Two Trains in the Night

 

Maybe more accurate with a donkey

My predictions for 2024 have been intentionally optimistic. Now 2024 has actually begun with a major earthquake, in Japan. Not a good sign.

It is hard to see how the 2024 US election turns out well. The Democrats have demonstrated that they will do anything to prevent Trump from being president—Tucker Carlson expects them to resort if necessary to assassination.

That would be a trauma greater than the Kennedy assassination.

If Trump does not become president as a result of the election, his supporters will have every reason to assume—indeed, they will know—the system was rigged against them. What will they do?

When democracy is denied, the option left is violence.

Conversely, the Democrats are determined that Trump must not become president. If he becomes president as a result of the election, what will they do? Lose all their determination and go home?

It looks like two trains coming at top speed down the same track, towards each other. It looks like revolution or civil war.

Yet history suggests that God has a special relationship with the US. I recall a friend on Facebook putting out a map showing that “most peaceful countries” correspond closely with “least religious countries.” He thought this discredited religion as a cause of violence. What it showed was that people turn to God when in need, and ignore him otherwise. Countries, as they become peaceful and prosperous, tend to turn away from religion. As do people.

The US has largely bucked that trend. As Europe or Japan have moved to apostasy, levels of religiosity in the US have remained relatively high. In the current crisis in the Catholic Church, Francis finds his traditionalist enemies in America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. With their intellectual centre in America.

Despite promulgating the postmodern madness, the US is not where it began. Traced back, it was a European import in the early and mid-20th century. The heart of America, as I think Cohen saw, remains strong. “he brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet.”

If civil war now seems inevitable, God has plunged the US into civil war before for a necessary cause. If the left is foolhardy or desperate enough to push it to this point, I believe at least the forces of democracy will win.

And perhaps be a beacon to the rest of the world, as America became in 1776.

Diversity is Not Our Strength

 

Yesterday in Saint John, there were two opposing demonstrations scheduled: the second One Million March for Children, protesting sexual orientation and gender ideology in the schools, and “Love is Louder than Hate,” demanding sexual orientation and gender ideology in the schools. All over Canada, there are large demonstrations protesting the genocide of Jews by Hamas in Israel, and competing demonstrations protesting the genocide of Arabs by Israel in Gaza. And this on top of the longstanding demonstrations for and against abortion.

Opposing demonstrations are not in themselves alarming. But these positions seem irreconcilable. There seems to be no room for calm debate or compromise. After all, to the one side, it looks like the other side is committing genocide. To one side, it looks like the other is trying to harm their children. 

It looks like civil war is coming inevitably closer all the time, and seems the necessary ultimate result. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Sooner or later, here or somewhere, competing demonstrations are going to clash violently, there will be a body count, there will be calls for vengeance, and the fighting will spread. One thinks of “Bleeding Kansas.”

The underlying problem is that we have lost or abandoned all our shared values or principles. Any society needs shared values to function: some underlying set of shared premises from which to argue and eventually come to an agreement. We used to all agree, or nearly all agree, on Judeo-Christian principles and the principles of liberal democracy. Now a large portion of the population no longer do.

The only way to prevent a civil war is either a wholesale return to these values, or general adoption of some new set of shared premises. Marxism offered one, based on material progress and “dialectical materialism”; but, leaving aside its philosophical flaws, Marxism has surely by now been discredited in practice. Bad things happen wherever it is tried. Nazism offered one, a new morality based on the Theory of Evolution; but I think we can agree that did not turn out well. Islamism is one current candidate; but the state of the Muslim world does not inspire confidence.

I vote for a return to Judeo-Christian principles and the principles of liberal democracy. To be clear, that means restrictions on abortion, absolute preference for Christian and Jewish over Muslim immigration, and no mention of sexual orientation or gender ideology in the schools.

Civil War? Nothing Civil about It

Signatories to the Texas suit.

 Things are getting crazier in the US. YouTube has announced that, as of today, they will take down any comment that the recently-completed US presidential election was illegitimate. Even though there are court cases pending making that argument. This is censorship at the totalitarian level.

One such court case has Texas and seventeen other states—at latest count—suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan to prevent them from certifying electors. A war between the states.

