H.L. Mencken – The Burning Platform

New Design: 3D2A: Can’t Take It If We Can Make It + H.L. Mencken Quotes

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believe.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) is the kind of guy you wish you could become whenever you’re confronted by a vociferous pinhead. Few wits as crystal as his are bestowed among men. More abrasive dispositions are even scarcer. But no worries – just memorize a few H.L. Mencken quotes to pass off as your own, and you’ll be able to trounce ninnies with the best of them.

Henry Louis Mencken was a “literary fella” (to borrow a term coined by one of his contemporaries) who wrote essays, satire and cultural critiques. As a journalist Mencken worked for The Herald, The Baltimore Sun and The American Mercury, the last of which he co-founded. He famously covered the Scopes Monkey Trial, and indeed is the one who gave it that name.

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Mencken was cynical about religion, especially the Elmer Gantry brand of Christianity which commonly bred under giant striped tents during his day. (He was good friends with Sinclair Lewis who wrote it.) Mencken was cynical about a lot of things, including quackery like chiropractic, American involvement in both World Wars, and democracy in particular. The Nietzschean scholar called democracy “the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” To him, democracy was a thing which impotent dolts mistook for actual power as they welcomed a succession of crooks to rule over them. Music to a libertarian’s ears.

Mencken’s writing is remarkably similar to that of Mark Twain, of whom he was a great fan, as well as Ambrose Bierce whose faux dictionary entries he paid frequent homage to. If you’d like to dip your big toe into Mencken’s staggeringly large body of work, you’d best start with The Vintage Mencken complied by Alistair Cooke. If you’d like to spend just a few minutes with Mencken at his very best, please proceed. Continue reading “New Design: 3D2A: Can’t Take It If We Can Make It + H.L. Mencken Quotes”

MARCH OF FOLLY: FALL OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

“Folly is a child of power.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense, and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The term “folly” is particularly apt at this stage in the decline of the great American empire. Folly is defined as: criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct; an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking. If ever a word captured the actions of American political leaders in the 21^st Century and reflect the tragic downfall of an empire borne out of the ashes of the Second World War, it is the term “folly”.

For the last two decades I’ve been befuddled by the inane foolishness of our leaders, as they have driven the nation into a bottomless pit of debt at an astoundingly ridiculous pace, initiated military conflict across the globe, and in the last three years initiated anti-human policies guaranteed to destroy our economic system, depopulate the planet, increase human suffering, and turn the world into a techno-gulag where we will own nothing, eat bugs, and bow down to the commands of globalist overlords.

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IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

I’ve been pondering this Fourth Turning in articles since its spectacular onset in September 2008, with the Wall Street/Federal Reserve initiated global financial implosion. The description above is apt, as this ongoing two-decade long storm gains intensity and our freedoms, liberties and rights are slowly extinguished as the electricity flickers and our modern civilization reverts to a more brutish state of antipathy among competing tribes, based on race, gender, class, party, geographic location, and now medical status.

Continue reading “IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?”

ARE WE REALLY GOING TO BUILD BACK BETTER AFTER A DARK WINTER?

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

With all the talk about dark winters from Biden, Harris, Fauci, tyrannical Democrat governors, pandemic hysteria medical “experts”, and the corporate media paid to propagate the vital narrative, my mind was naturally drawn to the words of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a story of good versus evil, with a foreboding mood of darkness and doom.

To those of us of a conspiratorial nature, according to those who conspired to overthrow a duly elected president for four years and are currently conspiring to steal the presidency through blatant election rigging and mail-in ballot fraud, we believe the darkness engulfing our nation has been initiated by the billionaire globalist evildoers marshaling dark forces in their Mordor on the Potomac.

Continue reading “ARE WE REALLY GOING TO BUILD BACK BETTER AFTER A DARK WINTER?”