2024: The Last Year of the Republic?

A New York friend of mine writes,

When I settled in Jackson Heights after leaving Mom's Bronx nest almost a half-century ago, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Great architecture, uncongested sidewalks, a police presence, and elderly ladies taking a stroll in the early evening were among the first things that struck me. It's now, to coin a  cliché, a third-world shithole run into the ground by "progressives." Few of its current denizens remember when it was otherwise.

The same friend thinks we won't make it to November.  When he so opined some months back, I thought that this might just be perspectival distortion due to his perch in Jackson Heights.  But he may well be right.  Another friend sends me here where we read some concrete suggestions of the sort that I have been asking for, but Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Levin,  and so many other astute commentators fail to make, content as they are merely to analyze and report:

. . . the next eight months should be spent getting prepared.

So, yes, I want you to vote in November — and, yes, I want you to prepare for the communist takeover of America when your vote won’t matter anymore. That might seem contradictory or incoherent but it’s basic strategy: you plan to win the battle, but you also plan for an orderly retreat so that you can survive to fight another day.

No, I’m not being gloomy or hopeless. I’m not telling you to quit. I’m not encouraging you to stop voting. I’m telling you to get prepared. What does that really mean? It means you should get a satellite phone. You should buy more guns and ammo. You should stockpile medicine and water and food. Hold cash. Hold gold and silver. Have an emergency plan with your friends and family.

It’s time to get serious.

{. . .]

You do realize that you’re in the middle of a global conspiracy to end the democratic West, right? You’ve heard about The Great Reset haven’t you? You don’t want to believe it’s true — of course. That’s why you keep ignoring the obvious signs.

That’s called: magical thinking.

We’re already at the stage of the communist revolution in which 320,000 illegal aliens have been flown into the United States by the Biden regime to occupy your country and to eventually serve as soldiers and police who are loyal to the communists.

We’re already at the stage when the agents of the Biden regime are openly admitting that they will not allow Trump to hold the office again if he’s elected. They’re telling you he should be denied classified briefings right now. They’re telling you that it’s time to dissolve the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and order American soldiers to disarm the people. They will not allow a peaceful transfer of power.

I hope that I’m wrong — butwhat happens to you if I’m right?

This is good advice. We don't despair or give up, we fight on "in the gloaming" to use my poetic phrase. We vote and we prep. Both. It's twilight time for the West, and while it is true that the Owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk (as per the Hegelian trope), and we philosophers rejoice at the wisdom gained when the bird takes flight, we philosophers still attached to gross-material bodies  endeavor to push that final denoument as far into the future as possible. After all, no one KNOWS whether or not there is anything beyond this scene of strife, this miserably mundane mundus sensibilis. (Am I sending a coded message that only white-supremacist dogs can hear?)

We fight on. We vote and we prep. And when we vote we do so not only with ballots but with our feet and our wallets.  Buy  a satphone. I hadn't thought of recommending that. Excellent suggestion for something you can do.  Take the rest of Emerald Robinson's advice.

But don't expect any help from the Judas Iscariots and con artists of the pseudo-con Right. David French is a prime example as are Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney,  Chris Christie, and so many others. Turncoats, quislings, yap-and-scribble lapdogs of the Left, cuckservative clowns, worse than useless, worse even than the cadre-commie anti-civilizational woke-joke leftards.

French and Pence are justly pilloried here.

UPDATE (3/16)

That well-fed, miserably misguided matron Liz Cheney is torn to pieces by Kash Patel here.

The greatest con job ever to happen in American politics is the false Jan. 6 “insurrection” narrative. The singular mission of this narrative is to stop Donald Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office again. 

A key pillar of the left’s propaganda about insurrection is to distort the truth surrounding whether Trump authorized, prior to Jan. 6, the deployment of National Guard troops to keep order on that day. The main architect of this disinformation campaign is former Congresswoman Liz Cheney.  

Issues and Insights is another good source of anti-totalitarian punch-back. This article, for example:

Democrats don’t support open borders for humanitarian reasons. They want the lines erased because they see every illegal alien as a likely Democratic voter crucial to their political power grab. But there’s another reason: They want to increase the populations of Democratic states to boost their representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

Apparently it’s not enough for Democrats to have become authoritarians, they have to be corrupt, too.

Of course this is no surprise. Only the corrupt become authoritarians. Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek showed in chapter 10 of “The Road to Serfdom” why socialist systems never have decent people in charge.

“Bad men,” Hayek explained in Why the Worst Get on Top, have no inhibitions about running other peoples’ lives. It is “the unscrupulous and uninhibited,” he wrote in 1944, who “are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism.”