At this point, Giuliani, Powell, and others seem to have demonstrated convincingly at least to the public who have been watching that there was indeed widespread fraud. As of the latest poll, almost half of the US population now believe the election was fraudulent. And that poll was taken before some of the strongest evidence was produced: the “smoking gun” video of the Atlanta counting station, and statistical analyses suggesting the odds of Biden pulling out a win given the count at 10 PM on election night was about as likely as a rhesus monkey spontaneously writing the Bible. In Aramaic.

Meantime, revelations that China has subverted politicians in the US, and has been able to count on this network to advance their interests; and that they lost this influence when Trump was elected. And that Hunter Biden is being investigated for serious financial crimes—a story that seems to have been suppressed by the news media until after the election.

If the Supreme Court does not accept the Texas suit, and overturn the election, Rush Limbaugh is suggesting secession and civil war. Other right-wing commentators, who previously scoffed at such talk, are now speaking of the need for violent resistance: Dave Rubin, Scott Adams, Andrew Klavan. Rising against the inauguration of Biden has to begin to look to a significant portion of the American public like a civic duty.

Lie down, shut up, and take it, at this point, feels and looks like craven surrender.

War Drums Along the Potomac

 

The revelations from Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell may not be enough to prompt the Supreme Court or Congress to overturn the election. But they are already enough to convince just about everyone on the right that the election results are not legitimate.

The great strength of democracy is that, having voted, everyone feels they have a stake in the government, and this prompts most of us to comply with the laws and the rules. This is suddenly no longer so in the USA.

We now have the worst possible scenario. If Biden is allowed to take office, the right will not accept it, Even commentators who scoffed at it until a few weeks ago, are now talking revolution, martial law, or civil war. If Trump is left in office, the left will erupt in new violence. And there will be demands from his supporters for a clampdown. These people, after all, have been shown now to be treasonous.

We have been dumb lucky so far that only the left has been trying to impose their will by violence. It is going to get far messier if now there are two sides.

Wargaming the Second American Civil War

While I would have scoffed at the idea a few years ago, the logic of the current situation in the US seems to raise the possibility of civil war. This idea does not originate with me; a lot of people are saying it on YouTube. The left has decided to deny and shut down public discourse. They have decided to impose their will by force. Those disadvantaged or oppressed by the demands of the left are then obliged to respond with force in turn.

This seems to have begun to happen with the current rioting. Guns and counter-demonstrators seem to have emerged.

The insistence by the left on untried mail-in balloting means that, unless one side or the other wins by a compelling margin, half the country will not see the results as legitimate. Again, if confidence in voting is subverted, violence will look like the only resort.

It seems to me the left is most likely to lose a civil conflict. They have thoroughly alienated police everywhere, surely, by scapegoating them and demanding they be defunded. Even assuming they succeed in dissolving or defanging police everywhere, they are still going to have a cadre of ex-policemen, trained and probably privately armed, with few warm feelings towards them.

Their power base is their control of the media and of education. But their control of the media is rapidly slipping, thanks to everyone now effectively having a video camera and a printing press. Their control of education is also vulnerable to the new technologies.

The brawling and rioting in the streets can go one of three ways: either it gets crushed by the authorities or the counter-protestors; or it overthrows the government; or it settles into a civil war. In the USA, with its traditions, and with an armed population, an undemocratic overthrow of the government does not seem possible without a prolonged civil war against it.

For a civil war, we need some geographical separation of sides. The left forms no natural contiguous territory: they are divided, on both coasts. Should both coasts rise in arms, they would not be able to coordinate. The right, naturally holding the central position, could pick off either in turn, able to shift their forces as needed. The right would also be sitting on the energy and the food supplies. The left, if it took the government, would still probably only hold sway in the cities. The situation would be like that of the Paris commune: they might nominally be in occupation of the government institutions, but they could be cut off from power, food, and communications.

Given these factors, I would have predicted that the left would not want to risk letting things come to blows. Yet they seem to be the side pushing hard to do so—the side that has begun to be violent. I can account for this only as a suicidal tendency. They are seeing their power slipping—they have lost their control over the media, and are perhaps in danger of losing their control over education. Not getting their will, they are throwing a self-destructive tantrum.

