and restaurants from sea to shining sea, various arbitrary restrictions on opening and capacity plague small business owners, and overweight people still glare (or scream) at you for “putting their health in danger” by not wearing a mask or properly social distancing. As if a lack of a piece of blue cloth is worse for them than fifty years of unhealthy eating. In any case, we have become a nation of tyrants and informants.

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There Will Be A Reckoning, by Southern Sage

It Got Serious In A Hurry” didn’t it? The Biden administration is doing so many stupid things, compounding previous administrations’ stupid things, that something’s got to give. From Southern Sage at theburningplatform.com:

Truth is truth To the end of reckoning | Picture Quotes

There will be a reckoning, and that right soon. It is obvious to any thinking person who has held any position of power or authority -in the military, in the intelligence world, the senior ranks of the police, or in critical posts in the civil government or major businesses – that a catastrophe looms.

I do not know if it will be a financial collapse, a military debacle, or a political disaster that degenerates into country-wide violence (or all three), but it is coming. Let me say that many of the people in these senior positions are not thinking people, as recently proven by the publication of a letter by more than one hundred such dolts urging Congress to “investigate” the justified outrage of the American people sparked by the 2020 election farce.

If I thought it was just a cynical Bronx cheer directed at the patriotic people of America I would merely be disgusted. In fact, these high-ranking morons actually believe what they say. I know some of them and the ones I know are utterly clueless about the real state of the country. They sincerely believe every word a Don Lemon or Jake Tapper or Jim Acosta says.

I know some people look to the 2022 or 2024 elections to turn things around. That is a waste of time. Only a Biblical train wreck will give us the opportunity to fight back, and not with Tweets or angry letters to the editor. The only thing the monsters who run this country will understand is force and merciless justice being dealt out to them.

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Be Your Own Revolution, by Caitlin Johnstone

Revolutions start with individual choices. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

I made the mistake of involving myself in a sectarian Twitter spat when I was halfway through my morning coffee today and I instantly felt like an idiot.

People from the Left Twitter faction I’d offended rushed in to push back against the offense I’d caused them, and within minutes I felt it: the all-too familiar sensation of inspiration and creativity draining away from my body. Tension, coldness and defensiveness where previously there was playfulness and the crackling sensation of an exciting new day in which anything was possible.

If you’re active online, you’ve probably experienced this too. The days when you’re involved in sectarian bickering are the days when you are at your least creative, your least inspired, and your least effective at fighting against the machine. At best the drama gives your ego a tickle (as social media platforms are designed to do), after which you feel a bit yuck. The longer you engage in it, the lower the probability that you will produce something creative and inspired that day.

As a general rule, you may find that it works best to reject cliques and factions altogether. When you “belong” to any group you feel compelled to defend it, and to move with it wherever it goes even if that’s not where you feel like the energy is. You get invested in wanting the collective to move in a certain direction, and you get frustrated when it just wants to focus on silly nonsense and sectarian feuds.

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The American Restoration, by Tim “xrugger” Stebbins

To get anything back that we once had, we’re in for the fight of our lives. However, it would be wise to define what it is we’ll be fighting for, and aiming for “a return to what once was.” From Tim “xrugger” Stebbins at theburningplatform.com:

Let us assume for a moment that the war is over. Let us further assume that the Restoration has begun. The bloated corpses of erstwhile plutocrats, communists, and other leftist rabble festoon the lampposts of the nation. The deep state has been unearthed. The leadership imprisoned, shot, or on the run. Vast swaths of urban American lie in smoking ruins, including large parts of Washington D.C. The flotsam and jetsam of war, the bloody detritus of internecine conflict, sloshes across the continent. The political landscape is irrevocably altered.

Should such a horrific vision come to pass, we would do well to be certain of the reasons we chose to fight. That brings us back to the here and now. The purpose of this essay is to lay out, as I see it, the broader vision of why we must fight. Perhaps a second part will serve to explore the details of what comes after. Make of these words what you will. I have finished my gut check and await now, with calm spirit, the coming storm.

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Battling the Gesundheitsfuhrers, by Eric Peters

Is America in a prerevolutionary era? Let’s hope so. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

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In all pre-revolutionary times, the question arises: What is to be done?

It was asked in the 1770s by the people who subsequently led the American movement for secession from Great Britain (the accurate term for what occurred) and again in the 1860s by Russians such as the writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who despaired of life under the brutal autocracy of the Romanovs.

It was clear that something had to be done.

But what, exactly?

The same question arises now because – arguably – America finds itself in a pre-revolutionary era.

These eras are characterized by a number of things-in-common, the chief one being pervasive misery. Almost everyone is unhappy – and unhappy people tend to squabble, then fight. There are extremes of opinion, combined with a determination to destroy opposing opinion. Intolerance, contempt. A sense that things are out-of-control. A feeling of irreconcilability.

America is at that stage right now and it is probably not reversible precisely because of the irreconcilability. A marriage – even a friendship – cannot recover once it passes beyond a certain Rubicon of commonality, trust and affection.

America has crossed that Rubicon.

On one side, the believers in the new religion of perpetual sickness and perpetual sickness kabuki. You can identify them by their religious vestment, the Holy Rag – also known as the Face Diaper. They who wear it militantly (i.e., absent being compelled to) will never be reconciled with those who wear it reluctantly, much less those who wear it not at all.

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