We here abjure most commentary on current affairs, inasmuch as current affairs are almost entirely froth upon the scum of history ‒ are, that is to say, mere noise ‒ and so, not worth notice, or mental work. Are, indeed, deleterious to mentation.
But, that’s no sort of policy here. I am like all us contributors here at liberty to write about whatever I want to write about.
And it seems to me that a threshold of world historical importance might have been passed last night with the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It showed to everyone not a total fool that the entire Biden administration is a sham, and a knowing deception of the public. And this showed in turn that everyone who has been propping up that administration in the press is likewise engaged in a sham, and a more or less knowing deception.
Last night, on national television, the sham was revealed as such.
The Big Lie, and so with it all its subsidiary supporting lies, have been published, for all to see, and all who can see anything at all have now seen them. There is no turning back.
The Powers That Be will try their best to stave off the collapse of their oligarchy that must now necessarily sooner or later, somehow or other, ensue. But we may hope that they will fail; that this event marks the beginning of an unstoppable preference cascade, like that wonderful release from acute cognitive dissonance enjoyed by the denizens of the Warsaw Pact when the Berlin Wall fell, and the foolish fantasy of Soviet Communism was over and done with.
We may at least now hope that the normies might have begun to suspect that not all is what the press have told them for years that it is.
It may just be that, when push comes to shove, it is at last impossible to controvert the obvious reality that the Emperor is naked, and with him his whole Empire of lies.
God send that this is the beginning of the end of the nightmare, and of a general awakening. God send that the process of that awakening is not violent, but gradual, charitable, and orderly. There is room for hope in that: as the Wall fell, the Stasi and the border guards stood down; they saw the handwriting on the Wall, and did not altogether despair thereat; indeed, in their hearts, we may suppose, a wild glad hope arose.
Maybe it won’t be for us now so nice. But, no matter: Deus vult!
The Orthosphere 
Hear! Hear!
Let’s hope so. But very few benefitted from the deep lie that was Communism; many, many more are convinced the Emperor is clothed.
The bigfoot media is obsessed, or would at least like the public to be obsessed, with the immediate bearing this epic fail will have on the Democrat’s nomination. Your observation is found, if found at all, only in very out-of-the way places. It is now very hard not to know that the President is just the front-man for a cabal. It is easy to overlook the strings on a marionette; not so easy to overlook that those strings have broken and the marionette has collapsed in a heap.
There is, I fear, nothing an ordinary citizen can do about this other than resolve not to be so big a fool as Biden. Circumstances allowed Joe Biden to play the old fool on the world stage, but almost any man, and most especially any old man, can fall into the same trap. I daresay vanity and flattery are the operative factors—vanity on the part of the old man and flattery on the part of the cabal that makes him dance.
A vain old man needs flattery for the same reason a lame old man needs a cane. His ego is no longer supported by the home-grown piss and vinegar of youth. Most old men are useless and so must do without much in the way of flattery. Those old men are fortunate because some of them will learn to do without much in the way of vanity. Other old men shuffle down the path that was taken by Joe Biden, fatuously hopeful grins on their faces.
This would explain why I see so many old guys (and an inexcusable amount of young ones) hauling themselves all across central Florida to play guitar and sing–badly–at whatever venue they can convince the owner to let them play at for some scattered applause. It’s apparently intoxicating in the same way being nominally in the ruling class is intoxicating. (The “drooling class?” Thank you I’m here all week.)
In doing some brief googling, it appears that “vanity” or “vaingloriousness” (which is what I call such behavior) was the term more commonly used for Pride in the Seven Cardinal Vices but now considered archaic. They are underused terms and deserve to be taken off the shelf and brushed off.
And what to think of Jill Biden and the rest of Joe’s family? Dear God, justice please.
Vanity is the handle by which most of us are most easily manipulated. I learned this the hard way.
I suffer similar sentiments whenever I see old guys like me who have pony tails and who obviously care about them as some sort of signal or symbol.
I’m reminded of Grace Slick laughing at Mick Jagger 20+ years ago: you’re a 60-something (now 80-something) multi-zillionaire singing that you “can’t get no satisfaction.” Doesn’t even make sense, and you’re no longer the lean, hungry 22-yo who wrote that song. Pure vanity.
