“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. The Centauri learned that lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.” – Babylon 5
I like the electronics DIY store – The Ohm Depot.
Part I of this series can be found here (LINK), and Part II can be found here (LINK).
Thinking about dictatorship is difficult. I was raised in a system that considered dictatorship more or less impossible. We didn’t even have any jokes about dictators because we didn’t speak Spanish, German, Italian, Russian or Chinese. I was raised in the wilds where you could be certain that every house contained more firearms than people, usually many more. And safe? Doors were rarely locked.
They taught us how to use rifles effectively in school. I even won the prize for marksmanship in eighth grade, which was a personally autographed photo of Andrew Jackson. Every boy took the test and got his Hunter Safety card, except me. I’d had my card since second grade.
The girls? Who knows what they did while we were shooting rifles, making models, and talking about football. This class was for boys only, and strangely we didn’t have difficulty identifying what a girl was. We didn’t even have advanced biology degrees to tell the boys from the girls back then, though I will admit to have been an avid amateur biologist while I was in high school. And even I could tell the difference.
So, back to the point, dictatorship was something that I didn’t think a lot of. And there’s no way that it’s a certainty since Civil War 2.0 is still a very real possibility. That being said, I started to research a bit deeper. What are the signposts that a dictatorship is near?
A truck carrying Vicks Vap-O-Rub® overturned yesterday. Thankfully, there was no congestion.
Most of the articles were written by Leftist journalists who wanted to reee! that Trump was the worst tyrant since Stalin’s more evil brother. One of them was even in a magazine for young adolescent females, whatever those are.
I found one article (Trump era, pre-George Floyd, pre-‘Rona) that had the following conditions (LINK). I didn’t think the article was great. But, being written by a writer from India, it was refreshingly free of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Here is (more or less the list, with some minor edits from me):
- Control of the Media: CNN®? Leftist think CNN™ is centrist. Outside of dissident media on the Internet and (sometimes) Fox©, I think we can firmly check this box. The denial of Hunter Biden’s laptop, anyone?
- Rigging of the Electoral System: That is more than self-evident from the strange and obviously fraudulent results of the 2020 election, but it is also 100% admitted by the Left, in Time Magazine, no less. It’s here (LINK), though it’s now behind a wall.
- Control of the Judicial System: This is only mostly, since Trump managed to put several justices on the Supreme Court. All in all, though, the court system has skewed Left for ages.
- Spying on the Population: This box has been checked since 2001 and the Patriot Act. Snowden, anyone?
- Harassing Dissidents: Compare the reaction to people literally burning down cities and staging insurrection in the streets to truckers peacefully protesting. Also: say something that is against The Narrative on YouTube®, see how long your account lasts. As a website operator, I certainly know when I’m over the target because the site catches flak.
- Suppression of Dissidents – Dissident Protest is Terrorism: January 6th. End of story.
- Promotion of Civil Unrest: George Floyd protests were going to happen, regardless of the person. It just needed an appropriate victim and the video spread far and wide, even though drugs killed St. George of Our Lady of Fentanyl and not a police officer’s knee. Riots were going to happen – it was part of the plan.
Ouch!
By my count, that’s seven out of seven, and that’s just since December of 2019. It’s interesting just how much Donald Trump, despite not really achieving much of lasting note, upset the system. Trump didn’t restore law and order. Heck, he couldn’t even restore Firefly. But yet, they were willing to take off the mask just to get him out.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
Or maybe that was the point?
Taking a step back, civilizations have a lifespan. The following cycle is attributed to Alexander Tytler, a dead Scottish guy. There are two problems with this:
- There is no evidence Tytler ever said anything like this.
- The name Tytler makes me think of an Austrian politician who moved to Germany and was popular in the 1930s and early 1940s and then decided to get breast enhancement.
Okay, deep down, I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.
The real author of the Tytler Cycle is probably Henning Prentiss, an executive, who is also dead and whose name is not nearly as funny. The 1943 speech it’s from is here (LINK).
So, here is what Tytler Prentiss had to say:
“The historical cycle seems to be:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- from spiritual faith to courage;
- from courage to liberty;
- from liberty to abundance,
- from abundance to selfishness;
- from selfishness to apathy,
- from apathy to dependency; and
- from dependency back to bondage once more.
At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies.”
The end state is what we’re really interested in – the failure of government, the loss of hope, and the dependence on someone, anyone, to save them. All they have to surrender is control. And, in the United States that doesn’t necessarily mean the same party – in many ways the GOP is just the “for God’s sake, don’t put me in charge, they’ll expect me to do something” wing of the Democratic Party.
How did the Roman Senate choose a new dictator? They played rock, paper, Caesars.
The Strong Man himself is certainly out there right now. He might be unknown to us, but he is building, biding his time. It’s almost certainly not AOC, since she’s not anyone’s idea of a problem solver unless your problem is needing a Margarita, no salt. It’s not someone too old like Bernie Sanders who will turn to dust if Sunlight ever hits him – which is why he has coffins in the basement of the multiple mansions he owns.
It’s certainly not the Ad Libber in Chief, since he (like his pants) is in the process of being dumped (you don’t think those releases about Hunter’s laptop are coincidental, do you?). No, someone young, vigorous, yet already sold to The Narrative. Dan Crenshaw (World Economic Forum™ Young Leader®), my eye is on you.
But it doesn’t have to be Dan. Any man who has The Plan, charisma, and reasonable personal hygiene (including regular showers) might become the Strong Man. It won’t be a woman: the masculinity of the “tough” solutions will be a part of the sales pitch, along with the ever so regretful admission that temporary controls are needed to restore the abundance of the past.
So, control is surrendered. Rights are conditional –rights will be honored as long as it is convenient, ignored, or suppressed when not. The budding Kommissars of Australia provided the poster child for the sudden evaporation of rights when inconvenient for government. In a continent where every insect is an inexhaustible vat of poison, every animal has fangs and can disembowel a man with a kick, and the nectar of half the plants does things that would make H.P. Lovecraft shudder, who knew that the most dangerous creatures were . . . government employees?
I went to Australia and they asked me if I had a criminal record. I said, “I didn’t know that was still required.”
Keep this in mind, as well: The United States government is fine with taking $300 billion of Russia’s funds. Think the Strong Man would hesitate to confiscate all the funds of a dissident? Most dissidents I know don’t even have half the nuclear weapons Russia does.
What does the dictator, the Strong Man want to control, then?
Well, all of us.
How does he do it?
Well, the Strong Man can control other things that allow him to control his people:
- Food
- Money
- Pharmaceuticals
- Media
- Politics
- Culture
- Technology
- Communications
- Family Structure
- Energy
- Immigration
- Fertility
If the Strong Man doesn’t like me, he can kill me and replace me with a compliant citizen and use my money to buy himself something nice, like a new watch. All for the greater good, of course. Orwell described the real goal of every Strong Man best: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Wow – this part got darker and emptier than the space between Kamala’s ears between ideas. I’ll close with this happy thought: Bondage leads to faith, faith to courage, and courage to liberty. And remember, there are large parts of the United States where guns still far outnumber people. Regardless of the detours we take into darkness, there will always be a light for mankind.
I mean, unless the light is the comet that’s going to hit us. Oh, wait, I wasn’t supposed to give spoilers for 2023 yet!
Not my original.
Next: (There will be a delay in this one, perhaps next week, perhaps the week after) Mechanisms of Control
John Wilder (wilderwealthywise.com)