How we get there matters
JHoward
In retrospect, one of my favorite conservative thinkers opining on the problem that was, we’re told, not the lack of conservative candidates in 2012, but the legion who voted off the conservative reservation:
And should Whittle run, will he, in October 2016 and following a Clinton/Clinton Supreme Court — thereby seating another black man and another woman, race and sex being paramount to justice — lobby us to throw our vote behind Jeb Bush and Chris Christie as they lose to the next Democrat statist?
It pains me to post this. I really like Bill Whittle and I want to think the best of the dozen “conservative” bloggers and pundits who also called for a last minute pro-Romney conversion among independent minds, as wrong-headed as it was in at least two ways to do so. It’s just that in the two weeks since the election each silly 2016-themed editorial to gush from so many of the right’s perpetually misaligned punditry has for me rung just as hollow, while each Republican obit from the liberty movement has proved solid as rock.
Just as they have for the last ten elections.
How we had already gotten here mattered, actually, and America was very arguably already lost way back when the two-party One Party System became entrenched, whenever that was. As we contemplate another nearly fifty months of what amounts to the New American Collective, this Thanksgiving let’s be thankful if we ever care to vote again.
Or if the place is going to be here with any legitimate option at all.
But mostly let’s be thankful we’re still here to discuss any of this. Be well, friends. Or as well as you can be. Either way 2016 is absolutely irrelevant. Each of us can, working locally, make a real difference today. It’s always been like that and from the looks of things, that’s not about to change any time soon.
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I really like Bill Whittle. However, not everyone I like is going to be right all the time, and since I had already decided to vote for Romney for my own reasons, nothing he said changed my mind either way.
America is screwed screwed screwed you almost feel sorry for the bitch
If Whittle and those dozen minds like him asking for acquiescing Romney votes were wrong naturally it wasn’t in their predictive powers. It was in misjudging the nature of the problem such that they misjudged how to attack it.
In weeks prior I both passively hoped for an Obama win as a way to finally resettle the nature of real liberty and that Romney would win if the real right had infiltrated the Republican grass roots, which I felt they may very well have.
But they were betrayed all over again and whatever infiltration they managed couldn’t do so well, and that owes to what Whittle’s mindsight only alludes to: That the Republican establishment has been rotten to the core for a long while.
It’s past time to allude to it. That principle we can neither deny nor use to justify a Republican vote. Not since Reagan, if not earlier.
This time I’m not going to threaten to leave the Republican Party. That I’d done even before 1980, and I relearned that painful lesson the one time I voted for Bush Jr.
Some guys can make losing more slowly sound attractive. But, it’s still losing, and the Republic is still gone. Nice while it lasted, though.
Is John Boehner going to continue as SOTH? Was there any resistance to his continuing as SOTH?
At least one other person was nominated for the position of Speaker. I don’t know what happened after that.
Republican lawmaker Louie Gohmert of Texas nominated the former presidential hopeful to serve as House speaker once again, The Hill reports.
No one seconded Gohmert’s nomination. It was a moot point as current House Speaker John Boehner won the nomination by voice vote.
link
Geez. I can remember when losing like that in an election meant a change was in order.
Maybe they don’t consider it a failure.
Boner is a Statist, as are the rest of the GOP establishment, so nothing has changed much as far as they are concerned.
The only one that persuaded me to vote for Romney was Obama. On 9/11/12 and over the ensuing days.
How “they” get there. Obama is probably taking notes for his second term. No, wait, he wrote this script and Hillary delivered it in person.
Yeah. Same here.
Same here, too, McGehee.
How “they” get there.
friends of a feather flock together. mostly butterball turkeys
President Bartlet on the Butterball Hotline
OT – Today (yesterday) was the 49th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, and a lot of LeftLibProggs started circulating an image featuring JFG and BHO occupying the heavens.
I just had to fix it for them.
Having “principles” isn’t worth crap when literal survival is at stake. The cafe at Thunderdome doesn’t accept integrity as payment.
Either there aren’t enough serious people left in the US to win a national election, or the GOP can no longer turn out enough serious people to win elections because it doesn’t deserve to; it lies to them, ignores them, insults them, badgers them, bullies them, scolds them, slanders them, blames them for its own ineffectualness, betrays them, and ultimately lets them down only to beg for more money and support in return for McCains(restricting free political speech by non-press entities) and Romneys (proto-Obamacare in Massachusetts). A vote for the current G.O.P is a vote for tired old Bushies, more Chief Justices that rewrite legislation to be a tax because if its a tax it would be legal, more hills not worth dying on, and a half hearted, jobbed, token attempt at the repeal of Obamacare, if that, and only if we all behave. It’s a vote for more 2006-2008. It won’t win you more freedom. It won’t win you more security. It sure won’t win you any fuckin’ respect, not even from the GOP, you dumb, illiterate, racist, inbred, toothless, pistol clutchin’, Jesus botherin’, fundie loser. Reagan’s dead and shit, and the earth is round, and Leave it to Beaver isn’t real (like West Wing, LA Law and Captain Planet are). Grow up and learn to lose the right way, over, and over, and over again while your betters get their high ball glasses topped up in DC ballrooms and enjoy those delicious Wagyu sliders as they chuckle knowingly about what dismal little oafs you all are.
I’m curious when we reached that point, @PurpAv. In the comment below yours palaeomerus alludes that it’s been survival mode for half a decade. I suggested it’s been this way since the Eighties.
The point of this post was to illustrate that Whittle’s coin has another side: When we admit defeat and call to circle the wagons we need to quickly determine who’s the enemy, why, and how we came to this point chronologically.
Obviously there’s a powerful connection between giving up on classical liberalism to vote for the GOP and having done so, watching the already compliant, already complacent, already leftist GOP lose anyway. I say that connection was forged decades ago.
I further propose that this time we should have finally put an end to the obvious myth that the eternal alternative to this headlong rush to statism is to routinely offer up losing statist-lite candidates. We should have had the confidence to vote for nothing but principle because at that precise point the entire paradigm begins to change. In a single cycle a genuine, durable alternative would appear.
New Hampshire — “Live Free or Die”
Patrick Henry — “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
@PurpAv — “Having ‘principles’ isn’t worth crap when literal survival is at stake. The cafe at Thunderdome doesn’t accept integrity as payment.”
Yup, “Live
Freeor Die”, that’s your motto. Or maybe “Give meliberty, or give me death.” Or, how about “Give me death, or please, please, please, oh God, please don’t kill me.”Should come in real handy when you’re faced with a Jihadi who offers death, conversion to Islam, or life without rights as a permanent ‘untouchable’ paying the Jizya. Seems like your follow-up would be that silly “principles” like freedom of religion, speech or even thought aren’t worth crap when paying a poll tax is at stake.
BTW, I love the sarcasm/skepticism marks you used around the word “principle”. Too few people nowadays are smart enough to realize that “principles” aren’t even actual things and to mock anyone who has them. Boy, you’re sharp! Glad to have you on our team!
As for Bill Whittle, I agree with your assessment, JHoward; but there’s no reason to single out Whittle.
Levin, Limbaugh, Beck, whoever, are all guilty of the same “principle-less” cheerleading for Romney leading up to the election, followed by the same bashing of Romney and all other Republicans as “principle-less” after the election.
I don’t have a dictionary handy to cite the definition of the word “hypocrisy”; but, that description of the before and after from radio hosts seems to fit.
Further, pick any 5, or 10, or 25 allegedly “conservative” blogs and the same pattern will apply.
This, in addition to the “Whittle-esque” assertion that not voting for Romney equals voting FOR Obama, and you’ve got a sanctimonious, logically fallacious, confused, and supremely “UN-principled” straight flush in the hands of nearly every “conservative” with a voice on radio or internet (I ignore conservatives in print, on television, or in government because there aren’t any).
Oooh, and I almost forgot that anyone who wasn’t going to vote Romney would be responsible for whatever evil doings Obama might get up to should he win. AND we must not hold Romney voters responsible for anything Romney might do, or fail to do, should he win.
……. That one’s my favorite. A NON-vote for either candidate makes you “responsible” for every act of the one candidate if he wins; but an affirmative vote FOR (not to mention cheerleading and campaigning for) the other candidate does not make them responsible for anything done if that candidate wins.
Anyway, in the interests of full disclosure, I DID vote for Romney. My reasons were and are my own. But my reasons had nothing to do with “Saving America”, or “Restoring the Constitution” or the pipe dream that this election, or any election at this point, could return the country to its original founding principles.
My reasons were more to do with a 4-year period of quasi-stability. And even that isn’t something I would have voted for if not for certain personal circumstances that I will keep to myself.
That’s just my two (o.k., four) cents.
If not voting for Romney is the same as voting for Obama, then not voting for Obama is the same as voting for Romney, so I figure my not votes cancel each other out.
Yup. And the lack of self awareness that indicates is really concerning. It’s precisely the opposite of comprehending where we stand, how, why, and how long we’ve been here.
If I could boil this topic down to one element it would be that this same song and dance plays out every election. The status quo has become the right’s status quo. We are the proverbial rented mule.
Dingdingdingdingdingdingdingdingding!!!! We have a winner!
Yuri, we agree on much. The so called conservative movement in the media that you cite has always been a self serving sham. Anyone care to quote , or advise watching Hannity these days?
Many of you here, in past exchanges with me, have advised me to listen to Rush, or read some other icon in the ‘conservative’ media. Out of respect and the wish to keep an open mind, I have. But not for long, as I quickly saw the same pattern. That is people with self interest telling their target audience what they wanted to hear in order to stay relevant, keep up the ratings, and the cash flowing into their pockets. And really, are they telling you anything you don’t know?
Captain Ed at Hot Air writes an article days after the election on how we need to cave on immigration and get in line- for the pragmatism! I guess.
The rest- Ace etc.- pushing Jeb, Rubio and the same cast of characters to make the GOP a ‘winner’ again. They’re gist all boils down to the same thing- we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing, only more and better. Party over country. I’ve deleted more than a few sites from my blog folder in the past two weeks.
As to fixing / saving the GOP; Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
I’ve noticed some of the talk here leaning towards just such a thing. The GOP does not want to be saved; it’s where it wants to be.
To those of you who voted for Romney because the alternative was unacceptable; so did I. I’m a lifelong registered independant, who has voted GOP because for nearly my entire voting life, the Dems have been alien to everything I believed in. Not voting was never an option for me. But in the near future, when Obama through executive decree gives voting rights to 20,000,000 illegals who are against what you believe in, well, for the first time I’m seriously thinking that my vote really won’t matter at all.
JHoward, the title of your thread, how we get there matters, is true. It is also now irrelevant, because we have gotten there my friends. We have arrived at a place that is not America, although, at least for a time as it sees fit, will continue to call itself such.
So what’s to do, gang? Keep fighting on the local, county and state levels, where you actually still have some sway to some degree or other. The states telling the feds to go screw is now our last defence. But make no mistake. When the fight comes- not if, but when- you damned well better be ready and right and tight with the idea every bit as much as those in the 1770′s were.
You know, tossing sandbags along the path of a broken water-main during a pouring rain to mitigate property damage isn’t a permanent or best solution …
but it does keep people’s homes intact until the storm stops & you can get the the plumbing fixed.
But hey, if you want the houses washed away before you rebuild because sandbags don’t really fix the problem, don’t be surprised if the people in those homes are not happy with your choice.
Darleen, I would submit to you that the people in those houses aren’t going to be happy anyway , as their homes are going to be washed away anyway.
The GOP and it’s supporters have become the prime definition of insanity; keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
…have been thrown for forty years. Is my point, again.
I give up.
Reagan was a sandbag?
mc4ever59
not every conservative is as mercenary as you allege. That’s usually the charge from the Left, that non-Leftists never work from good motives.
Yes, some very much do want to be with the “in” crowd but others are trying to find the space to punch through and rebuild.
Is it going to be harder or easier to push back against the Leviathan with “hell, I’ll just bypass congress” Obama in the White House?
I believe it would have been easier with Romney. That’s the way I voted, especially because of 9/11/12.
Come on folks, it’s time to “move on, get on with it” and “compromise.”
I’m actually feeling quite good about my decision not to vote for Romneycare.
Darleen, I agree entirely with your last sentence. I did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons. My point is- and correct me if I’m wrong, JHoward- is the same as JHowards responce to your sandbags post; we lost. That game , the one that has been being played for the last 40+ years, is now over. 6 Nov was merely the final score being posted.
Now, we can keep trying to replay that game, a game who’s rules are defined more and more by the enemy, or we can realize that that game is over, and change tact.
