Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Standing Wolf (With Cat & Cigarettes)

I don't know how else to do this. This is a comment. Yes, a "comment" at American Thinker. I swear to God, it just shows you the caliber of the writers and readers at that amazing website.

Standing+Wolf is the author's name and here's what he said:

(This is the quote he's responding to):
Now, hatred is the answer. Centralized authoritarian totalitarian government is the answer now. It used to be peace, love, and happiness. It used to be personal freedom and self-expression. Now, it is domination and control of the human race--starting with Americans.

Aw, heck, flamewarrior7! You weren't supposed to notice the extremely subtle, highly nuanced shift in emphasis.

In full seriousness: whatever self-proclaimed "liberals" or "progressives" may so-called "think" amounts to nothing more substantial than the great deeds and fascinating conversations of little girls' tea parties with dolls and stuffed animals and real cookies and water in the cute cute cute little tea pot. What goes on between leftist extremists' ears isn't just silly empty nonsense, but silly empty nonsense children entertain themselves with hours on end.

There's a catch, of course: many leftist extremist fantasies have effects and costs and consequences in the real world. I'll offer you two quick and easy example, then "move on," as the enlightened and evolved are fond of saying, toward my hunch, which will include summoning the ghost of George Wallace.

1.) Leftist extremist "green" energy fantasy so-called "investments" have resulted in the transfer—no one wants to use the word "theft"—of billions of dollars from us tax payers to swindlers with the right political connections. Lots of us call this "crony capitalism." Cronyism and theft of public funds are actually anti-capitalist, but they're often conducted by free market haters in the name of capitalism. In purely intellectual terms, it's all very elaborate and convoluted; in purely practical terms, the very few have ended up many billions of dollars richer at the expense of the vast majority.

2.) President You Didn't Build That's lovely wife has lately attended a funeral in Chicago for a teen-aged girl who was killed by so-called "gun violence" in that city. I haven't followed the story closely—unless I mean "narrative," the new term—but assume she tut-tutted and shook her head and called for action and scowled and wagged her finger for all she's worth, (rather a lot, I've heard, but far be it from me to dwell on innuendo.)

The big national leftist extremist fantasies were Franklin Roosevelt's "new deal" and "social security" and Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" and now YDBT's campaign "to protect our children from gun violence." The particulars of the fantasy undergo any number of transformations from generation to generation; its effect in the plain old real world, however, remain unvarying as the fact of snow and ice in winter by Lake Michigan: poverty and violent crime and early death for millions of people at the bottom of the Chicago social pyramid. The so-called "gun violence" was actually murder. It was committed by gangsters whose criminal enterprises have been inextricably allied with the Democratic [sic] party for generations. Crime pays in Chicago, and if a teen-aged girl or two or dozens per year end up dead, at least Mrs. YDBT gets an opportunity to snivel and shriek for so-called "gun control" out of the deal.

New so-called "gun control" laws to "combat" or "halt" or "stand up to" so-called "gun violence" will necessarily result in many more teen-aged girls' murders, because the root cause of violent crime is criminals, not guns, and especially not guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

In sum, without the absolute, radical disconnection between fantasy and its effects in reality, there would be no leftism. "Progressivism" doesn't merely depend on that disconnection, but is the very embodiment of it. Leftism elevates the disconnection between fantasy and reality to a high, guiding political principle. That's awfully strange, but here's what's even stranger: the public triumph of fantasy over reality is one of leftism's greatest historical accomplishments

"All right. Maybe so, Standing Wolf," you may well object, "but I don't see how you're going to get from that observation to George Wallace. Are you sure you're not smoking weirder stuff than Winstons this morning?"

I'm not, in fact, and if you doubt me, just ask Frisky the wonder tigress, who's keeping my lap from standing empty.

George Wallace, for the benefit of those too young to have discovered the numerous and varied pleasures of arthritis, was the feisty, cocky, populist governor of Alabama and a representative of the Democratic [sic] party.

My family used to eat dinner together every evening, and usually watched the news, which lasted half an hour. It was broadcast not in color, but "living color," though our television received it in black and white.

I was in my early teens when George Wallace took his stand in the doorway of a school, and thrust out his chin while announcing, "Segregation today!

Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" My father took a dim view of Wallace. My mother figured he was "some kind of a nut," and that was that. I was old enough to understand what racial segregation was, though too young to make full sense of it. I was outraged. I was incredulous. I didn't understand how anyone could use the power of law to enforce racial segregation. In retrospect, it's clear I was both young and naught short of outraged, or even OUTRAGED! and so missed a great deal of all that was actually going on. I didn't—couldn't yet—see racial segregation was a great moral wrong, and America was taking long, strong strides toward undoing it.

