Quote of the day—Jason

By allowing incremental transgressions to go unchecked for centuries, the government has grown exponentially. We have had generations of deliberate and incremental miseducation that has created a positive feedback loop. The people literally do have the power to fix it but lack the knowledge and will to do so. I honestly see no way out unless a massive movement of grass roots education on the principals of liberty, virtue and limited government were to rise, which would be nothing short of a miracle. If and when it all collapses, I have zero confidence in anything good rising from the ashes.

Jason
January 14, 2021
Comment to Ghosts of the Constitution, past, present, and future
[I’m an optimist.

I think there is a slight chance something good could rise from the ashes.—Joe]

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16 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Jason

  1. I’m with you Joe. One can see a very bright future indeed, without government chains to drag us down.
    The American people are the best and hardest working people on earth. Even if mostly destroyed. A new system will be built in short order. Even a much better one. The problem is the parasite class of our day is at the collapse point. Their about to destroy the host. We will survive.
    And It can surely be a chance to build something better.
    If we only understood the amount good people are held back by government bullshit, brainwashing, and red tape. Trump showed us a small part of that ability. And for that he should be thanked. There’s 100’s of millions of us.
    And we should never doubt our own ability to be better. And to make a better future.
    There will never be easy answers or clear paths. But that’s OK, cause were
    Freak’in Americans! We love a good fight. And a good challenge. We scare the crap out of the parasite class for those same reasons.
    We should never give up the idea of a better day.

  2. I can only think that if the Leftists who think this is a commendable course of events had this happen to their mortgage contracts instead of their Constitution, they would no longer be so proudly Leftists.
    It will happen eventually, and I hope there is no way to blame the conservatives except by becoming even more demonstrably batshit insane than Leftists are now.

    • Good analogy. Prof. Randy Barnett, author of an excellent book on the Constitution, mentions that he got started on it from the viewpoint of his expertise in contract law.

  3. I hope that after our federal government collapses, as it eventually will, that what follows is mass decentralization. But I’m not too optimistic that it will happen.

    • Nope. Too much massive and pervasive surveillance. Not enough stuff is actually manufactured locally to support decentralization. Going decentralized will result in “government” by the most organized gangs, which if you have been paying attention are already permeating our society – the Antifa thugs are just the more obvious part of it.

      On the other hand: https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-releases-dominion-audit-report-report-claims-system-designed-to-create-systemic-fraud

      Brave Sir Biden, he Bravely Ran Away! (he knows it’s a trap) https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/15/harris-inauguration-459598

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4Qv37ap2M

      I’m guessing that we are heading for the most exciting week in world history since D-Day. And no, that is not hyperbole.

      • You do realize the article on the Dominion report is from over a month ago and is now, for all practical purposes, meaningless, right?

    • Yes, collapse is the only hope that I have, but it’s likelihood is small and don’t bet on finance to do it – our national debt has been “un-payable” for a good part of our lifetime. MMT will rule our futures. Collapse will only come if we somehow fail to produce the basic necessities of life and given that only takes a small part of the population to provide that, mass unemployment with MMT will not do it. The other possibility is an existential event, but COVID did not do it and instead just accelerated totalitarianism tendencies, so I think that it too is unlikely unless it wipes out most of the population.

      Even more worrisome is what would come after.

  4. Or, to put it another way:
    The “Tea Party” was conservative people politely asking.
    Trump is conservative people asking less politely.
    You don’t want to level up in this game, guys, and find out who’s next. You really don’t.

    Nobody does.

    • The problem I see is that only trauma overrides brainwashing. So as long as they maintain some form of new normal, for lack of a better term. Humans will suffer where evils are sufferable. Rather than right themselves.
      The one thing we can bet on is the swiftness of the next outrage.
      If it turns out for Biden. The scandals will be so fast and numerous, and so ignored by the media, no one will be able to keep up.

      • That’s a good way of putting it and it seems to fit the history that I know. I could only think of examples – not the classification. A deep and long term trauma is what we need for people to again to see the wisdom in parables like the grasshopper and the ant.

        What I’m still have trouble with is how can trauma happen if automation produces the basics using only using a small fraction of the population. I’m thinking that it would have to be existential, something like global cooling.

        • Failure of the internet would do. In the 2008 crisis I heard tell of ships that couldn’t get letters of credit. So grain at the dock could not be purchased. All because of bank failures.
          Hyperinflation will have the same effects to a global market.
          Remember the lights going out in New York? Image a week or two?
          With a just in time, no warehouse system. Were begging for a crisis/trauma.

        • Failure of the Internet would be a bad thing, but it’s not so obvious how that is possible given the fault tolerance it has. Sabotage, perhaps. Some years ago a country (Pakistan?) disappeared from the Internet because bad BGP routes were diverting all traffic to that address range into some black hole (China? Hong Kong?). I’m not sure anymore if that was shown to be deliberate or might have been an error of some sort. But it clearly showed the potential of such attacks, and I wonder if anything, or enough, has been done to defeat them. It certainly can be done, but of course it isn’t easy.
          A more drastic failure would be a EMP attack. It’s often said that Kim 3rd is no threat because getting warheads to survive reentry and hit their target is hard. Yes, but neither is needed for a successful EMP attack. Just lob the missile to some spot somewhere over mid-California and set off the warhead… **poof**.
          For a look at what the aftermath might be like, there is Niven & Pournelle “Lucifer’s Hammer”, or Matthew Bracken’s “Alas, Brave New Babylon” (in his “Bracken Anthology”).

  5. That’s in the right direction, but none of those events including COVID, 911, power outages, bank, currency, inflation, stagflation, fires, … has caused trauma sufficient for collapse. Even the great depression did not cause collapse. That’s not to say that we did not take notice and make changes – we did, but the direction was always towards more authoritarianism not less.

    I can not think of any normal events that has resulted in a move towards more freedoms and less authoritarianism. The only events that come even close was the breakup of the Soviet Union after seventy years of communism. And that event was driven in part by the failure to produce basics for their people.

    I’m arguing that collapse due to the inability to provide for basics may not happen again with the advent of automation and abundance that we now have. Even with a lot of people on the government dole, due to lock downs, our store shelves are still full and what shortages did occur have been fixed. And even a lot of new products have appeared. What that tells me, is that we don’t need most people to provide for our basics.

    The only events that will do it are existential and then only if they are massive with very large loss of life.

    • Your right. But somehow this one feels…..different. I mean Joe Biden seems like he could be the sweet meteor of death, in drag?
      In the mean time, we are being promised stimulus money. Is out of line to look at Kamala Harris and say;
      Bitch! Where’s myyy money?!!!

      • I find it telling that Biden brags he can and will destroy the nations oldest civil rights organization. That seems like a pretty good clue for what to expect from a Biden/Harris administration.

    • I should note that the movement towards authoritarianism in response to a crisis can be quite uneven and in some cases parts of the response can result in more freedom. A case in point is WFH and DL mandated in response to COVID – at least for some people. Overall, our response to COVID is still making us less free. And I do not expect those emergency rules to go way.

      The authorities will find other reasons to keep them in place indefinitely including more new rules such as requiring health passports before you will be allowed to access to protected buildings or areas and public transportation. It’s already happening in transportation at the behest of the managers.

      Health departments have gained power and they will, of course, want to keep it along with the money. So expect more and more rules.

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