What happens in Iran when you mention that you've noticed the Mullahs have screwed things up again with their wacky notions based on literal interpretations of the Koran? Some dudes in robes with truncheons show up at your door and beat you.
What happened in East Germany when you remarked to your neighbor that the store was out of bread and meat again? The Stasi, in their fashionable black leather jackets kicked your door down and hauled you off to prison.
How about in Nazi Germany when you talked about how the neighborhood was falling to pieces, mostly because Allied bombers were flying unopposed by the Luftwaffe and bombing the place to bits? The Gestapo appeared and you disappeared.
What if you were a West African in the 1800s and mentioned that the leaders of that slavery-based African empire, the Dahomey, had managed to kill most of the young men by sending them out on raids to capture other Africans to sell them to the honkies? Well, according to the recent documentary film, The Woman King, a bunch of hot chicks in loincloths showed up at your hut and ... well, the record is a bit hazy on just how effective they were. Suffice it to say, they weren't there to twerk for your enjoyment.
In most place and for most of history, if you quacked about your leaders being a pack of dingledorks, chances were good that they'd make sure you regretted it.
So here in 2023, our American Elites are the biggest collection of losers, morons and fools we've ever had. Twitter is larded up with people yelling about it. Dig this tweet, for example.
Wow!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2023
That right there is something you'd never come close to seeing in Putin's Russia, the Empire of the Ashanti, an Aztec city or the world that Elizabeth Warren wishes she ruled. It's a 1,000,000-view flagging of an absolutely massive failure on the part of our leaders.
How'd that happen? How is it possible that the utter incompetence and idiocy of our rulers is visible to all?
Warren Zevon has the answer. Well, if you replace "lawyers" with "free speech," that is.
In those other examples, the citizens were disarmed. Because they were disarmed, the Elites could destroy their means of communicating freely. The leaders could then pursue whatever lunatic notions they chose. When your ruling class gets intellectually captured by stupidity, as ours has, they can see things are going to pieces, but they know, they just know that the solution is more and more of the stupidity. You peasants need to shut up and get with the program.
Look, Iranian dudes and dudettes of all castes are prone to the same sins that the dudes and dudettes of East Weevil, Indiana are. We're all fallen creatures made in the image of God. We all are prone to use what power we have to get our own ways. Our own ways are rarely the product of rational thought directed at constructive ends without being seriously influence by our desires and selfishness. The more power and immunity from consequences we have, the more we can let ourselves be bent towards self-indulgence.
The Dahomey could send hot chicks to twerk for you ... err ... try to beat you up, but get their butts kicked ... err ... give you a serious nagging, but here in America, while the morons running Stanford might be able to run off a Federal judge trying to give a speech, they can't silence you completely. The Stasi could take you out and shoot you, but if the FBI tried that more than just a few times, in short order, they'd have a lot of vacancies on their staff.
Elon's tweet, above, opened my eyes to what is happening in America right now. I've blogged ad nauseum that our Elites don't know how things work and that's true. Elon's tweet showed me that here in America, thanks to Elon, guns and money, the result will never be Iran, East Germany or slave-soaked West Africa.
We're going to mock the morons in charge mercilessly and there's nothing they can do about it. Oh sure, they can silence me at work, threatening my job if I step out of ideological line, but thanks to Elon, guns and money, I can tweet under a pseudonym as much a I like. Sometimes my stuff even goes viral.
As Yakov Smirnov liked to say, "What a country!"
“Look, Iranian dudes and dudettes of all castes are prone to the same sins that the dudes and dudettes of East Weevil, Indiana are. We're all fallen creatures made in the image of God. We all are prone to use what power we have to get our own ways.” The best part of this is that while the middle sentence talks about God, you could have replaced it with ‘We’re all failable creatures with the same evolutionary drives.’ And it makes just as much sense.
ReplyDelete“The Stasi could take you out and shoot you, but if the FBI tried that more than just a few times, in short order, they'd have a lot of vacancies on their staff.” You hope. But given what we’ve seen lately I have less than complete confidence.
Ohioan, if I were an FBI field agent and my team was ordered to start rounding up political opponents, I'd feel like each raid was like playing Russian Roulette. The peasants might be supine now, but then they decided they'd had enough, they'd have the means to do something about it.
ReplyDeleteSuch an agent also have to wonder… ‘If I stop participating, am I next?’ A difficult calculus to work out.
ReplyDelete