Resistance 101 in Occupied America
Here are some excerpts from a series of incisive, sometimes brilliant posts from the Z-Man. Don't agree with everything, but who ever does? Still important and worthwhile.
The Lesson of Trump #1: "The party system is a fiction. The core of each party holds the same opinions on the important issues. They are bankrolled by the same collection of billionaires and international interests. The parties have tentacles that reach into various camps, but the main body of the system serves the people who bankroll American politics. A politician with close ties to the CCP can maintain his seat because the Chinese are a major backer of both parties.
For generations, the Right insisted that the Left is driven by the same logic as everyone else. This was always false, and part of the long con played on the public. This is, in part, why conservatives lost every battle in the culture war. The people on the other side of the barricades, celebrating their victory over us, are not us and they do not think like us.
The Cloud People are not motivated by greed or a lust for power. They have those things. They are motivated by a sense of identity that starts with a hatred of the Dirt People. Their sense of self begins with not being anything like the people over whom they rule. This is why they hated Trump. He was an intruder from the other side injected into their world. ...Five years ago, most people were sure about politics. Now that the fog has lifted, people are looking around and seeing it was always a big lie.".......
The Lesson of Trump # 2: "Trump could never have existed without the realty of the masses that supported him. With or without Trump, those people exist and will continue to exist with the same grievances and concerns.
There is no way to reform this system....people no longer think the system is legitimate. Every day the people in charge convert more people to this view with their authoritarian actions.
The old political labels are no longer relevant. That is what the Trump era demonstrated. It is no longer about conservative versus liberal or red team versus blue team. It is not socialism versus capitalism. It is about those who live in the lie of liberal democracy and those who live in the truth. If you live in the truth, you not only oppose the people running the system, but you also oppose the system that allows these criminal aliens to rule over us.".......
Lesson of Trump # 3: "Competitive elections and open debate of the old era have been swept away in favor of ceremonial elections and speech codes. The managerial class has formally seized control of the country.
No one can look at what is going on in the country and think any of it is normal or that returning to normal is possible. Even if Washington wanted to return to normalcy, the last few months cannot be unseen. ... The imperial capital looks like it is under occupation and it very well may remain this way. The new regime is extremely paranoid, convulsed by increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories.
The political system in America is now a closed shop...you can no longer win a federal election without first being vetted by the managerial class. The razor wire barriers are the manifestation of this closing of the managerial elite.
It is not just the political marketplace that has been closed off. America is no longer a market economy. The shuttering of the social media site Parler is a great example of how the marketplace no longer exists in a conventional sense. All of its vendors gave up their business with the company, because the people running those firms are loyal to their class, not the abstract principles of the marketplace.
This will become increasingly clear as the new regime takes control. The big economic players like the banks or the tech giants are no longer subject to the marketplace in any meaningful way. For example, if angry consumers swore off Amazon, not much would change for Amazon as they control the logistics for the companies those angry consumers would use in place of Amazon. Mastercard can black list anyone because they are a part of a cartel that has no competition.
Despite all that has gone on, most people cannot accept that there is no marketplace in large swaths of the economy. They still respond to the bogeyman of socialism, despite the fact America has been a socialist country for close to a century now. We are now a command-and-control economy.
Of course, all of this is coming with something even more ominous. For example, the tech giants volunteered to work with the FBI to get the protestors they have now labeled insurrectionists, which is an important change in tone. This public-private partnership comes naturally, as the people involved see one another as members of the same class, at war with the same enemy. Silicon Valley is officially the signal intelligence arm of the surveillance state.
This year the regime will roll out the Covid passports, which will be required to get on public transport. Soon, they will be required to do anything. This is the beginning of the social credit system...Surveillance capitalism will come into full bloom tarted up with the language of public safety and defending democracy.
In total, what the Trump phenomenon has revealed is the America most people thought was their country is gone. Politically, economically, demographically, and culturally, the old American has been replaced with this new society. The great reset, as the new regime bills it, is a dictatorship of the managerial class. That class is now largely closed off to the rest of us. Public distrust of the media is no longer important, as the new class is no longer subject to the voters. The media companies no longer worry about the audience, because what are you going to do, start your own Amazon? Create your own Hollywood? Mitch McConnell supports another impeachment, because he knows the party system is a farce. His loyalty to his class is what matters.
