"The Theory of Indirect Approach operates on the line of least expectation...The most effective Indirect Approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move -- so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his own overthrow..." -- Basil Henry Liddel-Hart, "The Strategy of Indirect Approach".
My apologies for being late with this, however, Real Life has intruded recently, and I have been extremely busy.
In Part One, we took a deep look into the quality of the leftist opposition. To sum up, the typical leftist is a not-very bright, not-very industrious human being who expects government to give her the things she needs to survive in a world where personal initiative, talent, and utility to the greater society and marketplace are the differences between success and failure, because she lacks these things, herself.
Additionally, we discover the leftist is, at heart, an eternal adolescent constantly in search of means, methods and excuses to not take any personal responsibility for her own life or the greater community, despite making a great deal of noise about "decisions regarding my body" and a pretense of affinity and sympathy for "the downtrodden". In reality, this false compassion for "the underprivileged" is really a manifestation of fear: the Leftist believes as an article of faith that the Proletariat will one day rise up and forcibly eject it's class enemies, and the first people on that list of enemies are the sorts of people who live in gentrified ghettos and suburban housing developments in a torpor of irrational guilt about having a private income that typically derives from no productive endeavor, and who have no clue as to how to protect themselves from that eventuality except through surrender.
In other words, the Liberal -- particularly the White One -- is the appetizer on the Prole's Menu. Pretending to be in solidarity with "the Masses" is a defense mechanism. In the end, it will not work, because the Masses are not particularly interested in solidarity -- only in exchanging places with those they see as higher on the socio-economic ladder.
The Leftist is an emotional creature -- a bottomless pit of self-condemnation; unprepared for the realities of Real Life, both intellectually and emotionally. She has no emotions except envy, jealousy, greed, hatred and self-pity, and will willingly enslave herself to any movement or personality who promises to relieve her of these feelings, primarily by destroying those of a higher social and economic status or ideological opposition, and in the process, killing the goose that lays the Golden Eggs of the very system she depends upon to simultaneously feel badly about herself and assume entitlement to more and better.
The leftist depends upon the power of government to extract wealth on her behalf, because she's not very good at producing anything of value.
As previously stated, the leftist's ultimate goal is to change places with those who they see as having "robbed" them of their self-bestowed entitlement, while projecting responsibility and blame for all the Leftist's failures onto same. If successful, the leftist quickly discovers she's still a loser, only now she's "in charge" of a system she can't operate for lack of ability.
This is why the Soviet Union and China devolved from the Socialist Ideal of Utopia into repressive police states: eventually, someone discovers the entire Machinery of Everything has been turned over to Rhesus Monkeys. The Monkeys then have to terrorize and kill you to keep the secret and to keep the REAL danger of the Unwashed Masses at bay just a little longer.
In moral, intellectual and utilitarian terms, the typical leftist is about as useful as fleas are to a dog (yes, I know: there are exceptions to this rule).
Now we must explore how the leftist operates. We need to understand how it is they achieve power and then how they exercise it.
I'll try to be brief.
It was, to the best of my knowledge, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist, who first proposed the theory of "Invading the Institutions" within the political system. The theory is based upon the belief that if given a choice between democratic capitalism and socialism, the greater mass of the people would chose capitalism every time leaving the socialist little room to work within the democratic political system and no means of extracting a living from it, either.
Now, Gramsci, like most good communists or socialists, had a particular blind spot that originated in their praying at the Altar of Marx. They assumed that there could only be TWO systems of social organization -- capitalism or socialism -- and so missed the rise of Fascism (which is NOT an ideology: it is a method of conducting politics, more on this in a moment) -- and the advent of Managerialism, which is the system by which most governments on Earth operate (I'll explain this, too).
The truth about Socialism and Communism is that they're just not very good systems. They fail largely because they are not grounded in any reasonable ideas -- they are simply the semi-political expression of a series of emotional grievances. The claim of the devoted leftists is that both failed because a) the REAL Socialists/Communists never got into power, and b) both are continuously undermined by Capitalism, and c) they've "never had a chance".
The evidence would point in a different direction.
Fascism is simply a means of Mob Rule: democratic process fails, leaving many disillusioned, and so they opt for a dictatorial regime in place of the democratic give-and-take, which produces results tainted and made inoperative by the fact that they are arrived at by negotiation and consensus-building.
Fascism is an "all or nothing" sort of thing.
In China and Russia what could be called a "Proletarian Revolution" did, in fact, take place. In both instances, the Revolutionary Elite switched places with the Old Guard and behaved very much like the old, hated class enemies did, only worse. One hundred million corpses say so. Either Stalin, Mao and their adherents were not "true" socialists/communists, and so betrayed the ideals they fought for, or, one has to conclude this was The Plan all along, notwithstanding the efforts of Capitalism to "undermine" them.
