Unburdened By BS...

 "What can be, unburdened by what has been..." -- Mao Tse Dung Kamala Harris

Whatever the flabby quality of Kamala's favorite throwaway line, there is something here to consider; it is, in its very essence, a reformulation of Mao's teachings for the stupid.

The Cultural Revolution in China was undertaken in the spirit of eliminating the "Four Olds" -- old customs, old habits, old culture and old ideas. These were seen as an impediment to the Communist Elysium that was predicted by Marx, encapsulating a very inconvenient truth (with apologies to Al Gore).

That truth is that what has come before exerts an influence upon what is. Culture, society in general, is a continuation of what once was. I think it was Orwell who called it something like (paraphrased) a burden passed on to living by the dead. In the "revolutionary" sense, what is familiar, what is custom, what is cherished, what is valued, what is remembered, must be destroyed in order to make way for a new paradigm of things that aren't treasured, valued, cherished, worth remembering or familiar. It is only when the "old" is completely obliterated that the "new" has a chance to grow and thrive.

Now, being the scion of an avowed Marxist, it is not surprising that Kamala has taken this most sacred dictum of Mao's inhumanity to heart. It was something that was probably drummed into her otherwise-empty head from the first moment that she was able to comprehend language and emotions and it is a notion that apparently has never left her.

That it is a stupid notion never occurs to her. Most likely because her experience -- such as it is -- has not given her an alternative to contemplate. She is a product of Marxism, she has advanced by means of Marxism (only now we call it DEI or Diversity or whatnot) and now she could possibly achieve the ultimate role of power on the backs of the other stupid Marxists who are allowed to vote (or, more-accurately, the very wealthy pseudo-Marxists who pay the campaign bills)..

Why, then, should she be expected to give that nonsense up?

Because history has shown that it failed. It failed so badly that the Chinese took up Capitalism (of a sort) and it cost tens of millions of lives due to starvation, torture, executions, and other sordid possibilities, turned millions more into virtual slaves, because the progenitors of this ridiculous shit saw themselves as Messiahs. Messiahs with the right to kill anyone who stood in the way of salvation. 

Remember that word, "Messiah", because we're going to get back to it in a moment.

On the Other Side there is Donald Trump, who also has his own version of Mao's dictum, however, it has the veneer of freedom attached to it. Granted, it might even turn out to be more than just a veneer, but time will tell, assuming Trump makes it to the finish line, doesn't get killed by a whacko lefty, can manage to get enough people to the polls to overcome the left's cheating at the ballot box, or isn't tossed  into prison on more...ahem...trumped up and bogus charges.

He, also, presents himself as some sort of Messiah, one that has all the answers to our problems which also involves jettisoning several "olds" (a.k.a "draining the Swamp").

Trump's problem, should he succeed, is the flip side to Kamala's stupid.

Kamala is a dumbfuck because she's going to try something that has already been tried many times and failed, only harder and with more money we don't have, while Trump's stupid involves setting himself up against a professional bureaucracy that almost skinned him alive the first time and will only redouble their efforts if he manages to win. Both approaches have a seed of failure in them; Kamala's because we will have run out of other people's money, and Trump's because he hasn't realized that entrenched bureaucracy has inserted itself into the very fabric of everyone's lives.

One tells you that Paradise is upon you so long as we can fleece "The Rich" (who were all on display denouncing themselves at the DNC last week; I can predict how that little drama ends) while the other tells you that Nirvana can simply be willed into existence.

The problem both have to overcome, but don't recognize, is the concept of "salvation" and when I use this word, I don't mean it in the religious context.

"Salvation" would be generally defined by the average room-temperature IQ as follows:

1. I have enough to eat.
2. I have a sturdy roof.
3. Money is not a problem.
4. Whoever I despise gets the throbbing purple shaft (although Kamala has called dibs).
5. It costs me nothing.

Kamala tells you that if we simply take money from people, we can solve all the problems. Of course, that runs up against resistance. People who have money and property, regardless of their professed ideology, hate to give it up especially under coercion. Even the hardest-core libtard will object when you go after their personal assets. They don't really hate wealth and money, you see, they just don't like the people who have it.

Trump tells you that if we simply change the way in which government conducts business, there's a soft, cushy landing for everyone. Of course, this runs up against resistance, as well, as the people who conduct government business make their livings doing so, and if you solve the problems they've been tasked to manage you take away their reason for existence, not to mention the power they exercise.

One side sees salvation as an exercise in collectivism, so that the pain is spread around (to others) and responsibility disappears, to be paid for by their tormenters; the other sees salvation as a series of mini coup d'etat directed against their tormenters.

Both are really bad ideas.

There is no security in Collectivism because Collectives aren't held to any standards and because responsibility cannot be attached to the incompetent and the wrong doers.