Michael Anton was right that Donald Trump was the Flight 93 president. Like that flight, the story was motivated by hope, but it was doomed from the start. Like that flight, it crashed and now can only serve as a warning and a rally point. For the new regime, it is a warning that their subjects will fight back if given the chance. For the rest of us, it is reminder that we can fight back, but success is not guaranteed. Resistance only works when no one has any illusions about what is being resisted.".......
The Road Ahead: "The political marketplace no longer exists. You are not allowed to speak your mind to your fellow citizens, unless your opinions are approved by the managerial class. They are also making sure that your choices at the ballot box will be limited to their approved options. Even if you find a way around it, the magic of mail-in ballots will guarantee the outcome in advance.
What this means is the new age of managerial authoritarianism will require a new brand of politics that fits the age. All of the avenues of the old system have been closed off or corrupted, so they serve the ends of the regime. Mass censorship monopolizes the public space by the organs of the ruling class. Systematic ballot stuffing closes off the electoral route. Even the courts are a dead end. A court that claims the Founders wanted special rights for men in drag is no friend of the people.
From the perspective of white populism, all politics must now be irregular politics as conventional politics has been closed off to us. The Right has to move away from the mindset of the majority to the mindset of the put-upon minority. That means engaging in unconventional tactics. When you cannot participate in conventional politics in order to advance your interests, your choices are clear. You either submit and live the lie that is conventional politics, or you rebel and live outside the lie.
This is why boycotting elections and threatening the Republican Party from the Right must be part of the new political toolkit. In the old politics, it was always about the people running the system, not the system itself. The focus was on getting the right people elected. In the new politics, this is reversed. It is about the system, not the people running the system. The GOP is part of that system. Attacking them is part of weakening a system that makes war on us.
Attacking the GOP forces them to choose their friends on the Left over their former constituents. It reframes politics as insiders versus outsiders, rather than one group of insiders versus another...
The hardest part of this new mindset will be the idea of being ungovernable. This is the opposite of what most right-wing people have been conditioned to think. In the old way, the good citizen plays by the rules. In the new age, the good citizen is always looking for the chance to throw sand in the gears and undermine the rules. The dissident is always looking to drive up the costs to the managerial class by making them expend resources to compel compliance with their rules.
The main point of politics for dissidents in any sort of authoritarian society is to develop and maintain an atmosphere of pressure on the regime. As ugly as it looks, those troops, barricades and razor wire fencing in Washington are a great result. A ruling class living inside an armed camp is one that will eventually burn through its emotional capital and begin to make mistakes. Ideally, the ruling class stays behind those barriers, fearing that the people on the other side are ungovernable.
There are tactics that advance the interest of dissidents, which are primarily the weakening of the regime. The solutions in the demographic age can only come after the collapse the liberal democratic order. All politics now are about creating conditions in which rational politics can return.
This raises the thorniest of problems. The late Robert Novak used to say he loved his country but hated his government. In a post-national world ruled by a dictatorship of the managerial class, there is no country to love. Patriotism, like civic nationalism and clean elections, is a museum piece. Instead, you love your cause, you love your people, and you are willing to work with anyone that helps you fight the tyrants. In a world of “us versus them”, abstract concepts like patriotism have no place..
As a practical matter politics now must be a daily rebellion. Like Havel’s green grocer, being a dissident means living in the truth and every day is a war to pull a brother out of the lie that is modern America. It is defacing signs that say we are all in this together and littering managerial areas with reminders that they are surrounded. It means denying them your virtues by refusing to cooperate and only going along with their edicts after they have expended resources to compel you.
It is to live and let them know you live in a constant state of insurrection and that as long as you do, they can never rest. The people on the other side of those barriers live in fear of the people on this side of those barriers. They can no longer trust the men guarding them, as most of those men live on this side of those barriers. They are paranoid and afraid of the noises on the other side. The politics of this age are all about turning those institutions they control into prisons.".......
Apologies to the author for such large excerpts--there was simply no good place to stop.
But that's what the Junta said, isn't it?
But here's what God says:
Haggai 2
This Temple Will End Up Better Than It Started Out
20-21 God’s Message came a second time to Haggai on that most memorable day, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month: “Speak to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah:
21-23 “‘I am about to shake up everything, to turn everything upside down and start over from top to bottom—overthrow governments, destroy foreign powers, dismantle the world of weapons and armaments, throw armies into confusion, so that they end up killing one another. And on that day’”—this is God’s Message—“‘I will take you, O Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, as my personal servant and I will set you as a signet ring, the sign of my sovereign presence and authority. I’ve looked over the field and chosen you for this work.’” The Message of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Amen and Amen!
