WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Article of the Week (so far): MadCrowdsDisease —The American Descent into Madness by Victor Hanson
byVanderleunonJuly 19, 2021
Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable. They will either cease or they will destroy the nation, at least as we know it. Two, the law has largely been rendered meaningless. Three, left-wing political agendas justify any means necessary to achieve them.
Citizenship as Mere Residency
Two million people are anticipated to cross the southern border, en masse and illegally, over a 12-month period. If that absurdity were to continue, we would be adding the equivalent of a major U.S. city every year. The new arrivals have three things in common: Their first act was to break U.S. law by entering the country. Their second was to break the law by residing here illegally. And their third will be to find false identification or other illegal means to continue breaking the law. One does not arrive as a guest in a foreign country and immediately violate the laws of his host—unless one holds those laws in contempt.
Arrivals now cross a border that had been virtually closed to illegal immigration by January 2021. In the cynical and immoral logic of illegal immigration (that cares little for the concerns either of would-be legal immigrants or U.S. citizens), arrivals will be dependent upon the state and thus become constituents of progressives who engineered their arrival.
Yet the issue is not illegal immigration per se. If protests were to continue in Cuba, and 1 million Cubans boated to Miami, the Biden Administration would stop the influx, in terror that so many anti-Communists might tip Florida red forever.
How strange that the U.S. government is considering going door-to-door to bully the unvaccinated, even as it ignores the daily influx of thousands from Mexico and Latin America, without worrying whether they are carrying or vaccinated for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the progressive media shrilly warns that the new Delta Variant of the virus is exploding south of the border. Note how the administration applies standards to its own citizens that it does not apply to foreign nationals illegally entering the country.
We know from the failed Soviet system and from the French Revolution that the most mediocre in society became its most eager auditors of correct behavior. The arbiters of proper thought—the self-righteous paid toady, the perpetual victim employed in service to government payback, the freelancing snitch—were always the villains of freedom, productivity, and humanity, whether we read of the killing off of Alexander the Great’s inner circle, the forced suicides of the Neronian circle, the Jacobin murder spree, or the nightmarish world described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn……
Read this this morning (tip to WRSA) and entered a vacuum in my head. It confirmed what I and others had been observing, and offered no solution. Everybody knows there are a lot of serious things wrong and nobody knows what to do. Like being hog tied in the backseat of a very fast car driven by a suicidal maniac. Lay down on the floor and push yourself up against the back of the front seats and hunker down, wait for the impact.
Casey KlahnJuly 19, 2021, 10:24 PM
ghost, although it’s a scary analogy about the out of control car, try this one: chute doesn’t open and you’re hurtling ground-ward.
I always read every word VDH writes, and I hate to read this descent into madness essay. My only hope is that there will be a cohort of Americans who opt for strict self governance and self-reliance, a la: the Code of the West.
Now that I understand that Gen Milley orchestrated the armed defense of DC, for crazy reasons unattached to actual reality, I want to know how he and the govt. make intelligence analyses of any threat? They likely know next to nothing about China’s next moves, and they probably have a Russia-shaped hole in their vision as concerns Europe, and Russian Asia, and meanwhile the FBI, and never mind the erstwhile CIA, are filling in blank boxes with checks to comply with Biden’s hunt for an enraged Whitey behind every WalMart and Ford truck. The Antifa may have formed kill-squads, and who’d fucking know it?
We read every day about audits and securing the elections, and yet find ourselves fuming at Olympia, Sacramento, Raleigh, and Albany, and wondering who gets to count or oversee the next elections.
Cops. Phfffftttt. Excuse me, but FUHK! How’d last summer go for the cops? Who in their right minds are wearing cop uniforms in Portland, OR? Who are these people???
“I’m back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend…
Ridin’ the range once more
Totin’ my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again.”
GD, I should’ve bought that Ruger .22 revolver the other day. You go to war with the arsenal you have. Not gonna say what’s in mine. I can pick arms up off the ground and fire 95% of them accurately, I think. A box of hand grenades would not be turned down.
ghostsniperJuly 20, 2021, 4:57 AM
@Casey, your ‘chute reference – – Been there, did that, barely survived. I wrote about it before, here. 20 APR 1975, 800’ over Gelnhausen, Germany.
