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Politics Will Never Save You; You Need to Save Yourself
Biden might have mouthed the word “unity” in November but whenever he gets the chance to act on it, he refuses. Today, he decided to stoke racial grievance again.
Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021
Every official on both sides condemned the Capitol Hill riot and four “protestors” died. When BLM protests/riots hit DC, a street was named after them. As @PostmodernHoplite wrote, reacting to the Capitol Hill mob was a lay-up for Biden but, as always, he chose to divide.
Kamala continued in the same vein, poking and prodding at the nation’s racial divisions.
.@KamalaHarris: "We witnessed two systems of justice when we saw one that let extremists storm the United States Capitol, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protesters last summer…We know this is unacceptable. We know we should be better than this." pic.twitter.com/Uc1FC8aZKg
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 7, 2021
No one in DC wants unity or healing. No one wants to calm the waters. Be it Trump or Biden, they just want to ratchet up the divisions until it all breaks apart. This isn’t some grand conspiracy; politicians are too incompetent to launch one. Instead, they are hyperfocused on winning this day’s news cycle, then 2022. A few bold visionaries look all the way to their 2024 prospects, but no thought is given to the long-term implications for the country.
Our institutions are failing us day after day. We’re still in Afghanistan 20 years later. We’re $27 trillion in debt. Cuomo and De Blasio are blaming each other for not delivering vaccines instead of, you know, actually delivering the vaccines. Blue states watch their lockdowns fail so they mandate stricter ones.
None of this is sustainable and our political class couldn’t care less. They want us to keep yelling at each other.
My humble suggestion for all Americans is to detach yourself as much as possible from governmental dictates. This is far easier in red states and rural areas, but do what you can. Prepare also to be detached from corporate politics since cancel mobs are on the march. Accept that you might have to live below your means and certainly below your desires.
Get involved with your neighbors and with local groups — especially non-political ones. Many small businesses in my area only survived 2020 by working together and building support communities with their customers. (My wife and I are basically ad agencies for our local favorites and we happily accept their products as compensation.)
You need to build Russell Kirk’s version of “little platoons.” Edmund Burke’s version was class-based, while Kirk pointed to countless small institutions for every walk of life. As a severe introvert, this is tough for me, but I’m making an effort.
If you’re a believer, build up your faith communities. You might need to move to a new one that refuses to blow with the winds of culture. Same goes for schooling.
There are many great ideas for all of the above in Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, which I just read. When the book was released a few years ago, it was criticized as “alarmist.” Today, it feels downright optimistic.
None of the above is a “The End Is Nigh” screed. I’ve seen it coming for many years and it becomes more obvious every day. As I’ve made several of these adjustments over the past decade, I’ve noticed that I’m happier, freer, and have far more opportunities to help others. No one in politics, tech, or big business notices, which is just how I like it.
America is made great from the bottom-up, not the top-down. And while politicos in Washington are distracted by their self-destructive turf battles, We The People can get a hell of a lot done.
Published in Culture, Politics
Guys. Jeez. Criminey. This is Ace-of-Spaces level stuff, casting people into the eternal fires. Diminishing the circle of voices to a handful.
Same here. Personally, the hideous toll on small businesses in my town, particularly downtown, matters more than whether Joe Biden is impeached for personal enrichment. I know it’s not an either-or. But the life of communities matters more than whether Joe Biden faces a party-line vote after a partisan-posturing show trial, and I’m not going to spend the next four years in a Rumpelstiltskin state of disaffected fury.
But doesn’t that ignore or deny what appears to be a pretty direct connection between Joe Biden and people like him, and those destroyed businesses?
Kinda like, oh, I dunno, continuing to apply bandages to the wounded while doing nothing about the machine gun nest that continues to strafe them?
If embraced, your position would result in the complete destruction of the Republican party, all on account of a political figure who is weakened and gone in two weeks, leaving nothing to stand in the way of escalating Leftist oppression except real, actual insurrectionist violence, not some absurd ‘assault’ on Capital Hill that mostly seemed to consist of misguided enthusiasts wandering around between the velvet ropes, and a much smaller number of apparent instigators (ranging from objectionable to just plain cringeworthy) pretending to make prank calls in government offices-all of whom would have been chastised into complete irrelevance through sanctions ranging from public mocking and a trespassing fine to hard jail time for those who actually attacked police officers or vandalized public monuments.