I don’t know what it is like to be Mick Jagger, or even a middling rock star, but I think I may have some inkling of the nature of the drug on which he is hooked. Even an assistant Pizza Hut manager can get hooked on this drug of perceived personal importance. Withdrawal is a bitch with this drug, but everyone has to go through withdrawal sooner or later.
That Biden himself is a puppet of his handlers isn’t a fact of world-historical importance. The important truth, that neither the President nor his “political appointees” are meaningfully in charge of the federal government, remains just as concealed from the public as ever. It seems that some right-wing normies were starting to pick up on this while Trump was President, but they quickly forgot when Biden took office. The allure of blaming Biden (or his handlers) personally for everything was too strong.
I suppose I am to blame for bringing up current politics. I apologize, it is perfectly useless to talk about that stuff, we are on opposite sides with no danger of anybody changing their mind.
Re Biden: His administration has been widely recognized as one of the most effective in recent history (I’m sure you don’t share his policy preferences but that is beside the point). He is old and had a bad debate night, that doesn’t make his administration a sham, that’s just stupid.
It’s also a weird tack to take; I mean, there are many reasons one might dislike Joe Biden, but pretense is not really one of them. He’s pretty much what he appears to be, an old mainstream Democratic politician, for better or worse.
On the other hand, his opponent is a professional liar with countless legal judgements against him for various acts of fraud (remember “Trump University”?). An entire persona and movement built on pure lies. This was also evident at the debate; Trump was more vigorous but in the service of absolute bullshit. Almost everything out of his mouth was a lie.
I suppose Trump is not really a sham, because everybody knows he is a con man and somehow that makes them throng to him. People eat it up, they are hungry for bullshit for some unfathomable reason. Everybody can tell he is a living embodiment of the worst human traits, a living illustration of most of the cardinal sins (wrath, greed, pride, lust…all part of his brand). Yet people want that as the leader and representative of their country. It makes me despair of democracy, which can’t work with this level of stupid and evil.
You might get your wish of the old regime dying and a new one coming into being. I’m sure that will be a nightmare for me and every other halfway decent, sane, and civilized person. YMMV.
I am pretty sure I did not even imply that the Biden Administration is a sham. It is illegitimate, to be sure, but that’s a different thing: that an oligarchy is illegitimate does not mean it is a sham; does not mean that it is not really an oligarchy or not really in command of the organs of social control ‒ which is of course to say, at bottom, to the organs of administration of violence upon the people.
Nor in writing my last had I even been thinking that the Administration has been ineffective. Indeed, now that I am thinking about its effectiveness, it looks to me like one of the most effective in history. It has done immense damage to America. It is the reciprocal of the Milei Administration: in a matter of weeks, it managed to turn massive prosperity into speedy pervasive systemic increase of poverty and malaise (that term so familiar from the Carter Administration, which was *so much less effective* than the Biden Administration in pushing the agenda of the Left). No mean feat! Albeit, only too common with Commies.
The Biden Administration has proven itself masterfully effective at deploying the instruments of violence at hand to the organs of the government it controls in the service of the destruction of its enemies, and all under the color of ostensible due process of law.
But then, all the efficacy of the Biden Administration has done is to accelerate immensely the damage that American democracy had for long ‒ as having been for long implacably leftist ‒ already been doing to America. The Biden Administration has been ruthlessly effective at full speed pedal to the metal damn the torpedoes implementation of insane policies ‒ truly nutty stuff, like rejection of voter ID, of sex, of the 1st Amendment ‒ that until their fruits began to appear had been at least thought not totally whacko by about half the population (a fact that speaks ill of half the population (more on that in a moment)). Not Joe himself, of course (he has since before he began his 2020 campaign been but a cipher, the poor man; has been obviously, manifestly demented (anyone who has watched a parent or grandparent through the process sees the signs perfectly well)), but those who pull his strings, who hold the reins of power. That’s why they kept him in his basement throughout the 2020 campaign, while Trump was out on the hustings day after day, filling enormous arenae to massive overflowing. Trump was on full public view, the whole time; with all his faults.
He’s a flawed person, of course, albeit picaresque and larger than life: morally defective, sloppy, wild, prone to exaggeration, misstatement, mistakes, and so forth … unlike professional politicians, who do much better at all that sort of thing (i.e., they have *all* the faults of Trump (and more, for unlike him they are also famously corrupt in the conduct of their political offices), but sub rosa; whereas Trump has them out in the open, shamelessly). The reason people love him ‒ let me clue you in to this ‒ is that unlike *everyone else in mainstream public life,* he is unafraid to say whatever the hell he thinks on the spur of the moment, no matter how much trouble doing so might create for him, and no matter whose ox is gored (even his own).