If I get a chance at a Ruger .22 revolver I won’t walk away without it. I’m aggressively search for a .22 handgun. And a couple others. I almost pulled the trigger (snicker) on a brand new Colt Python for $1400 yesterday. The $1.25 per trigger pull for ammo brought me back to reality.
BTW, If brain damaged Biden can walk in a steal a country can’t Putin or Xi do it too?
For a more indepth analysis of VDH’s subject matter in that essay, I recommend reading Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, Identity. If reading Murray’s book, and Hanson’s thoughts, does not make righteous anger rise up within you, nothing will.
ghostsniperJuly 20, 2021, 6:59 AM
The book John mentions is available here in pdf format for free.
Scroll down, on the right.
(I downed it but have not yet viewed the pdf)
John V. and ghost: Thank you for the reference to Murray’s book and for the link. Just downloaded it and have started reading it. It’s a keeper.
G. L. AguilarJuly 23, 2021, 4:10 PM
Mr. Hanson represents a dangerous, militaristic view of America, one that has been dominant virtually since our independence.
As David Vine points out in his recently published book, “THE UNITED STATES OF WAR A GLOBAL HISTORY OF AMERICA’S ENDLESS CONFLICTS,” the “Land of the Free” has been at war of one kind of another for all but 11 years since our founding, despite John Adams advice we not stomp about the world in search of monsters to destroy. Apparently Hanson finds all that murderous warring insufficient.
With bipartisanship support, we’ve killed millions of innocents in our “wars of aggression” – in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and elsewhere, with no one ever being held to account. We used germ warfare in our failed war in Korea in the early fifties.
The refugees trying to get into the US are often fleeing the murderous, dictatorial narco states that the USA has installed in Latin America, many of which were put in place during the “Dirty Wars” of the Reagan era. But Obama put the narco-trafficer Hernandez into the Honduran presidency in the 2009 coup, and Trump put in the murderous Janine Anez into the presidency of Bolivia in a coup in 2019. These sorts of murderous coups are typical of America. (Google up the Guardian article entitled, “Fleeing a Hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north.)
The USA hates democracy and prefers compliant dictatorships, as our history of the coup in Iran in ’53, Guatemala in ’54, Chile in ’73, Indonesia in ’65, Brazil in ’64, etc., etc. ad nauseum prove. All conducted, of course, in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights!
Hanson’s silly remark that John Brennan had “all but wrecked the CIA” ignores the criminal history of that lawless outfit whose whole history has been one of endless failures, endless covert, anti-democratic coups, and a history that is accurately captured in the title of NYTimes’ Timothy Weiner’s book, “Legacy of Ashes.” Nazi-like human experimentation, tortures, “extrajudicial mass murders” (Operation Phoenix), training and directing fascist death squads, etc.
And Hanson’s bewailing the corrupt revolving door between our military and private military industrialists is laughable. He pretends to have never heard of Wall St. Journal writer, Andy Pasztor’s, book, “When the Pentagon Was for Sale,” which was published in ’95 detailing the massive military procurement corruption during the presidency of Hanson’s hero, Ronald Reagan. But you’ll never hear that history from Hanson.
Hanson wants more war in Afghanistan than the 20 year war we’ve already lost and could never win; he wants war with China; wants to continue covert war with Cuba, etc. And I’m just getting started!
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Read this this morning (tip to WRSA) and entered a vacuum in my head. It confirmed what I and others had been observing, and offered no solution. Everybody knows there are a lot of serious things wrong and nobody knows what to do. Like being hog tied in the backseat of a very fast car driven by a suicidal maniac. Lay down on the floor and push yourself up against the back of the front seats and hunker down, wait for the impact.
ghost, although it’s a scary analogy about the out of control car, try this one: chute doesn’t open and you’re hurtling ground-ward.
I always read every word VDH writes, and I hate to read this descent into madness essay. My only hope is that there will be a cohort of Americans who opt for strict self governance and self-reliance, a la: the Code of the West.
Now that I understand that Gen Milley orchestrated the armed defense of DC, for crazy reasons unattached to actual reality, I want to know how he and the govt. make intelligence analyses of any threat? They likely know next to nothing about China’s next moves, and they probably have a Russia-shaped hole in their vision as concerns Europe, and Russian Asia, and meanwhile the FBI, and never mind the erstwhile CIA, are filling in blank boxes with checks to comply with Biden’s hunt for an enraged Whitey behind every WalMart and Ford truck. The Antifa may have formed kill-squads, and who’d fucking know it?
