Guest Post by The Zman
Adolf Hitler once said, “There is nothing new under the sun. There are just new ways of expressing the same ideas.” There is some truth to this, which is why we have so many ways of saying that history repeats itself. At least we like to think it repeats itself, as that’s a comforting thought. It means the answers to today’s problems, no matter how vexing, exist in the past. All we have to do is rummage around in the past for a similar time and take a look at the solutions from that period.
There are exceptions. The French Revolution is one of those novel happenings that had no precedent in the known past. The Bolshevik Revolution looked a bit like the French Revolution, but turned out to be something different, mostly because the Bolsheviks were students of the French Revolution. Sometimes things are different enough to be treated as totally new. We may be experiencing one of those times where the conditions are unique enough to feel as if there is no precedent.
Older pundits are fond of comparing the current cultural revolution to the cultural revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They make the comparison because they were around for the first one and they go in for nostalgia. They also see that the people cheering it on in the halls of power are often people who participated in the cultural revolution of the past. You can be sure that many oldsters on the Left think what is happening today confirms their forever youth.
There are some big differences though. For one, the rebels of the past were actually rebelling against something. They did not have unlimited corporate and institutional support. The cops were told to beat the crap out of the rioters in the 1960’s by the political class, both Democrat and Republican. Today, the political class, both Democrat and Republican, is on the side of the rioters. We saw that in New York, Washington and now Portland and Seattle.
There’s also the fact that the rebels of the past had an agenda. It may have been childish and silly, in a college sophomore sort of way, but it was an agenda they could talk about in public. They wanted more personal freedom. They wanted the war in Vietnam to end. They wanted public aid for poor people and blacks. The current rebels talk about nonsense like social justice and privilege. All they can muster is pointless slogans they heard on-line.
A couple generations ago, the Silent Majority could look at the situation and imagine an end game. For example, they could connect ending the Vietnam War with ending the anti-war protests. That meant voting for Nixon in 1968. They could see a connection between loosening social mores and clearing the streets of hippies. On the other hand, they could imagine law and order politicians instructing the cops to clear the streets of the hippies and protesting students too.
Today, there is no silent majority. The great demographic changes that have been wrought by those ascendant rebels of the 1960’s has reduced the white population to about 60% now. About 20% of that population is on the side of the rioters, just as long as they stay away from their mansions. Some portion has walked away from politics entirely, due to the aforementioned changes wrought by the rebels. The Silent Majority is just a bitter minority now.
That’s an aspect to this that gets little attention and makes this very different from the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. The geezers cheering their grandchildren burning Starbucks keep expecting the jackboots of the Silent Majority to show up like they did the last time, but those jackboots are now on golf courses in Boca. No matter how much they provoke their imaginary enemy, there is no response. This reboot of the 1960’s is missing the thing that made it possible, that Silent Majority.
Another novel item is that the now silent minority has nowhere to turn for the solution to this cultural revolution. What is it that they can give to the people burning and looting the cities to make them go home? How does one answer the call for social justice or the end of systemic racism? What would those things look like? These chants and incantations have no practical meaning. They are moral signifiers borrowed from the grievance studies programs on the college campus.
More important, there is no electoral option either. The Democrat party is actively cheering on this lunacy. Joe Biden is running an extortion campaign, where a vote for him means an end to the violence and Covid lock downs. How realistic is that when his party is cheering for the mayhem, promising to take it to a new level after they win the final election. It is not hyperbole to say that a Democrat sweep in November means the end of elections. What would be the point?
Of course, the Republicans are revealing themselves to be entirely bankrupt. Their response to the unrest is nothing. They are too busy crafting yet another giveaway to their corporate paymasters. Trump is nowhere to be found. He occasionally tweets something stupid, but otherwise he looks like a beaten man. In fairness, he is a beaten man, beaten by a political class that is corrupt beyond reform. For that silent minority, there is no political option to end the current madness.
This is a novel problem for Americans. If you are a white person in a place like Seattle, what are your options? If you abide by the law, you have your property destroyed and possibly your life threatened. People are being shot in their cars now as they try to go about their business. Gun sales are booming, but the people buying the guns imagine themselves defending their life and property within a system of laws. What happens when they realize there is no system of laws?
If you read about the deliberations of the decision-makers in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the thing that stands out is their sober mindedness. They were very worried that America was on the cusp of social collapse. The decision makers of today, that means political and corporate leaders, seem to think American society is an indestructible object they can abuse without consequence. They are carrying on like reckless children, incapable of imagining any consequences to their behavior.
