Animo et Facto

       Francis Bacon said we believe nothing so much as that which we wish to believe.  After eight years of Oh Blah Blah, Estase yearned for a president who didn't make extensive use of executive orders and presidential fiat.  He thought Glenn Beck was like him in wanting a Frodo president--someone who would take the Ring of excessive presidential power created by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and then expanded by FDR, and throw it in a volcano.  To keep the business of the Dittohead Right, Glenn Beck now sings the praises of a Gollum president--someone who sits in a darkened cave where he sees only the shadows of his imagined success, clinging to Imperial power, repeating the words, "My precious!"

       Thus, the chasm between intention and reality becomes apparent.  Republicans thought they were electing a conservative super-patriot, and have actually empowered a statist who is less conservative than George W. Bush.  But you would never know this from the corrupt conservative media;  too afraid to tell the Right the truth for fear of losing listeners or viewers, they heap adulation on the same kind of autocrat they just spent eight years condemning.

Philosophy, R.I.P.

       Those who have followed my blogs for any length of time know I quoted Allen Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind.  Bloom's book diagnosed the problems with Heidegger, Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School, and what we now know as identity politics.  These trends have now become the dominant thread in American universities.  So much so that when Estase mentioned this book on a philosophy page on Facebook, another user (no doubt one of our mandarin class, entrusted with vulnerable young minds), accused him of saying that the book claimed the Frankfurt School was making everyone gay, and called him an idiot.
         This is what our philosophy departments have devolved into.

Why Liberation Theology is Heresy

       Marxism teaches that man's brokenness can be fixed by communal property.  Augustinian Christianity teaches that man's brokenness can be fixed by Christ.  These positions are fundamentally irreconcilable.  Any Pope that recieves a crucifix where the corpus is on a hammer and sickle is a false teacher.

Pro-Abortion Jacobins

       The same state of Killinois that created some of the most liberal abortion laws in America also made it illegal to smoke with children in the car.  While Drag Queen Story Hour grooms children for molestation, the fine Irish homosexual Robert O'Roarke (who supports third-trimester abortion) drops an F bomb over a baby being shot in the face.  To further emphasize the left's strong emphasis on human life, NBC Universal is releasing a movie wherein rich liberals hunt working-class conservatives.  Make the guillotine red again, indeed.

Stupid Comparison of the Day (Complete with Economic Hogwash)

       Cognitive dissonance (or rank economic ignorance) is at work when Orange Blatherskite simultaneously claims he is master of a booming economy, and says that the Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates.  If the economy were actually doing well, basic economics says that interest rates should go up.  Some point to the decreasing value of the stock market.  The stock market rose to such heights only because lowered interest rates killed the bond market.  
           Everything above is obvious to anyone who actually understands economics.  The President apparently said that he didn't know who the bigger enemy to our economy was--the Chairman of the Fed or Chinese President Eleven.   Huh?  The President thinks the Chinese are such an imminent threat that he destroys American commodity exports a la Jimmy Carter to "fight" them, and now he implies that the Chairman of the Fed is worse than the dictator of a Communist regime?  This moment of stupidity was brought to you by the letters "O" and "B."

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart;  the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out 
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:  somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again;  but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come around at last, 
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats, 1921

Revolution Without Bullets

       Legal systems develop over time as nations enshrine their customs and adapt to changing circumstances.  Letting large numbers of immigrants into a nation is a revolutionary act because they bring foreign ideas and customs and are unlikely to conform to existing laws.  It takes time to assimilate immigrants into thinking and acting like the nationals who are already there.
       Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a perfect example.  She has brought far-left opinions and hatred for Jews to America.  And because Oh Blah Blah brought hundreds of thousands of Somali Muslims to our shores, Rep. Ilhan Omar sits in our national legislature, where she will warp the laws created by Congress.  Hope and change meant putting a hateful leftist married to her own brother into a position of power.

One Maxim

       Estase hasn't blogged in a really long time, and has only one thing to add to current discussions.  

The opposite of an error isn't the truth;  it is the opposite error.

Low Testosterone Conservatism

       Machissimo is one of the defining characteristics of the post-Trump right.  Would-be tough guys like Mark Levin and Sean Hannity act like thirteen-year-old boys in a locker room.  Their George S. Patton posturing gets mighty old.  The Alt Right likes to dismiss their opponents as "low-T conservatives."  I guess that the people I grew up venerating like William F. Buckley and George F. Will look like nervous old ladies to those who learned their principles from shock jocks like Michael Savage.
        The granddaddy of conservative thought in the English-speaking world is Edmund Burke, who like his similar American counterpart, John Adams, was a learned gentleman.  Isaac Kramnick's 70s biography called Burke a homosexual;  how do you get more low-T than that?  Burkean conservatism is something that very few wave the flag for, and none of those people are on Fox News.