We read every day about audits and securing the elections, and yet find ourselves fuming at Olympia, Sacramento, Raleigh, and Albany, and wondering who gets to count or oversee the next elections.
Cops. Phfffftttt. Excuse me, but FUHK! How’d last summer go for the cops? Who in their right minds are wearing cop uniforms in Portland, OR? Who are these people???
“I’m back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend…
Ridin’ the range once more
Totin’ my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again.”
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-codewest/
Learn It, Live It, Love It. The Code of the West.
GD, I should’ve bought that Ruger .22 revolver the other day. You go to war with the arsenal you have. Not gonna say what’s in mine. I can pick arms up off the ground and fire 95% of them accurately, I think. A box of hand grenades would not be turned down.
@Casey, your ‘chute reference – – Been there, did that, barely survived. I wrote about it before, here. 20 APR 1975, 800’ over Gelnhausen, Germany.
If I get a chance at a Ruger .22 revolver I won’t walk away without it. I’m aggressively search for a .22 handgun. And a couple others. I almost pulled the trigger (snicker) on a brand new Colt Python for $1400 yesterday. The $1.25 per trigger pull for ammo brought me back to reality.
BTW, If brain damaged Biden can walk in a steal a country can’t Putin or Xi do it too?
For a more indepth analysis of VDH’s subject matter in that essay, I recommend reading Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, Identity. If reading Murray’s book, and Hanson’s thoughts, does not make righteous anger rise up within you, nothing will.
The book John mentions is available here in pdf format for free.
Scroll down, on the right.
(I downed it but have not yet viewed the pdf)
https://archive.org/details/themadnessofcrowdsgenderraceandidentity
John V. and ghost: Thank you for the reference to Murray’s book and for the link. Just downloaded it and have started reading it. It’s a keeper.
Mr. Hanson represents a dangerous, militaristic view of America, one that has been dominant virtually since our independence.
As David Vine points out in his recently published book, “THE UNITED STATES OF WAR A GLOBAL HISTORY OF AMERICA’S ENDLESS CONFLICTS,” the “Land of the Free” has been at war of one kind of another for all but 11 years since our founding, despite John Adams advice we not stomp about the world in search of monsters to destroy. Apparently Hanson finds all that murderous warring insufficient.
With bipartisanship support, we’ve killed millions of innocents in our “wars of aggression” – in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and elsewhere, with no one ever being held to account. We used germ warfare in our failed war in Korea in the early fifties.
The refugees trying to get into the US are often fleeing the murderous, dictatorial narco states that the USA has installed in Latin America, many of which were put in place during the “Dirty Wars” of the Reagan era. But Obama put the narco-trafficer Hernandez into the Honduran presidency in the 2009 coup, and Trump put in the murderous Janine Anez into the presidency of Bolivia in a coup in 2019. These sorts of murderous coups are typical of America. (Google up the Guardian article entitled, “Fleeing a Hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north.)
The USA hates democracy and prefers compliant dictatorships, as our history of the coup in Iran in ’53, Guatemala in ’54, Chile in ’73, Indonesia in ’65, Brazil in ’64, etc., etc. ad nauseum prove. All conducted, of course, in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights!
Hanson’s silly remark that John Brennan had “all but wrecked the CIA” ignores the criminal history of that lawless outfit whose whole history has been one of endless failures, endless covert, anti-democratic coups, and a history that is accurately captured in the title of NYTimes’ Timothy Weiner’s book, “Legacy of Ashes.” Nazi-like human experimentation, tortures, “extrajudicial mass murders” (Operation Phoenix), training and directing fascist death squads, etc.
And Hanson’s bewailing the corrupt revolving door between our military and private military industrialists is laughable. He pretends to have never heard of Wall St. Journal writer, Andy Pasztor’s, book, “When the Pentagon Was for Sale,” which was published in ’95 detailing the massive military procurement corruption during the presidency of Hanson’s hero, Ronald Reagan. But you’ll never hear that history from Hanson.
Hanson wants more war in Afghanistan than the 20 year war we’ve already lost and could never win; he wants war with China; wants to continue covert war with Cuba, etc. And I’m just getting started!