Put another way, by Dune author Frank Herbert, “​​Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”

And thus we understand why the Democratic Party is overflowing with the most wretched people imaginable. It’s a party that draws in the worst among us in much the same way communism attracted the Lenins, Stalins, Maos and Castros.

The kakistocrats that captain the Democratic Party are so lacking in principle and so filled with villainy that they are using illegal aliens as pawns in their scheme to establish unopposed, unchallengeable power.

How can we know this? Because not a single Democrat voted last week in favor of an amendment from Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty that would allow only citizens to be “counted for the purposes of allocating congressional districts and electoral votes.”

When Hagerty offered the amendment, “the Democrats just went nuts,” he said. New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer “threatened to shut the government down.”

Comments

[James Soriano]

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee, was fought August 1-2, 1946, when a group of newly returned WWII vets took up arms (Thompson sub-machine guns, M1 rifles) against a boss-run county administration and a corrupt election of the county sherif.

I had not heard of this obscure bit of American history until someone pointed it out to me a few days ago.

No fatalities, but injuries on both sides. The rebels won.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

[American Apple Pie]

Why are so many American politicians willing to sell out their country?
How many are being bribed?
Or blackmailed?
Or are dual citizens?
What documentation shows answers to some or all of the above?

On the face of the matter, why would a Joe Biden willingly condemn his family name for eternity, far outstripping Benedict Arnold?
What do he and his stand to gain, besides staying alive?
If their plans fail, they will be pariahs.

[Thomas Anger]

Unlike Emerald Robinson, I wouldn't call the current state of affairs a "communist takeover", but it's a hostile takeover, nonetheless. It bodes ill for liberty, prosperity, and the advancement of true science. The title of her post -- "Welcome to 2024, The Last Year of America?" -- puts the situation in perspective. In one of my posts, I called the coming election "The Armageddon Election" (a play on Michael Anton's "The Flight 93 Election" of 2016)

The piece about French and Pence is spot-on. I share Joshiah Lippincott's disgust with and anger toward French, Pence, and their ilk.

[mharko]

An interesting piece on an interesting site. The comment stream on some current offerings there is like 'let's start kicking ass, ask questions later'. I'll check it out further, but statements like "America was founded in violence and She will be saved by violence" is a siren call I will not follow. It will be under extreme duress that I deploy means I abhor to defend my family, not premeditated policy. That said, I am prepared & practiced. Others may be the minutemen on frontline skirmishes. A satphone is not on my list either. I'm not prepared to throw away spiritual and psychological assets to procure false or fallible talismans of security and connectivity. One of those assets is the sense to pace with and influence the people I intend to protect and defend. Some of whom want to race out in front of me, and some who would be left behind in almost any scenario, including if I go full retard. I don't see either voting or prepping our way out of shtf. I like ideas like divesting out of financial institutions like BofA and the like, I have some more work to do in that regard. The best preparation is my own rounded readiness to fight & die today and tomorrow for their wellbeing, and be well-informed in the meantime. Recommended prepper reading: Bob Dylan's Workingman’s Blues #2 from Modern Times

[BV]

Mr Anger,

I remember you well from the misty beginnings of the blogosphere. It's been a long time. Glad to see you are still at it.

'Commie takeover' may be pushing it, but the Dems are now a successor-commie outfit. 'Hostile takeover' it is.

What you say in your Armageddon post about civil society is spot on. https://politicsandprosperity.com/2022/08/16/the-culture-war-2/

I have described civil society as the buffer zone between the naked individual/family and Leviathan. The full-tilt totalitarian Left is busy destroying the buffer zone and its institutions.

[BV]

>> I'm not prepared to throw away spiritual and psychological assets to procure false or fallible talismans of security and connectivity.<<

How is this an argument against buying a satphone? Full disclosure: I don't have one at the moment, but it seems like a wise purchase, and not just for SHTF purposes, but also to have communication ability deep in the Superstition Wilderness where there is no cell phone coverage.

Thanks for the Dylan reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGT7XQ9XdKI

[mharko]

Yes, I realized it's an inept argument. In a normal world I can see having one especially in a place like that. I'm not versed enough in tech to know the ins and outs. Every techie thing comes with a curse. (Sophocles) Who would I communicate with in a SHTF world, other SAT phones I guess? Plus, I can't afford $100/month+ and keeping up with the potential financial aspects of being prepared for all SHTF contingencies impinges upon the assets I mentioned.
I deeply appreciate the addt'l links you updated, and the blog in general.