Super long story short:Neither am I.
I no longer believe the axis entirely pivots on Right vs Left.
I was using the term “collaborative establishment” until I encountered the term “Deep State”, which I think is probably more apropos.
Viewed as dispassionately and as objectively as I can muster, the federal US government is a machine whose function is to ingest a significant fraction of the people’s productivity, and transform that wealth into various benefits and favors. Both establishment parties fully, 100% agree that this machine shall persist and grow, and will drop all differences towards that end, collaborating fully. Where the parties compete is on the output end, crafting such packages of benefit such that they will believe will attract the most power, votes and influence.
This is the single largest coherent economic activity on the planet, and is jealously guarded as such, with all the violence implicit in a gang banger protecting his profits on a single drug corner. The “military industrial complex” was merely the prototype for the “governmental economic complex”.
The election of 2016 is entirely about the people of the US recognizing that they’ve lost control of their government, (even if they couldn’t articulate it in similar terms) that this was the result of normal electoral politics, and that the the cost of rejecting the continuation of the status quo via the Established candidate Hillary was electing the outrageous blowhard and loose cannon Trump, in the wild hopes that doing something different would result in a different outcome.
The extent to which Trump simply recognized and rode that wave to the Oval Office is a subject of academic debate.
For myself, I think that this is a temporary respite on the long march to Deep State Progressivism, for it is the Progressives, an inherently statist, totalitarian and parasitic entity that is the primary architect of its favorite tool, the Deep State, as well as the primary antagonist of the infiltration and subversion of the institutions of influence whose purpose is now to position in the public’s mind the essential necessity and centrality of the Deep State as the most critical component of a just society and source of the good life.
Nonetheless, Trump is neither the solution nor antithesis to this. The most we can hope for is enough demolition to the underpinnings of the Deep State’s mechanisms that some deep reform will be made possible, but on this, I am not optimistic.
The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama
I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit
The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David
The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish
All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck
I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit
The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David
The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish
All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Quote of the Day - GeekWithA.45 Edition
I wish the man would blog again, but I'll take 'em where I can get 'em. He left this over at Kim duToit's place. I'll fix his edit and quote in whole:
Labels:
politics,
QotD,
Tough History Coming
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