For me, step one is to ‘change the dynamic’. That being, ‘they call the tune, we dance to it’.
Here’s a hint; Romney’s decision to ‘not attack the media’; wrong answer. It’s the equal of fighting a major battle while conceding 100% control of the skies to the enemy.
New game, new rules, new leadership, new everything.
Was Reagan a classical liberal? Did Reagan rebuild any structural constitutional architecture? Did he reduce the number of federal agencies? Did he use the presidency to stimulate the economy? Did he enjoy a conservative congress? Did he appoint reliably constitutional judges?
Of course Reagan was a sandbag. A damn fine one, but a temporary measure nonetheless, which confirms the trajectory and begins to bracket the point in time when constitutional principle was lost.
I believe Romney would have been skinned alive in the Press, would have inherited the upcoming economic crash, would have a polarized congress and nation hung on his neck, and would have caved on every major socialist issue.
Mostly I think Romney would have lulled Republicans back to sleep, while the liberty types that would have had been onboard to elect him in the first place would have been the new rhetorical Reaganomics.
Again, the Press.
So no, we don’t need Romney and we don’t need anything but firm structural principle. History teaches this and per the 2012 elections, it just taught us all over again.
mc4
which new rules do you think conservatives can institute when Obama can issue executive orders to shut them down?
Jarrett already has promised revenge against any/all who were against His Holiness and we saw how private citizens were specifically targeted for public outrage and government audits.
Levin, Limbaugh, Beck, whoever, are all guilty of the same “principle-less” cheerleading for Romney leading up to the election
Sadly true. It is one thing to advise voting for the lesser of two evils, it is quite another to do as Whittle does at 4:10 of the video.
JHoward; I agree with your point about “firm structural principle”. I would take it a step further, that being how to best ‘weaponize’ it. Because if you are thinking of just stepping back onto the same field with the idea of changing things and converting enough people to your side, then you will have changed the packaging, but the result will be the same ass whooping.
Half of the country- and growing everyday- doesn’t give one damn about our principles, can not be reasoned or negotiated with, and will continue to despise us and everything we stand for. They will not see the light, and trying to win them over is just more of the same losing game. Pandering to certain groups or ethnicities whose demands are anethema to our beliefs – what many in the GOP and it’s supporters are now openly advocating- is not a strategy for victory, it is a document of surrender.
Whittle was being passionate about Benghazi and I agree with him.
Why should Obama, with the cuffs of his pants still wet with Chris Steven’s blood, be allowed back in the White House?
It hasn’t been a 40 year deal, it started over 100 years ago. Teddy and Woodrow and both parties have been travelling the same basic progressive path. The speed varies, but not the course.
We need to undue some fundamental sabotage by Wilson before anything will start to change.
You’re exactly right, mc4ever59. This war was lost at the American inception, just as more than a few Founders feared and stated.
The question I keep coming back to is this: When do we pound a stake in the ground and do exactly what you say, which is to stop playing even a single act by the left’s rules, regardless of where they’re found, all the more so when they’re found in our own camp.
Whittle et al were just caught out playing by those rules. They should have had the conviction of enough sound principle — principle they made their names and founded their brands on — to not participate. This is why on the day after the election I wanted to vomit listening to the Hue Hewlites and Mikey Medveds heading right back to the same old radio rhetoric and unmitigated bullshit like 2016 and identifying new blood and moderating tone and all that useless racket.
Since history instructs that this particular war was always going to be lost, we need to decide when that was and as of that moment, start anew. And the only way to start over is to decide to start over.
Their not having the conviction of their principles must not become us not owning our own.
I believe Obama unleashed marks the end of the America we now mourn, the land of the free and the home of the brave. At least until we hit the wall. Then what? George Washington or Mohammed Morsi? That’s anybody’s guess.
Why is irrelevant, Darleen. How is entirely relevant, and the answer is simply: because. Because it could and therefore it would, such being our state of affairs.
And that is the point.
What’s next is up to everyone who agrees with you morally, myself included. Again the question is not why statism happened or even how it happened — we’ve known that for nearly a quarter millennia. The question is when it happened and why we allowed it because those answers cement resolve to stop playing like the field is level and recoverable.
which is to stop playing even a single act by the left’s rules,
Ok, be specific. What do millions of conservatives do during their every day lives to “not play by the left’s rules” while trying to do more than just survive every day?
Since you admit to survival mode, Darleen, you start by embracing the ruin and immediately joining the local movement to refound structural principles. That movement already had, some of us decades ago.
In some cases I suspect it could lead to secession, probably as unavoidably as statification was itself unavoidable.
JH
TeaPartiers have already worked locally and continue to. It’s something I’ve said many times … the structure of the GOP is there and can be taken over.
What else do you specifically propose?
Secession at this time is not going to fly. Period. State governors/legislators saying “no thanks” to the White House is doable (and is being done by states that are refusing to institution Obama-exchanges).
I see room for long-term goals in remaking institutions as the Left has done over the past 60 years, but that means still using sandbags during the process.
Darleen at 9:12 am;
You don’t. Institute new rules into a system so compromised and corrupt? That’s ‘same game, same rules.’
You start at the local and state level to bring power back into the hands of the states/the people, and away from the feds. You start by realizing that we won’t be winning anymore national elections of consequence, that we won’t be winning anymore major decisions in SCOTUS, and that the GOP as an instrument of change is dead to us. You start by holding the feds to the laws and constitution that clearly state the limits of their power.
And step one is for the states to say to the feds, “No. As a matter of fact, fuck you, and what are you going to do about it?”
And Jarrett? When did the words of any individual become physical chains making us completely powerless to do anything other than hang our heads, shuffle off, and obey?
Darleen, the tea partiers- whether they realize it or not- have been attempting to force enough change in the GOP to use it as an instrument of change that represents them and their ideals.
I cannot stress enough- that ship has sailed.
Ok, be specific. What do millions of conservatives do during their every day lives to “not play by the left’s rules” while trying to do more than just survive every day?
Being supportive of the idea of States telling Fedzilla to go fuck itself would be a start.
“Levin, Limbaugh, Beck, whoever, are all guilty of the same “principle-less” cheerleading for Romney leading up to the election,”
Levin, Linbaugh, and Beck all did so with caveats and a focus on unseating Obama. Beck said that he thought that Romney was a good, generous, classy manwho could look at the books and have the best chance of knowing how to fix things. Beck did not mention that the Government is in the “too big to fail category” and that if the US were a business the solution would be to close the government, go into some form of bankruptcy. No such bankruptcy exists at the level of a declining indepted super power. But Beck noted while he praised Romney and defended him that Romney was still the author of a lot of intrusive big government things that Beck disapproves of and NOT given his history as a governor or senatorial candidate a good spokesman for a leaner, smaller, weaker, more hands off government. He was promoted as better than Obama in comparison, and Beck admitted that if Romney were elected Beck would be all over him probably from day one.
Rush went with “well, he’s our candidate” and spat at Romney’s advisors every chance he got. He often wondered aloud why Romney’s advisors kept opening their mouths to ruin what Romney needed to run on and wondered why Romney never punched back.
Levin I’m not too sure about because I only heard part of his bitchy “we’re out of time, now get on board” speech.
I got on board after Sept 11 because I was convinced that almost ANY foreign policy is better than “Obama is cool and people(Taliban, Egyptian Brotherhood, Hezbollah) like him and if they don’t like him, then we’ll lock up some nutty youtube guy or other and blame him. ”
In the end the 1,000,000 “other” votes were apparently too spread out to have changed the result if thy went for Romney.
Either way I still don’t agree with Ron Paul on enough to vote for him (Libertarian values seem to be so ergonomic that they wriggle and change to fit each prospective voter while being subjected to suasion and then you look into your candidate and suddenly they don’t fit so well any more and you wonder what holds the party together apart from not having a place in the big two. Sometimes they come off more as a pyramidal post office scam than a party or a revolution (please don’t send cash…but send cash if you want, we won’t tell on you) I don’t trust the republicans enough to vote for them. I know that the democrats are under the sway of an international wave of cult of personality drive cultural nihilism that wants ignorant voters converted into sheep they can experiment on until they reach ‘Utopia’ and they’ll have the experts and and leadership all go happy wine-drunk skiing in the mean time, until it’s ‘dagger in the back’ party culling time.
So I got nothing.
“You’re exactly right, mc4ever59. This war was lost at the American inception, just as more than a few Founders feared and stated.”
Okay then. The Aesir fall one by one, some killing their opponent as they fall, and some not. The wolves devour the sun and moon. The Fimbul Winter is unbroken. Surtur burns the world with his sword, and Asgard and the earth sink into the ocean and mist covers everything. Every story has an ending and a beginning. So sing the skalds. Story time’s over children. Go back to your lodges and holds. Move away from the fire because the elder just gave Old Svendi his drams of mead to ease the rawness of his sore throat, and he’s known to be a mean drunk. Off with ye.
Wow! I may have found a new home on the internet.
Many great comments different commenters that I agree with, FULLY; only one that I disgree with (which I’ve already made a rude, virgin post in response to); and only a couple that I think reflect a majority conservative point of view that I differ from but completely understand.
That latter point of view is best exemplified by Darleen’s comments.
Darlene,
I really don’t wish to argue the point(s) (whatever they are) with you. I understand your point of view, and I really hope you don’t take offense at my opinion that you are wrong (slightly? mostly? partly?).
I only wish to state my reason for thinking so, and leave it up to you to accept or reject it. Obviously, if anyone agrees with me, please feel free to argue my case in my stead. I’m just not up to it anymore.
As succinctly as I can say it, my opinion is this:
You, Darlene, (and others here & elsewhere) have seriously misjudged the severity of the situation.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, that “the system is broken.”
I know that you have heard this said before. You may even have said it yourself.
I have heard it said, many times, from people who, in their next breath, will talk of how to correct the “problems” while not realizing that their solutions are all within, and dependent upon, that system. An analogy to something mechanical would be helpful here; but I can’t seem to drum one up at the moment.
Two other ways to explain the gist, using your sandbag analogy:
1. We do not require sandbags, …. what we need is an Ark.
2. There was a theory a few years back Noah’s Flood was an actual flood which occurred when a chunk of rock at the Bosporous collapsed, allowing the Meditterranean Sea gush into a low-lying, but dry(-ish) region that is now — due to the gushing flood — the Black Sea. (
Assuming this theory were true, I would alter your sandbag analogy again. You spoke of sandbags to protect homes temporarily, which could later be repaired or replaced in situ.
My opinion of “Our American Situation” is less like your sandbag analogy, and more like the Black Sea Deluge theory.
There is no repairing or rebuilding homes in situ. Why? Because there is no situ anymore.
I don’t mean geographically (as in fleeing the country). What I mean is if you consider the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Lockean principles, the ideas and ideals of our Founding Fathers, etc, etc, to be a map, it’s the map of the Black Sea region before the Flood.
There’s no fixing the system from within the system. There’s no fixing the system, period.
There’s no rebuilding after “Superstorm” Sandy; because there’s no there there.
There’s no “Returning to the Constitution”; cuz, man, …. it’s gone!
There is only
re_Building a new homes, a new neighborhood, a new system, a new nation.If, that is, you would like Liberty, God-given rights, and a republican form of government based on (C)constitutional principles.
The new place can look just like the old place did when it was first built (and even with the addition of a few modern amenities). The geography (of ideas) can look and feel just like the old geography when it was green & new. But the situ, the locus where we originally built, can’t be rebuilt upon. It can’t be repaired. It can’t be “fixed up”.
It’s at the bottom of the Black Sea where Noah and Giants used to live.
Sorry, if you find this depressing and pessimistic. I don’t. I perceive the possibility of; the potential for; a sliver of hope for a kind of Liberty that conservatives talk a lot about, but which none of us now living has ever actually enjoyed. The kind of Liberty imagined by the Founders. Without that pesky “original sin” of slavery. Without 223 years worth of occasionally good, but — mostly — increasingly bad and more corrupting Supreme Court decisions. Plus, a chance to have new and better safeguards against usurpations and corruptions. (you favor term limits, perhaps? or laws that truly prevent Congressional “insider trading”? )
You don’t have to agree with me, obviously. Not my assessment of the “situation”, nor my utopian dreams of how/where to achieve real liberty, none of it. Just think on it a bit, is all I ask. Don’t respond quickly, or hotly. Don’t argue or disagree right now. Just give it a couple days to stew, and if we still disagree then so be it. You can berate me then.
p.s. we got here by incrementalism that went “with the current”. It is my opinion that one cannot “incrementally” climb back UP a Slippery Slope.
Then we’re in for good.