In the between-wars years in Europe, Socialist and Communist governments took power in one country after another, often by election, and then all failed to implement anything resembling Socialism. Even the British Labour Party, presumably the vanguard of Western European Socialism, understood that it's bread was buttered by the economic vitality of the Empire and so did nothing to inch Britain closer to Marx's ideal until the end of the Second World War gave them the mandate of "try-anything-because-everything-else-has-failed" -- and they failed harder until Margaret Thatcher pulled the English chestnuts out of the fire.
When the expected "true" Proletarian Revolution failed to materialize in the nations where it was taken as gospel they would occur , the left merely changed the definition of "Proletariat" to mean "The Third World". The left is good at moving goalposts, you see.
But, back to Gramsci:
If socialism and communism were merely pipedreams, and if socialists and communists could never hope for sustained electoral success, then another means of advancing socialist and communist ideals was required. Gramsci hit upon "the solution" of placing such people into positions where they could exercise power and influence, but who were not subject to recall or censure by the electorate. This meant the institutions of public life -- the law courts, the universities, the media, the churches, the bureaucracies that increasingly came to run governments, and thus, wield real power as opposed to mere elected officials and capitalist owners.
He was probably not the first to think of it, but he was the first to lay out a comprehensive program to see it through.
To cut the blather, it is capitalist democracy that is continuously being undermined by socialism/communism. Capitalism doesn't need to undermine socialism/communism, because if left alone, both always fail of their own accord, collapsing under the weight of their own internal contradictions.
You can see this in America, too. If the left can't get what it wants through legislation or at the voting booth, it charges the bureaucracy to write and enforce regulations on the sly, or it turns to the courts to enact law by means of precedent, rather than by legislation. Right now, as we all suffer through lockdowns and curfews and restrictions on our freedoms of association, religion and travel, the same drama is playing out: none of this is, strictly speaking, LEGAL, and the basis for it all is the supposed expertise of medical bureaucrats who can't seem to make up their minds on what should be established medical fact: do masks work or don't they? Is hydroxychloroquine an effective therapy or isn't it? Why is it okay to gather in thousands to riot and protest, but a felony "Super Spreader Event" if I have more than 10 people in my house during Thanksgiving?
Fuck, the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of this country spied on a sitting President...even before he was elected...based on nothing more than their subjective feelings and personal preferences, even going as far as to fake warrants, cajole perjury and manufacture "evidence" out of thin air.
And the same things happen everywhere in your daily life, on a variety of subjects: birth control, land use, tax policy, zoning laws, educational matters, financial transactions, at some point, there is interference by a bureau, commission, union, Blue Ribbon Panel, court, etc. that rules as if it had the force of law behind it, and we come to discover only later that they have only a tenuous connection to it, if any.
When it all goes (predictably) tits up, good luck identifying the slug in the Department of Losing Important Paperwork who is responsible, firing her ass, and reorganizing, liquidating the Department. Those responsible are protected: they are anonymous; they are not subject to a vote; they have unions; they have a political party that will cover for them; they have a press which will suppress knowledge of their crimes, misdeeds and incompetence; they have jobs for life despite being fuckups.
They are Agents of the State, and it is the left which is the champion of the State.
Look at your universities, too. They are swamped to the gunwhales by "tenured professors" of bullshit and arcane subjects, who haven't taught or published original work in decades. Who often have done NO WORK AT ALL in their related field in years. And they teach your kids. Same with the public schools, which exist to give the lowest-scoring college grads (Education Majors are generally drawn from the lowest-performing 20%) a living and union protection, regardless of how stupid and incompetent they are.
Note that all of these "professions" (which tend to be taken by people who lean left) -- politician, judge, lawyer, bureaucrat, "activist", professor, teacher, and even to a lesser extent "journalist" -- require extraction, BY THE STATE, to keep them alive and well. To provide them with a means of "earning" a living that Fate and Biology cheated them of.
The consequences>
We've been fighting "A War on Poverty" for 60 years. Poverty has never disappeared -- it's now become relative, as even "the poorest" have access to the same consumer goods "the richest" have -- and in fact, keeps getting redefined UPWARDS. The reason why Poverty does not disappear is because if it did, MILLIONS OF LEFTISTS WHO WORK FOR THE STATE WOULD BE OUT OF A PAYCHECK. Eliminating Poverty would be the worst thing that ever happened to them, and so the poverty pimps keep churning out regulations and requirements, rewards and punishments to keep Welfare a better option that self-reliance, and in the process, changed poverty from a circumstance into a profession.
Same with the "War on Drugs": if you win that, millions of unionized prison guards, police officers, drug counselors, judges, prosecutors, public defenders are out of a job. The need for the entire enforcement and rehabilitation regime is nullified, and the power of the State (to redistribute in favor of the leftist) is lost.