Social collapse comes when the majority stops accepting the legitimacy of the system and the authority of those in charge of it. The one result of the street rioters and their corporate and political sponsors is they may get what they want. The majority may stop accepting the legitimacy of the system. That silent minority may lose all faith in the system and the people running it. That would be us one step from the edge, when all respect for authority collapses and takes society with it.
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I do respect my neighbors, even if I don’t agree with them, but I see no authority at the federal level worthy of any respect whatsoever.
I don’t vote in elections for federal office. The blessed time when the US federal government has come to be seen as just another horrible memory cannot come soon enough.
Good luck to all. Visit your local rifle range often. And, as a hat tip to Ol’ Remus, stay away from crowds.
I hear more and more ‘warnings’ about the ‘real’ trouble after November 3rd….not sure what more I need to stock up on in anticipation.
That’s because they want you to wait till Nov.4.
It’s going to get out of hand before that.
More Mal-information from Zman again. The whole thing is Mal-info from start to finish.
The french revolution had the same deep pocketed backers as the Bolshies in Russia and Cromwell before that and so on. 4 pages of pure bullshit.
This is news to me FleaBaggs. Would you quote your references please because I feel obliged to correct my knowledge base – always willing to learn, thank you.
Peter.
The best starting point is a fairly short book titled
“A History of Central Banking and The Enslavement of Mankind” by
Stephen M Goodson. Starts in Rome with Julius Ceasar and establishes the trademark sequences for destroying any country or ruler. 163 easy pages. Once that is seen the rest falls in place. Full of links.
For the Sory of the Frecnh Revolution Nesta H. Webser “The French Revolution”
“Winston Churchill praised her in a 1920 article entitled “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,”[16][17] in which he wrote “This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution.”[18]”
Today the Jacobins live on in BLM/ANTIFA but their backers are the Progeny of the same Ilk.
Peter.
Here is an excellent video. Rothchilds 25 point plan for the French Revolution.
Thank you so much, Fleabaggs, for giving me these links – I will get on to it straightaway. You have pointed to a chink in my armour which I must rectify asap. The enjoyment of the twilight years is having the time to learn new things. Best wishes 🙂
Peter.
You’re welcome. I always try to give serious answers to serious questions.
The misinformation regarding Napoleon is also an eye opener. His crime? Creating his own bank and money.
“Napoleon vs The Old and New World Order” by M.S. King.
83 pages of large print with some surprising trivia as well.
He was no midget. At 5’7″ he was average for the era but his body guards were quite tall causing the appearance of being short.
He claimed in a letter to a friend that he was no genius and had no special talent for warfare. He merely thought through every imaginable attack and counter attack and prepared an answer based on his resources. Had the rains not continued for so long we would all speak French.
“He merely thought through every imaginable attack and counter attack and prepared an answer based on his resources.”
A friend of mine is an avid chess player and when asked how it was that he won so often, he said that he didn’t win as such, he merely out-thought his opponent. It’s a mind game I guess, like so many things in life.
You are clearly a well-read person, something I pressed upon my children but sadly the younger generations lack this special way of absorbing information. I love history among other subjects, and I will relish discovering all this new stuff. Thank you for the guiding hand.
Peter.
Learning is free but I have to give it away to keep it.
Like you, I’m really enjoying the luxury of late year learning.
For me, public school was pure torture. I was a natural at reading and it saved me. In the third grade I was reading Jules Verne and my parents picked up a set of old 1930 Britannica Encyclopedias at an estate sale for the older girls but I was the one who used them. I couldn’t stop reading them because they fed my mind, unlike the public prison system. When I compare the beautiful English spoken in those books compared to the vulgar trash we call English today it’s shocking how far down we’ve gone in the name of progress.
Ah, Yes, so true Fleabaggs. Just like love, it is only gained by giving it away. But it takes many years to learn this important lesson and some never learn it.
I was blessed by being born at the end of the war when my father was away in the forces. I was nurtured for my first five years by my mother and her father and mother on an estate deep in the countryside of Bedfordshire. From this I learned to love the freedom and space of rural England.
More than this, my grandfather was a philosopher and had a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica which he spent many hours reading to me and answering all those questions that a young mind conjures.
He also carried out practical experiments in physics and chemistry and I became familiar with his microscope and studied the flora and fauna surrounding our land. From this promising start I was able to learn how to ‘learn’ and found reading a joy. I was lucky to have had mentors of such caliber.