Not happening. Period.
There are no sandbags, Darleen, and what there were washed away. 2012 just proved that all over again.
Perhaps we need the flood. An ark is kinda useless without one.
Not sure what you’re saying there but if it’s that I am on about anything other than understanding position and trajectory when clearly we hadn’t for 40, 80, or 120 years, you’re mistaken.
I’m not saying give up. I’m saying give up your present strategy for it is no strategy whatsoever.
Elegant and effective alternatives? (I like that one; kinda like bashing JHo for noting over and over that 100 years of institutional fake money leads to ruin because JHo can’t propose a nifty solution.) There are no fucking alternatives if you aim to either stand around and kick at pebbles for another 40, 80, or 120 years, or if you refuse to see precisely where you stand.
Right now. Today. In perspective. I keep saying that.
Exactly that.
The system is OVER. So, long live the system?
Agree with Pablo. A flood can be a cleansing thing.
*
Yuri
I actually do not disagree much with what you are saying
but old fuddy duddy that I am, I want specifics because, you see,
this is structurally the exact same speech I heard from radical Leftists in the 60s who then turned around and burrowed in for the long haul by taking over academia, j-schools, media and government institutions.
They didn’t build a new system from scratch, they took over the existing one.
The Constitution is gone? Nope, it’s still there – just held hostage to the “it’s a living document” sham.
I’m saying that speaking of America as doomed from the start resembles the Myth of Asgard (the fortress of Asaheim) is that it was built despite the ones who built it knowing from the very beginning that it would fall. and that it is also myth about a cosmos that was only possible for a limited time that was ultimately worth pursuing because people would sing about but had an expiration date stamped on it. It was an attitude that spawned grim warriors, cunning thanes and jarls, and a lot of bondsmen (slaves) taken in battle. It is a viking/migration attitude. It is a pessimistic variation of the more mediterranean “eternal” Indoeuropean myths. It is kind of a savage loser’s myth. The world is against us because they natural state is fire warring against ice. Spring can die forever and will. Hell is against us for the dead hate the living and are jealous of them. Heaven is all that holds all of them back and Heaven is doomed because heaven is jealous, almost pitiless, and is even treacherous when it suits them to be. Heaven is fickle and arbitrary. Heaven only respects courage and heroes who stand taller than other men. Heaven doesn’t want those who want to live forever. Let the cowards join the winning side in hell when they die or let them haunt the earth.
I’m not sure that I can look at life that way. America was not a heaven. It was a human undertaking. It was not an ideal nor was it ruthless and unapologetic. It was not built on the stolen labor of tricked giants despite what we are told by politically correct revisionist history nor was it armed by tricked dwarves. It has no destiny decreed by the fate weaving norns. It has no prophecy damning it. Predictions sure. but not prophecy. There was not a design to it that came from the wisest of all Aesir. It is not a monarchy. It was created in part by the colonists not feeling like a part of their mother country anymore. It was created in part by the blood shed in a revolution. It was created in part by a long argumentative process of compromise between openly hostile and suspicious delegates who found the Articles of Confederation insufficient but found little agreement in what should replace them. It was always a fragile and mortal thing that was passed on to future generations and changed a little (or lot) each time a new generation rose to control and responded as they thought best to the opportunities and dangers that the world gave them. Many of the same problems that bedevil us afflicted it from the very beginning.
WE Were the problem. Not the people. Us. Our generation, or a blend of generations. There was no doom hanging over our head that we finally succumbed to. WE FUCKED UP THIS THING THAT WAS HANDED DOWN TO US. Sure we stood on the shoulders of giants when did it. but it was us that pushed it across the line. We learned to ignore the constitution and make it say what we wanted to hear with ventriloquism and code words and strange “neutral” interpretation schemes. We learned to think of our forebears as glorified criminals that we should always be moving away from. We came to think of ourselves as the last enemies of world peace.
And it’s not over. Unless it is. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s all up to how we struggle and how the other side struggles back and how much the child like confused idiots will tolerate before they can change. But with respect to Alexis de Tocqueville, who was no prophet but merely warned us of the seeds of danger within us, destiny has nothing to do with any of it. We watered those seeds and refused to pull up the weeds we grew into. It was our decisions that led us here and it is our decisions that lead us further into danger or away from it. And which decisions are right and which are wrong I am not qualified to say.
I do know that without a rich host to prop it up socialism quickly fails and usually is replaced by some form tyranny, chaos, or leads to a power being conquered and sectioned up until things “stabilize”. I also know that as socialist nations fail they turn very violent and repressive either in government party action or in weaker socialist democracies like France and Greece massive rioting and importing of hostile or indifferent foreign nationals to make up labor shortages, who form a counter culture, often end up unemployed to prevent more native rioting, which makes the foreign nationals and new citizens prone to riot in turn. But France and greeze have Europe to support them, Europe has US to support them and we have no one, because China can’t afford us, and sadly there are no turtles under us, just a long way down.
Yuri and JHoward; a better job of making my points then I have. I sometimes think that the scope of the problems we face and situation we are in makes it difficult to make the points made above and that I try to make.
So, to simplify; ‘how it is’ is now ‘how it was’. Trying to change things within the same framework is a non starter. We’ve already lost. To convince enough people that all new perspectives and strategies are needed to save or salvage anything before all is completely and irrevocably lost is the challenge.
Also I am not so sure that there is only one way to fix things. I keep hearing that but I don’t think it is true. Why would it be true? But who knows? Not me.
Sorry about that last post, everybody. I thought I could say what I wanted to much more clearly and with far fewer words.
In the words of Ralph Wiggum, “Me fail english? Thats unpossible!”
Anyway, to Pablo and Beemoe, I agree with both of you, in the way I think you mean it.
But what I meant in my prior comment was that the Flood has already occurred.
I don’t mean just recently, and certainly not just under Obama. Nor do I mean that we are currently experiencing a calamity of Flood-like proportions (tho we may yet).
What I meant was that the land buried by the Biblical Flood is like the conception of America as many Founders dreamed it. There’s no going back in any conventional sense; certainly not within, or even using, our broken system.
The only difference is that the Flood waters have not only never receded, the Flood ain’t even over yet (not completely, anyway). And it wasn’t from 40 days & 40 nights of rain; it was from 223 years of “incremental” usurpations. Kinda like the Warmists’ rising sea levels.
So, the point was that the U.S. Constitution, America “as founded”, is analagous to lands permanently submerged by the Deluge.
It may as well have happened just as long ago as the Flood, for all we can reverse time to get back there. And it’s just as far away from us and as uninhabitable as the bottom of the Black Sea.
There ain’t no going home again.
IF the goal is the kind of country, Freedom, individual rights, civil society and limited government that the Founders wanted; then the only way that I can see to get there is to build anew. To cling to certain ideas, ideals, principles, and ways of achieving them. When a new home is built, the contractor or carpenter or whoever doesn’t stop using a level, or a hammer, or 2×4′s, or build the second story before the foundation is laid.
You follow trusted tools and principles and just build a new house.
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I just want a … new … wheel. One that functions and rolls true.
I’m just full of crappy analogies today. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the Flood. I could have used a termite infestation for Darleen’s flooding homes. Dry-rot?
Anywho, that’s enough out of me for one day. Ima gunna get some leftover turkey & pumpkin pie, … then take a nap.
Palaeomerus; correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the idea that you believe the views of myself and others such as Yuri and JHoward are defeatest doom and gloom , and that we’ve rolled over and given up. Speaking for myself, not at all. What I am pointing out is that the America you, I, and many others here grew up in is gone, and never coming back.
We must completely readjust our strategies to deal with not only how things are, but what is coming if we are to salvage or eventually rebuild any of that America.
As to my own views on the Founders, they warned of all of this and more. They have made Nostradamus look like a piker.
American Contras. Or possibly neo-Apaches? Or are we looking for our Pinochete?
I need more detail.
Okay, purely for the sake of argument, I’ll stipulate your first principle that the metaphorical fort is lost, can’t be retaken and if retaken can’t be held. So, we must abandon the old political frame work, not just the parties, and presumably become outsiders at some form of war even if it is cold war with the remains of our “occupied” society. . Now what? We will need to be powerful enough or malleable enough as a force to continue our own existence. How do we do that?
If we do passive resistance and model ourselves on the Ahmish or the Mormons and become regional insular communities I doubt that will win us peace or much autonomy. Mostly likely no matter what we do, we end up being called terrorists, traitors, and criminals anyway because surely if someone is called a racist for disagreeing with socialist policies and virtually no one speaks up and there is no loss of perceived credibility, then anyone ‘not doing their fair share’ is easily rebranded as a terrorist and possibly a subhuman animal to be hunted just like wolves, alligators, jaguars, and wild boars used to be.
Do we become a kinder gentler mafia? Do we emulate the Palestinians ? What are we going to do and why will it work?
“We must completely readjust our strategies to deal with not only how things are, but what is coming if we are to salvage or eventually rebuild any of that America.”
Which means what exactly? Let’s say it’s an order you sent out to contractor who must execute it. What does it say? What’s your budget? How does it work? How does it deal with expected pitfalls and startup problems?
To oversimplify in a nutshell, Palaeo, continue to fight but fight differently, while preparing for inevitable collapse and fighting in the streets.
Forget trying to change the GOP and DC. Fall back to all politics is local. Draw power back to the states and away from the feds through open defiance of, and refusal to obey, their decrees that further encroach upon our liberties and well being.
All the while preparing for the inevitable violence that is coming, in whatever form(s) and degrees it will take.
I take the long view: if our America is gone, eventually somebody somewhere will get it right and establish a new one — maybe even with more lessons learned at the start to keep theirs from going under after less than a quarter-millennium.
It might take centuries or a couple thousand years but it’ll happen.
But it’s easy to take that long of a view when I don’t have any kids, and my brother’s stepfamily only serves to strengthen the conclusion that our handbasket has arrived and it’s just plain time to go.
I agree with the last. The flood has not yet occurred, but the stage has been set for it, such that it’s nearly inevitable. We’re still preoccupied with bread and circuses. That won’t last.
And I want genuine alternatives which is why I proposed the only two I can think of.
That thing about specifics — as if they were neat little rows of supermarket selections and you were out shopping for a new country — keeps being said but it’s still wrong every damn time.
As I said, it’s like bashing the resident libertarian (which I ain’t) because he’s on about fake money all the time. Why? Not because he’s right about what fake money transfers and to whom, or because he’s right that the game of fake money Jenga is eternally doomed, but because not wanting to face the inevitable makes it easier to make demands for solutions.
Or, goes the tacit reasoning, the monetary system quo is really a-okay, the oceans of evidence be damned. So. Just like considering the fake money system a-okay, we can continually re-elect the lesser of two evils and not promote evil. Mister Lesser is our candidate and we’re not evil and …
It’s fallacious. Wreckage is wreckage. You don’t rebuilt it. You don’t sandbag the thing; you don’t shore it up, and you ever tack back up the slippery slope.
You. Create. An. Alternative. Which means you DECIDE to create an alternative, a process inestimably aided by finally admitting what you’ve been denying and finally gathering up a proper new perspective.
McGeehee, I disagree that there will be another America somewhere else. This is it- literally mankind’s last and best hope. Should this America fall, darkness will descend. And I don’t believe that God will believe in us enough to say let’s try it again one more time.
” To oversimplify in a nutshell, Palaeo, continue to fight but fight differently, while preparing for inevitable collapse and fighting in the streets. ”
Fight differently. Sounds euphemistic.
” Forget trying to change the GOP and DC. ”
Why? We can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?
” Fall back to all politics is local. ”
Local politics are superseded rather easily these days. Especially the judiciary. I agree that we should WORK HARD at local politics which we have been doing at least locally. But I live in Austin which is blue which is in Texas which is still red but starting to purple a little. We elected Ted Cruz to the Senate. We have Perry as our governor who is for the moment, a Tea party whipped Bushie. He has been governor a LONG time and kind of shit his pants in the primaries so who knows how well he will survive a challenge from a fiscally conservative folksy democrat who says “Aw shucks, I sure love Texas and I ain’t so bad! I’m gonna lower your property taxes. And build libraries and hospitals and get into those inner cities and fix ‘em! ”
” Draw power back to the states and away from the feds through open defiance of, and refusal to obey, their decrees that further encroach upon our liberties and well being. ”
And if they use presidential decrees, judges, taxes, the press, regulatory oppression, law suits, a new nationalized police force based on the old federal emergency management agency that has its actions rendered defacto invisble by executive privilege, and perhaps friendly neighborhood visits by the national guard to yank that power right back to DC? Which they will?
