May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023Liked by Jeff Goldstein
Many words to tell a simple story: The social contract is breaking, or broken. At a growing number of levels, the State won't or can't protect you either from your fellow citizens or from the State itself. That was the fundamental quid pro quo of the social contract. It's gone, or going. No one in their right mind trusts government. We don't trust each other.
The "rule of law" that was supposed to set the United States of America apart from the disastrous, corrupt tyrannies of the past, has become an embarassing joke. It has been turned into a political weapon, to be used as and when needed to wield and solidify power.
John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” A poorly designed experiment, I'd say.
We are drowning in the laws that are supposed to protect us from tyranny and corruption. The problem is that laws aren't enough. All the laws you can imagine won't compensate for an uneducated, immoral and unvirtuous body politic.
Grant Gilmore once summed it up this way:
"Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."
I fear that President Trump can and likely will win the 2024 nomination and that he will clearly lose the general election. As long as there are silly moderate women who get their panties in a twist every time he says something mean (and admittedly, some of the things he says are wretched), and as long as mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are permitted in battleground states, we face another 4 years of Marxist rule over the US. I don't see us surviving that. At this point, I don't care to discuss the ways out of that disaster.
Hey MisterJeff. Yer right. Something has got to give. Human being were not created to live the way these cruel leftists plan. Maybe the masses are so dumbed down, drugged-out, smart-phoned and teevee'd there will be a century of misery before enough of us wise up. Or not. Strange things are happening all over.
FYI > > > As a much younger man Victor Davis Hanson wrote an important book of current events and old long-gone days entitled, "The Land Was Everything." https://www.amazon.com/Land-Was-Everything-Letters-American/dp/0684845016 If you haven't looked into it, it is worth more than a passing glance. A quote from his introduction:
"Consensual government can continue in the vastly transformed conditions of great wealth, urbanism, and rapidly changing technology never foreseen by its originators; but whether democracy can still instill virtue among its citizens will be answered by the age that is upon us, which for the first time in the history of civilization will at last see a democracy without farmers."
When I heard he picked Barr for AG I knew he was in over his head. How he accomplished so much is a mystery to me. What they did to him (and us) is something that demands a reckoning. If he doesn't win the presidency again they will have won. If they get away with it once, they can do it again....to DeSantis or anyone else willing to challenge them. It really isn't about Trump this time. It is about what they did to him for pointing out what they are.
My thoughts and feelings about Trump are not surprisingly, very much aligned with yours Jeff. And the question of whether he can win in the general is absolutely a real one. But whether he can win the nomination really needs to be properly framed, and its problem statement makes all other choices moot. Which is, can Trump as he is now, fulfill the historic mandate required at this existentially critical point? If so, he must be the candidate ... if not, someone else MUST also be prepared to be the avatar for this cause, and that is not a role that allows someone's ego in any sense, to take precedence. This... is my problem with Trump now. He has displayed more than crassness recently, but that narcissistic vein that has already been decoded by the ruthless and clever establishment power players.
I said repeatedly in early 2020 that it was clear that the so called establishment (a weak term for what is a historic fifth column in every sense of the word) were "ALL IN" when it came to the complete assumption and preservation of power through institutional control. They had to be, since losing that position would necessarily reveal just how obscenely and monstrously the once bulwark institutions had been utterly corrupted. As you said, literally inverted. There really was a "Long March" and it happened in parallel with a debasement of the zeitgeist and a cultural loss of faith. This phenomenon was partly organic within the nature of the times. (NB: I have felt for a long time that the seeming "perfect storm" of cultural and philosophical trends combined with enabling technology for a fundamental realignment of the predicates of the zeitgeist and its expansion in scope and scale to something that is becoming closer to a tipping point of being all-encompassing, is quite possibly a manifestation of The Great Filter at work.) But the rest, and particularly in terms of the US, which I also think inevitably had to become center stage in this crisis, was in great part imposed by the deliberate corruption of education first and foremost, and key cultural institutions that follow on. Elite education was transformed from merit based accreditation to ideological "vetting" for what really amounts to a class system, and one which is historically speaking, the worst case of this system that has ever emerged.
"Fundamental Transformation" was a necessarily ruthless enterprise, because once the tipping point had been breached wherein all the institutions of power projection were occupied by people of one mind, The People would inevitably be held in contempt and become the OBJECT of power. And again as you noted, this is an inversion of the fundamental structure and social compact of America as it can only exist. The mindset that came to co-opt the power structures is comprised of those whose material self interest was invested in their group affiliation, the nature of which was defined by allegiance to the "enlightened" few over the many rather the People... an existentially irreconcilable state. One does not need a conspiracy when one operates within enforceable consensus, even if (and particularly if actually) that consensus is falsely framed and all its actions justifiable under "pragmatism".
