Tag: Revolution

This Is Not a Revolution. It’s a Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”—John Lennon

Brace yourselves.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

What is unfolding before us is not a revolution.

The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: this is an anti-revolution.

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WEEKS WHERE DECADES HAPPEN

Image result for weeks where decades happen

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” ― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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 “A Crisis mood does not guarantee that the new governing policies will be well designed or will work as intended.

To the contrary: Crisis eras are studded with faulty leadership and inept management—from President Lincoln’s poor record of choosing generals to President Roosevelt’s colossal blunders with such alphabet soup agencies as the AAA, NRA, and WPA.

What makes a Crisis special is the public’s willingness to let leaders lead even when they falter and to let authorities be authoritative even when they make mistakes.

Wars become more likely and are fought with efficacy and finality. The risk of revolution is high—as is the risk of civil war, since the community that commands the greatest loyalty does not necessarily coincide with political (or geographic) boundaries. Leaders become more inclined to define enemies in moral terms, to enforce virtue militarily, to refuse all compromise, to commit large forces in that effort, to impose heavy sacrifices on the battlefield and home front, to build the most destructive weapons contemporary minds can imagine, and to deploy those weapons if needed to obtain an enduring victory.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

The quote by Lenin has been reverberating in my conscience for the last few weeks. I believe the quote from Strauss & Howe provides context to what has happened and will happen as this Fourth Turning advances towards its climax. I began a new role in my organization two weeks ago, after only seven months in my previous role. I’ve been in non-stop crisis meetings, as this coronavirus pandemic has flipped everyone’s world upside down. As of Thursday, we were ordered to work from home.

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Our Revolutionary Age

Guest Post by The Zman

If one were to conjure just one image to explain the French Revolution, it would be of the sheltered and self-indulged Marie Antoinette saying “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” when told the peasants were starving. Perhaps framing it alongside an image of the peasants in the streets, desperate for food. The story is apocryphal, but it probably stands as the most enduring image of the Revolution. The decadent and indifferent ruling class on one side and the desperate peasants on the other.

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A Question of Timing

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas via International Man

Economic Collapse

France, 1788.    Russia, 1916.    Germany, 1937.

These dates have something in common. In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage.

And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.

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Reformers, Restorers & Revolutionaries

Guest Post by The Zman

American politics is often cast as a battle between wreckers and restorers, taking turns at the helm of state. The wreckers are the do-gooders on the Left, who push through a bunch of ill-considered, by well-intentioned reforms that end poorly. The restorers are the so-called conservatives on the Right, who come in to clean up the mess and restore things back to order. Political history is often described in these terms, even by the people on the Left, who focus on the good intentions.

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American Apocalypse: The Government’s Plot To Destabilize The Nation Is Working

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” – H. L. Mencken

The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.

No, this is not another conspiracy theory.

Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.

Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.

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Cynicism, Then Revolt

Guest Post by The Zman

A popular line from libertarianism is that the state is violence. Another way of stating this is the state has a monopoly on violence. The implication is that the state imposes order, the order of those who control the state, with the threat of violence or through actual violence, in the case of law enforcement. It is a Hobbesian view of society, in which order is imposed, but an inaccurate one. Society, even authoritarian ones, rely on consent and a shared set of rituals and symbols to perpetuate consent.

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We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get

Guest Post by Paul Rosenberg

I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly call the human species depraved… hopelessly unredeemable… that was, and remains, obscene to me.

The sad truth, however, is that the modern West swims in a sea of Calvinism. The corporate bullhorns feed everyone they can a steady diet of the bad, ugly, and if possible the bloody. Under their influence, we would believe that all is darkness, that truth is illusion, that the human path is ever-downward, and that all professions of goodness are scams.

In other words, the minds of millions of people (billions, probably), are continually pushed to imagine that human depravity is a fact. That strategy is terribly effective – there’s no better tool for manipulating humans than fear – but it is no less than obscene and evil.

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Your Plans For Revolution Don’t Work. Nothing We’ve Tried Works.

Guest Post by Caitlin Johnstone

All the old ideas for uprooting the status quo have failed. I point this out not to depress people, but to persuade them to stop twisting on locked doorknobs. The old ideas don’t work, so we need new ones.

The political process has failed. Capitalism has failed. Socialism has failed. Libertarianism has failed. Marx has failed. Populism has failed. Anarchism has failed. I say this not because of any glaring flaws in any of those ideas (in theory any of them could potentially work in an alternate universe), but because we are hurtling towards extinction in the fairly near future, and none of them have saved us.

“But Caitlin!” you may object. “My particular favorite ideology would have saved us long ago if only everyone had gotten on board with it!”

Okay. But they didn’t. And now we’re on the brink of armageddon. That means it has failed. It doesn’t work.