” All the while preparing for the inevitable violence that is coming, in whatever form(s) and degrees it will take.”
I think you can do stuff that is an attempt to prepare for it. I’m not sure there is any such thing as really prepared for it though. An undeclared civil war or possibly a long series of dynamic paramilitary security action can be successfully fought/prosecuted one region at a time. If resistance is too thick then propaganda will be used to attempt to further balkanize and thus isolate the resisting parties against one another. Rail lines, powerlines, roads and water lines will be shut down. Hell they might even use mines. I don’t think pass some laws that will be nullified at the national/super-federal level, kick out the bums in city hall, get everyone locally riled up or beat down as appropriate, and shooting a couple of looters a year is going to amount to much of a resistance. I also don’t think Arizona will send troops to defend Texas or vice versa. I think there will be a lot of fleeing before the trouble starts when the ‘Forwards’ sausionists hit town and the mayor doesn’t kick them out like he did the last two times.
I know every time the sun sets I’m convinced it will never rise again.
There have been dark ages before, there will be again. God doesn’t say, “let’s try it again,” He says “You keep trying until you get it right.”
“That thing about specifics — as if they were neat little rows of supermarket selections and you were out shopping for a new country — keeps being said but it’s still wrong every damn time.”
So what’s right? Some ‘bellicose we’re not gonna take it’ cheerleading and “we’ll think of something when the time comes” ? We’ve got a mission statement some fire in the belly and we hope for some providence maybe? Just do it?
Palaeo, I think you well know what is meant by no longer fighting the same battles by the same rules means, and that doing so locally to build up enough consensus at a state level to tell the feds no means. If not, than I have failed miserably to make my points.
I also disagree that state National Guards or American troops from anywhere will fire on their on families, friends and homes because Obama or anyone else tells them to. In fact, I believe any such order would bring about the swift end of Obama and federal power.
But if you want to believe that all that is happening around you, that all the legions of examples are to be ignored, and that your best bet is to continue to ‘reform’ a political party that holds you in contempt is the way to go, then that is your choice.
When the violence comes, predicting how and where it will start and how it will go is folly; it’ll be the Balkans on steroids and then some. But it will come.
“You. Create. An. Alternative. ”
Okay. So create the alternative in your head. Then you can sell me on it. But “resist” doesn’t seem like a plan so much as a goal.
” Which means you DECIDE to create an alternative, a process inestimably aided by finally admitting what you’ve been denying and finally gathering up a proper new perspective.”
Having stipulated that, the result still seems to be that we seem to just repeat that over and over again and anyone who wants more is a heckler or stuck in the past. Okay.
McGeehee, good post. And I admire your faith and optimism. But reality has a way of brutally crushing hope whenever they come into opposition.
As to it being up to us instead of God. You may very well be right. How’s that been working out?
Well, gotta go. To the store to replenish my supply of cancer sticks, back home for leftovers . And football!
I have a feeling we’ll be having this conversation, and variations of it, again in the days to come.
In the meantime, you all take care.
“Palaeo, I think you well know what is meant by no longer fighting the same battles by the same rules means, and that doing so locally to build up enough consensus at a state level to tell the feds no means. If not, than I have failed miserably to make my points.”
Okay. So spell it out. Because I’m potentially hearing all kinds of things in there some crazy and some rational but it sounds like a goal more than a plan right now.
” I also disagree that state National Guards or American troops from anywhere will fire on their on families, friends and homes because Obama or anyone else tells them to. In fact, I believe any such order would bring about the swift end of Obama and federal power.”
The pretext will be that they are saving their friends and families from homegrown terrorists after the FBI and police failed to get the job done. I hope you are right but doubt very much that you are. What will end his federal power? Will there be a March on DC ? Who will make that march and why won’t it be stopped by force if deemed necessary ? If 47% to 1% to 52% after Obama’s crappy four years is evidence of an end to the possibility of political survival within the whole political framework then surely an end to federal power due to public outrage and Obama’s acquiescence to the same is off the table.
“But if you want to believe that all that is happening around you, that all the legions of examples are to be ignored, and that your best bet is to continue to ‘reform’ a political party that holds you in contempt is the way to go, then that is your choice. ”
I don’t know what the best bet is. I’m not sure that there is only one best bet at all. But I’m not sure backing a single presumed best bet and nothing else is ever a useful strategy.
” When the violence comes, predicting how and where it will start and how it will go is folly; it’ll be the Balkans on steroids and then some. But it will come.”
I’m not disputing that. I’m just disputing the utility of all this smug ” rah rah, this is it ” and vague “resistance” talk.
BTW I’ve stated loudly that I’m done with the GOP. I’ll vote for a GOP candidate if he or she sounds like what I want to hear and survives some vetting. But I’m not the base anymore.
But I’m not joining a kinda sorta movement idea until I hear more than “we have to change what we are doing. ”
‘Do something -> ????? -> profit’ is not a plan. And I’m not asking for Hari Seldon to come out and tell us where we are at or anything. But I need more info than “we need a new framework, we need to create an alternative”.
Ah, almost made it. But I’ll respond, Palaeo, then I have to go. But should you respond, I promise to reply sometime later, as to do otherwise would be rude and dismissive to you, which I don’t wish to do.
You haven’t heard any ‘smug rah rah resistance’ talk from me. Just me pointing out that continuing to do the same things, and believing that you can change the GOP will not work, and will only result in more and worse defeats.
As a ten year veteran of the Marine Corps, I can gaurantee you that under no pretext would we fire upon family and friends. Such an order would be considered illegal, and our weapons would be turned on those giving such an order. Have a little faith in your armed forces, specifically that they would not be so easily duped into turning on the very people they defend, and serve and fight for to begin with.
You’re asking for specific details on exactly what will happen, where, when, and exactly what actions to take at such time. Being as intelligent as you obviously are, you know that’s not possible.
Then again, you also haven’t argued against what has happened , where we are, and the natural progression of where this all must and will lead.
But you have disowned the GOP, which tells me that you get it, and you know exactly what we are saying on this thread.
I’ll catch you later.
Bullshit. This thread’s plenty long enough and I’m not here to educate the obtuse and stubborn.
Try this: Did you vote for Romney, palaeomerus?
Then you’re no more interested in an alternative than you are in having someone itemize your moves for you. Why do I get the sense you’ll rub your chin over them, contemplate just how to say no thanks, and go back to posting up new anti-Obama remarks?
Well, not that last part, because you never have posted up new anti-Obama remarks (like it constituted your sole responsibility to classical liberalism and the US of A — we’ll leave that to the headline right wing acts who just got it all wrong all over again.)
Look, you’re my favorite commenter here, palaeomerus, which is saying something because this is no pack of morons. But kindly quit your own damn bad habits. Secede. Or figure it out yourself. It’s not hard.
” Bullshit. This thread’s plenty long enough and I’m not here to educate the obtuse and stubborn. ”
Yeah we really hate long threats here. You have no choice but to clam up now, and its all because of my willfully obstructionist, ‘trap door spider,’ passive aggressive bullshit.
” Try this: Did you vote for Romney, palaeomerus? ”
Yes.
” Then you’re no more interested in an alternative than you are in having someone itemize your moves for you. ”
If you say so. I guess its your way or the highway.
” Why do I get the sense you’ll rub your chin over them, contemplate just how to say no thanks, and go back to posting up new anti-Obama remarks? ”
I don’t know, you tell me. Why are there always goals and never plans? Are plans harder to sell than goals or something?
” Well, not that last part, because you never have posted up new anti-Obama remarks (like it constituted your responsibility to classical liberalism and the US of A — we’ll leave that to the headline right wing acts who just got it all wrong all over again.) ”
Okay. Whatever that means. But I like the confident smugness. It really puts me in my place and makes be want to shrink back in self disgust. Will you pray that providence forget we were every countrymen? Shall I seek a place in drab Nifelheim with the other unworthy shades since I lacked to courage to be sure that I was borne up to heaven in bloody pieces after a short and glorious life of reaving? Yeah that’s melodramatic and a bit mocking, but fuck it. I like my toast buttered sometimes. I’m a (refined and genteel suburban) wildman.
” Look, you’re my favorite commenter here, palaeomerus, which is saying something because this is no pack of morons. But kindly quit your own damn bad habits. Secede. Or figure it out yourself. It’s not hard. ”
Sure, its not hard. That’s kind of my complaint. In fact it seems a bit on the vaporous side at the moment given all the boisterousness that heralded it. I’m sure it will manifest at some point great with such magnificence and awe that it puts its own fanfare to shame.
But, it probably doesn’t matter much anyway since I’m apparently just another blind, dickless, collared little serf, already deeply bred to a life of misery and compliance. I’ll move aside for the big balls to roll up and make up something cool on the fly, like a boss, only more patriotic. I certainly wouldn’t want it thought that I’m the type to spit into the wind by asking unwanted questions in the middle of a history changing rally.
You’re talking to yourself, palaeomerus. You did that in your previous lengthy comment too. In both cases you contradict yourself.
So just get off the GOP bus. Don’t vote or act out of anything but principle. Let the chips fall. No, that’ll never manifest at some point so great with such magnificence and awe that it puts its own fanfare to shame but you already knew that.
But it will manifest, even if only to you. That’s what each of us are here for, same as it ever was.
” You’re asking for specific details on exactly what will happen, where, when, and exactly what actions to take at such time. Being as intelligent as you obviously are, you know that’s not possible.”
I know that “we need to do something” is not a plan of action even if you are absolutely sure that somebody should do something. And so far we seem to still be very much at the goals stage and very excited.
I hope you are right about being able to trust the armed forces. I hope that there is no easy way in the next four years to change the degree to which we can trust the armed forces especially if they are called in to restore order after federal enforcement and paramilitary security “elements” encounter resistance in whatever form. I very much want to believe that you are right but then I trusted the law enforcement, the courts, the GOP, the governors, the Congress, the voters, our culture, and the power of the constitution itself to limit government at one time. Now I’m not so sure about any of it. I probably can’t even trust my neighbors since efforts will be made to turn us against each other and I live in Austin.
I’m not mocking your resolve I just think resolve by itself is insufficient and I think just doing one thing is a bad idea. I think that “preparing” is pretty generic term that leads one to ask about the preparations being made and what we are preparing for and how those preparations match the expectations. I don’t see a spine to hang any weight on (I’m not talking about courage here I’m talking about a structure of some kind) yet or even a real shape yet. I just see a need and a goal. That bothers me. The hour seems rather late to be without a plan and abandoning difficult and so far unsuccessful plans to gather up support for something that never goes much beyond “we need an alternative” doesn’t seem to be any more effective or defiant than what we’ve been doing.
I think I’ve already called for a third party movement to politically bully, starve, break, demoralize, and kill the GOP one shiny two faced douche bag at a time. I think I’ve already called for giving to candidates not party coffers and ignoring calls to back the latest inevitable on his doomed trek to the big turnaround and go home in November.
But I don’t think secession is not going to be peaceful. Or tolerated. Or handled with a minimum of force. I don’t think a real plan for secession, even peaceful secession exists. I think it is a pretext for increasing the rate and intensity of “transformation”.
I don’t think fortress red state will hold up for long. I wish it would but I’m not convinced it will give us four years to regroup much less two.
I think unless a lot of voters smarten up suddenly (because fickle people do that sometimes) we are looking at decline as our current position.
Now I tend to read history rather simplistically and literally and am no futurist. But if there is no hope for a political restoration of a nation of laws and limited government, and inalienable individual rights that trump governments desire to acquire clients, then here’s what I think we are looking at:
We are looking at heading towards intensifying legal abuse -> persecution -> economic and institutional collapse -> boots following nuts-> blood, starvation, and disease -> disintegration ->pacification slowly via encroachment of raiders or invaders seeking our resources ->neo-feudal regional lords(or councils) ruling something resembling city states and alliances -> a new rise of merchants and manufacturing -> reforms or a brief revolution into something resembling a republic and a vivacious enlightenment movement again. That’s IF we avoid succumbing to the jacobinist impulse or the promise of a forming a new mercantilist empire.
I think it might take 150 to 200 years to get all the way to the other side. I think global trade will be in the shitter the whole time. I don’t think we’ll be able to: defend a separate alliance of unwilling states, negotiate or win a separation, spread out to avoid the boot, expect pressure and help from foreign allies, stare them down and keep a sense of status, culturally subvert the new culture with the old culture within a lifetime, or form a new massive voting block to reset everything through a constitutional convention or some massive super -repeal effort to go back to some date where things were still okay.
I dunno. I see a lot of bleakness. I’m willing to listen to plans but I think the time for that was 2006 at least.