So... they HAD TO WIN control of the executive branch at that point. Trump's core team had finally weeded out most of the Janus faced and faux "conservatives" by late in the term, and there was little doubt he would be declaring war in the institutional leadership in his second term, revealing how fish do indeed rot from the top down, and how the Republic was indeed rotten at the top at a frightening scope and scale, all with a malevolence laden with the same authoritarian stench.
So... they did.
It's hard to say what would have happened had he won. The same Civil War talk we often hear cited though without clear form or predictions as to its nature, would almost certainly have taken shape in some way. And that is very much still on the menu as a requirement because things really are that far gone... and likely with each passing day wherein this depraved elite digs in, the chances of renewal fall, and the level of destruction necessary to purge the poison become higher. This is a clear and terrible truth in my opinion.
This was all necessary context to put Trump (and "Trumpism" as a phenomenon) in proper perspective. He really was an avatar of an organic reaction by the People, responding spontaneously to the dawning realization of the depredations being undertaken on the nation, and how this must lead to tyranny. The "unthinkable" evil after all, becomes virtually inevitable when it literally is not imagined to be possible, thus casting a shadow wherein the means of evil actually thrives. This reaction first manifested as the Tea Party, and the shape (the ACTUAL shape) of all the forces arrayed in the country in response to that movement, revealed themselves quite clearly then if you looked from outside the box. The word "establishment" emerged as something defined more substantively, and which encompassed all too much of the Republican side as well as virtually all of the Democrat. The reaction to the movement also revealed the truth of its necessity along with the affiliation of its enemies, who seemed to lash out from all quarters.
Keep in mind that all in all, the bad guys won then too, and the People lost... but the message that a fait accompli over a compliant and docile (and unrealizing) population, was not a forgone conclusion, even with almost complete control over all of the levers of power and cultural projection held by a shockingly narrow and easily aligned "class" of ersatz experts, was very much heard.
Trump... was I believe, in a very real way, the Tea Party's chosen champion. Or more succinctly, he was anointed by that which had underpinned the emergence of that movement in the first place. Call it the Spirit of America if you want to inject some romance, but that is also a fairly accurate descriptor.
Trump understood that what was at play then was a furball, and that what was needed was a street fighter. He was the fighter that the Spirit knew was absolutely required, and if you remember how the rest of the field was arrayed, you will remember how cookie cutter they really were, even those who had come to their positions in the Tea Party wave unfortunately. Deferential to a status quo that was utterly corrupted even then... EVEN THEN, when clearly (to anyone with eyes) the hour was late indeed.
I KNEW he was going to win from the moment he announced (and I have receipts) because he was set to be a catalyst for this massive reservoir of longing to fight back for what was right and good. What I feared, was that he mostly just a perceptive showman, and tapping into this with intent. That fear proved mostly unfounded. He may not have much in the way of intellectual affirmation of the Republic, but he knows very well who its enemies are, and that is good enough. He fights. And they made clear (foolishly) from early on that they saw HIM, as a dangerous enemy. Interestingly, I think in this way they helped to ensure in no small part, that he would be. They did not play to his vanity, but attacked him from all sides. His administration and the blatantly treasonous (a term not taken lightly at all) assaults on him, literally from bulwark "trust" institutions, all meant to impede his progress and capacity to array forces or even shine a light on the corruption of those institutions... is now part of a history whose implications are so pressurized as to be almost binary. The Republic is soon to be either transformed, or renewed. It cannot be saved without convulsive actions.
All this then... is part of these interesting times (which I'm sure are going to get a hell of a lot "interestinger" in the immediate future). And the question is, since they DID manage to prevent that second term, monstrous injustice though it may be, is Trump NOW... the one who will be able to take this process over the top, come what may?