The pulling down of institutions (regardless of how corrupt and useless they have actually become) threatens to also pull apart the remnants of civil society.

"Draining the Swamp" requires patience: it cannot be achieved immediately.

"Unburdened by what has been" is likewise not very likely because "what has been" has a pretty goddamned good track record.

But this is the Messiah complex playing out before you.

And like every would-be Messiah, there is the danger that the feedback necessary to do it all properly is going to be ignored. Failure will be attached to scapegoats; resistance will be seen as unpatriotic, bigoted, selfish, or what have you. All that will matter is the Sacred Quest which will have to be delivered no matter what.

This is where things get dicey. If one takes it as axiomatic that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, then the goddamned omelet had better appear. In the past, regimes who couldn't produce the omelet got very touchy when people noticed its absence, and that's when things like secret police, gulags and midnight disappearances start.

If you notice, you're a threat to those in power.

(For the record: I don't think either candidate would take it that far: Kamala has no guts and Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a no-no, but I'm worried about what comes after one or the other. Precedents are about to be set here.)

Be careful of self-proclaimed Messiahs: once they are enabled they will often stop at nothing to see their sacred duty done, and the body count doesn't matter, the lives ruined don't register and the thought "could we do this better?" never occurs to anyone involved.

(The Overlord favors neither candidate, on a personal level, but given the alternative is a dumbass broad with no accomplishments to her name, elevated in the name of ensuring the campaign scum gets paid and garlanded with all the fake, manufactured, gratuitous media dribble The Machine can muster, then Trump, by comparison looks mighty attractive. At this stage, if he could cook, never mind voting for him, I might consider gay marrying him. The Alternative is just that rank).

The problem with Messiahs is that they reveal a real weakness in their followers: 

They fear true Independence. The left fears it because it entails the possibility of failure and personal responsibility, and so they would rather someone take care of them and think for them; the Right fears it because rather than do the work to maintain it, they'd rather contract that job out (and they did a mighty fine job of it, too). If this wasn't true then we wouldn't be in the stew we're in now.

Neither truly has the stomach for the sorts of sacrifice that either approach entails.

Some Additional Notes:

* Considering the subject currently floating about that 'Murica is headed the way of the Roman Empire, I will disagree. Rome failed because it became unmanageable; we, on the other hand, are managed to death. To the point where millions can be voluntarily stampeded into taking untested vaccines because they fear the sniffles.

No, were are not the New Rome. I would liken our present stage of dipshit to that which prevailed during the French Revolution: cancel culture, rioting mobs, an atomized society, all clamoring for something that most couldn't put into words, and believing -- rightfully or wrongly -- that if you just change the people at the top, no matter how egregious and unprepared they might be, you'll still get better results than what came before.

By the way, that's the main premise of Progressivism, as well.

No, this is not Rome in it's twilight. That didn't have torches and pitchforks and a compliant media to hide the decline.

* On the subject of stupid millenials, I have had something of a thought about that recently. If your average 20-something is dumber than a fucking stump, it's not because their brain doesn't work; it's because they've been trained to behave in a certain fashion and to process information in a shallow manner.

I have recently been engaged in a series of historical debates with a young man of my acquaintance at one of the local watering holes. He's obviously a very bright and studious young man, but he tends to frame every subject in a black-and-white fashion, so that, for example, when he makes the argument that the Nazis were NOT socialists because they haven't checked all of Marx's boxes, he neglects to notice that the Nazis implemented a total socialist program.

The differences being:

a) The Nazis had the experience of the Russian revolution to draw upon to tailor their socialist program more-specifically and more-efficiently,

b) That it was a cradle-to-grave socialist state, only paid for by conquest, with the "benefits" accruing on the basis of race and ethnicity, 

c) that there was nothing specifically "right wing" in the program -- just like Mao, everything was overturned --democracy, monarchy, religion, economic freedom, the right to speech and conscience -- in the service of...THE STATE.

d) It ultimately failed because it called into existence an alliance so repelled by what it offered (and did) that it had to be annihilated.

And after having several discussions with this young man I've begun to notice that whatever his professor tells him is an established fact, and all of it is devoid of context. In fact, he seems incapable of grasping the concept of context, and it occurred to me just recently why that might be:

His entire educational experience has been based on the need to pass standardized tests. When a teacher's performance, the funding of the school system, are tied to performance on a standardized test, then the impetus ceases to be education. The incentives are all wrong; the kids are taught what they need to know to pass the test and this is drilled into them repeatedly, and so there is no time for context (assuming their teachers even know what that is).

And it happens at the university level, as well, where SATs, LSATS, LCATs are all seen as the true measure of intellect, and where most courses are taught by teaching assistants and junior professors who are often judged (and paid) based upon how many students pass their class.

Discuss.