Just happened to read Ann Coulter, all flushed with the knowledge that Romney wasn’t the problem and thus that TEA Party critiques of Romney are the problem.
If the candidate losing the election — in the same proud losing fashion as the guy who beat him for the nomination 4 years ago — isn’t the problem with losing the election then perhaps Ann could grant that his Party is that problem.
I mean, if not Mitt than either Mitt’s establishment or the general country is the problem because I’m fairly certain it wasn’t that setter in a box on the roof of the minivan and it probably wasn’t Ann’s décolletage that doomed the Republicans.
Which kinda validates what those wretched TEA Party types have been saying for half a century. So Ann, maybe think it through next time. Knowing you, maybe finally in Fall 2016.
“You’re talking to yourself, palaeomerus. You did that in your previous lengthy comment too. In both cases you contradict yourself. ”
Sure. whatever. Sounds like the same old ‘if you’re not on board then you’re in the water’ bullshit to me but ‘onboard’ looks a whole lot like in the water does. You know how to chest beat better than me. I’m doing it rorng.
” So just get off the GOP bus. Don’t vote or act out of anything but principle. Let the chips fall. ”
Your plan is ‘let the chips fall’. Great. I’m off the GOP bus. Now what?
” No, that’ll never manifest at some point so great with such magnificence and awe that it puts its own fanfare to shame but you already knew that. ”
Either you actually have something that you can convince people to do, or you haven’t. I’m not listening to the GOP bluff anymore. You sound to a lot like you have your own bluff, and you want me angry but not asking real questions that might kill the buzz. What am I being asked to actually do or not do? Where’s the platform?
” But it will manifest, even if only to you. That’s what each of us are here for, same as it ever was.”
And Zen.
I think you’re getting hung up isolating passive and active resistance and there lies your self-contradiction.
Actively opposing an unstoppable juggernaught isn’t activism. Passively opposing it by entirely avoiding it is not passive. We don’t need another “plan” when every previous plan never so much as materialized.
We don’t need to do anything but stop doing all the anythings we’ve already been doing. mostly by not doing a damn thing but showing up and bitching hopefully.
Again: Just get out. It’s over. Admit it. Be personally reformed. There is no plan; there wasn’t a plan. From there and only from there shall options, as precious few as they are, emerge. But please, and for the hundredth time in a dozen elections, just stop playing.
Depends. What’s it look like from there?
For the fourth or sixth or ninth time, that being the problem, there is no platform because there’s never been a classically liberal platform. For those 240 years or so there’s been inevitability.
So secede. Run locally. But drop out.
“Just happened to read Ann Coulter, all flushed with the knowledge that Romney wasn’t the problem and thus that TEA Party critiques of Romney are the problem.”
He sure had a lot of time to fix that. Shame he didn’t care to even try. Hey but Ann liked him and that’s what counts. You should have heard her on Glenn Back before the election. Oh she was SMUG as hell about how Romney had pulled it off and everyone owed her a big apology. Oh well. She can throw a bomb and stir shit with the best of them but she can’t build much a coalition. She’s also one of the left’s most hated people ‘on the right’ and is constantly brought up as why sensitive moderates could never ever vote for the ultra right wing mean racist republican party of today. She may not have anyone to write for is she keeps this up. The Frum virus continues apace.
There’s your contradiction. It was either all slippery slope for two hundred years or you have meaningful in-establishment options. Denying the GOP bluff, decades too late or not, does not constitute a platform. Meanwhile the original, structural, classically liberal platform you’ve had with you forever.
Where’s the mystery?
Oh, in strategy? What strategy would that be? Messaging, maybe? 2016? Bitching about Obama some more?
How about blaming the folks blaming Romney, otherwise known as the Coulter method? Or blaming the country, otherwise known as mine?
Then there it is.
Any way you cut it you do not have a platform, you do not have a plan, and you do not have a recourse. What you have is yourself, and you have your principles, and had we all each voted entirely on our principles we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Faith is your platform, or if you want to cartoon it, Zen. But spare me the blame, palaeomerus, because I am in no way part of that problem. The problem I’m part of is that of awareness.
The Republic is over. There is no longer a “state and local level” of politics to influence with your “vote, the Fed is now king, emperor, and ruler of all they survey. The tipping point is behind us, as 51% voted to enslave the other 49%. No Mr. Franklin, we couldn’t keep it.
A succession movement (and honest to God shooting war) like we had 150 years ago may resurrect republicanism in a portion of the continent, though doubtful; I place that possibility very low, as there are damn few people of our generation with the stomach for it.
No, we are now subjects, and most will be complacent with their bread and circuses until the barbarians breach the walls, and those of us refusing to submit to Allah and his Prophet are butchered in the streets.
Cling to your principles, by all means. My own are Christian. But to refer to Reagan, this is the generation where liberty became extinct.
I’m late to the party. I don’t believe that secession is off the table at all. It will take a few more egregious acts from Fedzilla, but people will begin to wake up.
The Bush tax cuts expire in January. We still don’t have and probably won’t have a budget in the dock. The president is dead set on raising taxes on anyone who makes a living wage. Newsflash Buh-rock, $250K is not rich, not by a long shot. And that middle class you’re always talking about is going to take it in the neck. Again.
We’re due for another credit downgrade. Our troops are still deployed in an endless war or a not-war. A Kinetic Military Action. In the meantime, the veterans are having their benefits gutted while congress votes itself a pay raise.
Groceries are up >10% in the past six months and climbing. Fuel is sky-rocketing and consequently, so will the costs of everything else since energy is the driver of all cost structure when we examine the bottome line.
JHo is right. Our money is worthless. Our credit is worthless. Our good name is worthless.
These are times that try mens’ souls.
That is a bold statement. It seems to assume most of the country has your principles, when clearly they don’t. Most of the country now wants security and material equality, above and beyond individual liberty and equality of opportunity.
Is why we are in this mess.
“For the fourth or sixth or ninth time, that being the problem, there is no platform because there’s never been a classically liberal platform. ”
Ah, then there can’t ever be one, ever. A shame. That ALMOST sounded like the beginnings of a political direction or something.
” For those 240 years or so there’s been inevitability. ”
Yah. Asgard again. The stuff of sagas! We didn’t win because we couldn’t! Now we take our fate into our own hands! And…thingie.
“So secede. Run locally. But drop out.”
Secede – probably not going to work as it is usually defined. Have we talked about why yet? I think we have. If you mean do it anyway, okay. That will be bloody and probably very very short. If you mean something else by it like ‘be disruptive and don’t participate in federal programs and force them to compel you to by law’…they will most likely compel you to by law eventually, or use your lack of compliance to justify creation of an even worse law, or policy. You can accept that but it doesn’t sound like an effective counter to what is happening.
There was a Pinky and the Brain episode were the Brain made congress mad some way or other. I think maybe he called them ‘fat, lazy, corrupt, useless, jerks who never get anything worthwhile done. ” Congress voted to throw him into the Atlantic ocean with a huge catapult. Brain responded: ” You don’t have the authority to do that!” Congress replied ” Oh is that true? Is he right? Okay then. All in favor of giving ourselves the authority to do that? The yays have it! The motion is carried!” The Brain’s eyes got real wide and he quickly backed down. Yeah, it’s just a cartoon from the 90′s. But congress and the president and the courts and some of the governors and mayors are out of control and looking to get even more so. They don’t care about the supposed limits of their powers and no significant force seems to be around to make them want to care including a majority of voters. This is bad. I don’t think you can just lock your door.
—————
Run locally – I’m in a liberal enclave. One that is proud of getting gourmet taco/food trucks two years ago because San Francisco and the bay area had them 7 to 12 years ago. If I move somewhere else they’ll just come after me like they do running form the smell of their own electoral shit. I can vote locally certainly and I already do. I do not vote straight ticket locally and couldn’t if I wanted to since often the GOP doesn’t even put a candidate out there. So I’ll get more libertarian railroad commissioners who promise to shut down the railroad commission since it is unnecessary and then don’t when they win, or watch them get picked off in run off elections or change parties or seek other offices an districts. So I’ll do it and do it now but it will accomplish nothing. It is not really a plan for anything more than self satisfaction. I’m doing that. So what? I got Ted Cruz who was Tea Party instead of Dewhurst who was kind of bushy but not as bushy as Perry and maybe a bit more Christie-ish or even near the fringes of the Crist/ Lugar/ Specter/ Snowe/ Murkowski territory of ‘ye grande olde bigge tente and partie’.
———–
Drop out. Well, I’m being pushed out right now. I bet I have a year at most before I’m out constantly job hunting and trying to mow neighbors lawns for favors and trading stuff and freaking out as food prices go up and dollar value plunges. And those who stay on where I work, will likely be reduced to what is essentially 30 hour a week temps with a pretty face on it. People will be FIGHTING over a chance to be reduced to that. Burning my draft card (yeah I know, unecessarily snotty) and deleting my facebook account, won’t make me invisible. Drop out where?
“Then there it is. ”
Yeah. The betrayal of all that is good. Is that sinister drums or a sad trombone I hear?
” Any way you cut it you do not have a platform, you do not have a plan, and you do not have a recourse. ”
Okay. Then this is all utter bullshit and useless cock squeezing. At best.
” What you have is yourself, and you have your principles, and had we all each voted entirely on our principles we wouldn’t be in this mess. ”
You voted on your principles and you are still in the mess.
I voted on the principle that we have a dangerous as fuck clown-spewed foreign un-policy that just blew up and we are still in this mess.
Other people voted on the principle that “republicans are a bunch of stupid fags who totally fate, I mean the good ones, and anyway they’re such a bunch of old fags and I hate ‘em so much and I sure hope I find a job soon.”
Quite a few seem to voted on the principle of “OBAMAPHOOOOONEEE!”
Some didn’t vote at all.
A few voted to keep birth control safe and vagina freedom to stop the war on women’s rights and free healthcare… omg! So gross! LOL!.
A few voted for ” The path to utopia opens! Praise the lightworker! Immanentize the eschaton! ”
Some voted for “Stop Obama at all costs. Please god. Stop him. Just stop him. ”
Some voted for “please I’m not racist! Look! I voted for Obama too! Leave me alone! ”
We’re still in the mess. 47% (you poor dumb bitches) to 1 %(NOT MY FAULT!) to 52% (Forward!) and there is no framework left. But we can still kind of try for a masada or a become bikers or establish some secret woods towns or something. “Ee Plebnista!”
” Faith is your platform, or if you want to cartoon it, Zen. But spare me the blame, palaeomerus, because I am in no way part of that problem.”
Yeah. Ride that sum’bitch to glory! Yeeehaw! Now what. Do we tie bandannas around or faces or wait like stoic klingons for a good day to die ? Do we pray for providence? Do we try again faster and more intense? Do we have any real answers at all on where to go next? I keep hearing that the Tea party is dead for some reason. Is that true? Do we just smile with dark burning Schadenfreude as the GOP paints itself purple and ‘happy birthday’ becomes the latest deadly racist dog whistle insult uncovered by the fine folks at MSNBC?
What now? I mean stipulated: ‘don’t blame JHoward’. I’m fine with that. Te absolvo. Hell I’ll throw in an Atta’ boy! to sweeten the deal. I’m glad that’s over.
But what now? I don’t think “secede, run/vote local, and drop out” ALONE is going to preserve much or accomplish much either in real life, or in the arena of ideas that Rush likes to talk about so much. Maybe it’s just me.
I may have already linked this, but I really liked it so I am going to do it again.
http://www.velociworld.com/Velociblog/Oldvelocity/004017.html
“There’s your contradiction. ”
I’m noting my belief that you don’t have a real plan or anything resembling one, or even know of anyone who has one.
” It was either all slippery slope for two hundred years or you have meaningful in-establishment options. ”
This does not follow. You cannot assume that because we have no political power beyond the squishes in the house and some governors that the republic was always doomed. I don’t know what you mean by ‘in-establishment”. Are we talking about existing parties or the actual federal institutions here? Just because an assault succeeded does not mean the fortress was always doomed. This is nonsense. Both continuance and an ending were possibilities. We chose what sure looks like an ending right now. And apparently that’s fine so long as you don’t get blamed.
“Denying the GOP bluff, decades too late or not, does not constitute a platform. Meanwhile the original, structural, classically liberal platform you’ve had with you forever.”
Yes and yet you claim it’s never been run or even tired. So run it. See what it can do. Otherwise all this ‘secede/run local/drop out/don’t blame me’ stuff is just another type of bluff rather than a platform.
“Depends. What’s it look like from there?”