Instead, you have millions of Republican voters, previously mortified by what happened and disenchanted with some of Trump’s rhetoric and actions over the last month, who are instead far more angry with the Republican Establishment and their boosters for this kind of reckless, opportunistic rhetoric, and would become absolutely enraged if the Republican party should actually do this, especially with the extreme double standard involved, and liable to view most of the protestors/rioters as the persecuted victims of excessive ‘insurrection’ charges rather than a bunch of idiots experiencing the just consequences of their foolishness.
Fair, perhaps. But the same could be said for the general hostility amongst ourselves (I don’t count the President, he’s yet to join Ricochet) commingled with talk about how we’re set to be conquered, and how that guy’s an idiot if he doesn’t agree.
“Diminishing the circle of voices to a handful.”
This is an interesting choice of words. I must remember it.
Heh. No, I’m not going to recant of my heresy. This is Ricochet, not the Spanish Inquisition. I disagree with many posts on Ricochet; never considered jumping into the comments to demand submission.
Kind of bummed that few seemed to read this post. Regardless, I’m not going to poll every reader before publishing future articles, even though some might, horror of horrors, disagree with an opinion on an opinion site. This is not a safe space.
You can register your contempt for that other article in that comment section. You can register your contempt for me with my wife. She’s assembled quite a list.
How sad.
Thanks Jon for the response, at least. I actually do appreciate the temper of your responses on this article. You’ve been somewhat self-deprecating and conciliatory in tone, which is appropriate I think given the circumstances. You’ve been evasive as well in some answers which I can also understand if you feel you are in the right but don’t want to shake the hive. I feel I was extending an olive branch, but maybe it came across as an impossible demand instead.
Regardless, I’m a little disappointed that you didn’t engage with the actual content of my questions to you. I don’t agree with your assessment that Trump should be impeached and I think your post was a rush to judgment. I’m sure we disagree. You are right this isn’t the Spanish Inquisition, but I think it’s fair to press for your feelings on Biden. You’ve made a bold proclamation about Trump, yet Biden has done many of the same things (perhaps more spread out over time). Do you think Biden should also be impeached? Pre-emptively… why not?
Well, you shouldn’t be surprised that everyone wants answers from you on your first post after the one that went for 600 comments.
Honestly, this post is what you should have posted instead of the Impeach post. That time would have been perfect for a post about calming down and stepping back from politics, instead of the rush to judgement nightmare which is contradictory in content and tone to this one.
Yes, as I commented previously it reads like two different people.
If you didn’t understand, Biden’s and Harris’ address were declarations of war. Politics can’t save you. But it sure can kill you.
Jon, I think I understand now that you really don’t see why so many of us are angry with you, establishment Republicans, and to a lesser degree James and others on this site.
All year we’ve only heard one leader stand up for the greatness of America. After Trump’s July 4th speech instead of praising him your side ignored him. When he stood for defending monuments you guys gave him no credit. He refused to take a knee when many of those woke Christains saturated in white guilt did. We banded together to open up churches and thanked God we had a president willing to call them essential. Did you?
We formed groups to fight for our businesses. We stood against masks and forced vaccinations and only Trump promised that would never happen on his watch. Did you support him then?
Peace deals, denouncing critical race theory, standing up for the police…all Trump with little credit and much scorn, because you were more embarrassed by his style than appreciative of his positions.
But we were gratefull, which is why we came out and did the hard work to get out and vote for him. You all stood against that, and for all we know may have voted for Biden, and in doing so (either or both) pissed all over that effort.
Then after the election your glee seemingly overshadowed your discernment of the fraud that we and hundreds, no thousands of professionals from all walks of life saw as clear as day. You denied it, censored it on this site, and tried to pass it off as rediculousness even as hundreds of congressmen and state legislators went on record demanding an airing of the evidence they had in hand, the evidence you denied existed.
When your side abandoned us we already went and formed those little platoons you spoke of because it was clear then that there are now two types of Americans: Those who stand against tyranny in all forms, and those willing to tolerate it so long as it doesn’t touch their lives too much. Your side appears to be the latter, and we won’t be preached to, especially now.
I like the idea about building the small/local institutions, but will the Woke big institutions allow this to occur.
Infractions of the CoC includes:
??
For one, I wouldn’t talk about politics.
Tantrum ergo.
Jon, I think you should read George Friedmans Storm Before The Calm. He is a historian and geo strategist, and in this book he describes the USA going through 40 year cycles. In it he says we are watching the end of the Reagan era, and much like at the end of other such eras, there is always great instability. That there is always one President who will be elected who will try every awful bad idea of the old era to fix things (Biden/Harris, prepare for bailouts everywhere). And finally the next President will come along and bring about the new way of fixing things (Reagan/Supply Side Economics).