It's with a hell of a lot of regret (almost resentment actually) that I have to say that Trump's moment may have passed, and that it IS a property of his character. I have kept hoping he would find it in him to set aside the mere vanity of his self image, and assume the mantle of the actual substance he has uniquely been afforded the historic opportunity to possess. But he does not. The way he has been engaging in one-upmanship by degradation (tedious and demeaning, and also something NOT NECESSARY for him to maintain primacy in the primary run) of his potential opponents, is telling me he doesn't get this. He isn't able to make this, bigger than him! That's vexing because he is SO well positioned to really roll into those who have maligned him and seek to destroy him. Yet he seems to think... that the reason they have done so, is because of him personally, rather than his role as avatar for something far far greater. In this he acts exactly the opposite of that amazing ad he did implying that it was the People that the concentration of power was after and he was just in the way. If he could internalize this, he would be ready for that role. But his narcissism I fear, prevents that insight. This then, because of the urgency of the cause, just about disqualifies him. I wish he had had his second term. The people around him were reaching high speed, and he was on a roll wherein he might have had enough momentum to actually start peeling back the mask of the elite, and start their fall (preventing the fall of the Republic in the process). But he didn't, and the situation is NOT the same now. The hour is not late... night is actually falling.
I feel I should add, In fairness to Trump, that his actual status has nothing to do with the relentlessly streamed falsehoods that our depraved elite establishment sought to impose on him (playing on his character to manipulate the facts), but about who he actually is in terms of what he would HAVE to stand for as "bigger than himself" if he is to fulfill the terrible mandate before him (which again, I am completely convinced, is necessary for the Republic even remotely having a chance to recover). Yes, the establishment "won" in 2020. Odiously, insidiously, and through means so terrible (I'll leave the implications there) that it's obvious the perverse status quo that has emerged in the last generation or so, is more important by far to those who "rule" now, than the integrity of the Republic most of them have taken an oath to stand for (and the rest, profited handsomely from). But that is the reality of the awful challenge we face, and the questions about meeting that challenge, must be about how we do it from where we are NOW.
If it must be someone else though, then who? At least I will say this with some spark of hope: the candidates that have been stepping forward seem to be just possibly "real", and to get that this is a fight for all the marbles to an extent that is unlike any election cycle in history. This is because winning means you must necessarily be entering the fray where it WILL be war. What kind is not set, but it will be war, and there will be casualties. The "Fundamental Transformation" is already well advanced and what it has unleashed cannot be undone. Its success in achieving its objectives (which really do mean the end of the Republic) can only be deflected by altering the course of events and its already critical mass of energy, in a different direction.
And that... will... be... a... war.
Whoever it will be then ... they better be a warrior.
Many words to tell a simple story: The social contract is breaking, or broken. At a growing number of levels, the State won't or can't protect you either from your fellow citizens or from the State itself. That was the fundamental quid pro quo of the social contract. It's gone, or going. No one in their right mind trusts government. We don't trust each other.
The "rule of law" that was supposed to set the United States of America apart from the disastrous, corrupt tyrannies of the past, has become an embarassing joke. It has been turned into a political weapon, to be used as and when needed to wield and solidify power.
John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” A poorly designed experiment, I'd say.
We are drowning in the laws that are supposed to protect us from tyranny and corruption. The problem is that laws aren't enough. All the laws you can imagine won't compensate for an uneducated, immoral and unvirtuous body politic.
Grant Gilmore once summed it up this way:
"Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."
Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law
I fear that President Trump can and likely will win the 2024 nomination and that he will clearly lose the general election. As long as there are silly moderate women who get their panties in a twist every time he says something mean (and admittedly, some of the things he says are wretched), and as long as mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are permitted in battleground states, we face another 4 years of Marxist rule over the US. I don't see us surviving that. At this point, I don't care to discuss the ways out of that disaster.
Hey MisterJeff. Yer right. Something has got to give. Human being were not created to live the way these cruel leftists plan. Maybe the masses are so dumbed down, drugged-out, smart-phoned and teevee'd there will be a century of misery before enough of us wise up. Or not. Strange things are happening all over.
FYI > > > As a much younger man Victor Davis Hanson wrote an important book of current events and old long-gone days entitled, "The Land Was Everything." https://www.amazon.com/Land-Was-Everything-Letters-American/dp/0684845016 If you haven't looked into it, it is worth more than a passing glance. A quote from his introduction:
"Consensual government can continue in the vastly transformed conditions of great wealth, urbanism, and rapidly changing technology never foreseen by its originators; but whether democracy can still instill virtue among its citizens will be answered by the age that is upon us, which for the first time in the history of civilization will at last see a democracy without farmers."
When I heard he picked Barr for AG I knew he was in over his head. How he accomplished so much is a mystery to me. What they did to him (and us) is something that demands a reckoning. If he doesn't win the presidency again they will have won. If they get away with it once, they can do it again....to DeSantis or anyone else willing to challenge them. It really isn't about Trump this time. It is about what they did to him for pointing out what they are.