As to ‘progress’; we may have advanced in many things especially science and technology but at the cost of a great loss of morality and culture. As you say, language has become corrupted and now we are even precluded from speaking our minds by those who fear the searing heat of truth.
I am certain that the pendulum will swing once more, given time, and we will return to a place that you and I recognise as more like we have known. It may take some time and a lot of pain but I do believe that the indomitable spirit of the human condition will prevail over the all pervading evil that we witness today.
Talk about doom porn. Geez. What’s the use of going on any more? Why try? The end is near! The world is going to end on Nov. 4!
So I guess it doesn’t matter now ……….that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Sadly it is true here in UK – we are living, doomed to suffer severe deprivations in the coming years; perhaps America is big enough and strong enough to weather the storm.
Well said and well put Zman, thank you. As you say, the remnants of the silent minority are quietly voting with their feet and forsaking the rotting hulks of the cities, leaving them to crash and burn. Let the BLM Marxist revolutionaries foul their nest, they will be long gone by the time the Democrats take the reins of power.
History does indeed rhyme if not repeat as the Fourth Turning unfolds. Strauss & Howe told you long ago but nobody was listening or chose not to hear. I am fortunate to be at the tail end of the silent generation and have enough serenity to quietly observe the world as it passes by on its way to Armageddon.
I pity Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z to whom the Boomers have failed to gift the necessary life skills and emotional support they will need to surmount their imminent challenges and burdensome travails. In the past a good war resolved these issues, but today that is out of the question, as mutual destruction is assured. As you say, we are in a unique period of history where there is no precedent.
For my part I can only record the events as they occur, with particular reference to UK, and speak my truth with clarity and integrity. I am reminded of that poem of unknown origin:
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.”
https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
As a Gen Xer, I’d have just preferred the Boomers didn’t shit for 40+ years where posterity had to eat. I’d have taken the hit on my prior contributions to Medicare and SS if I could have completely opted out of them henceforth. Consider it a sunk cost to keep the peace. I’d have also continued to pay for all wars prior to 9/11 provided we used that as a lesson to GTFO of the world’s business and to gut the military.
In many respects I consider the Rona to be a gift from God. That viral manna from heaven is at least targeting the right group of people. Maybe the new strain of H1N1 will seal the deal and give Xers a clean slate to gift their children.
Quite so A of C, and I empathise with your situation within which I regret that I have no power to influence its inevitable termination; my children are in a similar place even though it seems it is less severe here in UK.
At least most of our cops are unarmed, act politely, and the bulk of population are sufficiently dozy to be unaware of Boris’s doings unless it hits them personally in the face. Even then, there is a docile acceptance of what they must think is their unalterable fate as they shuffle around the supermarket with big round saucers staring for a 1000 yards over the brim of their mandated face-diaper.
Their fear is palpable and their obedience unquestioned. It is a lesson for me in corrosive herd behaviour because I always wondered what force drove those lemmings off cliffs in such large numbers – now I know!
The spirit and courage that drove my generation in their youth to defend their principles and culture and willingly sacrifice their young lives for God, King and Country was somehow lost in passing of the years of faux ‘prosperity’
King Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun.
Doc Pangloss said the same thing about plagiarism, there is nothing new under the sun.
Sorry, I’m not buying. I think there are all kinds of evil machinations going on here with our liberty being the big loser. I see a lot of useful idiots fanning the flames of discontent, but the players have no idea their heads are on the chopping block. Just like the rest of us.
And what was the common thread linking these two “unique” events? First, the French Revolution;
The Jews took over the French revolution from within with the Jacobin movement which was the political arm of the Illuminati which had taken over the Grand Orient Lodge in Paris which was the command lodge of the time. Its well known the Jewish Frankist movement was the guiding hand behind all of this within France.
And then the Bolshevik revolution;
First of all, it was not a revolution but rather a coup de’ etat planned and executed by Jewish bankers and terrorists. Everyone in Europe was horrified by what was occurring in Russia, and feared it would spread. Attempts were in fact made to implement Jewish communist governments in Germany, Spain and Hungary for example, so the threat was very real , despite the fact that there was a complete media blackout in the United States. Gee, I wonder why?
Can you discover the common thread between them? Sure, it’s exactly what we are threatened with today by the same brood of vipers that were able to pull off the other two events.
That’s a more accurate picture of historical facts without the obvious omissions. Know your enemy because he’s now here in your house and is seeking to destroy everything that you hold dear.