A Never Trumper Thanks Liberals

       Being a Never Trumper means that one always has to explain and justify oneself to other conservatives.  Typical accusations are of trying to ingratiate oneself to liberals, or of having impossible standards of purity when it comes to Trump's lamentable life choices.  George F. Will is an "elitist" who is "bitter" and "out-of-touch."  People who thought Paul Ryan a better conservative than Trump are just plain fools.
         The verbal abuse from the left includes the name of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which might as well be called the White Trash Law Center.  Originally formed to fight actual racists, the SPLC is now weaponized against pro-lifers.  Apparently, people who oppose abortion are white trash now.   Then comes this:

So we can now see that the left thinks everyone who rejected the demonic Hellbeast known as H-> is white trash.  And that the former Whigs who opposed slavery were white trash as well.  After all, the Republican party was formed by poor whites (easily distinguished from the fine slaveholding gentry who elected the Democrats of the 1860s).  Nancy Isenberg makes it so much harder to find fault with President Trump, and remain credible as a conservative in 2019.  The dismissal of a wide swath of Americans as white trash is amazingly arrogant, and enough to bring out the Dale Gribble in Estase.  I can see why a book like this was nominated for an award.  The NPR liberals must love Nancy Isenberg, as should President Trump.  Isenberg reinforces every trope of the Trump machine about "elitists" and the "establishment" who hate ordinary Americans.

The Once and Future Soviet Union

   Vladimir Putin's hero is the bloodthirsty tyrant Josef Stalin.  Estase has argued for some time that the current Russian state is marking time until its population have forgotten the U.S.S.R., and will then resume its role as a Communist/totalitarian state.  Russia's closest strategic partner is Communist China, and its role as a bolster to the failed regime of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela shows that Russia is still a Communist state at heart.
       With these things said, it's hard to understand why the American left is hysterical about Vladimir Putin.  Shouldn't Sean Penn be hanging out with him or something?

She Guevara

       There was a time when realism was a valued trait in politics.  The worst thing you could accuse a politician of was of having utopian dreams.
       Of course, the ultimate utopians were Karl Marx, and his disciple Vladimir Lenin.  The utopianism of Marx and Lenin led to the violence of Beria and Che Guevara.
       Those who were born after 1991 forget the horrors of Communism, mistaking Che Guevara for a hero.  Thus, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez becomes the darling of the extreme left.  Every American could be given a Ferrari for the cost of her insane Green New Deal.  She Guevara derides moderation as a basic concept, showing that today's Democratic Party is one where the Girondins have been purged by the Jacobins.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

       The conservative movement used to have really pure ideas about the limited powers of the Presidency.  Then it embraced someone who idolized dictators and strongmen, and things went out the window.

There are several points of comparison between the pissed off British electorate of 1770 that inspired Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and the segment of the American public who find Citizen Kane attractive.   The British rogue John Wilkes was the Donald Trump of his day.  His damning sin was bucking the Earl of Bute, but what he was denied Parliament for was his insult to George III in North Briton #45.  The first time Wilkes was denied his seat, the Middlesex electors were at least allowed to elect a replacement.  The second time, the ministry named a Colonel Luttrell to fill Wilkes' spot.

        The grievances of the British in 1770 were the weak legislature caused by an intrusive executive power (namely, Lord Bute and the court faction), the fact that competent leaders were unwilling to enter office because of the undermining of ministries (as happened with Pitt the elder and Lord Rockingham), and a public feeling that the executive was overwhelming the legislature.

       The grievances of the Trump faction today are similar.  They include a pushover Congress that does everything the President asks, Congressional leaders who are scapegoats for executive programs, and a public uninterested in empowering Congress.

       The problem with the backers of Citizen Kane is that they want to deal with an emasculated Congress, not by restoring to proper functions of Congress (e.g. by returning to actual budgets, rather than continuing resolutions;  an end to finances being designed in the White House), but by replacing one autocratic President with another autocratic President. . . .Virtually no position Trump takes is based on facts, reflection or experience.  Limited government and constitutionalism are meaningless to him.  All Trump promises to be is a different type of autocrat. . . .So, unlike the British in 1770, there exists today in America discontent, but a strange, incoherent discontent that aims to remedy a disorder by the same disorder.

       Estase wrote that on his old blog Q.E.D. before the election, and unfortunately, events have proceeded accordingly.  Orange Blatheskite has relied on Presidential Decrees and National Emergencies to achieve what he cannot by legitimate means.   

 

 

 

Pot, Meet Kettle!

       The People's Republic of Illinois at work.  The above was mailed out in a piece of mail from the Secretary of State's office.  Political propaganda mailed out at taxpayer expense.  Estase isn't positive, but he believes that Ameren is actually a nonprofit--previously known as CIPS.
       At any rate, it's just rich for the State of Killinois to complain about utility rates, seeing as how the General Assembly never tires of imposing new taxes to fritter away on whatever nonsense they think up.