Jeff Goldstein is NOT a dummy. Thanks for this incisive post.
My thoughts and feelings about Trump are not surprisingly, very much aligned with yours Jeff. And the question of whether he can win in the general is absolutely a real one. But whether he can win the nomination really needs to be properly framed, and its problem statement makes all other choices moot. Which is, can Trump as he is now, fulfill the historic mandate required at this existentially critical point? If so, he must be the candidate ... if not, someone else MUST also be prepared to be the avatar for this cause, and that is not a role that allows someone's ego in any sense, to take precedence. This... is my problem with Trump now. He has displayed more than crassness recently, but that narcissistic vein that has already been decoded by the ruthless and clever establishment power players.
I said repeatedly in early 2020 that it was clear that the so called establishment (a weak term for what is a historic fifth column in every sense of the word) were "ALL IN" when it came to the complete assumption and preservation of power through institutional control. They had to be, since losing that position would necessarily reveal just how obscenely and monstrously the once bulwark institutions had been utterly corrupted. As you said, literally inverted. There really was a "Long March" and it happened in parallel with a debasement of the zeitgeist and a cultural loss of faith. This phenomenon was partly organic within the nature of the times. (NB: I have felt for a long time that the seeming "perfect storm" of cultural and philosophical trends combined with enabling technology for a fundamental realignment of the predicates of the zeitgeist and its expansion in scope and scale to something that is becoming closer to a tipping point of being all-encompassing, is quite possibly a manifestation of The Great Filter at work.) But the rest, and particularly in terms of the US, which I also think inevitably had to become center stage in this crisis, was in great part imposed by the deliberate corruption of education first and foremost, and key cultural institutions that follow on. Elite education was transformed from merit based accreditation to ideological "vetting" for what really amounts to a class system, and one which is historically speaking, the worst case of this system that has ever emerged.
"Fundamental Transformation" was a necessarily ruthless enterprise, because once the tipping point had been breached wherein all the institutions of power projection were occupied by people of one mind, The People would inevitably be held in contempt and become the OBJECT of power. And again as you noted, this is an inversion of the fundamental structure and social compact of America as it can only exist. The mindset that came to co-opt the power structures is comprised of those whose material self interest was invested in their group affiliation, the nature of which was defined by allegiance to the "enlightened" few over the many rather the People... an existentially irreconcilable state. One does not need a conspiracy when one operates within enforceable consensus, even if (and particularly if actually) that consensus is falsely framed and all its actions justifiable under "pragmatism".
So... they HAD TO WIN control of the executive branch at that point. Trump's core team had finally weeded out most of the Janus faced and faux "conservatives" by late in the term, and there was little doubt he would be declaring war in the institutional leadership in his second term, revealing how fish do indeed rot from the top down, and how the Republic was indeed rotten at the top at a frightening scope and scale, all with a malevolence laden with the same authoritarian stench.
So... they did.
It's hard to say what would have happened had he won. The same Civil War talk we often hear cited though without clear form or predictions as to its nature, would almost certainly have taken shape in some way. And that is very much still on the menu as a requirement because things really are that far gone... and likely with each passing day wherein this depraved elite digs in, the chances of renewal fall, and the level of destruction necessary to purge the poison become higher. This is a clear and terrible truth in my opinion.
This was all necessary context to put Trump (and "Trumpism" as a phenomenon) in proper perspective. He really was an avatar of an organic reaction by the People, responding spontaneously to the dawning realization of the depredations being undertaken on the nation, and how this must lead to tyranny. The "unthinkable" evil after all, becomes virtually inevitable when it literally is not imagined to be possible, thus casting a shadow wherein the means of evil actually thrives. This reaction first manifested as the Tea Party, and the shape (the ACTUAL shape) of all the forces arrayed in the country in response to that movement, revealed themselves quite clearly then if you looked from outside the box. The word "establishment" emerged as something defined more substantively, and which encompassed all too much of the Republican side as well as virtually all of the Democrat. The reaction to the movement also revealed the truth of its necessity along with the affiliation of its enemies, who seemed to lash out from all quarters.
Keep in mind that all in all, the bad guys won then too, and the People lost... but the message that a fait accompli over a compliant and docile (and unrealizing) population, was not a forgone conclusion, even with almost complete control over all of the levers of power and cultural projection held by a shockingly narrow and easily aligned "class" of ersatz experts, was very much heard.