All that is necessary then for the good to succeed is that leaders on the right stay resolute, and not be frightened into appeasing without a fight. Sadly, this is looking like too high a bar for them.

Wars and Rumours of War

Aunty Fascist.

I think it is indisputable that we, in Europe, America, and Oceania, “the West,” or “Western civilization,” are now in a state of cold civil war. Normal discourse is being shut down, and this must lead to violence. To an extent, violence has already started, with gangs like Antifa in the streets.

I also think there is no question who is the aggressor in this war: the “left.” It is the left that has been trying to shut down civil discourse; this is demonstrable. They are shouting down, censoring, passing “hate speech” laws, banning, boycotting, and unfriending.

Not all wars are contests of good against evil. But in the normal course of things, contrary to popular belief, most are. If both parties are of good heart, things can almost certainly be worked out without violence. A war that is simply a “misunderstanding” is improbable.

When this is the case, when it is good against evil, it is generally the party of evil who begins the war. It is not that starting a war is evil in itself, as is often claimed, but that it is the side with a losing argument who will want to shut down debate and resort to force. As a desperation measure, because otherwise they will lose the debate.

And it is usually the party of evil, or the party that begins the war, who loses it. That is, given that the parties are reasonably equally matched--this rule cannot apply if, for example, the British Empire invades Easter Island with a dozen ships of the line.

It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. First, there is the logic of the ordeal or duel: the assumption behind these practices was that the human conscience would strengthen the arm and aim of one who knew they were in the right. Second, the side that lacks justification is going to war as a desperation measure; because they know they will lose the argument. As they go to war in desperation, they may well go to war against the odds.

The obvious historical example is the Second World War. Granted that Stalin was as bad, overall, as Hitler, I think there is no room to dispute that right was on the side of the Western Allies against the Nazis. And I think the argument is compelling that Hitler, and Japan, went to war with little chance of winning from the outset. It is as though in a fit of suicidal rage they just wanted to take down as many people with them as possible.

I think, contrary to much opinion, that the same was true of the First World War. Germany was morally in the wrong, advancing an ideology of social Darwinism, Germany and Austria were the aggressors, first declaring war, and Germany and Austria lost.

American Civil War: begun by the South by firing on Fort Sumter. They were obviously morally in the wrong, to the extent that they were fighting to preserve slavery, they started a war that, in terms of relative economic and military strength, they had little chance to win, and they lost the war they had begun.

Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia for no good reason but grandeur and to check German power. France lost.

Punic Wars: who started them is unclear; but the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice, and so were clearly in the moral wrong as a civilization. And they lost.

The left, I think on this basis, is doomed to lose this current civil war. And I believe, as I have said before, that the real underlying issue is abortion, and the supposed right to unrestricted sex. It is only a matter of how much blood they can spill in the effort.

Once they lose, I think we can expect the world to return to a healthy course and reconstruct.

Trump on the Civil War

Old Hickory in old age.

The latest nonsense from the press is a criticism of Trump for saying Andrew Jackson might have prevented the US Civil War.

One can disagree with Trump on this. But it is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

Yet all the coverage is along the lines of “Trump is ignorant of history”; “Trump does not understand the Civil War”; “Trump gets it wrong.” Please.

CNN: “Trump gets Andrew Jackson and Civil War totally wrong”

The Guardian: “Trump voices confusion over US history: ‘Why was there a Civil War?’”

New York Times: “With Civil War remark, a president who does not go by the (history) book.”

Washington Post: “Trump’s totally bizarre claim about avoiding the Civil War.”

Here, so far as I can tell, is exactly what Trump said:

"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.' People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

The mainstream media’s objections:

1. Andrew Jackson died fourteen years before the Civil War.

Does anyone really believe Trump was saying Jackson was in charge during the war? It was a hypothetical.

Jackson was certainly aware of the tensions between north and south, since they had been around since before the War of Independence.