Is American Politics Mere Entertainment?

          NBA referee Tim Donaghy apparently called excessive fouls to throw basketball games in favor of teams that he and his pals were betting on.  Donaghy defends himself by claiming that the NBA isn't real basketball, like college teams play.
           The idea that pro basketball is as real as pro wrestling might not sit so well with many, but has it ever occurred to many Americans that their political system is a fixed game?
           The Court of King's Bench (AKA the Praetors) are supposed to be the referees of the American government.  Ever since the 30s, their role has become that of a super-legislature, achieving through their dictate what Congress cannot do.  On everything from the unceasing ability of the Federal government to tax and regulate (Wickard v. Filburn) to striking down legitimate laws the States made concerning abortion, King's Bench does far more than tell the law.   The Federal Judiciary in general is the proudest bastion of the American left.
       In light of Tim Donaghy calling fouls to throw games, his claims that his actions don't matter because the NBA is entertainment, and not a real game, and the unnerving similarity between King's Bench and the way Donaghy officiated basketball games, one comes to a sobering conclusion.  Is American politics a real competition, or just entertainment?

The New Frontiers of Choice

Swift Condemns Walpole

       "I told him, that a First or Chief Minister of State, whom I intended to describe, was a Creature wholly exempt from Joy and Grief, Love and Hatred, Pity and Anger;  at least makes use of no other Passions but a violent Desire of Wealth, Power and Titles:  That he applies his Words to all Uses, except to the Indication of his Mind;  That he never tells a Truth, but with an Intent that you should take it for a Lye;  nor a Lye, but with a Design that you should take it for a Truth;  That those he speaks worst of behind their Backs, are in the surest way to Preferment;  and whenever he begins to praise you to others or to your self, you are from that Day forlorn.  The worst Mark you can receive is a Promise, especially when it is confirmed with an Oath;  after which every wise Man retires, and gives over all Hopes.
      There are three Methods by which a Man may rise to be Chief Minister:  The first is, by knowing with Prudence to dispose of a Wife, a Daughter, or a Sister:  The second, by betraying or undermining his Predecessor:  And the third is, by a furious Zeal in publick Assemblies against the Corruptions of the Court.  But a wise Prince would rather chuse to employ those who practise the last of these Methods;  because such Zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the Will and Passions of their Master.  That, these Ministers having all Employments at their Disposal, preserve themselves in Power by bribing the Majority of a Senate or great Council;  and at last by an Expedient called an Act of Indemnity (whereof I described the Nature to him) they secure themselves from After-reckonings, and retire from the Publick, laden with the Spoils of the Nation.
       The Palace of a Chief Minister, is a Seminary to breed up others in his own Trade:  The Pages, Lacquies, and Porter, by imitating their Master, become Ministers of State in their several Districts, and learn to excel in the three principal Ingredients, of Insolence, Lying, and Bribery.  Accordingly, they have a Subaltern Court paid to them by Persons of the best Rank;  and sometimes by the Force of Dexterity and Impudence, arrive through several Gradations to be Successors to their Lord.
       He is usually governed by a decayed Wench, or favourite Footman, who are the Tunnels through which all Graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the last Resort, the Governors of the Kingdom.
       One Day, my Master, having heard me mention the Nobility of my Country, was pleased to make me a Compliment which I could not pretend to deserve:  That, he was sure, I must have been born of some Noble Family, because I far exceeded in Shape, Colour, and Cleanliness, all the Yahoos of his Nation, although I seemed to fail in Strength, an Agility, which must be imputed to my different Way of Living  from those other Brutes;  and besides, I was not only endowed with the Faculty of Speech, but likewise with some Rudiments of Reason, to a Degree, that with all his Acquaintance I passed for a Prodigy.


     . . . .That, our young Noblemen are bred from their Childhood in Idleness and Luxury;  that, as soon as Years will permit, they consume their Vigour, and contract odious Diseases among lewd Females;  and when their Fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some Woman of mean Birth, disagreeable Person, and unsound Constitution, merely for the sake of Money, whom they hate and despise.  That, the Productions of such Marriages are generally scrophulous, rickety or deformed Children;  by which Means the Family seldom continues above three Generations, unless the Wife take Care to provide a healthy Father among her Neighbours, or Domesticks, in order to improve and continue the Breed.  That, a weak diseased Body, a meager Countenance, and sallow Complexion, are the true Marks of noble Blood,  and a healthy robust Appearance is so disgraceful in a Man of Quality, that the World concludes his real Father to have been a Groom or a Coachman.  The Imperfections of his Mind run parallel with those of his Body;  being a Composition of Spleen, Dulness, Ignorance, Caprice, Sensuality and Pride." 
                                       Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter Six