It looks like a clusterfuck only quieter with Ann Coulter trying to paint it all purple.
I’m back- for an hour at least- and glad to see you all still at it. Phew, where to start. First, Palaeomerus, with a responce to your responce to me at 2:PM. And thank you for your responce to me.
First off, I consider my plans to do something as being more than shreiking “We have to do something!!”. If nothing else, I have taken concrete preparations individually, and will continue to do so. As for a larger scale, at the moment I have no say in such matters.
As to your hoping I’m right in being able to trust the military. Look at it this way. A concern of yours is that the feds will just come up with more and more severe dictats to keep us under control. That is where my contention that states telling them to go screw is our last best chance, short of a new civil war that will make the old one seem tame.
But let’s say a point is reached where the feds decide to physically enforce their demands. With what? The very people they are at odds with? The sons and daughters, friends and neighbors of those people? In reality, they don’t have the physical means to do so, anymore than they have their own- and produce their own- money. It comes from us.
As to my resolve, and that of many others- I think you’d be surprised by how many- is backed up by the finest and most extensive training on earth. Not the kind of people you want to pick a fight with, especially when the well being of their loved ones is one of the things at stake.
For you, Palaeo, Leigh, and LBascom; I don’t think seccesion happens; at least not as a planned , organized precursor. I think if something like it does happen, it will be of the thrown together , half assed variety after the shit hits the fan. E.G. a loose confederation is announced by Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, for the purpose of letting everyone know,”Whoa, we want nothing to do with this lunacy”.
As to a 3rd party; not gonna happen. That’s hardly ever even gotten traction or serious discussion. If it wasn’t gonna happen with Perot, well, it’s just another ship that has long since sailed.
LBascom; I 100% agree with your assertion that we have passed the tipping point. The nuts run the asylum now, and outnumber us. The idea of winning elections in such an environment, and with the correlation of forces already against us and growing, that’s gone too. Principles have no chance of beating free stuff once the free stuff crowd outnumbers the principles group.
My take that falling back on the states, and state’s defiance of the feds, is based on that being the last and best hope of avoiding a bloody brawl in the streets. The inevitable economic collapse will bring it about anyway, but the idea of reforming the GOP and winning in 2016! is a non starter.
BMoe, good stuff…I agree with it completely.
Unfortunately, I have zero confidence any states will do it. The carrot is fat and sweet, while the sticks are many and fearsome. Elected officials get their power from the urban areas, that need and demand the carrot, while the self-reliant rural areas are as hard to organize as house flies, and not nearly as numerous.
I think there were two systemic changes that doomed our republic. One, letting non-property owners to vote, and two, the 17th amendment. It put us on the road to democracy, and set the course to socialism.
It seems but it does not state.
The operative word is “now”, and with it in place I agree with that statement.
But I’ve been consistently referring to the folly of perpetually voting for the Presumptive Nominee promoted for decades by half of the very institution at fault.
Had we instead perpetually voted our principles we wouldn’t be in this mess. Either we’d be preserving original values or we’d no longer be one country.
I can state with some authority that yes, the tipping point has been reached. I live in what is a fairly conservative area and I am certain the rot reaches all the way down to the local level.
Anyway, I keep hoping there is a peaceful resolution to our problems, but also recognize the desire for peace is probably motivated by not wanting to get my hands dirty.
At this point, I’m keeping my head down, going about my business, keeping my eyes open and mouth shut.
Unfortunately, I have zero confidence any states will do it.
the states should start with small stuff like light bulbs, toilets, showerheads. take toilets: there is no reason for 1.6 gal toilets in midwest or northeast. but the feds have taken california standards and enforced them nationally.
Or something. Yet since you’re going to require a more precise plan be designed for your shopping approval, I suggest you start by joining up and identifying where you expect it to exist. You haven’t. What’s left is like blaming me for identifying the problem with fake money.
Of course, we’ve had both of those conversations about six times in this thread.
Well, you can fuck off out of all talk of options or you can join up, take all that sudden anti-GOP animosity that’s descended on your person in these scant three weeks and state a platform yourself. Instead of all that voyeuristic political consumerism you seem to be doing instead, demanding the market supply your one vote a genuine alternative.
That doesn’t exist, all that bullshit about Asgard notwithstanding. See, you keep contradicting yourself.
Right, kinda like voting Republican until your dander is just good and up doesn’t succeed. Like clockwork.
Right. Asgard.
But surely I can compose you a nice compact solution and sell it to your approval. Can’t see I’m feeling it, palaeomerus. Not feeling it any more than you are your contradictions.
Sucks, especially for a Texan. This is where I ask by choice or did congress and the president and the courts install you there and not twenty miles over?
Asgard, the fuckers. But why with all the outcomes-based reasoning, palaeomerus? Was I on about outcomes or about principles?
You should hear about my life. Or not.
I don’t know. How’s it look from there, he asked again. Only this time with the full conviction that we’re all screwed, classically liberal-wise.
Agree completely with the 17th. Would agree about only property owners voting if we only tax property. If we tax income of consumption then I have some issues with it.
There have been so many “minor” things that fucked us. Imagine if people would have had the fortitude to maintain the original system of all Federal revenues had to be paid by the states?
A little off topic bit from Instapundit:
” http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/dreaded-yellow-light-may-be-trap-for-traffic-violations-20121121“
“Asgard, the fuckers. But why with all the outcomes-based reasoning, palaeomerus? Was I on about outcomes or about principles?”
Does it matter? I’m not particularly interested in your principles or your silly bravado. Are you interested in mine?
If principles is all you are selling then I’ll kindly bid good day sir and the next day as well.
palaeomerus, I beat a red light camera several years ago. I started off by writing a letter to the judge clearly stating why the ticket was in error. I got a letter a week later dismissing the ticket. Had I gone to trial, I was going to attack the yellow light interval, when it was last timed, changed, etc.
My point being that I’ve long suspected cities were gaming the timing on yellow lights.
across america what we have is a situation in many cases where there’s leftover pie
” you can join up, ”
Join up with what? You have nothing to join up with. You just have some non-outcome based principles that you are very very proud of. And I’m glad for you.
” take all that sudden anti-GOP animosity that’s descended on your person in these scant three weeks”
Yeah. I totally held and expressed no GOP animosity whatsoever before the last three weeks. That’s totally accurate. Bulls eye! Sure. I was a staunch defender and pro GOP all the way. Except y’know….bullshit.
I’m noting that lamenting the doom and gloom and utter lack of options — platforms, if you prefer — while demanding others find you a way out isn’t continuous with carping about their urging you to give up your paradigm because they’re all doom and gloom and planless and whatnot.
People have been losing everything including their hope for a million years. What they do next involves them and just them and it involves absolutely starting with the resolve to go on living, living entirely outside of their previous paradigm.
Of course it follows and of course the Founders and Framers were right — they didn’t compose an experiment in liberty and self-determination and contractual rights and responsibilities because any of that was natural in the scope of human history. In other words, the mirror converse of all that structuralism was because it was necessary, that being who we naturally are: Fucked.
So, once fucked, do you con yourself like the Establican tools are rushing to do as we speak, blathering on about 2016 and messaging and the inevitable failure of, get this, promoting originalist structural liberalism itself, or do you find a way and a place to actually rebuild just that very thing, rejecting all degrees of Establican rhetoric and myth as the rhetoric and myth it is, defeatist and false?
Is there a meaningful difference? What I mean is if you cannot identify any way to penetrate either establishment (which I myself see no difference between) how about we stop the racket, accept our losses, and at the least, take back our integrity and character on the personal level before wading back into anything political whatsoever ever again.
These analogies do not hold; they’re wearisome. America was never a fortress. It was at best a beachhead. And I didn’t say classical liberalism was doomed anymore than I’d say liberty and truth were doomed. I said its vessel was irreparably broken and shall not be reassembled. Classical liberalism is at its core an intent and motive that I for one think shall never give in. The question for Americans in 2012 and beyond is what it’s form will be now.
And to define that we must begin by realizing that now is the time for that reformation and not a dime’s worth of Republicanism is going to be anything but an impediment, the same impediment that very arguably brought us to this point by deception, whether willful or accidental.
No, it’s not nonsensical to presume liberty would be finite, not on this planet where liberty has never once been permanent. Even so that’s not the point, and to argue it is a waste of time and energy. Liberty’s end has been reached.
You cheapen the point personally and unnecessarily, palaeomerus. I’m not going to go there with you.
Has it been run? Has it been tried? Where exactly, I ask you. Or were we really just trading NOT A VIABLE CANDIDATE! and A VOTE FOR RON PAUL! IS A VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA! salvos right into the final pre-election hours?
And is this a bluff, palaeomerus, or is that your personal retort, a personal charge from the argument that insists that calls to reduce bad, failed politics back to principle no matter the consequences is a cheap ploy to scapegoat anybody but the radical in the hemp costume over there waving the VOTE THE UNVIABLE CANDIDATE! banners because he’s too cowardly to go over and pull the Republican handle and then have to defend why he did so?
Meh.
republicans are for amusement purposes only anymore
they’re like magic 8 balls except with less rape baby nuance
Yuri, just a quick shout out, great post and hope to see you back again.
And yet proudly wandering proudly alone on the classically liberal desert, expecting someone hand you a canteen and a map.
Which ain’t bullshit.
Well no it doesn’t matter at all, come to realize it. My silly bravado and like that, I mean.
You’re a fun guy until the pressure cracks you like an egg. Then it’s just too easy. Sad and unfortunate and I’m genuinely going to miss your former wit and scope, but since you’d prefer to cut my legs off for not giving you something none of us were designed to deliver, all I can really do when you really think it through is disappoint you. Which, like that wasn’t predictable hours ago.
Good evening, all.
actually, newrouter, there is no reason for a 1.6 gallon standard toilet tank standard.
There is not a water shortage in CA, there is an energy shortage.
With the current state of water filtration all that is lacking is sufficient cheap power. Cheap energy sources exist, but CA will never allow the energy to be produced.
“Has it been run? Has it been tried? Where exactly, I ask you. ”
Are you running it now? Is anybody? Seems like it might make something for folks to rally around. I repeat: So run it. See what it can do.
” Or were we really just trading NOT A VIABLE CANDIDATE! and A VOTE FOR RON PAUL! IS A VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA! salvos right into the final pre-election hours?”
I don’t think we were. In fact I recall saying something more like ‘I can understand people not voting for Romney and the GOP doesn’t deserve the vote, and I expect bad things even if Romney wins, but after the 9-11 mess and the youtube explanation I really need to vote for someone likely to try and form a real foreign policy.’
Am I wrong?
That said I don’t think Ron Paul is a good candidate either.
” And is this a bluff, palaeomerus, or is that your personal retort, a personal charge from the argument that insists that calls to reduce bad, failed politics back to principle no matter the consequences is a cheap ploy to scapegoat anybody but the radical in the hemp costume over there waving the VOTE THE UNVIABLE CANDIDATE! banners because he’s too cowardly to go over and pull the Republican handle and then have to defend why he did so?
Meh.”
So first you wanted me to vote my principles and now I should have voted yours? And you want to put what seems to me like highly inaccurate words in my mouth where I called Romney viable and you accuse me of waving the banner for him? Okay dude.
I did think that Romney won the debates. That was about as positive as I got about him.
And yes I now think you are bluffing just like the GOP was. I asked for a plan or a platform, or something and I got secede, run locally, look around and just wing it. Drop out. I got non outcome based principles. Okay dude. The best thing you said was classical liberal as far as ideas goes. But then you tried to put Ron Paul out in front of that. That’s that ‘libertarianism can be whatever you want it to be until the party picks a candidate’ recruitment stuff. I can’t go there. I don’t believe in Dr. Paul any more than I do in Romney. I do not support the Libertarian party as it currently exists. We can argue about why and get each other all mad but no. Those are not my principles. I am not a natural fit for it and never was. I can go for classical liberal depending on how that exits the a priori and takes on dimension and mass as a real thing, but if its just the same old libertarian thing…no.
” You’re a fun guy until the pressure cracks you like an egg. Then it’s just too easy. ”
Yapping about principles is ALWAYS too easy. Answering questions about what’s next is not.
” And yet proudly wandering proudly alone on the classically liberal desert, expecting someone hand you a canteen and a map.
Which ain’t bullshit.”