George Wallace, if you'll indulge me in another few moments' digression, was shot and nearly died while running for president as an independent some years later, and much later publicly recanted much of the old-fashioned racially divisive stuff he'd stood for. He was as unscrupulous and dirty and vicious a Democratic [sic] party operator as ever made a name for himself at any- and everyone's expense, but did the best he could, and went at least some part of the distance away from that great moral wrong. If he followed when he could have led, he at least covered some distance.

Let me ask you, please, friends, how long it's been since last you heard anyone speak up in favor of segregation. I don't mean the racial separation preached by this "reverend" or that "minister" or some other racial grievance entrepreneur: they advocate individual preferences, not wielding the power of law to enforce racial separatism. If this race or that ethnic bunch or some other religious group chooses to band together apart from everybody else, that's perfectly legitimate, and so is my choice to look askance at it. I may disagree with one choice or another, but there's all the difference in the world between making free choices and government enforcement of racial separation laws.

No one, I say, still advocates segregation. Oh, I grant it's possible somebody still does, (this is the point at which I normally relieve myself of a snide remark or two about the Ku Klux Klan and FBI informants,) but I'll bet a nickel of my own money you haven't heard anyone defend segregation in years.

Curiously, I'd guess if someone could come up with a way to measure these things, America would turn out to be about as racially divided today as we were in the early and middle 1960s, but we don't still have legally separate and unequal lunch counters or drinking fountains or parts of buses or motels or restaurants. We do have legally enforced so-called "affirmative action" and a national attorney general who makes no secret of his racial preferences in law enforcement, and any number of other lingering moral wrongs, but I say we, the American people have crossed that mountain range.

No one still defends racial segregation. No one still insists it ought to be up to the states rather than the national government to decide whether they'd prefer to accept or outlaw slavery.

You had faith all along I'd eventually arrive at a point, and here it is: the day is coming when the ideology that masquerades as "liberalism" and "progressivism" will be no less thoroughly spurned than George Wallace's segregation.

"Aw, now, wait a [fill in the blank] minute, Standing Wolf!" you may well object. "That's not just a stretch, but ten stretches! Let's see those cigarettes."

Plain garden variety Winstons in the gold rather than red packs. They used to be called "lights," but the feral government is protecting us from "light" cigarettes now. Heck, some self-appointed genius in the Oregon legislature is even proposing smokers be required to get doctors' prescriptions before being allowed to smoke. How's that for so-called "progressive" progress, eh? The new Prohibition is just like the old Prohibition, except you can tip-toe around it if you can find a doctor to write a prescription.

Never minding overt insanity, I mean this in full seriousness, American Thinkers: leftism in all its numerous guises—Marxism and communism and socialism and fascism and national socialism and "liberalism" and "progressivism" in the U.S.—is as great and monstrous a moral wrong as segregation ever was, and America is going to take long, strong strides toward undoing it.

It won't happen quickly or easily or painlessly, but it will happen. I don't know what it's going to take to make the looter class realize who really suckered it into state serfdom and why and what to do about it, but I believe that realization is inevitable. The leftist extremists who've eviscerated our constitutional republic in all but name and replaced it with their private oligarchy are pushing "forward" to disaster. "Progressives" have helped themselves to the national government and the unquestioning loyalty of millions of people who've gladly swapped their citizenship for "free" so-called "entitlements," and now, they're simultaneously trying to subvert many of the rest and declare war on all us patriots who "bitterly cling" to the old constitutional way, the old American way.

How successful was George Wallace in turning back the tide of desegregation? That's exactly how successful the "progressives" are going to be at so-called "fundamentally transforming" us, the American people. They're not just "on the wrong side of history," as they're fond of sneering, but on the same side with German national socialism and Soviet communism.

They can have the government. The national government is not the country, and it's not the American people, either. It's a government. Europeans probably wouldn't get that distinction, but that's their problem. No communist or socialist or fascist in the world would stand for it, but so what? We can restore our government with a vote—and it'll be an honest, open vote, too, not the all but openly fraudulent election that returned YDBT to the White House this past November.

The "progressives" are failing. I don't mean they're going to fail: I mean they already are failing. Did YDBT seem a little cocky and full of himself and feisty on television last evening? So was George Wallace in his day.

I can't predict the particulars—the national debt or the devalued dollar or the patently ludicrous budgetary high jinks or an Iranian nuclear weapon or one step too far in so-called "immigration reform" or the fiasco in Afghanistan or a different one step too far in the endless hate-fueled quest for "gun control" or this state's or that state's bankruptcy or some new financial industry disruption—but am very sure the whole house of cards is too unstable to remain standing. The sum total of leftist extremist "accomplishments" is first and last a monumental moral outrage, and like segregation, it's necessarily coming down.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand?"