2. Andrew Jackson did not have a big heart. He was a slaveowner and made the Cherokee Indians move to Oklahoma.

While we may find these policies heartless, it is also true that Jackson had a reputation as a kind commander and a generous slaveholder. When one of his slaves was apparently beaten to death by an overseer, he pressed hard to have the man charged with murder. “Big heart” can also mean courageous, and Jackson certainly had a reputation for that.

It seems to me a bit unfair to condemn anyone running a plantation in the US South for owning slaves. The problem was systemic. If you owned a plantation and did not keep slaves, given that others would, you would soon go bankrupt. You could not compete, given your higher labour costs.

The Anaconda Plan. Basically the North's war strategy.

3. The reason for the Civil War is well known. It was to abolish slavery.

This presupposes that the only way to abolish slavery is through war. An odd claim. Yet the British Empire abolished slavery many years before the US, with no war. In fact, slavery is abolished everywhere, and it seemingly never required a war anywhere but the US. Why is it unreasonable then to think war could have been avoided?

As to slavery being the cause of the Civil War, even this is debatable. Abraham Lincoln, for one, denied it. He said that it was to preserve the union. He said that if he could have kept the union together by endorsing slavery, he would have done so. And the South abolished slavery themselves before the war ended. It seems more as though slavery was a symbol to the South of their right to self-rule.

4. The Civil War was inevitable, and no leader could have prevented it.

This seems at base a Marxist view of history: dialectical materialism produces historical inevitability, leading of course in the end to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the communist utopia at the end of time. The school of history that believes people actually have free will also has some intellectual credibility. Did Churchill not matter? Gandhi? Martin Luther King? Lincoln? Washington? Newton? Aristotle?

In fact, Jackson faced a southern attempt to leave the union during his presidency—the South Carolina nullification crisis—and managed to nip it in the bud. This seems reasonable grounds for presuming he could have handed it the next time around.

5. Andrew Jackson would not have prevented the Civil War, because he was a slaveholder.

This is a non sequitur. It makes no more sense than arguing that Lincoln could not have fought the Civil War because he owned no slaves. Being a slaveholder himself might have given Jackson the credibility to get the South to compromise.

What compromise? How about what the British did: financial compensation to slave owners for their loss of property.

Note that US Grant, top Union general during the Civil War, himself owned slaves, or at least one slave. Robert E. Lee, top general for the South, opposed slavery. This did not seem to make their tasks impossible.

It may not be that the world has gone crazy, but certainly the press has. What they print has no necessary relation to objective fact.

The Battle of Berkeley

Although it does not seem to have been covered in most media, there is a lot on YouTube about the recent “Battle of Berkeley.”

Somebody held a “Free Speech” rally featuring pro-Trump speakers. Antifa showed up—you have heard of “Antifa”? They’re the guys who show up in gangs all in black, just so everyone knows they’re the bad guys, and wearing masks, so nobody knows who they are, like the KKK, and try to disrupt any right-wing events. The name is supposed to be short for “Anti-fascism,” but they seem themselves to be fascist in their thinking and tactics. Their black and red flag suggests communism and anarchism. I guess they are “anti-fascist” in the same way the Berlin Wall was “anti-fascist.” “Fascists” has long been the communist word for anyone who is not communist.

Whoever staged the rally surely expected Antifa to show up. They always show up, and especially in a place like Berkeley. There have been two previous “Battles of Berkeley,” notably the one about a month ago where a guy was shot and a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled. But this time, it seems, the right wing was prepared. They were organized for this, they fought back, and, as they tell it, they drove the Antifa guys off.

And so it begins. The other side has now finally begun to organize. After years of provocation by Antifa and Black Lives Matter and students shouting down speakers on campus. How does this not end in a Weimar Republic, or a Northern Ireland, rival gangs fighting in the streets, situation? Each side, to defeat the other at the next confrontation, must get better organized. They must bring stronger and stronger weapons.

People are going to get killed, and politics will no longer be possible. It will be might makes right. You can see in the YouTube videos that the right wing is now excited. They have tasted blood, and it is thrilling. They want more.

It seems to me almost a certainly that the left will lose. But they brought this on. And the right wing organization that wins is almost sure to involve some elements of fascism, given fascism’s taste for violence. It will not be the religious right, nor the libertarian right, which rises through this.

