Which is news, I guess, for those of us who love Claire but isn’t such vital news as to call for its own post until she actually moves, right? Yeah, except she’s got a fund-raiser going on and it’s moving kind of slow for my taste. Claire’s had some money issues, exacerbated by Backwoods Home ceasing to pay their bloggers, and some house issues – like it needs all the rot lifted up and a house slid in underneath – and building a professional website from scratch isn’t a matter of logging on to Blogger.
So wander over there if you’ve a mind to, and maybe help her out a little. I wasn’t able to contribute much more than a token, but she’s on my short list of people with whom I’d share my last cup of flour baked with my last whiff of propane, so I’d look pretty funny just talking about a contribution.
When I see the new site, it’ll be linked and reported here.
BTW, I liked this quite a lot.
We the monkey wrench…
I guess my views on this subject place me in the role of heretic. Oh well, it will not be the first time and will not be the last.
http://gate-spyglass.blogspot.ca/2016/07/all-that-is-necessary-for-triumph-of.html
I disagree with what you say, but will defend with mild rhetoric your right to say it. 🙂
Honestly, if I weren’t so convinced that the two major parties are far too invested in ‘anything goes’ to ever allow a genuinely ideological third party into the game, I’d vote for the libertarian too. Despite that the only thing preventing the LP from being as corrupt as any of the others is lack of opportunity: They’ve got the smoke-filled room chicanery down pat already.
But what convinced me that voting (for major national candidates; this may not apply locally) is not only pointless but actually an evil act was my conviction that the parties are not only similar but actually fictitious in every way that matters. Oh, I’ve no doubt that the inside baseball stuff, the private malices and rivalries, are true enough. There’s personal power to be had, and people will personally grab for it. But the parties have lately been too obvious in the ratcheting effect the constant back-and-forth of elections has on government power and policy. Each time one party has power it increases the government’s hold on [fill in the blank: fiscal policy? domestic surveillance? drug war? welfare state?] while the party “out-of-power” cries and vows reform. But then when the other party takes power, the pushback never comes. There’s an appearance of a pendulum swing, but it only drives the clockwork of government power.
No matter who gets elected, the government always wins.
BTW, MJR: I would have said that on your blog, but I don’t have any of the available profiles so I couldn’t.
First of all Joel thank you for not censoring my comment. If my blog entry has offended you I apologize. Joel over the past three days I have been having this long drawn out conversation on line with a couple of hard core libertarians who would rather die than vote. They have been driving me crazy with their hate filled comments. I should have known better than to get into politics with these guys, arguments like this tend to upset my stomach. :^)
So now I am going to pick your brain… What’s next? As I see it from my porch up here north of disorder you guys have several options. What do you think those options are? And why?
The reason that I am curious is that historically we up here in Canada are ten years (+-) behind you guys in political and criminal happenings. So I’m curious to see if there is a game plan to help keep the fascist and the criminal out off office. If there isn’t well at least I have time before the spill over takes place and hopefully it can be stopped.
MJR, that’s the big question, isn’t it? What now? Revolution? Room 101? Both?
We can’t keep the fascist or the criminal out of office. Lacking a Sweet Meteor of Death, one of those two creatures will further befoul the executive branch of our loving and beloved government. The rational reaction to this is depression. Fine. But what will bring absolute existential frickin’ despair is the knowledge – which comes to thinking people at some point if they make the mistake of giving it too much thought – that it doesn’t matter which one wins because the whole left/right thing is a fraud. It’s a false dichotomy, the two sides may compete in minor ways but they’re on the same team. There is no good guy. Nobody in a white hat is coming to save us. The government can’t be reformed because it’s not broken: It’s humming along just fine no matter how much dysfunction may appear on the surface. Why would anyone in it want to free us? We’re the only resource the government has. It would be like setting your wallet or your car free.
When that epiphany sinks in, you’re guaranteed to go through a period where a bottle of wine, a warm bath and a razor blade looks like it may be a possible rational option.
And here’s where I first met Claire: She first suggested (to me, that is – I don’t know who suggested it to her) that none of that matters any more than you let it matter. Look, if you’re in the path of a giant blizzard that’s going to freeze your ass solid, you don’t stand there waiting for it to hit and you don’t beg it to pass you by. Right? You find shelter and heat. If none are immediately available you get busy making shelter and heat. Only a fool would wait for somebody else to do it for him, and nobody would be fool enough to petition the blizzard to please take itself someplace else.
In our case, the government is the blizzard. As we’ve seen far too clearly in the past year, the democratic process is a cruel joke. The entire apparatus is driven by insiders for the benefit of insiders, and you and I are its resources. Petitioning the government for redress – or even more laughably, trying to vote our way to freedom – is a pointless and demeaning exercise. But we have been conditioned from earliest childhood to see that as the only path to change, and participation is held to be our patriotic duty. Only participation can bring change. If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain. Right? Except the mask is well and truly off now: Participation just shows you’re willing to be a putz.
Okay, but I wouldn’t cooperate with that blizzard. In the face of the inevitable, since I can’t affect the blizzard I will seek or build shelter as best I can. I will remove myself from the path of the blizzard if I can. I will burrow underground and hide from the blizzard if I can. I will make myself as free from that blizzard as I possibly can.
Elections are part of the box governments get us thinking in. I will think outside the box. Meine gedanken sind frei, baby. I will make my life as free of the government and of my would-be rulers as I can contrive to do so. To the extent possible, the government will be irrelevant to me. I am very small and Leviathan is very large: I have no illusion that I’ll be able to starve the beast down to a manageable size. I can’t make the world free. But I can make myself much more free than I was before.
That knowledge, and the action you take on that knowledge, is “what’s next.” It doesn’t matter what Hillary or Trump do. I will live with it, take from it what amusement I can, hide from those diktats I can’t escape or ignore, and refine my own personal freedom. “What’s next” has nothing to do with whichever clown sits in the big chair. It has nothing to do with me – or at least as little as I can manage. I am not obligated to comply, and I will not. I am free, no matter what rules surround me.
Sorry, that got long. But the question doesn’t have a mechanistic answer. There is no “next” political maneuver, except to abandon politics and as much dependence on the government it props up as rationally possible.