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Failure Analysis

Guest Post by The Zman

For a time, it looked as if the “yellow vests” revolt was going to shakeup French politics by legitimizing populist issues. The protests were mainly focused on economic issues, but those issues are the sorts of things that highlight the divide between the cosmopolitan ruling class and the general public. That is the heart of the great political divide in the current age. The ruling class and its supporters are living a fantasy life paid for in a million small ways by the unorganized and ignored masses making up the general public.

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The Revolution Has No Hollywood Ending

Guest Post by Caitlin Johnstone

After struggling against our own self-destructive tendencies throughout the entirety of recorded history, humanity is now at a point where that struggle is probably going to be resolved, one way or another, within the lifetime of most people reading this.

The movie about this struggle has been written with one of two possible endings. In the first, we are unable to overcome our self-destructive tendencies, and the last of our species dies by radiation poisoning or choking on the dust of an uninhabitable planet. In the second, we evolve beyond our self-destructive tendencies and move into a healthy relationship with our minds, our ecosystem, and each other.

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Recession. Revolution. Recovery.

Guest Post by Mike Krieger

– Saturn Devouring His Son (image above) is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus, who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children, ate each one upon their birth. 

Deny it all you want, but the global economy appears to be headed into recession. It became clear the cycle had started to turn once the FAANG stock bubble popped and the U.S. stock market plunged 20% late last year. The optimists among us insist this is merely a growth scare or blip as we saw in 2016, but that scenario looks increasingly unlikely.

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Why Are the ‘Yellow Vests’ Protesting

Guest Post by Jesse

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“Four weekends of mass protests in Paris and in towns and villages across France have hampered economic activity while hurting the country’s image with investors, the government said Monday…

He [Macron] did not mention changing course on the most business-friendly overhaul of the French labor market in decades. The omission was a signal to investors that, despite the recent chaos, Mr. Macron plans to stick with his strategy for re-energizing Europe’s third-largest economy by pursuing changes that had stalled for more than a decade…

His mostly unyielding attitude underscores the stakes for France as he eases business regulations to seed dynamism. His plans include altering the country’s strict labor code to encourage hiring, and making budget adjustments during his first year in office that hit low-income earners and retirees especially hard, even as he cut taxes for wealthy people.”

NY Times, Unrest in France Hinders Macron’s Push to Revive Economy

“The headline of an article [NY Times] on the protests in France told readers ‘Unrest in France hinders Macron’s push to revive economy.’

The policies in question include ending a wealth tax on the rich, cutting retirees’ Social Security benefits, and a series of measures designed to reduce the power of unions. While it is possible that Macron has taken these steps because he really does believe that this is the best to boost economic growth, it is also possible that he has taken these steps because he wants to give more money to rich people.   In this respect it is worth noting that Macron is a former investment banker. Therefore he is likely to be very rich, and to have rich friends.”

“The problem of the last three decades is not the ‘vicissitudes of the marketplace,’ but rather deliberate actions by the [captured] government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent.”

Dean Baker

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What Price Crazy?

Guest Post by Tom Luongo

“Remember, Remember the Fifth of November…”

V for Vendetta

Tuesday’s mid-term elections will not be a turning point for the United States.  That happened when we elected Donald Trump in 2016.

The roots of Trump’s win were seeded back in 2008 with Ron Paul.

And today the words I wrote then I think hold the key to understanding what is happening around the world today.

Paul has offered himself as the figure-head for a revolution that was mature enough, finally, to find him.  His campaign is a spontaneous and self-organizing uprising of human frustration; acknowledging that it’s truly time for a change in direction for this society and the responsibility that comes with that knowledge.

Substitute Trump, Orban, Putin, Farage, Le Pen, Salvini or Kurz for Paul and that sentence is just as valid.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

“As with almost every reform that I have ever undertaken, most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd slander. Our opponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our methods, acts, and personalities.”

Theodore Roosevelt

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

Wendell Berry

“The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this [reform] bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amid the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.

Let us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us: reform, that you may preserve.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay

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Time to Stand-To…or Stand Down

By Tim “xrugger” Stebbins for The Burning Platform

The Problem

The substance of this particular rant finds its roots in three premises: First, that the depth and pervasiveness of federal corruption precludes any possibility of a peaceful reformation of the institutions of national government. Second, that a majority of the population of this nation have become so morally compromised, spiritually deadened, and economically dependent that they will be incapable of surviving any meaningful reform of our national institutions, peaceful or otherwise. Third, that excising the cancerous tumor, which sits astride the Potomac, will almost certainly lead to some level of societal breakdown and the ensuing chaos and violence will result in the destruction of a large part of the current population.

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