I won't argue against that, but must tell you it's even simpler: lies are useless foundation stones.

Leftism is a lie. The feral government can proclaim some people are "entitled" to the fruits of other people's labor, but that doesn't make it so, and everything based on that lie is fraught with dishonesty. The feral government can proclaim infringement isn't infringement, and doubtless even scare up enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp its own proclamation, but that doesn't make it so, and everything based on that lie is compounded infringement. The feral government can declare its independence of us, the people and "create or save" imaginary jobs by issuing fraudulent numbers and inflating the dollar to its malicious heart's content, but that doesn't have anything to do with reality, and everything basked on fake employment and fake dollars is in deep, dark, ugly trouble. The feral government can proclaim any stupid, insane, ludicrous thing it pleases, but it's all lies, and like the Soviet Union, or Jim Crow, or the vaunted "thousand-year Reich, it's inherently unstable.

"Aw, c'mon, Standing Wolf," you may well object. "What's all that high-flying rhetoric got to do with the stock market? It's way up these days, in case you were too busy thumbing through your thesaurus to notice."

No thesaurus. Many dictionaries, but no thesaurus. The stock market is up because the dollar is worth less and less, and program-driven large investors are holding it up about the same way cartoon characters speeding off cliffs remain airborne until they look down.

The pomp and ceremony of YDBT's speech last evening look convincing until you pause to wonder what's ending up in charge of the Department of Defense and realize nobody is. The general seriousness looks convincing until you stop to wonder who's paying for all the new "investment" in fantasy economics, how people are supposed to pay for the so-called "Affordable Health Care Act," what to make of unsubtle hints about the internet's susceptibility to unspecified "foreign attacks." I'm sure Mrs. YDBT's snotty remarks about "gun violence" sounded perfectly plausible to lots of denizens of Chicago and Denver and New York and Los Angeles, but how many makers in Wyoming and Alabama and Virginia and Idaho decided to cash out and go Galt during the past week? Is YDBT off to Israel to shake hands and try not to look too unpresidential? That's nice, but meanwhile, what's that scowly little fat guy with the ulta-stylish hair cut in North Korea up to, and how many Iranian nuclear physicists did he invite to the test party? What difference does that make?

There's no way to secure the border before the RINOs and the representatives of the Democratic [sic] party team up to grant amnesty to millions of new "undocumented voters" and hand out food stamps and Democratic [sic] party free lifetime membership cards, but so what? What difference does that make? Don't worry! Be happy!

I'm not an enthusiast for perfect storm thinking, or any other kind of "thinking" based on Hollywood productions, for that matter, but the number of airborne variables is high and rising, and nobody with more than about 75 IQ points in Washington, D.C. is paying attention. A Muslim for the CIA? A D college student for DOD? Executive orders to save the planet from the imminent menace of carbon dioxide? My junior high school biology teacher would have been dumbfounded.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity?"

Even if I'd ever found that notion persuasive, I'd have to reject it in the case of a president who's apparently going to tolerate the Keystone pipe line because he can't get away with simply prohibiting it, but intends to "balance" that political loss with this, that, or a dozen other new "environmental sustainability" fantasy regulations.

Oh, by the way, how's that investigation into the last EPA top gal's illegal E-mail fact hiding scheme coming along? How's that big Benghazi investigation coming along? How's that Fast & Furious investigation coming along? How's that "insurgent dissent thingy" in Afghanistan coming along? I doubt I need to wonder how Joey the Genius Biden's "gun control" campaign is coming along, because the Republicans in Congress are already compromising for all they're worth, but how about BATFE and DOJ and DEA and Sinaloa narcotics cartel joint operations? Other than talking points for the New York Times and Washington Post propagandists and television "news" sock puppets, how's anything coming along? As well as I can see, nobody knows and nobody cares.

The house of cards could fall down any moment, or else maybe not until next week, or maybe even not for another six months, but I think the timing matters less than the pair of facts about houses of cards no one seems to want to notice:

1.) Houses of cards always fall down.

2.) Nations fall down with more dire consequencs than metaphoric houses of cards.

The fantasy thinking of leftist extremism is well on its way toward causing a real world disaster.

In due time, we'll be searching and honest enough to look at the collapse and admit we, the people let it happen by trusting self-proclaimed "progressives." We'll face that fact the same way we looked at segregation in the 1950s and 1960s and shook our heads and changed our minds. We'll look at leftist extremism, and take long, strong strides away from it once and for all. We may be naive and too trusting, but we're not stupid, and we're not dishonest, either.

Unless it's already too late, it's time to secede.
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Please note, he refers to Ă˜bama as YDBT (You Didn't Build That) and to the Beast as Mrs. YDBT.

I love this guy. I want to marry him.

The Gunslinger

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