I dont think that next Pres will be Trump btw. I think Trump will have influence on the new movement, but Trump has the Michael Moore problem. Back in 2000 there was only one Michael Moore, now there are thousands of people doing what he did, but better. And so it will be with Trump. People who can take his methods and do them better.
There is more to it but I dont want to ruin the book. But in short the USA institutions are failing, as you recognize. And new technology is going to break them up. The reactions to all our big institutions are not that of people confident, or brave. It really reminds me of the fall of the Soviet Union around here.
I think it is significant if BLM and Antifa stoked the mayhem, including what they found at the RNC and DNC headquarters. Very significant. On another note, quite honestly, the chickens came home to roost. I never wish to see a repeat of what happened, not anyone harmed, or property breached, but those in charge that we send to DC via our votes did very little to quell the terrible riots all year. The burning, looting, destroying of business and harming people, including law enforcement was despicable. Those in the Capitol experienced a small sample of what law abiding citizens experienced in those cities.
Yet the Left want to decrease funding for law enforcement and let those crimes go that we witnessed over the last year as well as let out more criminals.
The last of this was actually quite funny. I did read this post I get it to an extent, but an awful lot of this type of idea does not work. If I am only focusing on my local community I can make positive impacts in small ways. But the small improvements only last as long as the Federal Government lets them. My local school board was not going to be allowed to work out of reasonable solution to things like Transgender bathrooms under Obama, they were going to receive “guidance” that would ultimately impact funding, to do what the National politics told them to.
I have some quibble with your wording, “Ricochet join the conversation” has been a tag line here. This is a bit different then a blog or simple opinion site. This is a conversation. So of course when you chuck a hand grenade into a room and walk away the blow back will follow you around.
“Register your contempt” in the other article. Maybe you could address the membership in the other article, you know join the conversation. Rather it seems you decided to needlessly kick a hornets nest and have your readers and members at each others throats.
I’m hesitant to say anything at all, because I like you, Jon, although I was extremely disappointed in what you posted Wednesday. If you really believed in this withdrawing from politics, you’d leave Ricochet, pull the plug, and turn the lights out behind you. What else is Ricochet but people “yelling on social media.” As for thinking politics will save, that very idea is embedded in your call to impeach and bar from office. That’s you seeking a (very bad) political solution.
I do agree that we need to rebuild apart from Washington, as I wrote yesterday in some thread up there. Depending on Washington is a fool’s game. It’s clear to me that they don’t give a rodent’s hindquarters what the citizens think and they will continue to abuse us. So I’m on your side about not seeking an answer in politics. But I wonder how serious you really are when I read your angry, over-the-top bloodlust from Wednesday, which was a call to use raw political power against a man you hate.
I’ll regret posting this.
Be fair. That’s pretty much what Jon wants to do with the President.
Here is one mayhem stoker identified by Andy Ngo.
Maybe we can walk and chew gum:
Withdrawal doesn’t work, as there’s no where else to go. If only for defensive reasons, we must keep at it at all levels.
The old saw that “all politics is local” does seem to have been forgotten. But it’s true. The Dems didn’t just take over all the institutions yesterday. Conservatives must build and must start a long march of their own. It’s going to have to start at the lowest, local levels. (Good luck, though, because the left are the gatekeepers at all levels, too.)
But conservatives only seem able to make podcasts and set up think tanks.
Biden/Harris are of a kind with Bill Clinton, very good liars.
Glenn Beck – this bears watching especially if you are in the media :
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwKkRDqmMhSmCpGsxlpBFLqVfTk
Liars – definitely. Good – no, actually they’re terrible. The evil witch and the brain dead. Clinton was charming. They have whatever is the opposite of charm.
“Withdrawal doesn’t work, as there’s nowhere else to go.”
Excellent advice. This is no time for navel-gazing, recrimination, or any other negative thinking. There are still 75 million of us. Trump is gone; we remain. To simply hunker down and assume a defensive posture is ridiculous. We still have plenty of offensive capability. Let’s use it.
Excuse me for a moment while I copy/paste this for posterity…
So, now the scales are falling from Ngo’s eyes? Wasn’t he stating definitively, with all of his supposed authority as an expert on these things, that BLM/Antifa had nothing to do with it?