Hey, you ain’t got one then you ain’t got one. Next time you make a lot of noise, I’ll remember that you have non outcome based principles and that’s what you got. I’ll know better than to ask questions you can’t answer..
there is no reason for a 1.6 gallon standard toilet tank standard.
sure there is. to screw the “system”. that’s why push back at this level would work. hayward
If you’ve ever dropped in for an episode of the IFC channel’s cult hit mockumentary “Portlandia” and wondered if Portland, Oregon, is really that wacky-crunchy, the answer is an unqualified Yes it is. Even the trees are green there. You think I joke! The public toilet handles are green—and that’s not a joke. Let’s see, a place where it rains something like 200 days a year needs to save water?
link
I’m still trying to figure out the Austin city council wanting to charge $.25 per plastic grocery bag and then phase them out completely. Some fuck knocker actually thought this was a good idea. And we have plastic bags because back in the 90′s everyone hated all the trees we were chopping down to make the older paper bags and we were told that the plastics were photodegradable with 20 years AND could be recycled.
this coffee shop in vegan hillbilly blowing rock had a pamphlet about how they had those toilet handles
but the diagram is helpful
but the diagram is helpful
have run into any deliverance
should be
“have you run into any “deliverance” peeps in your wonderings?
http://reason.com/24-7/2012/11/23/violence-in-wake-of-egyptian-presidents
Morsi is not so popular right now. Maybe ?
there is no reason for a 1.6 gallon standard toilet tank standard.
here’s a reason. if you reduce the volume of water going to the sewerage treatment plant, you make it more difficult to achieve epa standards coming out out of the plant. thus the plant needs to “upgrade” to meet the “new” standards.
not yet but on the way off the mountain here to wilkesboro you pass some very deliverancey looking stuff
“here’s a reason. if you reduce the volume of water going to the sewerage treatment plant, you make it more difficult to achieve epa standards coming out out of the plant. thus the plant needs to “upgrade” to meet the “new” standards.”
And the pipes are more likely to clog up in the whole system too. Then you can have the old metal pipes replaced with PCV.
True. It’s been a death by a thousand cuts.
If we all voted for only the candidate sharing 100% of our
valuesprinciples, few would vote, and we would be in a different mess. Or maybe the same, who knows?I suspect even you didn’t vote for a guy that held all the same principles as you, but instead voted for the generic “other guy” as a statement of your principles. Which is all well and good, but is essentially spitting into the wind.
See, I think people have been voting their principles, and it has indeed brought us to the point of no longer being one (united)country. What you seem to be missing is, principles, like values, are subjective. The principles of classical liberalism have been educated right out of we the people, but I didn’t vote for Romney by giving up my principles. In the real world, no, Romney wasn’t my 1st choice, or even my 6th choice, but he was far and away better than the (only) other choice.
Tell me I’m the problem all you want, but all of life is a never ending parade of evil choices. Is why we don’t call here “heaven”.
I’ve voted for every Republican presidential candidate since Reagan, and don’t regret one of’em. And my principles are as sound (although not identical) as yours.
newrouter at 6:11 pm;
That’s some pretty devious shit. I like it.
Then you can have the old metal pipes replaced with PCV.
most of proggtard stuff is “make work” useful or no. proggtards are the “broken windows” theory writ large.
Yep. Dig a hole, fill it in and pay with printed money so bread costs a wheelbarrow worth of paper. And STILL those chubby wretches bitch. A real shame that they had to be born with tongues. Oh well. EBT (Lonestar in Texas) and debit cards will make all that scrip much easier to haul around. Just ignore the zeroes and everything is jake if you don’t mind the lines and know where to trade your haul.
Sigh.
That’s some pretty devious shit.
that’s how bureaucracies work. take air pollution the 7 or 8 pollutants epa was tasked with in 1970? are down 90%. always finding new fields of battle for the funding. that is why at the state level i think these stupidities could be battled successfully.
The reaction to when the welfare checks bounce and the EBT/Lonestar cards don’t work is gonna be something to behold.
” there is no reason for a 1.6 gallon standard toilet tank standard.”
I bet we did it merely because somebody in Canada said it was a good idea. That seems to be about all it takes.
“The reaction to when the welfare checks bounce and the EBT/Lonestar cards don’t work is gonna be something to behold.”
It’ll look like california.
Newrouter, you’re the best. You come up with a new field to do battle on that most people- well, me at least- would have never considered.
Palaeomerus, now you’re scaring the hell out of me.
Well, I think I’ll head into town, see what I can see, and upset the locals.
Good night all.
You come up with a new field to do battle
it is not a new field of battle it is that our options are few. this junk is easy to sell to the low info voter. low flo junk and gasoline blends are easy to show that they are stupid. my $0.02.
Well, if you want to see a whole state jumping into the maw of the abyss with such force that the poor abyss is choking and trying to get away, California is putting on a heck of a show. You’d think they didn’t understand the numbers!
mc4ever59, opinions are divided as to which will be experienced, exponential inflation or deflationary collapse.
The Fed is trying to create inflation, but it is hard to create inflation when people cannot afford anything.
California and Obama AND Boehner all wanna tax the shit out of the same people
Wait, what? That’s what they call it? Having your hungry mouth clamped firmly on the teat of your fellow man is called Lonestar?
I may have to rethink my Texas intentions.
Oh, fer fuck’s sake.
Freedom is slavery.
Up is down.
Dependence is independence.
Benny Hill is a hot chick in a bikini.
Pablo, did you see the link about using the EBT card when out of State?
Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think that if you can afford to go out of State while on public assistance, either public assistance needs to be curtailed or, you didn’t need the assistance in the first place.
the toilets can be put on the shelf. with 30 loser rethug govs we should be able to standardize gas blends in 30 states.
Dreamer by Roger Hodgson
I tend to think we’d do better in these discussions if we considered one another as coalition partners rather than as moving in lockstep, inductive fashion from first principles. Even where there is agreement there most often isn’t agreement in terms of a hierarchy of goals.
We could form a strong coalition but we’ll never be singing off the same page.
From my perspective, that’s a plus. We’re not collectivists by temperament. This will always result in our having a harder time organizing ourselves into politically influential groups.
Choose the most odious regulations for starters and just say no. If the reddest states don’t have the courage to even do that, we all deserve to be slaves.
“Having your hungry mouth clamped firmly on the teat of your fellow man is called Lonestar?”
Oh Pablo, it’s better than that…it’s “Your Lonestar Card” !
You can find out ALL about them when you pay at a grocery store with cash or debit! The touch screen scanner/digital signature capture thing tells how much of what you purchased can be “bought” on your Lonestar card and how much you owe. Why you have a pin code and everything! Just like a debit card!
Read all about it! It happened under Tx Governor Ann Richards (democrat) in 1995. It is one of the largest EBT programs in the country sometimes surpassed by New York’s and sometimes not.
http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/providers/lonestar/EBT/EBTprogramDATA.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5767763_apply-lone-star-card.html
Choose the most odious regulations for starters and just say no. If the reddest states don’t have the courage to even do that, we all deserve to be slaves.
go for gas standards 1st. the rethugs don’t attack this then 3rd party time.
link
“Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think that if you can afford to go out of State while on public assistance,”
Maybe some people live really near and cross a border to go to work but still need the help? Kansas City maybe? Shit, I dunno.
See, you guys come up with plans.
Map and canteen in the desert MY SPARKLING ASS.
why the eff is a tiny section of freakin’ montana have “special” blends?
why the eff is a tiny section of freakin’ montana have “special” blends?
That’s where all the Californians are moving.
“why the eff is a tiny section of freakin’ montana have “special” blends?”
Some kind of pilot program to do metrics to support or undermine Federal pressure to switch the whole state? Some local county decided to do it and the rest of the state didn’t?
This mentions 10% E being in some regions of Montana but not many as of yet. Is the region called Missoula County?
“Statewide, Montana consumed 493.6 million gallons of gasoline last year, with roughly 43 percent, or 214.5 million gallons, blended with ethanol. Those numbers from the Montana Department of Transportation indicate that Missoula County accounted for 137 million blended gallons, or just less than 28 percent of the state total. The remaining ethanol was blended in Billings. Only Billings and Missoula have the equipment to blend ethanol and gas.
Ethanol’s road to Montana pumps has been bumpy despite support from advocates like Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who in 2005 said he intended for Montana to be a leader in renewable fuels, with ethanol playing a role. At the time, the state was rolling out a fleet of flexible-fuel vehicles capable of burning an ethanol blend of up to 85 percent. That effort stalled for a lack of steady fuel supply. ”
Maybe that’s it. I’m not sure.
Oops. I deleted the link! Sorry.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/ethanol-sputters-in-montana-but-feds-favor-more/article_4203e21e-0a9e-5409-8846-640e1c34815a.html
Ethanol’s road to Montana pumps has been bumpy despite support from advocates like Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who in 2005 said he intended for Montana to be a leader in renewable fuels,
assholes from sea to sea
Having your hungry mouth clamped firmly on the teat of your fellow man is called Lonestar?
Pablo, remember in California it’s called CalFresh … like a crate of yummy produce from the farmer’s market …
Now, does anyone know how much a French-door stainless steel refrigerator COSTS?
ARGH
Excellent thread folks.
A minor point on the low flo toilets. Mandating that all houses built after a certain date allows the sewage treatment plant of that particular water shed to magically double the number of available sewer permits before reaching capacity and also buys them time before going before the voters to have them approve a bond so that the plant can be updated.
This makes developers and their subcontractors very happy. And this makes city managers happy because each new house means another bit of revenue producing real estate.
Maybe we should put the GOP on mock trial with charges and everything and see who we can get to sign on. It might make for a fun thing to do. Make some charges see if anyone else wants to add to it. Document the charges. Give the GOP and their apologist blogs a chance to respond and then get a panel of people representing each “wing” of the party to people to vote on whether the GOP is guilty or innocent of willfully endangering and contributing to the failure of their stated mission and wasting the faith, money, time, and efforts of their supporters. Primary EVERYONE all the time. Fuck em’ all. It’s time they sweated. Make it clear that some choices are severable meaning they will result in a loud “screw you I’m out of here ” event. Give your money only to actual candidates and starve the actual GOP resource distribution mechanisms. Turn hostile. Ask Gary Johnson if he’d like to run for something other than president as a Republican again or as a Tea Party candidate. Bring up the fair tax again. Because Obama is going to try for a VAT on top of what we have now. Constantly ask for actual lowered spending not a cut in the size of planned spending increases. Record the number of “no we can’t” answers from candidates and throw them in their faces with rough questions in public. Do the same for pundits who try to poopoo it.
147 comments, wow!
Thought I’d check back to see how the discussion proceeded.
I haven’t read all 147 comments, so pardon if I repeat something someone else has already said.
Still, after reading a few comments after my last, I guess I’ll add two things:
1. As mc4ever59 said to Paleoramus at 11:21 am, I want to reiterate that my view of our situation and future options is NOT one of “Oh noes, all is lost.” “We have no hope.” or “we may as well pack up our shit and move to Fiji.”
It ain’t particularly rosy, either. But, in “Our American Situation”, if there’s one thing I find extraordinarily dangerous (life threatening, actually), it’s false hope. Looking at our situation through rose-tinted glasses.
I’m not accusing anyone here of fostering false hope — though I could easily accuse some conservative pundits, bloggers, & radio hosts of it. I just do not see a political fix within our system. I do not see how the system can be fixed while working within that broken system.
Seeking a “solution” that centers on electing more & more conservatives to positions in a broken governmental system violates the Rule of Holes.
I’m reminded of the Professor in “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” who doesn’t objects to long odds; but wants some reasonable chance of success. With some alternatives, I see one-in-one hundred to one-in-one thousand odds of having some portion of Americans live in the kind of Liberty that America’s Founders intended. With a political solution, I see one-in-one million to one-in-one billion odds. Is it possible, in an absolute sense? Sure; but I’m not placing any bets there.
Which brings me to my second point.
2. I wanted to set forth the proposition that working on the system from within the system was folly — without having to present viable alternatives.
That is, I didn’t imagine that the existence of viable alternatives was a requisite for believing that the system is irrevocably broken.
I knew it would come up; but, I figured it was a topic for another day once, and if, people accepted the premise that alternatives were necessary — as I believe they are.
But, since it has come up, I have one word … secession.
Not these recent whitehouse.gov petitions, they’re just an expression of frustration — not serious plans or proposals.
As a first step, I see consolidation and concentration of “like-minded people” in specific physical and geographic locations. I.e., move to Texas. (tho, I should point out that there ARE other “red” States than Texas, and I have no desire to live in Texas. Personally, Tennessee or Kentucky sound nice, though I’m still in PA)
Next step, control ALL political/governmental elected AND appointed positions at every level from State Congresses to local school boards to town dog catcher.
Next step, figure a way to convert or drive out remaining Leftists through policies, laws, taxes, or (and here’s a kicker for you) flat out harrassment, assault and vandalism (for the squeamish, please remember the STAKES here).