What would "artistes" who put their mother's ashes in a jar of pig urine do without the National Endowment for the Arts?
What would the universities with huge private endowments and billions in income from football and basketball do without huge subsidies from government to do their 150,000th study on the effects and benefits of Vitamin C?
Where would a rocket scientist or astrophysicist (until recently) have found remunerative work if not for NASA?
Why do we still have a Post Office in a day and age of electronic messaging and bill payment and efficient overnight delivery systems?
Where does a community organizer get funded if not through government grant?
I could give 50 more examples, but there's no point -- the ultimate goal of the exercise is to put the Statist (usually leftist) into positions they cannot be dislodged from and drawing a paycheck from the productive in return for producing nothing of value.
Even when these bureaucracies and panels, commissions and departments are convened for a specific purpose (like most of the New Deal agencies), they always seem to hang around forever, so that the talentless, the hack, the useless, the loser, can still manage to get her 'entitlement" through government by association with the powerful. It was said of FDR "Brain's Trust" that they "came to Washington to do good, but stayed to do well".
We now know half of them, at least, were commies.
This brings us to the next leftist strategy, which is Managerialism. Managerialism dovetails very nicely with the Invasion of the Institutions thingy.
Simple definition: Managerialism is a response to increasing complexity in any system. It is the creation of systems of technical experts in continuously-narrowing, highly-specialized fields of endeavor. As American Life became more complex, and the lines between Capitalism and Government became blurred, huge bureaucratic organisms began to grow which infringed upon more aspects of daily life.
You are not lorded over by Senators and Congresscritters. Even presidents do not wield power -- except through force of personality and charisma -- to objectively "rule" this country. Strictly speaking, you are ruled over by millions of petty officials buried deep in the recesses of every government bureaucracy at the federal, state, county and municipal level. These bureaucracies have been empowered over time to write and enforce regulations on their own. They are staffed by a class professional parasites -- professional bureaucrats and administrators, political appointees, and judges, mostly -- who are not in any way, shape or form responsible to an electorate. All extract a very good living from the productive, tend to lean leftwards, politically, and the results to date would seem to indicate that they neither do much good, but are capable of much harm.
Even when these organizations don't exert direct influence by regulation, rule or enforcement, they often exert cultural influence by their power to shape the human mind, so that every pissant, second-rate, excess-to-needs, largely unheard of institution suddenly becomes all-important as soon as we reach "a crisis".
And speaking of "Crisis"...we seem to have an awful lot of them.
Crises, incidentally, most likely created by the same mechanisms that are then used as an excuse to create MORE managerialist enterprises comprised of bloodsuckers of leftist bent, given greater and ever-more so esoteric and subtle powers. The results are easy to see, in retrospect: like that time someone offered you a "government-backed" mortgage for more house than you could afford for no money down, and then let you go into foreclosure, just so they could "rescue" you from the ill-effects of their own bad policies.
Crises are provided by a system of "Gradual Catastrophism" wherein bad policies are allowed to remain in force, to expand, and then to eventually collapse, leaving millions dependent upon government "to do something", yet it was (unelected) government ALWAYS that produced the Crisis.
The whole regime may be useless and unwanted by the general public, but "the experts" say it is necessary, and the experts can never be argued with, nor punished for incompetence or malfeasance and so the whole thing is allowed to unproductively ossify and become a permanent feature of government and life.
Perfect breeding grounds for MORE lefties who come to see themselves not so much as apolitical movement, but as a singular CLASS, given the power to dictate and direct the means of distribution. Since they act as a class, rather than as individuals, their distribution always tends to operate in their favor.
This is ALL The Swamp. It grew itself largely in secret, because the average American is a nose-picking idiot, about 50% of whom depend upon government for their existence.
The greatest danger to America is not the democratic party, which, by definition is not a political party but rather a collection of disparate, often opposed interest groups (the only thing that keeps them in alliance is a shared hatred of The Other Guy); it is The Swamp. Because the Swamp was tailor made for leftists and is infested with them, and was founded upon Gramscian principles.
Incidentally, the theory of Managerialism was professed by a man named James Burnham, an American socialist who became disillusioned with the left (because they hurt his feelz by not recognizing his Special), who then made common cause with THE RIGHT, even becoming one of the co-founders of National Review, the right-wing Bible.
So even the discarded leftists -- the most useless of the useless, one assumes -- still managed to invade an institution of the Right!
The left does not attack directly: it always moves under cover of darkness or camouflaged. When the left does act directly, it does so because it is in panic mode. Look around you -- riots, looting, lockdowns, arbitrary restrictions of fundamental freedoms, stealing an election in broad daylight.
I think the left is in full panic mode, now. The ascendency of Trump was a signal to them that they have been discovered and their rice bowl is in deadly peril.
Next up in Part Three -- the War Plan.
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