I swear, I have seen this one coming since the early 1970s. And it was always the left’s doing. This was inevitable as soon as a large body of people embraced moral relativism.

Stop Me, Before I Kill Again...

In reaction to the allegations by Trump that his campaign headquarters were bugged, Mark Levin and Stefan Molyneux have joined Sarah Hoyt in pressing the panic button. Molyneux warns of likely violence to come, and compares the situation to that before the French Revolution. Levin seemed to be literally trembling with rage as he made his case with news reports. He said this was “orders of magnitude” more serious than Watergate

We do not yet know whether there is any thing substantial behind Trump’s charges. If there is, it would seem that we have a constitutional crisis. Bob Woodward was interviewed, and said there is no good mechanism to deal with this.

I wonder. Democratic government—any stable society—depends on a series of gentleman’s agreements. Bad guys will always break them, but everyone counts on most people not doing so. Everyone must trust that most people in authority will do the decent thing when it comes down to it. That level of trust seems to be gone in the US now. There is already fighting in the streets. We have just seen a particularly nasty incident at Middlebury College in Vermont. We are suddenly seeing masked protesters everywhere--eerily like the Fascists in their day.

You have to wonder. What happens if there is a civil war or revolution in America?

A civil war like the first one would require some states to vote to secede from the union. For that to be possible, I think you have to assume a Democratic majority in both state houses, given that the federal government is solidly Republican. Not many states currently qualify: California, Oregon, Nevada, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, New Mexico.

Note that these do not form one geographical block. There is a clump of three on the West Coast, a clump of four on the East Coast, another clump of three on the East Coast, and two odd states in the interior, far apart. So in the case of civil war, or forming a separate country, it could not be a unified opposition. A separatist movement might hope that the rest of the US would do nothing, but if the rest of the US chose to deny them the right to independence, as happened last time this was tried, it would probably not be a terribly even fight. The interior states, if they separated on their own, would be quickly overrun. They probably would not try. It would be unlikely to get more than one of the three-state clumps to pull out in tandem. Independently, even if they did, they would probably easily be overrun. At best, it would be 40 states against 10 in three separate groups which could be picked off separately. 

Some talk of the rebel states joining Canada. That would not help, militarily. Canada does not have the military strength to defend its own land mass, much less help defend someone else’s. And there is no chance of defense in depth. Unlike Russia, everything strategic is in a narrow band just north of the border. A quick tank thrust into Winnipeg, and Canada is cut in two. It would be suicide for Canada to get involved, if it came to fighting.

So how about a revolution? Here, the left’s chances look better. They control the press, the bureaucracy, the schools and universities, the professions. In day to day terms, their hands are already on the levels of power. And they control the inner cities.

But if it came to actual shooting, again, they look as if they are at a disadvantage. In past revolutions, like the French or the Russian, controlling the capital or the big city was vitally important. But it may not be so any more, thanks to our vastly improved communications. The hinterland gets immediate news, and can make their own voice heard. So it is hard for one mob in one place to carry the day.

On the other hand, the crucial issue in any of the classic revolutions in the past has been the attitude of the army. The turning point always comes when the army refuses to fight the crowd.

Here, it seems that the Trump forces have the advantage. Both the military and the police forces are probably on the Republican side. The more so since Black Lives Matter has been demonizing the cops. The more so since Trump has appointed prominent and well-respected military men to top administration posts. And promised more money for the military. Any civilians with guns are also likely to be Trump supporters, given the left’s fight for gun control.

So, if it comes to fighting in the streets, most of the weaponry and military discipline will be on one side. If it comes to a quick attempted coup, they had better be ready to face tank turrets below their office windows within days.

This being so, it seems like suicide for the left to be taking to the barriers now, refusing to work within the system as it stands, in which they are favoured, and fighting against open discussion, free speech and democratic mechanisms. It is a spectacular case of historical blindness and arrogance.

And if anyone tries to warn them, they are the enemy.

I wonder if it is a case of their own guilty consciences demanding they be found out and punished. It is said to be so, for example, for serial murderers, that they secretly want to be caught, and will keep taking risks and leaving clues until they are.

The Erinyes are out, and are taking no prisoners.