Trump... was I believe, in a very real way, the Tea Party's chosen champion. Or more succinctly, he was anointed by that which had underpinned the emergence of that movement in the first place. Call it the Spirit of America if you want to inject some romance, but that is also a fairly accurate descriptor.
Trump understood that what was at play then was a furball, and that what was needed was a street fighter. He was the fighter that the Spirit knew was absolutely required, and if you remember how the rest of the field was arrayed, you will remember how cookie cutter they really were, even those who had come to their positions in the Tea Party wave unfortunately. Deferential to a status quo that was utterly corrupted even then... EVEN THEN, when clearly (to anyone with eyes) the hour was late indeed.
I KNEW he was going to win from the moment he announced (and I have receipts) because he was set to be a catalyst for this massive reservoir of longing to fight back for what was right and good. What I feared, was that he mostly just a perceptive showman, and tapping into this with intent. That fear proved mostly unfounded. He may not have much in the way of intellectual affirmation of the Republic, but he knows very well who its enemies are, and that is good enough. He fights. And they made clear (foolishly) from early on that they saw HIM, as a dangerous enemy. Interestingly, I think in this way they helped to ensure in no small part, that he would be. They did not play to his vanity, but attacked him from all sides. His administration and the blatantly treasonous (a term not taken lightly at all) assaults on him, literally from bulwark "trust" institutions, all meant to impede his progress and capacity to array forces or even shine a light on the corruption of those institutions... is now part of a history whose implications are so pressurized as to be almost binary. The Republic is soon to be either transformed, or renewed. It cannot be saved without convulsive actions.
All this then... is part of these interesting times (which I'm sure are going to get a hell of a lot "interestinger" in the immediate future). And the question is, since they DID manage to prevent that second term, monstrous injustice though it may be, is Trump NOW... the one who will be able to take this process over the top, come what may?
It's with a hell of a lot of regret (almost resentment actually) that I have to say that Trump's moment may have passed, and that it IS a property of his character. I have kept hoping he would find it in him to set aside the mere vanity of his self image, and assume the mantle of the actual substance he has uniquely been afforded the historic opportunity to possess. But he does not. The way he has been engaging in one-upmanship by degradation (tedious and demeaning, and also something NOT NECESSARY for him to maintain primacy in the primary run) of his potential opponents, is telling me he doesn't get this. He isn't able to make this, bigger than him! That's vexing because he is SO well positioned to really roll into those who have maligned him and seek to destroy him. Yet he seems to think... that the reason they have done so, is because of him personally, rather than his role as avatar for something far far greater. In this he acts exactly the opposite of that amazing ad he did implying that it was the People that the concentration of power was after and he was just in the way. If he could internalize this, he would be ready for that role. But his narcissism I fear, prevents that insight. This then, because of the urgency of the cause, just about disqualifies him. I wish he had had his second term. The people around him were reaching high speed, and he was on a roll wherein he might have had enough momentum to actually start peeling back the mask of the elite, and start their fall (preventing the fall of the Republic in the process). But he didn't, and the situation is NOT the same now. The hour is not late... night is actually falling.
I feel I should add, In fairness to Trump, that his actual status has nothing to do with the relentlessly streamed falsehoods that our depraved elite establishment sought to impose on him (playing on his character to manipulate the facts), but about who he actually is in terms of what he would HAVE to stand for as "bigger than himself" if he is to fulfill the terrible mandate before him (which again, I am completely convinced, is necessary for the Republic even remotely having a chance to recover). Yes, the establishment "won" in 2020. Odiously, insidiously, and through means so terrible (I'll leave the implications there) that it's obvious the perverse status quo that has emerged in the last generation or so, is more important by far to those who "rule" now, than the integrity of the Republic most of them have taken an oath to stand for (and the rest, profited handsomely from). But that is the reality of the awful challenge we face, and the questions about meeting that challenge, must be about how we do it from where we are NOW.
If it must be someone else though, then who? At least I will say this with some spark of hope: the candidates that have been stepping forward seem to be just possibly "real", and to get that this is a fight for all the marbles to an extent that is unlike any election cycle in history. This is because winning means you must necessarily be entering the fray where it WILL be war. What kind is not set, but it will be war, and there will be casualties. The "Fundamental Transformation" is already well advanced and what it has unleashed cannot be undone. Its success in achieving its objectives (which really do mean the end of the Republic) can only be deflected by altering the course of events and its already critical mass of energy, in a different direction.
And that... will... be... a... war.
Whoever it will be then ... they better be a warrior.