It is obvious to everyone that Trump can’t be controlled. He’s a force of nature. This is his appeal. He just does not care what anyone thinks, does not care about the boundaries of polite discourse, does not care about the rules of what may not be mentioned. He says out loud what millions think only to themselves, and never let on to anyone, lest they be destroyed. So he gives voice to the voiceless.
The voiceless read this or that of the latest daily inanity from within the Beltway or Hollywood or their local high school, and think, “Wait, this is nuts; but then, wait again, for if I say to anyone that it is nuts, I might be destroyed, and with me my kids; so, better be quiet.” Trump just says it. So he releases the political energy of a relief of massive, deep, pervasive cognitive dissonance. People who have been thinking for years, “No, wait, this is nuts, but I better keep my mouth shut,” they hear him say what they would like to have been able to say, and they respond with something akin to joy. The release is that intense.
Politicians try like all of us to look OK. Trump doesn’t try to look OK. He is happy to look less than perfect. It is a classic, and at bottom honest, therefore charitable, stratagem of good negotiation: don’t be afraid to appear less than perfect (as indeed you are) to your adversary; for, your forthrightly admitted imperfection will render you to him less formidable, more human, more *like him,* thus more to him agreeable; and, so, will disarm him, and increase the likelihood that you will reach a true agreement with him ‒ true peace.
The problem with democracy is that it can’t work for good ‒ for prosperity, peace, harmony, and so on ‒ unless the demos be itself in the first place preponderantly wise, prudent, righteous, enterprising, based, foresightful, charitable, reasonable, self-controlled, and so forth. Otherwise, democracy is the rule of knaves and villains and fools.
Democracy works great so long as the demos is composed mostly of philosophically astute saints. It never is. So, democracy can’t work in the real world, with men as we find them to be. This has been known by political science for 2,500 years at least. That’s why our Fathers ‒ all of them astute political scientists ‒ bequeathed us a republic, rather than a democracy (it is why we still have the Electoral College). We have not kept it.
I was just the other day talking to my father, a Democrat, who was voting before Joe Biden could read. I remarked that we were heading for an election in which one candidate is in prison and the other is in hospice. It was intended and taken as grounds for commiseration. Either man might win but neither man can lead. This is a sad but tragically inevitable state of affairs for which we are all in some degree to blame, and from which I see no exit. I wonder, though, if we might reduce the carnage of the coming crash if we all stop putting lipstick on our preferred pig. The puppet-masters may yet devise some means to swerve, but that would only relocate the damage to the electoral system, and will deepen the general conviction of its mendacity. I will confess to relishing some rich schadenfreude these past few days, but this was a grim pleasure unleavened by jubilation. My pig is my pig, but he will get no lipstick from me.
Biden is a demented old man and does not exercise executive agency. If you think Anthony Blinken and Jeff Zients are doing a good job heading the Executive branch that’s fine but they needed to have been named in advance and gone on the campaign trail to articulate their political vision so we could vote on it.
As far as Trump’s personal pecadillos, I don’t need Marcus Aurelius; Marcus Aurelius would get eaten alive, just like the decent and principled Ron Paul. I need a sonuvabich who loathes my enemies.
I’ve no doubt you’re a person who takes great Pride in the notion of the US as a Proposition Nation, but I doubt you’ve ever given much thought to the ethnicity of the only people in human history who dreamed up the Proposition and fought for it, or what to do when there’s no longer any consensus on the Proposition.
I doubt a.morphous has ever done so – I could be wrong, he has quite a far reaching mind – but I’ve thought about that a fair bit, with Madison, and contra the Standard American Myth in which I was inculcated from infancy. Not much I can do about it at this point; water under the bridge, that was then, this is now. From this point forward, nations will sort themselves out more or less adversarily, more or less amicably … as has ever been so. I expect it will be messy, but provided the dominant people of each nation asserts itself forcibly and reasonably, there is no reason we may not avoid genocide.
Not that I quite expect that we shan’t avoid genocide. I rather expect that we’ll see some of it. Not a happy thought.
Pingback: On Trump … on Biden, the Poor Old Fellow … & on the Biden Administration – The Orthosphere