Next step (actually ongoing from this moment forward), the development of a NEW Constitution — based on the principles underlying the original U.S. Constitution — or, better yet, several competing versions of a new Constitution. With the same fundamental principles, but with additional safeguards for our Liberty. Remember, the Framers were not gods, and the Constutution is not Holy Writ as brilliant and revolutionary as it was. Imagine the Framers of the Constitution having not only the luxury of time to further perfect their creation; but also an additional 200+ years of “future history” under their belts to see what works, what doesn’t, and what potential problems might arise from the Constitution as compiled, and as worded. (At this point I would recommend reading the ANTI-Federalist Papers, if you haven’t already …. don’t worry it’s a much easier read than the prolix and archaicly-worded Federalist Papers … remember that Madison, Jay, and Hamilton were all lawyers!)
As a next step, I would recommend splitting our would-be new nation into two or three separate, distinct, and UN-federated nations. Conservatives are not a monolithic group all with exactly the same opinions and goals. There are Libertarians, and there are “fiscal conservatives” and there are people who are simply against our current regime without really being for much of anything based on any sound principles. I frankly don’t want that last group in “my” “New America” anymore than I want Hollywood liberals.
Last step, draft a new Declaration of Independence and secede. There will undoubtedly be war afterward, but that is not on us (morally speaking). If, on the other hand, I were to advocate for the forcible overthrow of the U.S. government and the takeover and control of ALL the States and territory; then the moral responsibility for war would be on me … as would the taint of Treason — but, they’ll call secession “treason” too; just as our Founding Fathers knew King George would call their secession. The American Revolution, after all, is a revolution of the type of the “Industrial Revolution” or the “Agricultural Revolution”. It was a “revolutionary” new political ideology and way of organizing government. It was not a “pure” revolution, as they did not overthrow the British government nor oust the English King ……….. what they DID do was — they SECEDED.
If someone wants more discussion or detail than that, they’ll have to wait to argue it another day.
If anyone wants tactical details and elements and times and GPS coordinates, I can’t — and wouldn’t — give them. I’m proposing only one potential and very general rough rough draft of a preliminary overall strategy. More specific strategies and tactics, I think, are a little premature. I’d actually like to hear other alternatives than my secession alternative, provided they have some reasonable (albeit small) chance of achieving the goals I spoke about above.
Whew!
i’m wordy s.o.b., ain’t I?
Mandating that all houses built after a certain date allows the sewage treatment plant of that particular water shed to magically double the number of available sewer permits before reaching capacity and also buys them time before going before the voters to have them approve a bond so that the plant can be updated.
california regs nationwide
eff california and it’s stupid mandates
Wacky ideas I know and kind of lame and “lets put up posters in the foyer of the assistant dean’s office” but I’m lame like that. Feel free to one up me or three up me or whatever. (But not in a sexual way. I have a headache tonight. Good thing I have Obamacare! Which way to the death panel, um I mean the supervisory quality care maintenance team?)
i’m wordy s.o.b., ain’t I?
nah rEVOLutin thanks dr paul. go get IT
Yuri
Do you understand that in many ways the Left started following your strategy 60 years ago?
Look at the county by county election maps and that the Left dominated areas are all exclusively urban and mostly coastal.
Media centers, financial centers, government centers …. all with their pet/dependent urban populations.
The 3/5ths compromise was done as the first step to end slavery by blocking slave-states for using completely their slaves to pad their political power.
Now urban slaves are full voters on the Leftist plantation.
Bill Whittle (the unclean) updates the “The Gods of the Copy Book Headings”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx9–zQDfog&feature=player_embedded
One last, hopefully short, thing.
I know there are folks here who think that secession is a bad idea, or that it won’t work, or, at least, that its chances of success are too small to be worth doing.
I think it’s an o.k. idea … provided that it works. I think only that it might work, not that it will work. As for it having a very, very small likelihood of success — no argument here. It’s a long shot, … perhaps the longest of shots.
And if, given all that, you ask if that’s the only alternative I can think of. Is that all I’ve got?
Yeah. That’s all I got.
Between what I perceive as “will not work”, and “snowball’s chance in Hell of working”. The snowball is literally all I have to offer. It is, in my opinion, our best shot.
Snowball in Hell = Best case scenario. That’s where I am.
oh look proggtard fools
Steely Dan – Kings
Snowball in Hell = Best case scenario. That’s where I am.
thanks for that. i say epa stuff it in my state. your troll may vary.
Darleen,
Yes. But I think there are differences.
However, as it is now past my bedtime (I never took that nap), the only one I have right now is that they wanted the whole thing, the entire country. My “scheme”, such as it is, can only work at all if there is physical, geographic concentration of conservatives into a few (maybe 10 to 15) States.
There’s also the difference that if my “concentrate then overwhelm then secede” strategy takes as long as it took the Left, it can’t work.
I have no good solution for the urban problem. The concentration of liberals in large population centers. It’s a huge, gaping hole in my strategy.
The really smart thing the left did was get control of the newsmedia and higher education first. Can we do the same without first somehow nonviolently purging journalism and the professoriate of Leftist ideologues? Maybe. We still have some of the internet, and education actually matters less because of the aforementioned time constraints. Still, not changing media & education will make the job harder and decrease the odds of success.
PLUS! As an added bonus, the left was actually working with the flow of some less-desirable and selfish characteristics of human nature. My plan requires moving against that flow and fighting uphill.
You in?
Secession could be disastrous for this country as a whole as far as defending ourselves from foreign interests. You cannot make a serious change without causing other problems.
You would need to get at least one State to agree to secede. I figure that is fairly unlikely right now, and I’m not sure we have the time to get like-minded people into local office to make it happen before it all goes to hell.
Still, it will taken something at that level of seriousness to even have a chance of reducing the power of the Federal government, and if I had enough warning, I would go to the State that’s serious about it to add my voice to theirs.
For myself, I hope that people don’t worry overly much about speaking their peace at whatever length.
Hold forth. This is what healthy people do.
Steely Dan “Kings”
Lyrics:
Now they lay his body down
Sad old men who run this town
I still recall the way
He led the charge and saved the day
Blue blood and rain
I can hear the bugle playin’
CHORUS:
We seen the last of Good King Richard
Ring out the past his name lives on
Roll out the bones and raise up your pitcher
Raise up your glass to Good King John
While he plundered far and wide
All his starving children cried
And though we sung his fame
We all went hungry just the same
He meant to shine
To the end of the line
CHORUS
Yuri,
With the coming collapse, the major urban centers will become “Escape From New York.” They’ll go from a “gaping hole in your strategy” to just a gaping hole.
pal
Oh my god, that was great. I remember that poem from high school (back when we read lots of Kipling … I don’t know if teachers would allow such subversive literature in their classrooms anymore)
http://freestateproject.org/
“I don’t know if teachers would allow such subversive literature in their classrooms anymore.”
I’m sure they’d gleefully let kids read chapters from Phillip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ instead though.
IIRC it was a California idea. People where I live would drive into Canada and buy the regular 3.5 gallon flush toilets which were legally sold there.
I’m wondering if one should speak their piece or speak their peace.
“IIRC it was a California idea. People where I live would drive into Canada and buy the regular 3.5 gallon flush toilets which were legally sold there.”
Ah so the hypothetical ‘someone in Canada’ clearly had a motive…
“I’m wondering if one should speak their piece or speak their peace.”
I spoke my peas once. It was very rude. I always get crummy tables at that restaurant now.
I love the little Ann Coulter ad at the bottom of the page from Ad Choices.
ANN COULTER- FREE!
You – Um…not so much. Not any more. STBY.TTFN.
We shouldn’t make fun of Ann Coulter.
Do we make fun of those fish that attach to larger New Jersey governors? Of course not.
“piece or speak their peace.”
I think you ‘speak your piece’.
Alternatively, if you don’t ‘speak now’ prior to the completion of certain ceremonies, you may be obligated by a verbal contract, without expectation of any consideration. to’ forever hold your peace’ (unless you are lawfully subpoenaed at a later date).
If you ‘hold your piece’ at the ceremony it may be considered inappropriate. but not as inappropriate as if you ‘hold someone else’s piece’, especially without asking for their permission first.
So, try da crispy duck n’ rice. They don’t call it the special for nuttin’. I’ll be here ’till Thursday. You’ve been great folks and I wanna go home on high note, but the union says I godda let dis band do one last song or they’ll put the word out that there’s no work fer me in this town. I kid. I kid. Not in da face. I kid.
Heh.
Yeah, “piece” makes more sense in my earlier sentence, doesn’t it? This is literally the first time I’ve wondered about that.
On the plus side, I really do mean “literally” above so I have that going for me.
When things do go sideways then you will/should let your piece speak for you.
Double heh.
Blessed are the peas makers, for they shall be called hoers.
I took a painting class in 1998 and I painted a spiral of peas. The teacher asked if those were peas and I said they were. And she asked me if I regularly did paintings of produce and objects and such arranged into organic or regular radially symmetrical geometry as a sort of theme or was I just fascinated with roundness and curves and the colors and such and chose to play with my subject matter that way. Was I think of galaxies perhaps or a vortex of water or air? Were these peas caught in a symbolic tornado seen from the top? Was the direction of the spiral important? Did it have to with Mendel? Because he did genetic work with peas and DNA has a certain chirality…
So I sprung the trap and said “I saw this bumper sticker last Tuesday and it advised me to to ‘visualize whirled peas’. ”
“Oh. ” She said. ” It’s for the poster crowd.”
And the other paintings suddenly became FAR more interesting. :)
That’s modern “art” for you.
The really smart thing the left did was get control of the newsmedia and higher education first. Can we do the same without first somehow nonviolently purging journalism and the professoriate of Leftist ideologues? Maybe. We still have some of the internet, and education actually matters less because of the aforementioned time constraints. Still, not changing media & education will make the job harder and decrease the odds of success.
For what it’s worth, in his post-election “so now what?” Stratosphere Lounge, Whittle talked about exactly this sort of thing.
The solution is not to do what the Left did and infiltrate the MSM or academia. That’s exactly what they’d expect us to do, and they’re on guard against it. Anyone who tries will be caught and punished severely for Unapproved Speech.
The trick is to build a parallel system that bypasses theirs, and does it so much better that the old system eventually falls into well-deserved oblivion. This is already well on the way to happening in the MSM.
Does anybody still read the dead-tree NYT or WaPo? Obviously some do, but less today than yesterday, and even fewer tomorrow. The conclusion is foregone, and I don’t believe either will make the switch to ‘net-only successfully, as vibrant, growing concerns. Largely irrelevant echoes of their past glory seems more likely.
As Mr. “of Spades” is fond of pointing out, when the MSM embargoes a “right wing” story (like Fast and Furious) because it doesn’t fit the narrative their readers expect, they’re doing a disservice to their own customers; they’re not giving them the news that all the ‘cool people’ (Left and Right) are fighting about on-line.
I’m convinced that HuffPo and Politico are much more a “daily read” for the movers and shakers of the Left than the old MSM sites. They’re just a lot better at the whole news aggregation and dispersal ‘thing’ than the old MSM.
Point being: the news-junkies like us (on both sides) are getting their news on the internet, not in print or on tv. And they’re getting the news from new voices, not on-line versions of the same old. And this is a arena where we compete far more evenly, unlike the old Left-dominated MSM. We’ll never change the old MSM directly, and there’s no reason to try. (I imagine in their dying stages, the MSM will rediscover the ‘other 50%’ of the country, and make some lurches in that direction to try to remain afloat. See the last months of Newsweek. Too little, too late.)
—-
Same deal in education. Whittle suggested that ‘fixing’ the LA School System is impossible (unions, etc.) and a far more efficient solution would be to bypass it completely. Plenty of people are doing home-schooling these days, but that’s a lot of work, and wildly inefficient. He proposed something like an “online university”, but for K-12, wherein for $10/mo (or whatever) even a few thousand people would generate enough income to put together some really top-notch educational material. And since distribution is effectively free, when more people sign up, that extra money can go straight into improving the product. Expenses don’t increase the way they would in real life.
The crucial bit there is the low cost. “They” are never going to let the people have School Choice, so anyone who wants a better education for their kids is going to be paying for that on top of the damned-expensive ‘free’ public education they’re already buying. That rules out (traditional) private school for most; too expensive.
But a better education than the public schools can offer, or than most home-schooling parents can manage, for next to no money? That’s something that could work.
Work around the existing systems, produce a better, cheaper product, and people will be lining up for it. At least until our Imperial Government bans it.